The Impeachment Papers

A Compendium

of

Documents Related

to the

Impeachment

of

President Donald J. Trump

CREDITS

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Version 1.0

Contents

1. Whistleblower Complaint Regarding President Trump and Ukraine

1. I. The 25 July Presidential phone call

2. II. Efforts to restrict access to records related to the call

3. III. Ongoing concerns

4. IV. Circumstances leading up to the 25 July Presidential phone call

5. (U) CLASSIFIED APPENDIX

2. Pelosi Letter on Whistleblower Complaint

3. The Trump-Ukraine Phone Call Transcript

4. Intelligence Community Inspector General's Letter About the Whistleblower Complaint

5. Safety Concerns Regarding the Intelligence Community Whistleblower I

1. ENCLOSURE

6. Safety Concerns Regarding the Intelligence Community Whistleblower II

7. House Democrats Subpoena Rudy Giuliani

8. White House Subpoenaed

9. White House Letter to Speaker Pelosi Et Al 10-08

1. I. Your “Inquiry” Is Constitutionally Invalid and Violates Basic Due Process Rights and the Separation of Powers.

2. II. The Invalid “Impeachment Inquiry” Plainly Seeks To Reverse the Election of 2016 and To Influence the Election of 2020.

3. III. There Is No Legitimate Basis for Your “Impeachment Inquiry”; Instead, the Committees’ Actions Raise Serious Questions.

10. House Democrats Subpoena Two Giuliani Associates for Documents

1. Background

2. Your Clients’ Refusal to Cooperate

11. Rick Perry Subpoenaed

1. Background

2. Reports Relating to Your Involvement During This Period

3. Subpoena for Documents

4. SCHEDULE

12. Giuliani Lawyer Response to Congressional Subpoena

13. House Impeachment Resolution

1. SEC. 2. OPEN AND TRANSPARENT INVESTIGATIVE PROCEEDINGS BY THE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE.

2. SEC. 3. TRANSMISSION OF ADDITIONAL MATERIALS.

3. SEC. 4. IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY PROCEDURES IN THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY.

14. Testimony from Former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch

15. Testimony from former State Department official Michael McKinley

16. Sondland Transcript Full

17. Kurt Volker Testimony

18. Bill Taylor Deposition

19. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent

20. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman Deposition

21. Fiona Hill Testimony

22. Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Laura Cooper Testimony Transcript I

23. Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Laura Cooper Testimony Transcript II

24. Correspondence to White House Counsel

25. Opening Statement before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

26. Opening Statement of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander S. Vindman Before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

1. Background

2. Relevant Events

3. April 21, 2019: President Trump Calls Ukraine President Zelenskyy

4. May 2019: Inauguration Delegation Goes to Ukraine

5. July 10, 2019: Danylyuk Visit

6. July 25, 2019: Parliamentary Election Call

7. Conclusion

27. Chairman Schiff Releases Opening Statement for Open Hearing With Lt. Col. Vindman and Jennifer Williams

1. Full statement below as prepared:

28. Impeachment Inquiry: Ms. Jennifer Williams and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman

29. George Kent - Opening Statement from Nov. 13 Public Testimony

30. Ukraine Clearinghouse Memorandum Telephone Conversation April-2019

31. Ukraine Clearinghouse 10-03-19. Chairmen Letter on State Dept Texts

32. Ukraine Clearinghouse 2019.11.05 Volker Additional Texts Excerpts

33. Ukraine Clearinghouse Whistleblower Memo 07.26.19

34. Ukraine Clearinghouse ICIG Statement on Processing of Whistleblower Complaints

35. Letter From President Trump Final

36. Articles of Impeachment

1. ARTICLE I ABUSE OF POWER

2. ARTICLE II: OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS

Whistleblower Complaint Regarding President Trump and Ukraine

August 12, 2009

The Honorable Richard Burr

Chairman

Select Committee on Intelligence

United States Senate

The Honorable Adam Schiff

Chairman

Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

United States House of Representatives

Dear Chairman Burr and Chairman Schiff:

I am reporting an “urgent concern” in accordance with the procedures outlined in 50 U.S.C. §3033(k)(5)(A). This letter is UNCLASSIFIED when separated from the attachment.

In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals. The President’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.

- Over the past four months, more than half a dozen U.S. officials have informed me of various facts related to this effort. The information provided herein was relayed to me in the course of official interagency business. It is routine for U.S. officials with responsibility for a particular regional or functional portfolio to share such information with one another in order to inform policymaking and analysis.

- I was not a direct witness to most of the events described. However, I found my colleagues’ accounts of these events to be credible because, in almost all cases, multiple officials recounted fact patterns that were consistent with one another. In addition, a variety of information consistent with these private accounts has been reported publicly.

I am deeply concerned that the actions described below constitute “a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, or violation of law or Executive Order” that “does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters,” consistent with the definition of an “urgent concern” in 50 U.S.C. §3033(k)(5)(G). I am therefore fulfilling my duty to report this information, through proper legal channels, to the relevant authorities.

- I am also concerned that these actions pose risks to U.S. national security and undermine the U.S. Government’s efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in U.S. elections.

To the best of my knowledge, the entirety of this statement is unclassified when separated from the classified enclosure. I have endeavored to apply the classification standards outlined in Executive Order (EO) 13526 and to separate out information that I know or have reason to believe is classified for national security purposes.[1]

- If a classification marking is applied retroactively, I believe it is incumbent upon the classifying authority to explain why such a marking was applied, and to which specific information it pertains.

I. The 25 July Presidential phone call

Early in the morning of 25 July, the President spoke by telephone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. I do not know which side initiated the call. This was the first publicly acknowledged call between the two leaders since a brief congratulatory call after Mr. Zelenskyy won the presidency on 21 April.

Multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call informed me that, after an initial exchange of pleasantries, the President used the remainder of the call to advance his personal interests. Namely, he sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President’s 2020 reelection bid. According to the White House officials who had direct knowledge of the call, the President pressured Mr. Zelenskyy to, inter alia:

- initiate or continue an investigation[2] into the activities of former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter Biden;

- assist in purportedly uncovering that allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election originated in Ukraine, with a specific request that the Ukrainian leader locate and turn over servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and examined by the U.S. cyber security firm Crowdstrike,[3] which initially reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the DNC’s networks in 2016; and

- meet or speak with two people the President named explicitly as his personal envoys on these matters, Mr. Giuliani and Attorney General Barr, to whom the President referred multiple times in tandem.

The President also praised Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, Mr. Yuriy Lutsenko, and suggested that Mr. Zelenskyy might want to keep him in his position. (Note: Starting in March 2019, Mr. Lutsenko made a series of public allegations—many of which he later walked back—about the Biden family’s activities in Ukraine, Ukrainian officials’ purported involvement in the 2016 U.S. election, and the activities of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. See Part IV for additional context.)

The White House officials who told me this information were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call. They told me that there was already a “discussion ongoing” with White House lawyers about how to treat the call because of the likelihood, in the officials’ retelling, that they had witnessed the President abuse his office for personal gain.

The Ukrainian side was the first to publicly acknowledge the phone call. On the evening of 25 July, a readout was posted on the website of the Ukrainian President that contained the following line (translation from original Russian-language readout):

- “Donald Trump expressed his conviction that the new Ukrainian government will be able to quickly improve Ukraine’s image and complete the investigation of corruption cases that have held back cooperation between Ukraine and the United States.”

Aside from the above-mentioned “cases” purportedly dealing with the Biden family and the 2016 U.S. election, I was told by White House officials that no other “cases” were discussed.

Based on my understanding, there were approximately a dozen White House officials who listened to the call—a mixture of policy officials and duty officers in the White House Situation Room, as is customary. The officials I spoke with told me that participation in the call had not been restricted in advance because everyone expected it would be a “routine” call with a foreign leader. I do not know whether anyone was physically present with the President during the call.

- In addition to White House personnel, I was told that a State Department official, Mr. T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, also listened in on the call.

- I was not the only non-White House official to receive a readout of the call. Based on my understanding, multiple State Department and Intelligence Community officials were also briefed on the contents of the call as outlined above.

II. Efforts to restrict access to records related to the call

In the days following the phone call, I learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to “lock down” all records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced—as is customary—by the White House Situation Room. This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call.

- White House officials told me that they were “directed” by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored for coordination, finalization, and distribution to Cabinet-level officials.

- Instead, the transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature. One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective.

I do not know whether similar measures were taken to restrict access to other records of the call, such as contemporaneous handwritten notes taken by those who listened in.

III. Ongoing concerns

On 26 July, a day after the call, U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker visited Kyiv and met with President Zelenskyy and a variety of Ukrainian political figures. Ambassador Volker was accompanied in his meetings by U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. Based on multiple readouts of these meetings recounted to me by various U.S. officials, Ambassadors Volker and Sondland reportedly provided advice to the Ukrainian leadership about how to “navigate” the demands that the President had made of Mr. Zelenskyy.

I also learned from multiple U.S. officials that, on or about 2 August, Mr. Giuliani reportedly traveled to Madrid to meet with one of President Zelenskyy’s advisers, Andriy Yermak. The U.S. officials characterized this meeting, which was not reported publicly at the time, as a “direct follow-up” to the President’s call with Mr. Zelenskyy about the “cases” they had discussed.

- Separately, multiple U.S. officials told me that Mr. Giuliani had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of other Zelenskyy advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov.[4]

- I do not know whether those officials met or spoke with Mr. Giuliani, but I was told separately by multiple U.S. officials that Mr. Yermak and Mr. Bakanov intended to travel to Washington in mid-August.

On 9 August, the President told reporters: “I think [President Zelenskyy] is going to make a deal with President Putin, and he will be invited to the White House. And we look forward to seeing him. He’s already been invited to the White House, and he wants to come. And I think he will. He’s a very reasonable guy. He wants to see peace in Ukraine, and I think he will be coming very soon, actually.”

IV. Circumstances leading up to the 25 July Presidential phone call

Beginning in late March 2019, a series of articles appeared in an online publication called The Hill. In these articles, several Ukrainian officials—most notably, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko—made a series of allegations against other Ukrainian officials and current and former U.S. officials. Mr. Lutsenko and his colleagues alleged, inter alia:

- that they possessed evidence that Ukrainian officials—namely, Head of the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine Artem Sytnyk and Member of Parliament Serhiy Leshchenko—had “interfered” in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, allegedly in collaboration with the DNC and the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv;[5]

- that the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv—specifically, U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who had criticized Mr. Lutsenko’s organization for its poor record on fighting corruption—had allegedly obstructed Ukrainian law enforcement agencies’ pursuit of corruption cases, including by providing a “do not prosecute” list, and had blocked Ukrainian prosecutors from traveling to the United States expressly to prevent them from delivering their “evidence” about the 2016 U.S. election;[6] and

- that former Vice President Biden had pressured former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in 2016 to fire then Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in order to quash a purported criminal probe into Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company on whose board the former Vice President’s son, Hunter, sat.[7]

In several public comments,[8] Mr. Lutsenko also stated that he wished to communicate directly with Attorney General Barr on these matters.[9]

The allegations by Mr. Lutsenko came on the eve of the first round of Ukraine’s presidential election on 31 March. By that time, Mr. Lutsenko’s political patron, President Poroshenko, was trailing Mr. Zelenskyy in the polls and appeared likely to be defeated. Mr. Zelenskyy had made known his desire to replace Mr. Lutsenko as Prosecutor General. On 21 April, Mr. Poroshenko lost the runoff to Mr. Zelenskyy by a landslide. See Enclosure for additional information.

- It was also publicly reported that Mr. Giuliani had met on at least two occasions with Mr. Lutsenko: once in New York in late January and again in Warsaw in mid-February. In addition, it was publicly reported that Mr. Giuliani had spoken in late 2018 to former Prosecutor General Shokin, in a Skype call arranged by two associates of Mr. Giuliani.[10]

- On 25 April in an interview with Fox News, the President called Mr. Lutsenko’s claims “big” and “incredible” and stated that the Attorney General “would want to see this.”

On or about 29 April, I learned from U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the situation that Ambassador Yovanovitch had been suddenly recalled to Washington by senior State Department officials for “consultations” and would most likely be removed from her position.

- Around the same time, I also learned from a U.S. official that “associates” of Mr. Giuliani were trying to make contact with the incoming Zelenskyy team.[11]

- On 6 May, the State Department announced that Ambassador Yovanovitch would be ending her assignment in Kyiv “as planned.”

- However, several U.S. officials told me that, in fact, her tour was curtailed because of pressure stemming from Mr. Lutsenko’s allegations. Mr. Giuliani subsequently stated in an interview with a Ukrainian journalist published on 14 May that Ambassador Yovanovitch was “removed...because she was part of the efforts against the President.”

On 9 May, The New York Times reported that Mr. Giuliani planned to travel to Ukraine to press the Ukrainian government to pursue investigations that would help the President in his 2020 reelection bid.

- In his multitude of public statements leading up to and in the wake of the publication of this article, Mr. Giuliani confirmed that he was focused on encouraging Ukrainian authorities to pursue investigations into alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and alleged wrongdoing by the Biden family.[12]

- On the afternoon of 10 May, the President stated in an interview with Politico that he planned to speak with Mr. Giuliani about the trip.

- A few hours later, Mr. Giuliani publicly canceled his trip, claiming that Mr. Zelenskyy was “surrounded by enemies of the [U.S.] President...and of the United States.”

On 11 May, Mr. Lutsenko met for two hours with President-elect Zelenskyy, according to a public account given several days later by Mr. Lutsenko. Mr. Lutsenko publicly stated that he had told Mr. Zelenskyy that he wished to remain as Prosecutor General.

Starting in mid-May, I heard from multiple U.S. officials that they were deeply concerned by what they viewed as Mr. Giuliani’s circumvention of national security decisionmaking processes to engage with Ukrainian officials and relay messages back and forth between Kyiv and the President. These officials also told me:

- that State Department officials, including Ambassadors Volker and Sondland, had spoken with Mr. Giuliani in an attempt to “contain the damage” to U.S. national security; and

- that Ambassadors Volker and Sondland during this time period met with members of the new Ukrainian administration and, in addition to discussing policy matters, sought to help Ukrainian leaders understand and respond to the differing messages they were receiving from official U.S. channels on the one hand, and from Mr. Giuliani on the other.

During this same timeframe, multiple U.S. officials told me that the Ukrainian leadership was led to believe that a meeting or phone call between the President and President Zelenskyy would depend on whether Zelenskyy showed willingness to “play ball” on the issues that had been publicly aired by Mr. Lutsenko and Mr. Giuliani. (Note: This was the general understanding of the state of affairs as conveyed to me by U.S. officials from late May into early July. I do not know who delivered this message to the Ukrainian leadership, or when.) See Enclosure for additional information.

Shortly after President Zelenskyy’s inauguration, it was publicly reported that Mr. Giuliani met with two other Ukrainian officials: Ukraine’s Special Anticorruption Prosecutor, Mr. Nazar Kholodnytskyy, and a former Ukrainian diplomat named Andriy Telizhenko. Both Mr. Kholodnytskyy and Mr. Telizhenko are allies of Mr. Lutsenko and made similar allegations in the above-mentioned series of articles in The Hill.

On 13 June, the President told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he would accept damaging information on his political rivals from a foreign government.

On 21 June, Mr. Giuliani tweeted: “New Pres of Ukraine still silent on investigation of Ukrainian interference in 2016 and alleged Biden bribery of Poroshenko. Time for leadership and investigate both if you want to purge how Ukraine was abused by Hillary and Clinton people.”

In mid-July, I learned of a sudden change of policy with respect to U.S. assistance for Ukraine. See Enclosure for additional information.

ENCLOSURE:     Classified appendix

[1] Apart from the information in the Enclosure, it is my belief that none of the information contained herein meets the definition of “classified information” outlined in EO 13526, Part 1, Section 1.1. There is ample open-source information about the efforts I describe below, including statements by the President and Mr. Giuliani. In addition, based on my personal observations, there is discretion with respect to the classification of private comments by or instructions from the President, including his communications with foreign leaders; information that is not related to U.S. foreign policy or national security—such as the information contained in this document, when separated from the Enclosure—is generally treated as unclassified. I also believe that applying a classification marking to this information would violate EO 13526, Part 1, Section 1.7, which states: “In no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified in order to: (1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error; [or] (2) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency.”

[2] It is unclear whether such a Ukrainian investigation exists. See Footnote #7 for additional information.

[3] I do not know why the President associates these servers with Ukraine. (See, for example, his comments to Fox News on 20 July: “And Ukraine. Take a look at Ukraine. How come the FBI didn’t take this server? Podesta told them to get out. He said, get out. So, how come the FBI didn’t take the server from the DNC?”)

[4] In a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) on 22 July, two associates of Mr. Giuliani reportedly traveled to Kyiv in May 2019 and met with Mr. Bakanov and another close Zelenskyy adviser, Mr. Serhiy Shefir.

[5] Mr. Sytnyk and Mr. Leshchenko are two of Mr. Lutsenko’s main domestic rivals. Mr. Lutsenko has no legal training and has been widely criticized in Ukraine for politicizing criminal probes and using his tenure as Prosecutor General to protect corrupt Ukrainian officials. He has publicly feuded with Mr. Sytnyk, who heads Ukraine’s only competent anticorruption body, and with Mr. Leshchenko, a former investigative journalist who has repeatedly criticized Mr. Lutsenko’s record. In December 2018, a Ukrainian court upheld a complaint by a Member of Parliament, Mr. Boryslav Rozenblat, who alleged that Mr. Sytnyk and Mr. Leshchenko had “interfered” in the 2016 U.S. election by publicizing a document detailing corrupt payments made by former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych before his ouster in 2014. Mr. Rozenblat had originally filed the motion in late 2017 after attempting to flee Ukraine amid an investigation into his taking of a large bribe. On 16 July 2019, Mr. Leshchenko publicly stated that a Ukrainian court had overturned the lower court’s decision.

[6] Mr. Lutsenko later told Ukrainian news outlet The Babel on 17 April that Ambassador Yovanovitch had never provided such a list, and that he was, in fact, the one who requested such a list.

[7] Mr. Lutsenko later told Bloomberg on 16 May that former Vice President Biden and his son were not subject to any current Ukrainian investigations, and that he had no evidence against them. Other senior Ukrainian officials also contested his original allegations; one former senior Ukrainian prosecutor told Bloomberg on 7 May that Mr. Shokin in fact was not investigating Burisma at the time of his removal in 2016.

[8] See, for example, Mr. Lutsenko’s comments to The Hill on 1 and 7 April and his interview with The Babel on 17 April, in which he stated that he had spoken with Mr. Giuliani about arranging contact with Attorney General Barr.

[9] In May, Attorney General Barr announced that he was initiating a probe into the “origins” of the Russia investigation. According to the above-referenced OCCRP report (22 July), two associates of Mr. Giuliani claimed to be working with Ukrainian officials to uncover information that would become part of this inquiry. In an interview with Fox News on 8 August, Mr. Giuliani claimed that Mr. John Durham, whom Attorney General Barr designated to lead this probe, was “spending a lot of time in Europe” because he was “investigating Ukraine.” I do not know the extent to which, if at all, Mr. Giuliani is directly coordinating his efforts on Ukraine with Attorney General Barr or Mr. Durham.

[10] See, for example, the above-referenced articles in Bloomberg (16 May) and OCCRP (22 July).

[11] I do not know whether these associates of Mr. Giuliani were the same individuals named in the 22 July report by OCCRP, referenced above.

[12] See, for example, Mr. Giuliani’s appearance on Fox News on 6 April and his tweets on 23 April and 10 May. In his interview with The New York Times, Mr. Giuliani stated that the President “basically knows what I’m doing, sure, as his lawyer.” Mr. Giuliani also stated: “We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do... There’s nothing illegal about it... Somebody could say it’s improper. And this isn’t foreign policy - I’m asking them to do an investigation that they’re doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”

August 12, 2019

(U) CLASSIFIED APPENDIX

(U) Supplementary classified information is provided as follows:

(U) Additional information related to Section II

Strikethrough:(TSEnd of strikethrough/words redacted                According to multiple White House officials I spoke with, the transcript of the President’s call with President Zelenskyy was placed into a computer system managed directly by the National Security Council (NSC) Directorate for Intelligence Programs. This is a standalone computer system reserved for codeword-level intelligence information, such as covert action. According to information I received from White House officials, some officials voiced concerns internally that this would be an abuse of the system and was not consistent with the responsibilities of the Directorate for Intelligence Programs. According to White House officials I spoke with, this was “not the first time” under this Administration that a Presidential transcript was placed into this codeword-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive—rather than national security sensitive—information.

(U) Additional information related to Section IV

words redactedInformation Relating To Classified Intelligence Community Reporting & Analysis

Strikethrough:(SEnd of strikethrough/words redacted          ) I would like to expand upon two issues mentioned in Section IV that might have a connection with the overall effort to pressure the Ukrainian leadership. As I do not know definitively whether the below-mentioned decisions are connected to the broader efforts I describe, I have chosen to include them in the classified annex. If they indeed represent genuine policy deliberations and decisions formulated to advance U.S. foreign policy and national security, one might be able to make a reasonable case that the facts are classified.

- Strikethrough:(SEnd of strikethrough/words redacted          ) I learned from U.S officials that, on or around 14 May, the President instructed Vice President Pence to cancel his planned travel to Ukraine to attend President Zelenskyy’s inauguration on 20 May; Secretary of Energy Rick Perry led the delegation instead. According to these officials, it was also “made clear” to them that the President did not want to meet with Mr. Zelenskyy until he saw how Zelenskyy “chose to act” in office. I do not know how this guidance was communicated, or by whom. I also do not know whether this action was connected with the broader understanding, described in the unclassified letter, that a meeting or phone call between the President and President Zelenskyy would depend on whether Zelenskyy showed willingness to “play ball” on the issues that had been publicly aired by Mr. Lutsenko and Mr. Giuliani.

- Strikethrough:(SEnd of strikethrough/words redacted          ) On 18 July, an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) official informed Departments and Agencies that the President “earlier that month” had issued instructions to suspend all U.S. security assistance to Ukraine. Neither OMB nor the NSC staff knew why this instruction had been issued. During interagency meetings on 23 July and 26 July, OMB officials again stated explicitly that the instruction to suspend this assistance had come directly from the President, but they still were unaware of a policy rationale. As of early August, I heard from U.S. officials that some Ukrainian officials were aware that U.S. aid might be in jeopardy, but I do not know how or when they learned of it.

words redactedInformation Relating To Classified Intelligence Community Reporting & Analysis

Pelosi Letter on Whistleblower Complaint

A seal: Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
September 22, 2019

Dear Colleague,

On Thursday, Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire will appear before the House Intelligence Committee in an open hearing. At that time, we expect him to obey the law and turn over the whistleblower’s full complaint to the Committee. We also expect that he will establish a path for the whistleblower to speak directly to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees as required by law.

The Intelligence Community Inspector General, who was appointed by President Trump, has determined that the complaint is both of “urgent concern and credible,” and its disclosure “relates to one of the most significant and important of the Director of National Intelligence’s responsibilities to the American people.”

The Administration’s blocking of Acting DNI Maguire from providing Congress with the whistleblower complaint calls upon him to violate the federal statute, which unequivocally states that the DNI “shall” provide Congress this information. The Administration is endangering our national security and having a chilling effect on any future whistleblower who sees wrongdoing.

We must be sure that the President and his Administration are always conducting our national security and foreign policy in the best interest of the American people, not the President’s personal or political interest.

I am calling on Republicans to join us in insisting that the Acting DNI obey the law as we seek the truth to protect the American people and our Constitution.

This violation is about our national security. The Inspector General determined that the matter is “urgent” and therefore we face an emergency that must be addressed immediately.

If the Administration persists in blocking this whistleblower from disclosing to Congress a serious possible breach of constitutional duties by the President, they will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation.

Thank you for your patriotism.

best regards,

A signature: Nancy Pelosi.

The Trump-Ukraine Phone Call Transcript

Declassified by order of the President

September 24, 2019

Strikethrough:EYES ONLYEnd of strikethrough

Strikethrough:DO NOT COPYEnd of strikethrough

MEMORANDUM OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATION

SUBJECT:

Strikethrough:(C)End of strikethrough Telephone Conversation with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine

PARTICIPANTS:

President Zelenskyy of Ukraine

Notetakers: The White House Situation Room

DATE, TIME
AND PLACE:

July 25, 2019, 9:03 - 9:33 a.m. EDT
Residence

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough The President: Congratulations on a great victory. We all watched from the United States and you did a terrific job. The way you came from behind, somebody who wasn’t given much of a chance, and you ended up winning easily. It’s a fantastic achievement. Congratulations.

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough President Zelenskyy: You are absolutely right Mr. President. We did win big and we worked hard for this. We worked a lot but I would like to confess to you that I had an opportunity to learn from you. We used quite a few of your skills and knowledge and were able to use it as an example for our elections and yes it is true that these were unique elections. We were in a unique situation that we were able to achieve a unique success. I’m able to tell you the following; the first time, you called me to congratulate me when I won my presidential election, and the second time you are now calling me when my party won the parliamentary election. I think I should run more often so you can call me more often and we can talk over the phone more often.

CAUTION: A Memorandum of a Telephone Conversation (TELCON) is not a verbatim transcript of a discussion. The text in this document records the notes and recollections of Situation Room Duty Officers and NSC policy staff assigned to listen and memorialize the conversation in written form as the conversation takes place. A number of factors can affect the accuracy of the record, including poor telecommunications connections and variations in accent and/or interpretation. The word "inaudible" is used to indicate portions of a conversation that the notetaker was unable to hear.

Classified By: 2354726

Derived.From: NSC SCG

Declassify On: 20441231

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough The President: [laughter] That’s a very good idea. I think your country is very happy about that.

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough President Zelenskyy: Well yes, to tell you the truth, we are trying to work hard because we wanted to drain the swamp here in our country. We brought in many many new people. Not the old politicians, not the typical politicians, because we want to have a new format and a new type of government. You are a great teacher for us and in that.

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough The President: Well it’s very nice of you to say that. I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. Much more than the European countries are doing and they should be helping you more than they are. Germany does almost nothing for you. All they do is talk and I think it’s something that you should really ask them about. When I was speaking to Angela Merkel she talks Ukraine, but she doesn’t do anything. A lot of the European countries are the same way so I think it’s something you want to look at but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine. I wouldn't say that it’s reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough President Zelenskyy: Yes you are absolutely right. Not only 100%, but actually 1000% and I can tell you the following; I did talk to Angela Merkel and I did meet with her. I also met and talked with Macron and I told them that they are not doing quite as much as they need to be doing on the issues with the sanctions. They are not enforcing the sanctions. They are not working as much as they should work for Ukraine. It turns out that even though logically, the European Union should be our biggest partner but technically the United States is a much bigger partner than the European Union and I'm very grateful to you for that because the United States is doing quite a lot for Ukraine. Much more than the European Union especially when we are talking about sanctions against the Russian Federation. I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough The President: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough President Zelenskyy: Yes it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier. For me as a President, it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation. We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine. For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from United States and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard on making sure that our two nations are getting closer. I would also like and hope to see him having your trust and your confidence and have personal relations with you so we can cooperate even more so. I will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with Mr. Giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that Mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we will meet once he comes to Ukraine. I just wanted to assure you once again that you have nobody but friends around us. I will make sure that I surround myself with the best and most experienced people. I also wanted to tell you that we are friends. We are great friends and you Mr. President have friends in our country so we can continue our strategic partnership. I also plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly. That I can assure you.

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough The President: Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough President Zelenskyy: I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor. First of all I understand and I’m knowledgeable about the situation. Since we have won the absolute majority in our Parliament, the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate, who will be approved by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue. The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case. On top of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information that you can provide to us, it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in our country with regard to the Ambassador to the United States from Ukraine as far as I recall her name was Ivanovich. It was great that you were the first one who told me that she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100%. Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as a new President well enough.

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough The President: Well, she’s going to go through some things. I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it. I’m sure you will figure it out. I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly and he was a very fair prosecutor so good luck with everything. Your economy is going to get better and better I predict. You have a lot of assets. It’s a great country. I have many Ukrainian friends, their incredible people.

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough President Zelenskyy: I would like to tell you that I also have quite a few Ukrainian friends that live in the United States. Actually last time I traveled to the United States, I stayed in New York near Central Park and I stayed at the Trump Tower. I will talk to them and I hope to see them again in the future. I also wanted to thank you for your invitation to visit the United States, specifically Washington DC. On the other hand, I also want to ensure you that we will be very serious about the case and will work on the investigation. As to the economy, there is much potential for our two countries and one of the issues that is very important for Ukraine is energy independence. I believe we can be very successful and cooperating on energy independence with United States. We are already working on cooperation. We are buying American oil but I am very hopeful for a future meeting. We will have more time and more opportunities to discuss these opportunities and get to know each other better. I would like to thank you very much for your support

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough The President: Good. Well, thank you very much and I appreciate that. I will tell Rudy and Attorney General Barr to call. Thank you. Whenever you would like to come to the White House, feel free to call. Give us a date and we'll work that out. I look forward to seeing you.

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough President Zelenskyy: Thank you very much. I would be very happy to come and would be happy to meet with you personally and get to know you better. I am looking forward to our meeting and I also would like to invite you to visit Ukraine and come to the city of Kyiv which is a beautiful city. We have a beautiful country which would welcome you. On the other hand, I believe that on September 1 we will be in Poland and we can meet in Poland hopefully. After that, it might be a very good idea for you to travel to Ukraine. We can either take my plane and go to Ukraine or we can take your plane, which is probably much better than mine.

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough The President: Okay, we can work that out. I look forward to seeing you in Washington and maybe in Poland because I think we are going to be there at that time.

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough President Zelenskyy: Thank you very much Mr. President

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough The President: Congratulations on a fantastic job you've done. The whole world was watching. I’m not sure it was so much of an upset but congratulations.

Strikethrough:(S/NF)End of strikethrough President Zelenskyy: Thank you Mr. President bye-bye.

-- End of Conversation --

Intelligence Community Inspector General's Letter About the Whistleblower Complaint

A seal: Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.

OFFICE OF THE INSPECTOR GENERAL OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20511

This Letter is Strikethrough:TOP SECRETEnd of strikethrough/words redacted                              when detached from the Enclosures

August 26, 2019

VIA HAND DELIVERY

The Honorable Joseph Maguire

Director of National Intelligence (Acting)

Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Washington, D.C. 20511

Dear Acting Director Maguire:

(U) On Monday, August 12, 2019, the Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG) received information from an individual (hereinafter, the “Complainant”) concerning an alleged “urgent concern,” pursuant to 50 U.S.C. § 3033(k)(5)(A). The law requires that, “[n]ot later than the end of the 14-calendar-day period beginning on the date of receipt from an employee of a complaint or information under subparagraph A, the Inspector General shall determine whether the complaint or information appears credible.”[1] For the reasons discussed below, among others, I have determined that the Complainant has reported an “urgent concern” that “appears credible.”

(U) As you know, the ICIG is authorized to, among other things, “receive and investigate . . . complaints or information from any person concerning the existence of an activity within the authorities and responsibilities of the Director of National Intelligence constituting a violation of laws, rules, or regulations, or mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to the public health and safety.”[2] In connection with that authority, “[a]n employee of an element of the intelligence community, an employee assigned or detailed to an element of the intelligence community, or an employee of a contractor to the intelligence community who intends to report to Congress a complaint or information with respect to an urgent concern may report such complaint or information” to the ICIG.[3]

Classified By:  words redacted

Derived From:  words redacted

Declassify On:  words redacted

(U) The term “urgent concern” is defined, in relevant part, as:

(U) A serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of law or Executive order, or deficiency relating to the funding, administration, or operation of an intelligence activity within the responsibility and authority of the Director of National Intelligence involving classified information, but does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters.[4]

(UStrikethrough://FOUOEnd of strikethrough) The Complainant’s identity is known to me. As allowed by law, however, the Complainant has requested that the ICIG not disclose the Complainant's identity at this time.[5] For your information, the Complainant has retained an attorney, identified the attorney to the ICIG, and requested that the attorney be the Complainant’s point of contact in subsequent communications with the congressional intelligence committees on this matter.

(UStrikethrough://FOUOEnd of strikethrough) As part of the Complainant’s report to the ICIG of information with respect to the urgent concern, the Complainant included a letter addressed to The Honorable Richard Burr, Chairman, U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and The Honorable Adam Schiff, Chairman, U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (hereinafter, the “Complainant’s Letter”). The Complainant’s Letter referenced a separate, Classified Appendix containing information pertaining to the urgent concern (hereinafter, the “Classified Appendix”), which the Complainant also provided to the ICIG and which the Complainant intends to provide to Chairmen Burr and Schiff. The ICIG attaches hereto the Complainant’s Letter, addressed to Chairmen Burr and Schiff, and the Classified Appendix. The ICIG has informed the Complainant that the transmittal of information by the Director of National Intelligence related to the Complainant’s report to the congressional intelligence committees, as required by 50 U.S.C. § 3033(k)(5)(C), may not be limited to Chairmen Burr and Schiff.

(U) The Complainant’s Letter and Classified Appendix delineate the Complainant’s information pertaining to the urgent concern. According to the Complainant’s Letter, “the actions described [in the Complainant’s Letter and Classified Appendix] constitute ‘a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, or violation of law or Executive Order,’” consistent with the definition of an “urgent concern” in 50 U.S.C. § 3033(k)(5)(G).

(UStrikethrough://FOUOEnd of strikethrough) Upon receiving the information reported by the Complainant, the ICIG conducted a preliminary review to determine whether the report constituted “an urgent concern” under 50 U.S.C. § 3033(k)(5). As part of the preliminary review, the ICIG confirmed that the Complainant is “[a]n employee of an element of the intelligence community, an employee assigned or detailed to an element of the intelligence community, or an employee of a contractor to the intelligence community.”[6] The ICIG also confirmed that the Complainant intends to report to Congress the Complainant's information relating to the urgent concern.[7]

(Strikethrough:TSEnd of strikethrough/words redacted         ) As stated above, to constitute an “urgent concern” under 50 U.S.C. § 3033(k)(5)(G)(i), the information reported by the Complainant must constitute “[a] serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of law or Executive order, or deficiency relating to the funding, administration, or operation of an intelligence activity within the responsibility and authority of the Director of National Intelligence involving classified information.”[8] Here, the Complainant’s Letter alleged, among other things, that the President of the United States, in a telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on July 25, 2019, “sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President’s 2020 reelection bid.” U.S. laws and regulations prohibit a foreign national, directly or indirectly, from making a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election.[9] Similarly, U.S. laws and regulations prohibit a person from soliciting, accepting, or receiving such a contribution or donation from a foreign national, directly or indirectly, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election.[10] Further, in the ICIG’s judgment, alleged conduct by a senior U.S. public official to seek foreign assistance to interfere in or influence a Federal election would constitute a “serious or flagrant problem [or] abuse” under 50 U.S.C. § 3033(k)(5)(G)(i), which would also potentially expose such a U.S. public official (or others acting in concert with the U.S. public official) to serious national security and counterintelligence risks with respect to foreign intelligence services aware of such alleged conduct.

(U) In addition, the Director of National Intelligence has responsibility and authority pursuant to federal law and Executive Orders to administer and operate programs and activities related to potential foreign interference in a United States election.[11] Among other responsibilities and authorities, subject to the authority, direction, and control of the President, the Director of National Intelligence “shall serve as the head of the Intelligence Community, act as the principal adviser to the President, to the [National Security Council], and to the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to national security, and shall oversee and direct the implementation of the National Intelligence Program and execution of the National Intelligence Program budget.”[12] Further, the United States Intelligence Community, “under the leadership of the Director [of National Intelligence],” shall “collect information concerning, and conduct activities to protect against, . . . intelligence activities directed against the United States.”[13]

(U) More recently, in issuing Executive Order 13848, Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Influence in a United States Election (Sept. 12, 2018), President Trump stated the following regarding foreign influence in United States elections:

I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, find that the ability of persons located, in whole or in part, outside the United States to interfere in or undermine public confidence in United States elections, including through the unauthorized accessing of election and campaign infrastructure or the covert distribution of propaganda and disinformation, constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.[14]

(U) Most recently, on July 19, 2019, as part of the Director of National Intelligence’s responsibility and authority to administer and operate programs and activities related to potential foreign interference in a United States election, the Director of National Intelligence announced the establishment of the Intelligence Community Election Threats Executive. In the words of then-Director of National Intelligence Daniel R. Coats, who announced the establishment of the new position within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), “Election security is an enduring challenge and a top priority for the IC.”[15] A few days later, in an internal announcement for the ODNI, then-Director Coats stated, “I can think of no higher priority mission than working to counter adversary efforts to undermine the very core of our democratic process.”[16]

(U) As a result, I have determined that the Complainant’s information would constitute an urgent concern, as defined in 50 U.S.C. § 3033(k)(5)(G)(i), provided that I also determine that the information “appears credible,” as required by 50 U.S.C. § 3033(k)(5)(B).

(Strikethrough:TS/End of strikethroughwords redacted         ) Based on the information reported by the Complainant to the ICIG and the ICIG’s preliminary review, I have determined that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the complaint relating to the urgent concern “appears credible.” The ICIG’s preliminary review indicated that the Complainant has official and authorized access to the information and sources referenced in the Complainant’s Letter and Classified Appendix, and that the Complainant has subject matter expertise related to much of the material information provided in the Complainant’s Letter and Classified Appendix. The Complainant’s Letter acknowledges that the Complainant was not a direct witness to the President’s telephone call with the Ukrainian President on July 25, 2019. Other information obtained during the ICIG’s preliminary review, however, supports the Complainant’s allegation that, among other things, during the call the President “sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President’s 2020 reelection bid.” Further, although the ICIG’s preliminary review identified some indicia of an arguable political bias on the part of the Complainant in favor of a rival political candidate, such evidence did not change my determination that the complaint relating to the urgent concern “appears credible,” particularly given the other information the ICIG obtained during its preliminary review.

(Strikethrough:TS/End of strikethroughwords redacted         ) As part of its preliminary review, the ICIG did not request access to records of the President’s July 25, 2019, call with the Ukrainian President. Based on the sensitivity of the alleged urgent concern, I directed ICIG personnel to conduct a preliminary review of the Complainant’s information. Based on the information obtained from the ICIG’s preliminary review, I decided that access to records of the telephone call was not necessary to make my determination that the complaint relating to the urgent concern “appears credible.” In addition, given the time consumed by the preliminary review, together with lengthy negotiations that I anticipated over access to and use of records of the telephone call, particularly for purposes of communicating a disclosure to the congressional intelligence committees, I concluded that it would be highly unlikely for the ICIG to obtain those records within the limited remaining time allowed by the statute. I also understood from the ICIG’s preliminary review that the National Security Council had already implemented special handling procedures to preserve all records of the telephone call.

(Strikethrough:TS/End of strikethroughwords redacted         ) Nevertheless, the ICIG understands that the records of the call will be relevant to any further investigation of this matter. For your information, the ICIG has sent concurrently with this transmittal a notice of a document access request and a document hold notice to the White House Counsel to request access to and the preservation of any and all records related to the President’s telephone call with the Ukrainian President on July 25, 2019, and alleged related efforts to solicit, obtain, or receive assistance from foreign nationals in Ukraine, directly or indirectly, in connection with a Federal election. The document access request and document hold notice were issued pursuant to the ICIG’s authority to conduct independent investigations and reviews on programs and activities within the responsibility and authority of the Director of National Intelligence, which includes the authority for the ICIG to have “direct access to all records, reports, audits, reviews, documents, papers, recommendations, or other materials that relate to the programs and activities with respect to which the Inspector General has responsibilities under this section.”[17]

(U) Having determined that the complaint relating to the urgent concern appears credible, I am transmitting to you this notice of my determination, along with the Complainant’s Letter and Classified Appendix. Upon receipt of this transmittal, the Director of National Intelligence “shall, within 7 calendar days of such receipt, forward such transmittal to the congressional intelligence committees, together with any comments the Director considers appropriate.”[18] Because the ICIG has the statutory responsibility to “notify an employee who reports a complaint or information” to the ICIG concerning an urgent concern “of each action taken” with respect to the complaint or information “not later than 3 days after any such action is taken,”[19] I respectfully request that you provide the ICIG with notice of your transmittal to the congressional intelligence committees not later than 3 days after the transmittal is made to them. In addition, as required by the statute, the ICIG is required to notify the Complainant not later than 3 days after today’s date of my determination that the complaint relating to the urgent concern appears credible and that the ICIG transmitted on today’s date notice of that determination to the Director of National Intelligence, along with the Complainant’s Letter and Classified Appendix.

(U) If you have any questions or require additional information concerning this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely yours,

A signature: Michael K. Atkinson.

Michael K. Atkinson

Inspector General

of the Intelligence Community

(U) Enclosure (Complainant’s Letter and Classified Appendix) (Documents are Strikethrough:TSEnd of strikethrough/words redacted                 )

[1] (U) Id. at § 3033(k)(5)(B).

[2] (U) Id. al § 3033(g)(3).

[3] (U) Id. at § 3033(k)(5)(A).

[4] (U) Id. at § 3033(k)(5)(G)(i).

[5] (U) Id. at § 3033(g)(3)(A).

[6] (U) Id. at § 3033(k)(5)(A).

[7] (U) Id.

[8] (U) The Complainant’s Classified Appendix appears to contain classified information involving an alleged “serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of law or Executive order, or deficiency relating to the funding, administration, or operation of an intelligence activity within the responsibility and authority of the Director of National Intelligence,” as required by 50 U.S.C. § 3033(k)(5)(G)(i).

[9] (U) See, e.g., 52 U.S.C. § 30121(a)(l)(A); 11 C.F.R. § 110.20(b).

[10] (U) See, e.g., 52 U.S.C. § 30121(a)(2); 11 C.F.R. § 110.20(g).

[11] (U) See, e.g., National Security Act of 1947, as amended; Exec. Order No. 12333, as amended, United States Intelligence Activities; Exec. Order No. 13848, Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Influence in a United States Election (Sept. 12, 2018).

[12] (StrikethroughTS/words redacted         ) Exec. Order. No. 12333 at § 1.3. In the Complainant’s Classified Appendix, the Complainant reported that officials from the Office of Management and Budget, in the days before and on the day after the President’s call on July 25, 2019, allegedly informed the “interagency” that the President had issued instructions to suspend all security assistance to Ukraine. The Complainant further alleges in the Classified Appendix that there might be a connection between the allegations concerning the substance of the President’s telephone call with the Ukrainian President on July 25, 2019, and the alleged action to suspend (or continue the suspension of) all security assistance to Ukraine. If the allegedly improper motives were substantiated as part of a future investigation, the alleged suspension (or continued suspension) of all security assistance to Ukraine might implicate the Director of National Intelligence’s responsibility and authority with regard to implementing the National Intelligence Program and/or executing the National Intelligence Program budget.

[13] (U) Exec. Order No. 12333 at § 1.4.

[14] (U) Among other directives, the Executive Order requires the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the heads of any other appropriate executive departments and agencies, not later than 45 days after the conclusion of a United States election, to “conduct an assessment of any information indicating that a foreign government, or any person acting as an agent of or on behalf of a foreign government, has acted with the intent or purpose of interfering in that election,” and the “assessment shall identify, to the maximum extent ascertainable, the nature of any foreign interference and any methods employed to execute it, the persons involved, and the foreign government or governments that authorized, directed, sponsored, or supported it.” Exec. Order No. 13848 at § 1.(a).

[15] (U) ODNI News Release, Director of National Intelligence Daniel R. Coats Establishes Intelligence Community Election Threats Executive (July 19, 2019).

[16] (U) Memorandum from Daniel R. Coats, Director of National Intelligence, entitled, Designation of Intelligence Community Election Threats Executive and Assistant Deputy Director for Mission Integration (July 23, 2019).

[17] (U) 50 U.S.C. § 3033(g)(2)(C). The ICIG’s statutory right of access to those records is consistent with the statutory right of access to such records provided to the Director of National Intelligence. See 50 U.S.C. § 3024(b) (“Unless otherwise directed by the President, the Director of National Intelligence shall have access to all national intelligence and intelligence related to the national security which is collected by any Federal department, agency, or other entity, except as otherwise provided by law or, as appropriate, under guidelines agreed upon by the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence.”).

[18] (U) See 50 U.S.C. § 3033(k)(5)(C). The ICIG notes that if the ICIG had determined the complaint was not an “urgent concern” or did not “appear[] credible,” the statute would require the Director of National Intelligence to transmit the same information to the same congressional intelligence committees in the same time period, and provides the Complainant with the right “to submit the complaint or information to Congress by contacting either or both of the congressional intelligence committees directly,” id. at § 3033(k)(5)(D)(i), subject to direction from the Director of National Intelligence, through the ICIG, “on how to contact the congressional intelligence committees in accordance with appropriate security practices,” id. at § 3033(k)(5)(D)(ii).

[19] (U) 50 U.S.C. § 3033(k)(5)(E).

Safety Concerns Regarding the Intelligence Community Whistleblower I

A logo: Compass Rose Legal Group.

COMPASS ROSE LEGAL GROUP, PLLC
1250 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
Suite 700
Washington, DC 20036

Telephone: 202.570.4896
Fax: 202.478.5201
www.CompassRosePLLC.com

Andrew P. Bakaj, Esq.
Managing Partner
APB@CompassRosePLLC.com

September 28, 2019

The Honorable Richard Burr
Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
The Honorable Mark Warner
Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Adam Schiff
Chairman, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
The Honorable Devin Nunes
Ranking Member, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

RE: Safety Concerns Regarding the Intelligence Community Whistleblower

Dear Chairman Burr, Chairman Schiff, Vice Chairman Warner, and Ranking Member Nunes:

Enclosed please find correspondence to Acting Director Maguire conveying our serious concerns for our client’s personal safety, as well as for others connected to this matter. Our concerns apply directly to the efforts your Committees wish to undertake.

Therefore, we call upon the political leadership of both parties to speak out in favor of whistleblower protection and reiterate that this is a protected system where retaliation is not permitted, whether direct or implied. We further expect that political leaders from both parties condemn any intimidation against our client and others.

I thank you in advance for your time and attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

A signature: Andrew P. Bakaj.

Andrew P. Bakaj

Enclosures: As stated.

ENCLOSURE

Safety Concerns Regarding the Intelligence Community Whistleblower II

A logo: Compass Rose Legal Group.

COMPASS ROSE LEGAL GROUP, PLLC
1250 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
Suite 700
Washington, DC 20036

Telephone: 202.570.4896
Fax: 202.478.5201
www.CompassRosePLLC.com

Andrew P. Bakaj, Esq.
Managing Partner
APB@CompassRosePLLC.com

September 28, 2019

VIA E-MAIL THROUGH THE OFFICE OF GENERAL COUNSEL

The Honorable Joseph Maguire
Acting Director of National Intelligence
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Washington, DC 20511

RE: Safety Concerns Regarding the Intelligence Community Whistleblower

Dear Acting Director Maguire:

Thank you for your unqualified support of our client’s statutory Whistleblower rights during your testimony at the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (“HPSCI”) hearing last Thursday, and also for your unwavering insistence that our client “did the right thing” and “followed the law every step of the way.”

The purpose of this letter is to formally notify you of serious concerns we have regarding our client’s personal safety. We appreciate your office’s support thus far to activate appropriate resources to ensure their safety.

The events of the past week have heightened our concerns that our client’s identity will be disclosed publicly and that, as a result, our client will be put in harm’s way. On September 26, 2019, the President of the United States said the following:

I want to know who’s the person that gave the Whistleblower, who’s the person that gave the Whistleblower the information, because that’s close to a spy. You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? With spies and treason, right? We used to handle them a little differently than we do now.

The fact that the President’s statement was directed to “the person that gave the Whistleblower the information” does nothing to assuage our concerns for our client’s safety. Moreover, certain individuals have issued a $50,000 “bounty” for “any information” relating to our client’s identity. Unfortunately, we expect this situation to worsen, and to become even more dangerous for our client and any other whistleblowers, as Congress seeks to investigate this matter.

Thank you for your immediate attention to the matters noted above. Please do not hesitate to contact me directly with any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

A signature: Andrew P. Bakaj.

Andrew P. Bakaj
Lead Attorney for the Intelligence Community Whistleblower

Enclosures: None.

cc:

The Honorable Michael Atkinson,

Intelligence Community Inspector General

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

House Democrats Subpoena Rudy Giuliani

Congress of the United States
Washington, DC 20515

September 30, 2019

VIA U.S. AND ELECTRONIC MAIL

Rudolph (“Rudy”) W. L. Giuliani

Giuliani Partners LLC

5 Times Square, 24th Floor

New York, NY 10036

Dear Mr. Giuliani:

Pursuant to the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry, we are hereby transmitting a subpoena that compels you to produce the documents set forth in the accompanying schedule by October 15, 2019.

This subpoena is being issued by the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under the Rules of the House of Representatives in exercise of its oversight and legislative jurisdiction and after consultation with the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Committee on Oversight and Reform. The subpoenaed documents shall be collected as part of the House’s impeachment inquiry and shared among the Committees, as well as with the Committee on the Judiciary as appropriate.[1] Your failure or refusal to comply with the subpoena, including at the direction or behest of the President or the White House, shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry and may be used as an adverse inference against you and the President.

The Committees are investigating the extent to which President Trump jeopardized national security by pressing Ukraine to interfere with our 2020 election and by withholding security assistance provided by Congress to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression, as well as any efforts to cover up these matters.

Our inquiry includes an investigation of credible allegations that you acted as an agent of the President in a scheme to advance his personal political interests by abusing the power of the Office of the President. A growing public record, including your own statements, indicates that the President, you, and others appear to have pressed the Ukrainian government to pursue two politically-motivated investigations. The first is a prosecution of Ukrainians who provided evidence against Mr. Trump’s convicted campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. The second relates to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is challenging President Trump for the presidency in 2020.

For example, on September 19, 2019, you admitted on national television that you personally asked the government of Ukraine to target Vice President Biden. During an interview on CNN, Chris Cuomo asked you, “So, you did ask Ukraine to look into Joe Biden?” You responded, “Of course I did.” In addition to this stark admission, you stated more recently that you are in possession of evidence—in the form of text messages, phone records, and other communications—indicating that you were not acting alone and that other Trump Administration officials may have been involved in this scheme. The subpoena requires you to produce all of those communications, and other related documents, to the Committees in order to determine the full extent of this effort by the President and his Administration to press Ukraine to interfere in our 2020 presidential election.

Please contact staff for the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence at (202) 225-7690 to arrange for the production of documents.

Sincerely,

A signature: Adam Schiff.
Adam B. Schiff
Chairman
House of Permanent Select Committee
On Intelligence

A signature: Eliot L. Engel.
Eloit L. Engel
Chairman
House Committee on Foreign Affairs

A signature: Elijah E. Cummings.
Elijah E. Cummings
Chairman
House Committee on Oversight and Reform

Enclosures

cc:

The Honorable Devin Nunes, Ranking Member House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

The Honorable Michael McCaul, Ranking Member House Committee on Foreign Affairs

The Honorable Jim Jordan, Ranking Member House Committee on Oversight and Reform

[1] See Letter from Jerrold Nadler, Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, to Adam B. Schiff, Chairman, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; Maxine Waters, Chairwoman, Committee on Financial Services; Elijah E. Cummings, Chairman, Committee on Oversight and Reform; and Eliot L. Engel, Chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs (August 22, 2019).

White House Subpoenaed

Congress of the United States
Washington, DC 20515

October 4, 2019

The Honorable John Michael Mulvaney

Acting Chief of Staff to the President

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Ave, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. Mulvaney:

Pursuant to the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry, we are hereby transmitting a subpoena that compels you to produce documents set forth in the accompanying schedule by October 18, 2019.

This subpoena is being issued by the Committee on Oversight and Reform under the Rules of the House of Representatives in exercise of its oversight and legislative jurisdiction and after consultation with the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Foreign Affairs. The subpoenaed documents shall be collected as part of the House’s impeachment inquiry and shared among the Committees, as well as with the Committee on the Judiciary as appropriate.[1] Your failure or refusal to comply with the subpoena, including at the direction or behest of the President or others at the White House, shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry and may be used as an adverse inference against you and the President.

The Committees are investigating the extent to which President Trump jeopardized national security by pressing Ukraine to interfere with our 2020 election and by withholding security assistance provided by Congress to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression, as well as any efforts to cover up these matters.

During a press conference on Wednesday, President Trump was asked if he would cooperate with the House impeachment inquiry. He responded, “I always cooperate.”[2] President Trump’s claim is patently false. The White House has refused to engage with-or even respond to-multiple requests for documents from our Committees on a voluntary basis. After nearly a month of stonewalling, it appears clear that the President has chosen the path of defiance, obstruction, and cover-up.

On September 9, 2019, the Committees sent a letter to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone requesting that the White House produce documents relating to the Committees’ investigation by September 16, 2019.[3] The White House did not produce any documents by the requested date, did not send any reply letter, and did not acknowledge receipt of the request.

On September 24, 2019, the Committees sent a follow-up letter warning that the Chairmen would be forced to consider compulsory process if the White House continued to ignore our request. The Committees set a new deadline of September 26, 2019, for the White House to produce these documents.[4] Again, the White House failed to comply and did not acknowledge receipt of our follow-up letter.

Today, President Trump stated that he plans to send a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and press reports indicate that the letter will relay the White House’s refusal to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry until there is a House vote on the floor.[5]

A vote of the full House is not required to launch an impeachment inquiry, and there is no authority for the White House to make this claim. There is no such requirement in the Constitution or in the House Rules.[6]

Nor does precedent support this claim. On the contrary, “In the House various events have been credited with setting an impeachment in motion.”[7] In the case of President Nixon, for example, the Judiciary Committee had been investigating charges of impeachment for months before the House voted to open an inquiry.[8] In 1974, the Judiciary Committee had already “been conducting an investigation into the charges of impeachment against President Nixon” and had “hired special counsel for the impeachment inquiry.”[9] During the 1980s, the House investigated three federal judges, and no resolution explicitly authorizing an impeachment investigation was proposed or agreed to in the House.[10] Speaker Pelosi has confirmed that an impeachment inquiry is underway, and it is not for the White House to say otherwise.

Even if an impeachment inquiry were not underway, the entire House of Representatives voted on the floor on January 9, 2019, to adopt its Rules, which provide the Oversight Committee with its own independent oversight and legislative jurisdiction to investigate these matters-including authority to issue subpoenas to the White House.[11]

Specifically, under House Rule X, the Oversight Committee is the principal oversight committee of the House of Representatives and has broad authority to investigate “any matter” at “any time.” In addition, House Rule X, clause 3(i) specifically charges the Committee with conducting oversight of “the operation of Government activities at all levels, including the Executive Office of the President.” Finally, Rule X, clause 4 provides: “The findings and recommendations of the committee in such an investigation shall be made available to any other standing committee having jurisdiction over the matter involved.”

The Oversight Committee has used its authority repeatedly under both Republican and Democratic Chairmen to obtain documents from the White House. For example, during an investigation of the Administration of President George W. Bush involving violations of the Presidential Records Act, the Oversight Committee obtained more than 20,000 pages of internal emails and other documents from the White House and the National Archives and Records Administration. The Oversight Committee also interviewed or received written answers to questions from six current or former White House officials as part of that investigation.[12]

The Oversight Committee has also obtained public testimony from numerous White House officials under both Democratic and Republican Administrations, including:

- Charles Ruff, Counsel to the President, Clinton Administration;

- Beth Nolan, Counsel to the President, Clinton Administration;

- Dimitri Nionakis, Associate Counsel to the President, Clinton Administration; and

- James Knodell, Director of White House Office of Security, George W. Bush Administration.[13]

We deeply regret that President Trump has put us—and the nation—in this position, but his actions have left us with no choice but to issue this subpoena.

Please contact staff for the Committee on Oversight and Reform at (202) 225-5051 to arrange for the production of documents.

Sincerely,

A signature: Elijah E. Cummings.
Elijah E. Cummings
Chairman
House Committee on Oversight and Reform

A signature: Adam Schiff.
Adam Schiff
Chairman
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

A signature: Eliot L. Engel.
Eliot L. Engel
Chairman
House Committee on Foreign Affairs

Enclosures

cc:

The Honorable Jim Jordan, Ranking Member House Committee on Oversight and Reform

The Honorable Devin Nunes, Ranking Member House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

The Honorable Michael McCaul, Ranking Member House Committee on Foreign Affairs

[1] See Letter from Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Committee on the Judiciary, to Chairman Adam B. Schiff, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; Chairwoman Maxine Waters, Committee on Financial Services; Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Committee on Oversight and Reform; and Chairman Eliot L. Engel, Committee on Foreign Affairs (Aug. 22, 20 19).

[2] Trump Says He ‘Always’ Cooperates While Railing Against Impeachment Inquiry, The Hill (Oct. 2, 2019) (online at https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/464087-trump-says-he-always-cooperates-while-railingagainst-impeachment).

[3] Letter from Chairman Eliot L. Engel, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Chairman Adam Schiff, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, House Committee on Oversight and Reform, to Pat Cipollone, White House Counsel (Sept. 9, 2019) (online at https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ele_schiff_cummings_letter_to_cipollone_on_ukraine.pdf).

[4] Letter from Chairman Eliot L. Engel, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Chairman Adam Schiff, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, House Committee on Oversight and Reform, to Pat Cipollone, White House Counsel (Sept. 24, 2019) (online at https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2019-09-24.eec_engel_schiff_to_cipollone-wh_re_potus_ukraine.pdf).

[5] The White House, Remarks by President Trump Before Marine One Departure (Oct. 4, 2019) (online at www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-marine-one-departure-68/). See also Trump Demands Full House Vote on Impeachment Before Complying with Lawmakers, NPR (Oct. 4, 2019) (online at www.npr.org/2019/10/04/767205170/trump-demands-full-house-vote-on-impeachment-before-complying-withlawmakers).

[6] U.S. Constitution, Art. I, § 2, cl. 5; § 5, cl. 2.

[7] Jefferson’s Manual § 603, H. Doc. No. 114-192, at 319 (2017).

[8] Deschler Ch. 14 § 15, at 2171-72 (Parliamentarian’s Note) (prior to adopting the H. Res. 803, 93rd Cong.).

[9] Id.

[10] Cf. H. Rept. No. 101-36, at 1 3-16 (1989) (Nixon); H. Rept. No. 100-810, at 9-10 (1988) (Hastings); H. Rept. No. 99-688, at 3-7 (1986) (Claiborne).

[11] Clerk of the House of Representatives, Rules of the House of Representatives One Hundred Sixteenth Congress (Jan. 11, 2019) (online at https://rules.house.gov/sites/democrats.rules.house.gov/files/documents/116-House-Rules-Cierk.pdf).

[12] Memorandum from Democratic Staff to Members of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Supplemental Information for Full Committee Hearing on White House E-mails (Feb. 26, 2008) (online at https://bit.ly/2Z4Z2pC).

[13] Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, Hearings on White House Compliance with Committee Subpoenas, 105th Cong. (Nov. 6-7, 1997) (H. Rept. 105-61); Committee on Government Reform, Hearings on Missing White House E-Mails: Mismanagement of Subpoenaed Records, 106th Cong. (Mar. 23, 2000, Mar. 30, 2000, May 3, 2000, and May 4, 2000) (H. Rept. 106-179); Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Hearing on White House Procedures for Safeguarding Classified Information, 110th Cong. (Mar.l6, 2007) (H. Rept. 110-28).

White House Letter to Speaker Pelosi Et Al 10-08

THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON

October 8, 2019

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker
House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

The Honorable Adam B. Schiff
Chairman
House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence
Washington, D.C. 20515

The Honorable Eliot L. Engel
Chairman
House Foreign Affairs Committee
Washington, D.C. 20515

The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings
Chairman
House Committee on Oversight and Reform
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Madam Speaker and Messrs. Chairmen:

I write on behalf of President Donald J. Trump in response to your numerous, legally unsupported demands made as part of what you have labeled-contrary to the Constitution of the United States and all past bipartisan precedent-as an “impeachment inquiry.” As you know, you have designed and implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process.

For example, you have denied the President the right to cross-examine witnesses, to call witnesses, to receive transcripts of testimony, to have access to evidence, to have counsel present, and many other basic rights guaranteed to all Americans. You have conducted your proceedings in secret. You have violated civil liberties and the separation of powers by threatening Executive Branch officials, claiming that you will seek to punish those who exercise fundamental constitutional rights and prerogatives. All of this violates the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent. Never before in our history has the House of Representatives-under the control of either political party-taken the American people down the dangerous path you seem determined to pursue.

Put simply, you seek to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the American people of the President they have freely chosen. Many Democrats now apparently view impeachment not only as a means to undo the democratic results of the last election, but as a strategy to influence the next election, which is barely more than a year away. As one member of Congress explained, he is “concerned that if we don't impeach the President, he will get reelected.”[1] Your highly partisan and unconstitutional effort threatens grave and lasting damage to our democratic institutions, to our system of free elections, and to the American people.

For his part, President Trump took the unprecedented step of providing the public transparency by declassifying and releasing the record of his call with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine. The record clearly established that the call was completely appropriate and that there is no basis for your inquiry. The fact that there was nothing wrong with the call was also powerfully confirmed by Chairman Schiff’s decision to create a false version of the call and read it to the American people at a congressional hearing, without disclosing that he was simply making it all up.

In addition, information has recently come to light that the whistleblower had contact with Chairman Schiff’s office before filing the complaint. His initial denial of such contact caused The Washington Post to conclude that Chairman Schiff “clearly made a statement that was false.”[2] In any event, the American people understand that Chairman Schiff cannot covertly assist with the submission of a complaint, mislead the public about his involvement, read a counterfeit version of the call to the American people, and then pretend to sit in judgment as a neutral “investigator.”

For these reasons, President Trump and his Administration reject your baseless, unconstitutional efforts to overturn the democratic process. Your unprecedented actions have left the President with no choice. In order to fulfill his duties to the American people, the Constitution, the Executive Branch, and all future occupants of the Office of the Presidency, President Trump and his Administration cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry under these circumstances.

I. Your “Inquiry” Is Constitutionally Invalid and Violates Basic Due Process Rights and the Separation of Powers.

Your inquiry is constitutionally invalid and a violation of due process. In the history of our Nation, the House of Representatives has never attempted to launch an impeachment inquiry against the President without a majority of the House taking political accountability for that decision by voting to authorize such a dramatic constitutional step. Here, House leadership claims to have initiated the gravest inter-branch conflict contemplated under our Constitution by means of nothing more than a press conference at which the Speaker of the House simply announced an “official impeachment inquiry”[3] Your contrived process is unprecedented in the history of the Nation,[4] and lacks the necessary authorization for a valid impeachment proceeding.[5]

The Committees’ inquiry also suffers from a separate, fatal defect. Despite Speaker Pelosi’s commitment to “treat the President with fairness,”[6] the Committees have not established any procedures affording the President even the most basic protections demanded by due process under the Constitution and by fundamental fairness. Chairman Nadler of the House Judiciary Committee has expressly acknowledged, at least when the President was a member of his own party, that “[t]he power of impeachment . . . demands a rigorous level of due process,” and that in this context “due process mean[s] . . . the right to be informed of the law, of the charges against you, the right to confront the witnesses against you, to call your own witnesses, and to have the assistance of counsel.”[7] All of these procedures have been abandoned here.

These due process rights are not a matter of discretion for the Committees to dispense with at will. To the contrary, they are constitutional requirements. The Supreme Court has recognized that due process protections apply to all congressional investigations.[8] Indeed, it has been recognized that the Due Process Clause applies to impeachment proceedings.[9] And precedent for the rights to cross-examine witnesses, call witnesses, and present evidence dates back nearly 150 years.[10] Yet the Committees have decided to deny the President these elementary rights and protections that form the basis of the American justice system and are protected by the Constitution. No citizen—including the President—should be treated this unfairly.

To comply with the Constitution’s demands, appropriate procedures would include—at a minimum—the right to see all evidence, to present evidence, to call witnesses, to have counsel present at all hearings, to cross-examine all witnesses, to make objections relating to the examination of witnesses or the admissibility of testimony and evidence, and to respond to evidence and testimony. Likewise, the Committees must provide for the disclosure of all evidence favorable to the President and all evidence bearing on the credibility of witnesses called to testify in the inquiry. The Committees’ current procedures provide none of these basic constitutional rights.

In addition, the House has not provided the Committees’ Ranking Members with the authority to issue subpoenas. The right of the minority to issue subpoenas—subject to the same rules as the majority—has been the standard, bipartisan practice in all recent resolutions authorizing presidential impeachment inquiries.[11] The House’s failure to provide co-equal subpoena power in this case ensures that any inquiry will be nothing more than a one-sided effort by House Democrats to gather information favorable to their views and to selectively release it as only they determine. The House’s utter disregard for the established procedural safeguards followed in past impeachment inquiries shows that the current proceedings are nothing more than an unconstitutional exercise in political theater.

As if denying the President basic procedural protections were not enough, the Committees have also resorted to threats and intimidation against potential Executive Branch witnesses. Threats by the Committees against Executive Branch witnesses who assert common and longstanding rights destroy the integrity of the process and brazenly violate fundamental due process. In letters to State Department employees, the Committees have ominously threatened—without any legal basis and before the Committees even issued a subpoena—that “[a]ny failure to appear” in response to a mere letter request for a deposition “shall constitute evidence of obstruction.”[12] Worse, the Committees have broadly threatened that if State Department officials attempt to insist upon the right for the Department to have an agency lawyer present at depositions to protect legitimate Executive Branch confidentiality interests—or apparently if they make any effort to protect those confidentiality interests at all—these officials will have their salaries withheld.[13]

The suggestion that it would somehow be problematic for anyone to raise long-established Executive Branch confidentiality interests and privileges in response to a request for a deposition is legally unfounded. Not surprisingly, the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice has made clear on multiple occasions that employees of the Executive Branch who have been instructed not to appear or not to provide particular testimony before Congress based on privileges or immunities of the Executive Branch cannot be punished for following such instructions.[14] Current and former State Department officials are duty bound to protect the confidentiality interests of the Executive Branch, and the Office of Legal Counsel has also recognized that it is unconstitutional to exclude agency counsel from participating in congressional depositions.[15] In addition, any attempt to withhold an official’s salary for the assertion of such interests would be unprecedented and unconstitutional.[16] The Committees’ assertions on these points amount to nothing more than strong-arm tactics designed to rush proceedings without any regard for due process and the rights of individuals and of the Executive Branch. Threats aimed at intimidating individuals who assert these basic rights are attacks on civil liberties that should profoundly concern all Americans.

II. The Invalid “Impeachment Inquiry” Plainly Seeks To Reverse the Election of 2016 and To Influence the Election of 2020.

The effort to impeach President Trump—without regard to any evidence of his actions in office—is a naked political strategy that began the day he was inaugurated, and perhaps even before.[17] In fact, your transparent rush to judgment, lack of democratically accountable authorization, and violation of basic rights in the current proceedings make clear the illegitimate, partisan purpose of this purported “impeachment inquiry.” The Founders, however, did not create the extraordinary mechanism of impeachment so it could be used by a political party that feared for its prospects against the sitting President in the next election. The decision as to who will be elected President in 2020 should rest with the people of the United States, exactly where the Constitution places it.

Democrats themselves used to recognize the dire implications of impeachment for the Nation. For example, in the past, Chairman Nadler has explained:

The effect of impeachment is to overturn the popular will of the voters. We must not overturn an election and remove a President from office except to defend our system of government or our constitutional liberties against a dire threat, and we must not do so without an overwhelming consensus of the American people. There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment supported by one of our major political parties and opposed by another. Such an impeachment will produce divisiveness and bitterness in our politics for years to come, and will call into question the very legitimacy of our political institutions.[18]

Unfortunately, the President’s political opponents now seem eager to transform impeachment from an extraordinary remedy that should rarely be contemplated into a conventional political weapon to be deployed for partisan gain. These actions are a far cry from what our Founders envisioned when they vested Congress with the “important trust” of considering impeachment.[19] Precisely because it nullifies the outcome of the democratic process, impeachment of the President is fraught with the risk of deepening divisions in the country and creating long-lasting rifts in the body politic.[20] Unfortunately, you are now playing out exactly the partisan rush to judgment that the Founders so strongly warned against. The American people deserve much better than this.

III. There Is No Legitimate Basis for Your “Impeachment Inquiry”; Instead, the Committees’ Actions Raise Serious Questions.

It is transparent that you have resorted to such unprecedented and unconstitutional procedures because you know that a fair process would expose the lack of any basis for your inquiry. Your current effort is founded on a completely appropriate call on July 25, 2019, between President Trump and President Zelenskyy of Ukraine. Without waiting to see what was actually said on the call, a press conference was held announcing an “impeachment inquiry” based on falsehoods and misinformation about the call.[21] To rebut those falsehoods, and to provide transparency to the American people, President Trump secured agreement from the Government of Ukraine and took the extraordinary step of declassifying and publicly releasing the record of the call. That record clearly established that the call was completely appropriate, that the President did nothing wrong, and that there is no basis for an impeachment inquiry. At a joint press conference shortly after the call’s public release, President Zelenskyy agreed that the call was appropriate.[22] In addition, the Department of Justice announced that officials there had reviewed the call after a referral for an alleged campaign finance law violation and found no such violation.[23]

Perhaps the best evidence that there was no wrongdoing on the call is the fact that, after the actual record of the call was released, Chairman Schiff chose to concoct a false version of the call and to read his made-up transcript to the American people at a public hearing.[24] This powerfully confirms there is no issue with the actual call. Otherwise, why would Chairman Schiff feel the need to make up his own version? The Chairman’s action only further undermines the public’s confidence in the fairness of any inquiry before his Committee.

The real problem, as we are now learning, is that Chairman Schiff’s office, and perhaps others—despite initial denials—were involved in advising the whistleblower before the complaint was filed. Initially, when asked on national television about interactions with the whistleblower, Chairman Schiff unequivocally stated that “[w]e have not spoken directly with the whistleblower. We would like to.”[25]

Now, however, it has been reported that the whistleblower approached the House Intelligence Committee with information—and received guidance from the Committee—before filing a complaint with the Inspector General.[26] As a result, The Washington Post concluded that Chairman Schiff “clearly made a statement that was false.”[27] Anyone who was involved in the preparation or submission of the whistleblower’s complaint cannot possibly act as a fair and impartial judge in the same matter—particularly after misleading the American people about his involvement.

All of this raises serious questions that must be investigated. However, the Committees are preventing anyone, including the minority, from looking into these critically important matters. At the very least, Chairman Schiff must immediately make available all documents relating to these issues. After all, the American people have a right to know about the Committees’ own actions with respect to these matters.

*      *      *

Given that your inquiry lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation, any pretense of fairness, or even the most elementary due process protections, the Executive Branch cannot be expected to participate in it. Because participating in this inquiry under the current unconstitutional posture would inflict lasting institutional harm on the Executive Branch and lasting damage to the separation of powers, you have left the President no choice. Consistent with the duties of the President of the United States, and in particular his obligation to preserve the rights of future occupants of his office, President Trump cannot permit his Administration to participate in this partisan inquiry under these circumstances.

Your recent letter to the Acting White House Chief of Staff argues that “[e]ven if an impeachment inquiry were not underway,” the Oversight Committee may seek this information as a matter of the established oversight process.[28] Respectfully, the Committees cannot have it both ways. The letter comes from the Chairmen of three different Committees, it transmits a subpoena “[p]ursuant to the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry,” it recites that the documents will “be collected as part of the House’s impeachment inquiry,” and it asserts that the documents will be “shared among the Committees, as well as with the Committee on the Judiciary as appropriate.”[29] The letter is in no way directed at collecting information in aid of legislation, and you simply cannot expect to rely on oversight authority to gather information for an unauthorized impeachment inquiry that conflicts with all historical precedent and rides roughshod over due process and the separation of powers. If the Committees wish to return to the regular order of oversight requests, we stand ready to engage in that process as we have in the past, in a manner consistent with well-established bipartisan constitutional protections and a respect for the separation of powers enshrined in our Constitution.

For the foregoing reasons, the President cannot allow your constitutionally illegitimate proceedings to distract him and those in the Executive Branch from their work on behalf of the American people. The President has a country to lead. The American people elected him to do this job, and he remains focused on fulfilling his promises to the American people. He has important work that he must continue on their behalf, both at home and around the world, including continuing strong economic growth, extending historically low levels of unemployment, negotiating trade deals, fixing our broken immigration system, lowering prescription drug prices, and addressing mass shooting violence. We hope that, in light of the many deficiencies we have identified in your proceedings, you will abandon the current invalid efforts to pursue an impeachment inquiry and join the President in focusing on the many important goals that matter to the American people.

Sincerely,

A signature: Pat A. Cipollone.

Pat A. Cipollone
Counsel to the President

cc:

Hon. Kevin McCarthy, Minority Leader, House of Representatives
Hon. Michael McCaul, Ranking Member, House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Hon. Devin Nunes, Ranking Member, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Hon. Jim Jordan, Ranking Member, House Committee on Oversight and Reform

[1] Interview with Rep. Al Green, MSNBC (May 5, 2019).

[2] Glenn Kessler, Schiff’s False Claim His Committee Had Not Spoken to the Whistleblower, Wash. Post (Oct. 4, 2019).

[3] Press Release, Nancy Pelosi, Pelosi Remarks Announcing Impeachment Inquiry (Sept. 24, 2019).

[4] Since the Founding of the Republic, under unbroken practice, the House has never undertaken the solemn responsibility of an impeachment inquiry directed at the President without first adopting a resolution authorizing a committee to begin the inquiry. The inquiries into the impeachments of Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton proceeded in multiple phases, each authorized by a separate House resolution. See, e.g., H.R. Res. 581, 105th Cong. (1998); H.R. Res. 525, 105th Cong. (1998); III Hinds’ Precedents §§ 2400-02, 2408, 2412. And before the Judiciary Committee initiated an impeachment inquiry into President Richard Nixon, the Committee’s chairman rightfully recognized that “a[n] [inquiry] resolution has always been passed by the House” and “is a necessary step.” III Deschler’s Precedents ch. 14, § 15.2. The House then satisfied that requirement by adopting H.R. Res. 803, 93rd Cong. (1974),

[5] Chairman Nadler has recognized the importance of taking a vote in the House before beginning a presidential impeachment inquiry. At the outset of the Clinton impeachment inquiry—where a floor vote was held—he argued that even limiting the time for debate before that vote was improper and that “an hour debate on this momentous decision is an insult to the American people and another sign that this is not going to be fair.” 144 Cong. Rec. H10018 (daily ed. Oct. 8, 1998) (statement of Rep. Jerrold Nadler). Here, the House has dispensed with any vote and any debate at all.

[6] Press Release, Nancy Pelosi, Transcript of Pelosi Weekly Press Conference Today (Oct. 2, 2019).

[7] Examining the Allegations of Misconduct Against IRS Commissioner John Koskinen (Part II): Hearing Before the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 114th Cong. 3 (2016) (statement of Rep. Jerrold Nadler); Background and History of Impeachment: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on the Constitution of the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 105th Cong. 17 (1998) (statement of Rep. Jerrold Nadler).

[8] See, e.g., Watkins v. United States, 354 U.S. 178, 188 (1957); Quinn v. United States, 349 U.S. 155,161 (1955).

[9] See Hastings v. United States, 802 F. Supp. 490, 504 (D.D.C. 1992), vacated on other grounds by Hastings v. United States, 988 F.2d 1280 (D.C. Cir. 1993).

[10] See, e.g., III Hinds’ Precedents § 2445.

[11] H.R. Res. 581, 105th Cong. (1998); H.R. Res. 803, 93rd Cong. (1974).

[12] Letter from Eliot L. Engel, Chairman, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, et al., to George P. Kent, Deputy Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of State 1 (Sept. 27, 2019).

[13] See Letter from Eliot L. Engel, Chairman, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, et al., to John J. Sullivan, Deputy Secretary of State 2-3 (Oct. 1, 2019).

[14] See, e.g., Testimonial Immunity Before Congress of the Former Counsel to the President, 43 Op. O.L.C. _, * 19 (May 20, 2019); Prosecution for Contempt of Congress of an Executive Branch Official Who Has Asserted a Claim of Executive Privilege, 8 Op. O.L.C. 101, 102, 140 (1984)(“The Executive, however, must be free from the threat of criminal prosecution if its right to assert executive privilege is to have any practical substance.”)

[15] Attempted Exclusion of Agency Counsel from Congressional Depositions of Agency Employees, 43 Op. O.L.C._, * 1-2 (May 23, 2019).

[16] See President Donald J. Trump, Statement by the President on Signing the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2019 (Feb. 15, 20 19); Authority of Agency Officials To Prohibit Employees From Providing Information to Congress, 28 Op, O.L.C. 79, 80 (2004).

[17] See Matea Gold, The Campaign To Impeach President Trump Has Begun, Wash. Post (Jan. 21, 2017) (“At the moment the new commander in chief was sworn in, a campaign to build public support for his impeachment went live . . . .”).

[18] 144 Cong. Rec. HI 1786 (daily ed. Dec. 18, 1998) (statement of Rep. Jerrold Nadler).

[19] The Federalist No. 65 (Alexander Hamilton).

[20] See id.

[21] Press Release, Nancy Pelosi, Pelosi Remarks Announcing Impeachment Inquiry (Sept. 24, 20 19).

[22] President Trump Meeting with Ukrainian President, C-SPAN (Sept. 25, 2019).

[23] Statement of Kerri Kupec, Director, Office of Public Affairs, Dept. of Justice (Sept. 25, 2019) (“[T]he Department’s Criminal Division reviewed the official record of the call and determined, based on the facts and applicable law, that there was no campaign finance violation and that no further action was warranted.”).

[24] See Whistleblower Disclosure: Hearing Before the H Select Comm. on Intel., 116th Cong. (Sept. 26, 2019)(statement of Rep. Adam Schiff).

[25] Interview with Chairman Adam Schiff, MSNBC (Sept. l 7, 2019).

[26] Julian Barnes, et al., Schiff Got Early Account of Accusations as Whistle-Blower’s Concerns Grew, N.Y. Times (Oct. 2, 2019).

[27] Glenn Kessler, Schiff’s False Claim His Committee Had Not Spoken to the Whistleblower, Wash, Post (Oct. 4, 2019).

[28] Letter from Elijah E. Cummings, Chairman, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, et al., to John Michael Mulvaney, Acting Chief of Staff to the President 3 (Oct. 4, 2019).

[29] Id. at 1.

House Democrats Subpoena Two Giuliani Associates for Documents

Congress of the United States
Washington, DC 20515

October 10, 2019

VIA U.S. MAIL

John M. Dowd, Esq.

5335 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W. Suite 700

Washington, D.C. 20015

Dear Mr. Dowd:

Pursuant to the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry, we are hereby transmitting the following subpoenas:

- A subpoena that compels your client, Lev Parnas, to produce the documents set forth in the accompanying schedule by October 16, 2019; and

- A subpoena that compels your client, Igor Fruman, to produce the documents set forth in the accompanying schedule by October 16, 2019.

The subpoenas are being issued by the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under the Rules of the House of Representatives in exercise of its oversight and legislative jurisdiction and after consultation with the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Committee on Oversight and Reform. The subpoenaed documents shall be collected as part of the House’s impeachment inquiry and shared among the Committees, as well as with the Committee on the Judiciary as appropriate.[1] Your clients’ failure or refusal to comply with the subpoenas, including at the direction or behest of the President or the White House, shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry and may be used as an adverse inference against your clients and anyone with whom they are acting in concert, including the President.

In addition to providing the subpoenaed documents, the Committees also expect your clients to appear to testify about these matters at a later date.

Background

The Committees are investigating the extent to which President Trump jeopardized national security by pressing Ukraine to interfere with our 2020 election and by withholding a White House meeting with the President of Ukraine and military assistance provided by Congress to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression, as well as any efforts to cover up these matters.

According to press reports, Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman reportedly were “assisting Giuliani’s push to get Ukrainian officials to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son, as well as Giuliani’s claim that Democrats conspired with Ukrainians in the 2016 campaign.”[2]

Press reports also indicate that Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman were involved with efforts to press Ukrainian officials to change the management structure at a Ukrainian state-owned energy company, Naftogaz, to benefit individuals involved with Mr. Giuliani’s push to get Ukrainian officials to interfere in the 2020 election.

For example, according to press reports, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry reportedly “pressed the Ukrainian president to fire members of the Naftogaz advisory board” and “made clear” to Ukrainian officials and energy sector officials “that the Trump administration wanted to see the entire Naftogaz supervisory board replaced.” He reportedly gave President Zelensky a list of potential board members, including Michael Bleyzer, who “donated $20,000 to Perry’s reelection campaign” in 2010, and Robert Bensh, “another Texan who frequently works in Ukraine.”[3]

The proposal to install new board members at Naftogaz was reportedly promoted by “two Soviet-born Florida real estate entrepreneurs, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, and an oil magnate from Boca Raton, Florida, named Harry Sargeant III.” According to these reports, their plan was to “steer lucrative contracts to companies controlled by Trump allies.” In service of these efforts, Mr. Parnas, Mr. Fruman, and Mr. Sargeant also touted “a plan to replace Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolyev with another senior executive at the company.”[4]

Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman are also “clients of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.” When Mr. Giuliani was asked about efforts to install new members on Naftogaz’s board, he responded, “I may or may not know anything about it.”[5]

Throughout this period, Mr. Parnas, Mr. Fruman, and Mr. Sargeant reportedly “touted connections to Giuliani and Trump while trying to install new management at the top of Ukraine’s massive state gas company.” They also “appear to have had inside knowledge of the U.S. government’s plans in Ukraine.”[6] For example, “Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman boasted that they had worked with Mr. Giuliani to force the recall this spring of the American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch.”[7]

Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman reportedly “told people that Trump would replace the U.S. ambassador there months before she was actually recalled to Washington.” When Mr. Giuliani was asked about whether he was involved with this effort to recall the Ambassador to Ukraine, he responded, “I did play a role in that.”[8]

Your Clients’ Refusal to Cooperate

On September 30, 2019, the Committees sent letters to your clients requesting that they produce documents relating to the Committees’ inquiry by October 7, 2019, and appear for depositions on October 10, 2019, for Mr. Parnas and October 11, 2019, for Mr. Fruman.[9]

On October 3, 2019, you sent a letter in your capacity as counsel for Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman. You asked for additional time to respond to the Committees’ request, but you also wrote that the “amount of time required is difficult to determine.” You objected to the requests on various grounds, and you argued that they were intended to “harass, intimidate, and embarrass” your clients. Your letter confirmed, however, that “Messrs. Parnas and Fruman assisted Mr. Giuliani in connection with his representation of President Trump.”[10]

On October 8, 2019, you sent a second letter stating that your clients would not appear for the depositions on October 10 and 11, 2019.[11]

On October 9, 2019, you sent an email informing Committee counsel that your clients “agree with and adopt the position of the White House Counsel pertaining to Democrat inquiry [sic].”[12] You attached a copy of a letter that the White House Counsel wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and our Committees on Tuesday stating that President Trump will not cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.

Your clients are private citizens who are not employees of the Executive Branch. They may not evade requests from Congress for documents and information necessary to conduct our inquiry. They are required by law to comply with the enclosed subpoenas. They are not exempted from this requirement merely because they happen to work with Mr. Giuliani, and they may not defy congressional subpoenas merely because President Trump has chosen the path of denial, defiance, and obstruction.

Please contact staff for the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence at (202) 225-7690 to arrange for the production of these documents.

Sincerely,

A signature: Adam Schiff.
Adam B Schiff
Chairman
House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence

A signature: Eliot L. Engel.
Eloit L. Engel
Chairman
House Committee on Foreign Affairs

A signature: Elijah E. Cummings.
Elijah E. Cummings
Chairman
House Committee on Oversight and Reform

Enclosures

cc:

The Honorable Devin Nunes, Ranking Member House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

The Honorable Michael McCaul, Ranking Member House Committee on Foreign Affairs

The Honorable Jim Jordan, Ranking Member House Committee on Oversight and Reform

[1] See Letter from Jerrold Nadler, Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, to Adam B. Schiff, Chairman, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; Maxine Waters, Chairwoman, Committee on Financial Services; Elijah E. Cummings, Chairman, Committee on Oversight and Reform; and Eliot L. Engel, Chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs (Aug. 22, 2019) (online at https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/democrats.judiciary.house.gov/files/documents/FiveChairsLetter8.22.pdf).

[2] Impeachment Inquiry Puts New Focus on Giuliani’s Work for Prominent Figures in Ukraine, Washington Post (Oct. 2, 2019) (online at www.washingtonpost.com/politics/impeachment-inquiry-puts-new-focus-on-giulianiswork-for-prominent-figures-in-ukraine/2019/10/0l/b3c6d08c-e089-lle9-be96-6adb81821e90_story.html).

[3] Profits, Not Politics: Trump Allies Sought Ukraine Gas Deal, Associated Press (Oct. 7, 2019) (online at https://apnews.com/d7440cffba4940f5b85cd3dfa3500fb2).

[4] Id.

[5] Perry Pressed Ukraine on Corruption, Energy Company Changes, Politico (Oct. 5, 2019) (online at www.politico.com/news/2019/10/05/rick-perry-ukraine-trump-030230).

[6] Profits, Not Politics: Trump Allies Sought Ukraine Gas Deal, Associated Press (Oct. 7, 2019) (online at https://apnews.com/d7440cffba4940f5b85cd3dfa3500fb2).

[7] Rick Perry’s Focus on Gas Company Entangles Him in Ukraine Case, New York Times (Oct. 7, 2019) (online at www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/us/politics/rick-perry-ukraine.html).

[8] Profits, Not Politics: Trump Allies Sought Ukraine Gas Deal, Associated Press (Oct. 7, 2019) (online at https://apnews.com/d7440cffba4940f5b85cd3dfa3500fb2).

[9] See, e.g., letter from Chairman Adam B. Schiff, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Chairman Eliot L. Engel, Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Committee on Oversight and Reform, to Lev Parnas (Sept. 30, 2019) (online at https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/documents/20190930%20-%20Parnas%20Letter%20and%20Doc%20Request%20Schedule.pdf).

[10] Letter from John M. Dowd to Staff, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (Oct. 3, 2019).

[11] Letter from John M. Dowd to Staff, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (Oct. 8, 2019).

[12] Email from John M. Dowd to Staff, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (Oct. 9, 2019).

Rick Perry Subpoenaed

Congress of the United States
Washington, DC 20515

October 10, 2019

VIA U.S. AND ELECTRONIC MAIL

The Honorable James Richard “Rick” Perry

Secretary

Department of Energy

1000 Independence Avenue, S.W.

Washington, D.C. 20585

Dear Secretary Perry:

Pursuant to the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry, we are hereby transmitting a subpoena that compels you to produce the documents set forth in the accompanying schedule by October 18, 2019.

This subpoena is being issued by the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under the Rules of the House of Representatives in exercise of its oversight and legislative jurisdiction and after consultation with the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Committee on Oversight and Reform. The subpoenaed documents shall be collected as part of the House’s impeachment inquiry and shared among the Committees, as well as with the Committee on the Judiciary as appropriate.[1] Your failure or refusal to comply with the subpoena, including at the direction or behest of the President or the White House, shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry and may be used as an adverse inference against you and the President.

The Committees are investigating the extent to which President Trump jeopardized U.S. national security by pressing Ukraine to interfere with our 2020 election and by withholding a White House meeting with the President of Ukraine and military assistance provided by Congress to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression, as well as any efforts to cover up these matters.

Recently, public reports have raised questions about any role you may have played in conveying or reinforcing the President’s stark message to the Ukrainian President. These reports have also raised significant questions about your efforts to press Ukrainian officials to change the management structure at a Ukrainian state-owned energy company to benefit individuals involved with Rudy Giuliani’s push to get Ukrainian officials to interfere in our 2020 election.

Background

In September 2018, Congress appropriated $250 million to the Department of Defense for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative for fiscal year 2019.[2] In its Committee report authorizing the appropriation, the Senate Committee on Armed Services wrote:

The committee remains deeply concerned by the continuing aggression of Russia and Russian-led separatist forces in Ukraine. The committee welcomes the delivery of Javelin Missiles and Javelin Command Launch Units to Ukraine, which sends a strong signal of the United States’ commitment to the defense of allies and partners. The committee continues to emphasize the importance of providing security assistance and intelligence support, including defensive lethal assistance, to the Government of Ukraine to build its capacity to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.[3]

On February 28 and May 23, 2019, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John C. Rood notified Congressional chairs that the Department of Defense intended to release large tranches of this military aid to Ukraine.[4] The Congressional committees approved the defense assistance shortly after each notification. On June 18, 2019, the Defense Department announced that it was finalizing $250 million in security cooperation funds to Ukraine.[5]

According to multiple press reports, at some point in July 2019, President Trump ordered Acting Chief of Staff and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney to freeze the military aid to Ukraine, and Mr. Mulvaney reportedly conveyed the President’s order “through the budget office to the Pentagon and the State Department, which were told only that the administration was looking at whether the spending was necessary.”[6]

According to press reports, “Administration officials were instructed to tell lawmakers that the delays were part of an ‘interagency process’ but to give them no additional information.”[7] Officials at the Departments of State and Defense reportedly were “puzzled and alarmed” after learning about the White House’s directive. Defense Department officials reportedly “tried to make a case to the White House that the Ukraine aid was effective and should not be looked at in the same manner as other aid,” but “those arguments were ignored.” State and Defense Department officials reportedly contacted Congress to inform them of the freeze imposed by the White House.[8]

On July 25, 2019, President Trump had a telephone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. According to the record of the call that has now been made public, President Trump urged the Ukrainian President to launch an investigation into former Vice President Biden immediately after the Ukrainian President inquired about the status of the U.S. military assistance, including his desire to procure U.S.-manufactured Javelin missiles.[9]

According to the record, immediately after President Zelensky mentioned his desire to obtain Javelin missiles, President Trump stated, “I would like you to do us a favor though.” He also stated, “I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.” He also said:

There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.[10]

On July 25, 2019, Kurt Volker, the Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, sent a text message to Ukrainian Presidential Advisor Andrey Yermak before the call between President Trump and President Zelensky. Ambassador Volker wrote:

Heard from White House—assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate / “get to the bottom of what happened” in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington.[11]

Last week, Senator Ron Johnson publicly stated that in August 2019, he was informed by Gordon Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, that if Ukraine would “get to the bottom of what happened in 2016—if President Trump has that confidence, then he’ll release the military spending.” Senator Johnson stated: “At that suggestion, I winced.” He also stated: “My reaction was: Oh, God. I don’t want to see those two things combined.”[12]

As you are aware, the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 authorizes the President to withhold the obligation of funds only “(1) to provide for contingencies; (2) to achieve savings made possible by or through changes in requirements or greater efficiency of operations; or (3) as specifically provided by law.” The President is required to submit a special message to Congress with information about the proposed deferral of funds.[13]

On August 30, 2019, Chairman Adam Smith and Ranking Member Mac Thornberry of the House Committee on Armed Services wrote a letter to Mr. Mulvaney requesting information regarding why military assistance to Ukraine was being withheld and when it would be released. They wrote: “This funding is critical to the accomplishment of U.S. national security objectives in Europe.”[14] Two days later, on September 1, Ambassador William “Bill” Taylor, the Chargé d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, sent a text message to Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Sondland, asking, “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH [White House] meeting are conditioned on investigations?”[15]

On September 3, 2019, a bipartisan group of Senators—including Senators Rob Portman, Jeanne Shaheen, Dick Durbin, Richard Blumenthal, and Ron Johnson—wrote a letter requesting that OMB release the military assistance to Ukraine that the Trump Administration was withholding:

The funds designated for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative are vital to the long term viability of the Ukrainian military. It has helped Ukraine develop the independent military capabilities and skills necessary to fend off the Kremlin’s continued onslaughts within its territory. In fact, Ukraine continues to fight daily on its eastern border against Russia-backed separatists in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, and over 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have lost their lives in this war. U.S.-funded security assistance has already helped turn the tide in this conflict, and it is necessary to ensure the protection of the sovereign territory of this young country, going forward.[16]

On September 5, 2019, Chairman Eliot L. Engel and Ranking Member Michael McCaul of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs wrote a letter to OMB urging the Trump Administration to lift its hold on security assistance funds to support Ukraine, writing: “These funds, which were appropriated by Congress as Foreign Military Financing and as part of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and signed into law by the President, are essential to advancing U.S. national security interests.”[17]

On September 9, 2019, the Committees on Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight wrote to the White House requesting documents related to “the actual or potential suspension of security assistance to Ukraine.”[18] The White House never responded to this request. However, two days later, on September 11, 2019, the White House released its hold on the military assistance to Ukraine.[19]

On September 24, 2019, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stated that, although he was “very actively involved in advocating the aid,” he “was not given an explanation” about why it was being withheld, even though he talked to the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State. He stated: “I have no idea what precipitated the delay.”[20]

Reports Relating to Your Involvement During This Period

On October 4, 2019, President Trump reportedly “told House Republicans that he made his now infamous phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the urging of Energy Secretary Rick Perry—a call Trump claimed he didn’t even want to make.”[21]

In May 2019, you attended President Zelensky’s inauguration in place of Vice President Mike Pence, who reportedly was ordered by President Trump not to attend.[22]

On May 23, 2019, you attended a meeting in the Oval Office with President Trump, Ambassador Sondland, and Ambassador Volker. According to written testimony submitted by Ambassador Volker, President Trump called Ukraine a corrupt country full of “terrible people” and claimed that “they tried to take me down.”[23]

According to press reports, President Trump directed you and State Department officials “to deal with his private attorney Rudy Giuliani when the Ukrainian President sought to meet Trump, in a clear circumvention of official channels.” The President reportedly expressed that “if President Volodymyr Zelensky wanted to meet with him, Giuliani would have to be convinced first.”[24]

In June 2019, you reportedly attended a dinner with President Zelensky, President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and other U.S. officials.[25] On September 1, 2019, you attended the bilateral meeting between President Zelensky and Vice President Pence in Poland.[26] On September 25, 2019, you attended a meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky. According to press accounts of that meeting, “The message from Perry to Zelensky, according to one person familiar with the discussions, was: ‘You’ve got to take steps on your anti-corruption efforts.’”[27]

During your extensive interactions with Ukrainian officials, you also reportedly “pressed the Ukrainian president to fire members of the Naftogaz advisory board” and “made clear” to Ukrainian officials and energy sector officials “that the Trump administration wanted to see the entire Naftogaz supervisory board replaced.” You reportedly gave President Zelensky a list of potential board members, including Michael Bleyzer, who “donated $20,000 to Perry’s reelection campaign” in 2010, and Robert Bensh, “another Texan who frequently works in Ukraine.”[28]

According to press reports, your efforts raised questions about whether you were “seeking to provide certain Americans help in gaining a foothold in the Ukrainian energy business at a time when the new Ukrainian government was looking to the United States for signals of support in its simmering conflict with Russia.”[29]

The proposal to install new board members at Naftogaz was reportedly promoted by three donors to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign: “two Soviet-born Florida real estate entrepreneurs, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, and an oil magnate from Boca Raton, Florida, named Harry Sargeant III.” According to these reports, their plan was to “steer lucrative contracts to companies controlled by Trump allies. In service of these efforts, Mr. Parnas, Mr. Fruman, and Mr. Sargeant also touted “a plan to replace Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolyev with another senior executive at the company.”[30]

Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman are also “clients of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.” When Mr. Giuliani was asked about efforts to install new members on Naftogaz’s board, he responded, “I may or may not know anything about it.”[31]

Throughout this period, Mr. Parnas, Mr. Fruman, and Mr. Sargeant reportedly “touted connections to Giuliani and Trump while trying to install new management at the top of Ukraine’s massive state gas company.” They also “appear to have had inside knowledge of the U.S. government’s plans in Ukraine.”[32] For example, “Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman boasted that they had worked with Mr. Giuliani to force the recall this spring of the American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch.”[33]

Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman reportedly “told people that Trump would replace the U.S. ambassador there months before she was actually recalled to Washington.” When Mr. Giuliani was asked about whether he was involved with this effort to recall the Ambassador to Ukraine, he responded, “I did play a role in that.”[34]

In addition, during this same time period, Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman reportedly were “assisting Giuliani’s push to get Ukrainian officials to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son, as well as Giuliani’s claim that Democrats conspired with Ukrainians in the 2016 campaign.”[35]

Subpoena for Documents

On October 2, 2019, you stated publicly, “We’re going to work with Congress and answer all their questions.”[36] The enclosed subpoena demands documents that are necessary for the Committees to examine this sequence of these events and the reasons behind the White House’s decision to withhold critical military assistance to Ukraine that was appropriated by Congress to counter Russian aggression.

Please contact staff for the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence at (202) 225-7690 to arrange for the production of documents.

Sincerely,

A signature: Eliot L. Engel.
Eliot L. Engel
Chairman
House Committee on Foreign Affairs

A signature: Adam Schiff.
Adam B. Schiff
Chairman
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

A signature: Elijah E. Cummings.
Elijah E. Cummings
Chairman
House Committee on Oversight and Reform

Enclosures

cc:

The Honorable Michael McCaul, Ranking Member House Committee on Foreign Affairs

The Honorable Devin Nunes, Ranking Member House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

The Honorable Jim Jordan, Ranking Member House Committee on Oversight and Reform

[1] See Letter from Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Committee on the Judiciary, to Chairman Adam B. Schiff, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; Chairwoman Maxine Waters, Committee on Financial Services; Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Committee on Oversight and Reform; and Chairman Eliot L. Engel, Committee on Foreign Affairs (Aug. 22, 2019) (online at https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/democrats.judiciary.house.gov/files/documents/FiveChairsLetter8.22.pdf).

[2] Department of Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Act, 2019 and Continuing Appropriations Act, 2019, Pub. L. No. 115-245 at § 9013 (2018).

[3] Senate Committee on Armed Services, Report to Authorize Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2019 for Military Activities of the Department of Defense and for Military Construction, to Prescribe Military Personnel Strengths for Such Fiscal Year, and for Other Purposes (Sen. Rpt. 115-262) (June 5, 2018) (online at www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-115srpt262/html/CRPT-115srpt262.htm).

[4] Letter from John C. Rood, Under Secretary for Policy, Department of Defense, to Congressional Chairmen (May 23, 2019) (online at https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6430088/Pentagon-Letter-On-Ukraine-Aid.pdf).

[5] Department of Defense, Press Release: DOD Announces $250M to Ukraine (June 18, 2019) (online at www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/1879340/dod-announces-250m-to-ukraine/).

[6] Trump Said to Have Frozen Aid to Ukraine Before Call with Its Leader, New York Times (Sept. 23, 2019) (online at www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/us/politics/trump-un-biden-ukraine.html).

[7] Trump Ordered Hold on Military Aid Days Before Calling Ukrainian President, Officials Say, Washington Post (Sept. 23, 2019) (online at www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-ordered-hold-on-military-aid-days-before-calling-ukrainian-president-officials-say/2019/09/23/df93a6ca-de38-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html).

[8] Trump Said to Have Frozen Aid to Ukraine Before Call with Its Leader, New York Times (Sept. 23, 2019) (online at www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/us/politics/trump-un-biden-ukraine.html).

[9] The White House, Memorandum of Telephone Conversation (July 25, 2019) (online at www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Unclassified09.2019.pdf).

[10] Id

[11] Text Message from Kurt Volker, U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, to Andrey Yermak, Advisor to Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky (July 25, 2019) (online at https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/documents/Chairmen%20Letter%20on%20State%20Department%20Texts%2010-03-19.pdf).

[12] Trump, in August Call with GOP Senator, Denied Official’s Claim on Ukraine Aid, Wall Street Journal (Oct. 4, 2019) (online at www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-used-potential-meeting-to-pressure-ukraine-on-biden-texts-indicate-11570205661).

[13] 2 U.S.C. § 684.

[14] Letter from Chairman Adam Smith and Ranking Member Mac Thornberry, Committee on Armed Services, to Mick Mulvaney, Director, Office of Management and Budget (Aug. 30, 2019).

[15] Text Message from William Taylor, Chargé d’Affaires, U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, to Gordon Sondland, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, and Kurt Volker, U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations (Sept. 1, 2019) (online at https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/documents/Chairmen%20Letter%20on%20State%20Department%20Texts%2010-03-19.pdf).

[16] Letter from Senators Rob Portman, Jeanne Shaheen, Dick Durbin, Richard Blumenthal, and Ron Johnson, to Mick Mulvaney, Director, Office of Management and Budget (Sept. 3, 2019) (online at www.portman.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/portman-shaheen-lead-bipartisan-ukraine-caucus-leadership-letter-urging).

[17] Letter from Chairman Eliot L. Engel and Ranking Member Michael McCaul, Committee on Foreign Affairs, to Mick Mulvaney, Director, and Russell Vought, Acting Director, Office of Management and Budget (Sept 5, 2019).

[18] Letter from Chairman Eliot L. Engel, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Chairman Adam Schiff, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, Committee on Oversight and Reform, to Secretary Mike Pompeo, Department of State (Sept. 9, 2019) (online at https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/_cache/files/a/d/adle0561-2252-4f7c-97ad-f649db558c83/1F587BDDA9087BEDDEE8D45A8F92C370.test.ele-schiff-cummings-letter-to-sec-pompeo-on-ukraine-002-.pdf).

[19] Trump Administration Backs Off Hold on Ukraine Military Aid, Politico (Sept. 12, 2019) (online at www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/trump-administration-ukraine-military-aid-3825755).

[20] McConnell: ‘I Was Not Given an Explanation’ for Ukraine Aid Delay, The Hill (Sept. 24, 2019) (online at https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/462828-mcconnell-i-was-not-given-an-explanation-for-ukraine-aid-delay).

[21] Scoop: Trump Pins Ukraine Call on Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Axios (Oct. 5, 2019) (online at www.axios.com/trump-blamed-rick-perry-call-ukraine-zelensky-8178447a-0374-4ac6-b321-a9454b0565d4.html).

[22] Department of Energy, Readout of Secretary Perry’s Delegation Visit to the Inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (May 21, 2019) (online at www.energy.gov/articles/readout-secretary-perry-s-delegation-visit-inauguration-ukrainian-president-volodymyr); Trump Involved Pence in Efforts to Pressure Ukraine’s Leader, Though Officials Say Vice President Was Unaware of Allegations in Whistleblower Complaint, Washington Post (Oct. 2, 2019) (online at www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-involved-pence-in-efforts-to-pressure-ukraines-leader-though-aides-say-vice-president-was-unaware-of-pursuit-of-dirt-on-bidens/2019/10/02/263aa9e2-e4a7-11e9-b403-f738899982d2_story.html).

[23] Kurt Volker, Former U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, Written Testimony before the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs. Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Committee on Oversight (Oct. 3, 2019) (online at https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/Volker%20Testimony%20Long%20Form.pdf).

[24] Trump Told Perry and State Department Officials as Early as May to Talk to Giuliani about Ukraine, CNN (Oct. 8, 2019) (online at www.cnn.com/2019/10/08/politics/trump-perry-giuliani-state-department/index.html).

[25] Perry Pressed Ukraine on Corruption, Energy Company Changes, Politico (Oct. 5, 2019) (online at www.politico.com/news/2019/10/05/rick-perry-ukraine-trump-030230).

[26] The White House, Remarks by Vice President Pence and President Duda of Poland in Joint Press Conference, Warsaw, Poland (Sept. 2, 2019) (online at www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-vice-president-pence-president-duda-poland-joint-press-conference-warsaw-poland).

[27] Perry Pressed Ukraine on Corruption, Energy Company Changes, Politico (Oct. 5, 2019) (online at www.politico.com/news/2019/10/05/rick-perry-ukraine-trump-030230).

[28] Profits, Not Politics: Trump Allies Sought Ukraine Gas Deal, Associated Press (Oct. 7, 2019) (online at https://apnews.com/d7440cffba4940f5b85cd3dfa3500fb2).

[29] Rick Perry’s Focus on Gas Company Entangles Him in Ukraine Case, New York Times (Oct. 7, 2019) (online at www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/us/politics/rick-perry-ukraine.html).

[30] Profits, Not Politics: Trump Allies Sought Ukraine Gas Deal, Associated Press (Oct. 7, 2019) (online at https://apnews.com/d7440cffba4940f5b85cd3dfa3500fb2).

[31] Perry Pressed Ukraine on Corruption, Energy Company Changes, Politico (Oct. 5, 2019) (online at www.politico.com/news/2019/10/05/rick-perry-ukraine-trump-030230).

[32] Profits, Not Politics: Trump Allies Sought Ukraine Gas Deal, Associated Press (Oct. 7, 2019) (online at https://apnews.com/d7440cffba4940f5b85cd3dfa3500fb2).

[33] Rick Perry’s Focus on Gas Company Entangles Him in Ukraine Case, New York Times (Oct. 7, 2019) (online at www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/us/politics/rick-perry-ukraine.html).

[34] Profits, Not Politics: Trump Allies Sought Ukraine Gas Deal, Associated Press (Oct. 7, 2019) (online at https://apnews.com/d7440cffba4940f5b85cd3dfa3500fb2).

[35] Impeachment Inquiry Puts New Focus on Giuliani’s Work For Prominent Figures in Ukraine, Washington Post (Oct. 2, 2019) (online at www.washingtonpost.com/politics/impeachment-inquiry-puts-new-focus-on-giulianis-work-for-prominent-figures-in-ukraine/2019/10/01/b3c6d08c-e089-11e9-be96-6adb81821e90_story.html).

[36] Energy Secretary Rick Perry: “We’re Going to Work with Congress” on Ukraine Probe, CNN (Oct. 2, 2019) (online at www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-impeachment-inquiry-10-02-2019/h_630dedace7306f93b664069b6011863f).

SCHEDULE

In accordance with the attached Definitions and Instructions, you, James Richard “Rick” Perry, in your capacity as Secretary of Energy, are hereby required to produce, for the time period from February 1, 2019, to the present, all documents and communications referring or relating to:

1. President Trump’s April 21, 2019, and July 25, 2019, telephone conversations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, including but not limited to:

1. All recordings, transcripts, notes (including electronic and hand-written notes), summaries, and draft versions of the official “Memorandum of Telephone Conversation”;

2. All preparatory memoranda and materials including the full presidential call package and any addenda;

3. The identity of all individuals who listened to, participated in, assisted in preparation for, transcribed, took notes during, reviewed the call record or transcript, or received information about the April 21, 2019, and July 25, 2019, telephone conversations;

4. All memoranda, briefing materials, summaries, and other documents received by you or officials in the Department of Energy (DOE) referring or relating to the July 25, 2019, call;

2. Communications between or among current or former officials of any of the following entities referring or relating in any way to the April 21, 2019, or July 25, 2019, telephone conversations:

1. The White House, including the Office of the Vice President (OVP), the White House Counsel’s Office, the National Security Council (NSC), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), or the White House Situation Room;

2. The Department of Justice (DOJ);

3. The Department of State (DOS);

4. The Department of Defense (DOD);

5. The Department of Energy (DOE); and

6. Agencies in the Intelligence Community (IC);

3. Any of the following actual or potential meetings or contacts:

1. All telephone calls, meetings, visits, or other communication involving President Trump and President Zelensky, including but not limited to requests, suggestions, proposals, or other communications;

2. President Zelensky’s inauguration on May 20, 2019, in Kyiv, Ukraine, including but not limited to President Trump’s decision not to attend or send Vice President Mike Pence to lead the U.S. delegation, and instead to send you;

3. A meeting on or about May 21, 2019, in Kyiv, Ukraine including you, former Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Ambassador Kurt Volker, and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, as well as Ukrainian officials and representatives of the Ukrainian energy sector;

4. A meeting at the White House on or about May 23, 2019, involving you, President Trump, Ambassador Kurt Volker, Ambassador Gordon Sondland, and others, including a discussion relating to Ukraine and/or Rudolph (“Rudy”) W. Giuliani;

5. A meeting on or about July 10, 2019, at the White House between Ukrainian officials Andriy Yermak and Oleksander Danylyuk and U.S. government officials, including you, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, Ambassador Kurt Volker, and Ambassador Gordon Sondland, as well as the proposed or actual participation of Vice President Mike Pence and/or President Trump in the meeting;

6. A potential meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky in Warsaw, Poland on or about September 1, 2019, including President Trump’s decision to cancel his attendance;

7. All meetings and communications between U.S. officials, including but not limited to you, Vice President Mike Pence, or Senior Advisor Jared Kushner, and President Zelensky or other Ukrainian government officials in Warsaw, Poland on or around September 1, 2019;

8. Secretary Pompeo’s September 17, 2019, call with the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystayko;

9. Vice President Pence’s September 18, 2019, call with President Zelensky; and

10. All meetings between President Trump and President Zelensky during the United Nations General Assembly on or about September 25, 2019, including but not limited to any discussion of their July 25, 2019, phone call, as well as any preparatory memoranda and materials generated for the meeting; any notes, readouts, summaries of the same; and any follow-up directives and guidance formally or informally issued to NSC staff, as well as relevant departments and agencies, either formally or informally;

4. Efforts by any current or former member of the Trump Administration or Rudy Giuliani, Igor Fruman, Lev Parnas, and Semyon (“Sam”) Kislin, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing, Vitaly Pruss, or any of their associates, to induce, compel, petition, press, solicit, request, or suggest that current or former Ukrainian government officials, politicians, or other persons or entities associated with or acting in any capacity as a representative, agent, or proxy for any such individuals, investigate matters related to Burisma Holdings Ltd., Paul Manafort, Hunter Biden, Joseph Biden, the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton, former U.S. Ambassador Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch, and/or any U.S. persons or entities;

5. Naftogaz, including all proposed or actual changes to the company’s Board of Directors, potential or actual proposals for business or new contracts involving Naftogaz, and communications referencing or related to the company from, to, or referencing Rudy Giuliani, Igor Fruman, Lev Parnas, Sam Kislin, Harry Sargeant III, Amos Hochstein, Robert Bensh, Michael Bleyzer, Haley Baumgardner, 45 Energy Group, Andriy Kobolyev, Andrew Favorov, Dale W. Perry, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing, and/or Vitaly Pruss;

6. Proposed or actual transactions, investments, or projects relating to liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Ukraine;

7. The actual or potential withholding, freezing, reviewing, delaying, deferring, directing, impounding, or releasing of foreign assistance of any kind, including security assistance, to Ukraine for fiscal year 2019, including communications among or between individuals in the White House, OMB, OVP, DOD, DOS, DOE, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), ODNI, or agencies in the IC;

8. Interagency meetings related to foreign assistance of any kind, including security assistance, to Ukraine, including documents sufficient to show the identities of all officials who attended interagency meetings on July 18, 2019, July 23, 2019, July 26, 2019, and/or July 31, 2019, among others;

9. The decision announced on or about September 11, 2019, to provide appropriated foreign aid to Ukraine for fiscal year 2019, including any notes, memoranda, documentation or correspondence related to the decision; and

10. All meetings or discussions with Rudy Giuliani referring or relating to Ukraine.

Giuliani Lawyer Response to Congressional Subpoena

A logo: Nelson Mullins Broad and Cassel.
Jon A. Sale, Of Counsel and Co-Chair White
Collar & Government Investigations Practice Group
Direct Line: 305.373.9454
jon.sale@nelsonmullins.com

ATTORNEYS AND COUNSELORS AT LAW

One Biscayne Tower
2 South Biscayne Blvd. | 21st Floor
Miami, FL 33131
T: 305.373.9400 F: 305.373.9443

nelsonmullins.com
*In Florida, known as Nelson Mullins Broad and Cassel

October 15, 2019

VIA EMAIL

Nicolas A. Mitchell
Investigation Counsel
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Congress
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Mr. Mitchell:

I am writing on behalf of Mr. Rudolph W. Giuliani in response to the letter from Chairmen Schiff, Engel, and Cummings dated September 30, 2019, and the accompanying subpoena. Please accept this response as formal notice that Mr. Giuliani will not participate because this appears to be an unconstitutional, baseless, and illegitimate “impeachment inquiry.” By way of this response, Mr. Giuliani adopts all the positions set forth in Mr. Cipollone’s October 8, 2019 letter on behalf of President Donald J. Trump.

In addition, the subpoena is overbroad, unduly burdensome, and seeks documents beyond the scope of legitimate inquiry. Moreover, documents sought in the subpoena are protected by attorney-client, attorney work-product, and executive privileges.

Sincerely,

A signature: Jon A. Sale.

Jon A. Sale

Counsel for Rudolph W. Giuliani

House Impeachment Resolution

(Original Signature of Member)

116TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION

H. RES.

____________

Directing certain committees to continue their ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its Constitutional power to impeach Donald John Trump, President of the United States of America, and for other purposes.

______________________________________

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Mr. MCGOVERN submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on ______________________________________

______________________________________

RESOLUTION

Directing certain committees to continue their ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its Constitutional power to impeach Donald John Trump, President of the United States of America, and for other purposes.

Resolved, That the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committees on Financial Services, Foreign Affairs, the Judiciary, Oversight and Reform, and Ways and Means, are directed to continue their ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its Constitutional power to impeach Donald John Trump, President of the United States of America.

SEC. 2. OPEN AND TRANSPARENT INVESTIGATIVE PROCEEDINGS BY THE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE.

For the purpose of continuing the investigation described in the first section of this resolution, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (referred to in this resolution as the â€œPermanent Select Committeeâ€) is authorized to conduct proceedings pursuant to this resolution as follows:

(1) The chair of the Permanent Select Committee shall designate an open hearing or hearings pursuant to this section.

(2) Notwithstanding clause 2(j)(2) of rule XI of the Rules of the House of Representatives, upon recognition by the chair for such purpose under this paragraph during any hearing designated pursuant to paragraph (1), the chair and ranking minority member of the Permanent Select Committee shall be permitted to question witnesses for equal specified periods of longer than five minutes, as determined by the chair. The time available for each period of questioning under this paragraph shall be equal for the chair and the ranking minority member. The chair may confer recognition for multiple periods of such questioning, but each period of questioning shall not exceed 90 minutes in the aggregate. Only the chair and ranking minority member, or a Permanent Select Committee employee if yielded to by the chair or ranking minority member, may question witnesses during such periods of questioning. At the conclusion of questioning pursuant to this paragraph, the committee shall proceed with questioning under the five-minute rule pursuant to clause 2(j)(2)(A) of rule XI.

(3) To allow for full evaluation of minority witness requests, the ranking minority member may submit to the chair, in writing, any requests for witness testimony relevant to the investigation described in the first section of this resolution within 72 hours after notice is given for the first hearing designated pursuant to paragraph (1). Any such request shall be accompanied by a detailed written justification of the relevance of the testimony of each requested witness to the investigation described in the first section of this resolution.

(4) (A) The ranking minority member of the Permanent Select Committee is authorized, with the concurrence of the chair, to require, as deemed necessary to the investigationâ€”

(i) by subpoena or otherwiseâ€”

(I) the attendance and testimony of any person (including at a taking of a deposition); and

(II) the production of books, records, correspondence, memoranda, papers, and documents; and

(ii) by interrogatory, the furnishing of information

(B) In the case that the chair declines to concur in a proposed action of the ranking minority member pursuant to subparagraph (A), the ranking minority member shall have the right to refer to the committee for decision the question whether such authority shall be so exercised and the chair shall convene the committee promptly to render that decision, subject to the notice procedures for a committee meeting under clause 2(g)(3)(A) and (B) of rule XI.

(C) Subpoenas and interrogatories so authorized may be signed by the ranking minority member, and may be served by any person designated by the ranking minority member.

(5) The chair is authorized to make publicly available in electronic form the transcripts of depositions conducted by the Permanent Select Committee in furtherance of the investigation described in the first section of this resolution, with appropriate redactions for classified and other sensitive information.

(6) The Permanent Select Committee is directed to issue a report setting forth its findings and any recommendations and appending any information and materials the Permanent Select Committee may deem appropriate with respect to the investigation described in the first section of this resolution. The chair shall transmit such report and appendices, along with any supplemental, minority, additional, or dissenting views filed pursuant to clause 2(l) of rule XI, to the Committee on the Judiciary and make such report publicly available in electronic form, with appropriate redactions to protect classified and other sensitive information. The report required by this paragraph shall be prepared in consultation with the chairs of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Committee on Oversight and Reform.

SEC. 3. TRANSMISSION OF ADDITIONAL MATERIALS.

The chair of the Permanent Select Committee or the chair of any other committee having custody of records or other materials relating to the inquiry referenced in the first section of this resolution is authorized, in consultation with the ranking minority member, to transfer such records or materials to the Committee on the Judiciary.

SEC. 4. IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY PROCEDURES IN THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY.

(a) The House authorizes the Committee on the Judiciary to conduct proceedings relating to the impeachment inquiry referenced in the first section of this resolution pursuant to the procedures submitted for printing in the Congressional Record by the chair of the Committee on Rules, including such procedures as to allow for the participation of the President and his counsel.

(b) The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to promulgate additional procedures as it deems necessary for the fair and efficient conduct of committee hearings held pursuant to this resolution, provided that the additional procedures are not inconsistent with the procedures referenced in subsection (a), the Rules of the Committee, and the Rules of the House.

(c)(1) The ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary is authorized, with the concurrence of the chair of the Committee on the Judiciary, to require, as deemed necessary to the investigationâ€”

(A) by subpoena or otherwiseâ€”

(i) the attendance and testimony of any person (including at a taking of a deposition); and

(ii) the production of books, records, correspondence, memoranda, papers, and documents; and

(B) by interrogatory, the furnishing of information.

(2) In the case that the chair declines to concur in a proposed action of the ranking minority member pursuant to paragraph (1), the ranking minority member shall have the right to refer to the committee for decision the question whether such authority shall be so exercised and the chair shall convene the committee promptly to render that decision, subject to the notice procedures for a committee meeting under clause 2(g)(3)(A) and (B) of rule XI.

(3) Subpoenas and interrogatories so authorized may be signed by the ranking minority member, and may be served by any person designated by the ranking minority member.

(d) The Committee on the Judiciary shall report to the House of Representatives such resolutions, articles of impeachment, or other recommendations as it deems proper.

Testimony from Former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch

PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE,
joint with the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
and the
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
WASHINGTON, D.C.

DEPOSITION OF: MARIE "MASHA" YOVANOVITCH

Friday, October 11, 2019 Washington, D.C.

The interview in the above matter was held in Room HVC-304, Capitol Visitor Center, commencing at 10:38 a.m.

Present: Schiff, Himes, Quigley, Heck, and Maloney.

Also Present: Representatives Norton, Plaskett, Raskin, Jordan, Meadows, Malinowski, Perry, and Zeldin.

Appearances:

For the PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE:

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For the COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM:

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For the Committee ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS:

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For MARIE YOVANOVITCH:

LAWRENCE S. ROBBINS, ESQ.

LAURIE RUBENSTEIN, ESQ.

RACHEL S. LI WAI SUEN, ESQ.

ROBBINS, RUSSELL, ENGLERT, ORSECK,

UNTEREINER & SAUBER LLP

2000 K Street, N.W. 4th Floor

Washington, D.C. 20006

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. The committee will come to order. Good morning, Ambassador, and welcome to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which along with the Foreign Affairs and Oversight, Committees, is conducting this investigation as part of the official impeachment inquiry of the House of Representatives.

Today's deposition is being conducted as part of the inquiry. On behalf of all of us today, on both sides of the table, I want to thank you for your decades of service to the Nation, and especially for so ably representing the United States as our Ambassador to Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine. As you know firsthand, the post-Soviet space has presented a myriad of challenges for success of American administrations. And as the successor states, the former USSR continue to grapple with the consequences of 70 years of Communism.

I've read about the curtailment of your posting in Kyiv, and I have seen the shameful attacks made on you by those who lack your character and devotion to country. While we will doubtless explore more fully the circumstances of your premature recall during this interview, I'm appalled that any administration would treat a dedicated public servant as you have been treated.

As you know, the White House and the Secretary of State have spared no effort in trying to prevent you and others from meeting with us to tell us the facts. Because of the administration's efforts to block your deposition and obstruct your inquiry, the committee had no choice but to compel your appearance today. We thank you for complying with the duly authorized congressional subpoena.

Finally, I want you to know that the Congress will not tolerate any attempt to retaliate against you or to exact retribution of any kind. We expect that you'll be treated in accordance with your rank, and offered assignments commensurate with your expertise and long service. Should that not be the case, we will hold those responsible to account.

Before I turn to committee counsel to begin the deposition, I invite Ranking Member Nunes or any member of HPSCI, or in their absence, any of my minority colleagues to make opening remarks on Mr. Nunes' behalf.

MR. JORDAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just for the record, on October 2nd, 2019, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said that she would treat the President with fairness. Fairness requires certain things. Just a few minutes ago, the chairman of the Intel Committee said that this is an official impeachment inquiry.

If it's an official impeachment inquiry, we should be following precedent. Every recent impeachment has permitted minority subpoenas. The right of the minority to issue subpoenas subject to the same rules as the majority has been the standard bipartisan practice in all recent resolutions authorizing presidential impeachment inquiries. That is not the case today, has not been the case since this, quote, "official impeachment inquiry" began.

Democrats' failure to provide ranking members with equal subpoena power shows this is a partisan investigation. Second, Democrats have threatened witnesses who request agency counsel to be present for their transcribed interview and/or deposition. State Department lawyers have a right to protect executive branch interests, including national security interests. Democrats have threatened to withhold salaries of State Department officials who ask for the presence of State Department lawyers in depositions.

I've been in countless number of depositions and/or transcribed interviews, this is only the second one I’ve ever seen where agency counsel was not permitted to be in the room when a witness was deposed or asked questions, the first was last Thursday. The first witness as a part of this, quote, "official impeachment inquiry."

And, finally, fairness requires due process. The President and minority should have the right to see all evidence, both favorable and unfavorable. The President and minority should have the ability to present evidence bearing on the credibility of testifying witnesses. The President and the minority should have the ability to raise objections relating to examination of witnesses, and the admissibility of testimony and evidence. And the President and the minority should have the ability to respond to all evidence and testimony presented.

With that, I would like to yield to my colleague from the Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Zeldin, for a few items to put on the record as well.

MR. ZELDIN: Yesterday, Ranking Member McCaul sent a letter to Chairman Engel consistent with what Mr. Jordan was just referencing on the record, calling on the chair to honor the bipartisan Rodino Hyde precedence that governed both the Nixon and Clinton impeachment inquires, which guaranteed the President's counsel the right to participate in these proceedings, and allowed the minority to exercise coequal subpoena authority.

Moving on. The question is, what specific provision of House rules gives the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence the jurisdiction and authority to convene an investigative inquiry of a State Department diplomat regarding the conduct of U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine? That is clearly the jurisdiction of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and to date, the House has not voted to give the Intel Committee any additional authority to conduct an impeachment inquiry outside of its jurisdictional lane, which concerns intelligence-related activities.

Can you please point us to anything in the House rules that gives you this authority?

THE CHAIRMAN: We're going to move forward with the deposition rather than address the mischaracterizations of both impeachment history and inquiries and process. I would now recognize Mr. Goldman.

MR. MEADOWS: Mr. Chairman, point of order. Point of order.

THE CHAIRMAN: My colleague, we're not going to allow --

MR. MEADOWS: Well, you can't not allow -- I'm here to tell you, Mr. Schiff --

THE CHAIRMAN: We're not going to allow any dilatory --

MR. MEADOWS: -- you know the House rules allows for point of order in any --

THE CHAIRMAN: State your point of order.

MR. MEADOWS: The point of order is the rules of the House are very clear. The gentleman raised a valid point that there are no rules that would give the authority of you to actually depose this witness. And so, under what authority -- I would say you're out of order.

THE CHAIRMAN: I appreciate your opinion, but the House deposition rules say otherwise. So, Mr. Goldman, you are recognized.

MR. ZELDIN: Point of order, though, we are asking what that rule is that gives you the authority to conduct today's deposition.

MR. MEADOWS: Rule 11 doesn't outline anything.

THE CHAIRMAN: We won't allow any further dilatory motions. Mr. Goldman, you're recognized.

MR. ZELDIN: We're asking a simple question.

MR. GOLDMAN: This is the deposition of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch conducted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, also called HPSCI, pursuant to the impeachment inquiry announced by the Speaker of the House on September 24th.

MR. GOLDMAN: Ambassador Yovanovitch, could you please state your full name and spell your last name for the record.

MR. ROBBINS: I'm sorry, before we begin the deposition. Sorry, I represent the witness. My name is Larry Robbins. The ambassador has an opening statement to make.

MR. GOLDMAN: We're going to get to that.

MR. ROBBINS: I see.

MR. GOLDMAN: After we lay out the ground rules here, we'll turn it over to the Ambassador.

MR. ROBBINS: Okay. It's a deal.

MR. GOLDMAN: All right. If you could go ahead and please state your full name and spell it for the record.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Marie Louise Yovanovitch. Marie, M-A-R-I-E, Louise, L-O-U-I-S-E, Yovanovitch, Y-O-V-A-N-O-V-I-T-C-H.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you. Along with other proceedings in furtherance of the inquiry, the deposition is part of a joint investigation led by the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in coordination with the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the Committee on Oversight and Reform.

In the room today, I believe, are at least given the option of having two majority staff and two minority staff from both the Foreign Affairs and the Oversight Committees, as well as majority and minority staff from HPSCI. This is a staff-led deposition, but members, of course, may ask questions during the allotted time.

My name is Daniel Goldman, I'm a senior advisor and director of investigations for the HPSCI majority staff, and I'd like to thank you for coming in today for this deposition. I'd like to do some brief introductions. To my right is Nicolas Mitchell, senior investigative counsel for HPSCI. Mr. Mitchell and I will be conducting most of the interview for the majority.

And I will now let my counterparts who will be asking any questions introduce themselves.

MR. CASTOR: Good morning, Ambassador. My name is Steve Castor, I'm a staffer with the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, minority staff.

MR. BREWER: Good morning. I'm David Brewer from Oversight as well.

MR. GOLDMAN: This deposition will be conducted entirely at the unclassified level. However, the deposition is being conducted in HPSCI's secure spaces, and in the presence of staff who all have appropriate security clearances. It is the committee's expectation that neither questions asked of the witness nor answers by the witness or the witness' counsel will require discussion of any information that is currently, or at any point could be properly classified under executive order 13526.

Moreover, EO-13526 states that, quote, "in no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified," unquote, for the purpose of concealing any violations of law or preventing embarrassment of any person or entity. If any of our questions can only be answered with classified information, Ambassador Yovanovitch, we'd ask you to inform us of that and we will adjust accordingly.

I would also just note for the record that my understanding is that Ambassador Yovanovitch's counsel also has the necessary security clearances. Is that right?

MR. ROBBINS: That is correct.

MR. GOLDMAN: All right. Today's deposition is not being taken in executive session, but because of the sensitive and confidential nature of some of the topics and materials that will be discussed, access to the transcript of the deposition will be limited to three committees in attendance. You and your attorney will have an opportunity to review the transcript as well. Per the House rules for this deposition, no members or staff may discuss the contents of this deposition outside of the three committees, including in public.

Before we begin, I'd like to briefly go over the ground rules for this deposition. We'll be following the House regulations for depositions. We have previously provided your counsel with a copy of those regulations, and we have copies here if you would like to review them at any time. The deposition will proceed as follows:

The majority will be given 1 hour to ask questions and then the minority will be given 1 hour to ask questions. Thereafter, we will alternate back and forth between majority and minority in 45-minute rounds until questioning is complete. We will take periodic breaks, but if you need a break at any time, please let us know.

Under the House deposition rules, counsel for other persons or government agencies may not attend. And we can point you to the deposition rule if anyone would like to look at it. You are allowed to have an attorney present during this deposition, and I see that you have brought three. And at this time, if counsel could state their names for the record.

MR. ROBBINS: So I'm Lawrence Robbins from the firm of Robbins Russell, representing the Ambassador. With me are Laurie Rubenstein and Rachel Li Wai Suen, also from our firm, also for the witness.

MR. GOLDMAN: There is a stenographer, or two, taking down everything that is said here in order to make a written record of the deposition. For the record to be clear, please wait until the questions are finished before you begin your answer, and we will wait until you finish your response before asking the next question. The stenographer cannot record nonverbal answers, such as shaking your head. So it is important that you answer each question with an audible verbal answer.

We ask that you give complete replies to questions based on your best recollection. If the question is unclear or you are uncertain in your response, please let us know. And if you do not know the answer to a question or cannot remember, simply say so.

You may only refuse to answer a question to preserve a privilege that is recognized by the committee. If you refuse to answer a question on the basis of privilege, staff may either proceed with the deposition or seek a ruling from Chairman Schiff on the objection during the deposition at a time of the majority staff's choosing. If the chair overrules any such objection during the deposition, you are required to answer the question. These are the House deposition rules.

Finally, you are reminded that it is unlawful to deliberately provide false information to Members of Congress or staff. It is imperative that you not only answer our questions truthfully, but that you give full and complete answers to all questions asked of you. Omissions may also be considered false statements.

Now, as this deposition is under oath, Ambassador Yovanovitch, would you please raise your right hand and stand and you'll be sworn in. Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give is the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I do.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you. The record will reflect that the witness has been duly sworn, and you may be seated. Now, Ambassador Yovanovitch, I understand you have some opening remarks and now is the time to do them.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Thank you. Chairman Schiff, Mr. Jordan, and other members and staff who are here today. I really do thank you for the opportunity to start with a statement. And I'd like to introduce myself. For the last -- for the last 33 years, it's been my great honor to serve the American people as a Foreign Service Officer over six administrations, four Republican and two Democrat. I have served in seven different countries; five of them have been hardship posts, and I was appointed to serve as an ambassador three times, twice by a Republican President, once by a Democratic President.

Throughout my career, I have stayed true to the oath that Foreign Service Officers take and observe every day, that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. Like all Foreign Service Officers with whom I have been privileged to serve, I have understood that oath as a commitment to serve on a strictly nonpartisan basis, to advance the foreign policy determined by the incumbent President, and to work at all times to strengthen our national security and promote our national interests.

I come by these beliefs honestly and through personal experience. My parents fled Communist and Nazi regimes. And having seen, firsthand, the war and poverty and displacement common to totalitarian regimes, they valued the freedom and democracy the U.S. offers, and that the United States represents. And they raised me to cherish those values as well.

Their sacrifice allowed me to attend Princeton University, where I focused my studies on the former Soviet Union. And given my upbringing and my background, it has been the honor of a lifetime to help to foster those principles as a career Foreign Service Officer. From August 2016 until May 2019, I served as the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine. Our policy, fully embraced by Democrats and Republicans alike, was to help Ukraine become a stable and independent democratic state, with a market economy integrated into Europe. Ukraine is a sovereign country whose borders are inviolate, and whose people have the right to determine their own destiny. These are the bedrock principles of our policy.

Because of Ukraine's geostrategic position bordering Russia on its east, the warm waters of the oil-rich Black Sea to its south, and four NATO allies to its west, it is critical to the security of the United States that Ukraine remain free and democratic, and that it continue to resist Russian expansionism.

Russia's purported annexation of Crimea, its invasion of Eastern Ukraine, and its de facto control over the Sea of Azov, make clear Russia's malign intentions towards Ukraine. If we allow Russia's actions to stand, we will set a precedent that the United States will regret for decades to come.

So supporting Ukraine's integration into Europe and combating Russia's efforts to destabilize Ukraine have anchored our policy since the Ukrainian people protested on the Maidan in 2014 and demanded to be a part of Europe and live according to the rule of law. That was U.S. policy when I became ambassador in August 2016, and it was reaffirmed as that policy as the policy of the current administration in early 2017.

The Revolution of Dignity and the Ukrainian people's demand to end corruption forced the new Ukrainian Government to take measures to fight the rampant corruption that long permeated that country's political and economic systems. We have long understood that strong anti-corruption efforts must form an essential part of our policy in Ukraine, and now there was a window of opportunity to do just exactly that.

And so why is that important? And why is it important to us? Put simply, anti-corruption efforts serve Ukraine's interests, but they also serve ours as well. Corrupt leaders are inherently less trustworthy, while honest and accountable Ukrainian leadership makes a U.S.-Ukraine partnership more reliable and more valuable to us. A level playing field in this strategically located country, one with a European landmass exceeded only by Russia, and with one of the largest populations in Europe, creates an environment in which U.S. business can make more easily trade, invest, and profit. Corruption is a security issue as well because corrupt officials are vulnerable to Moscow. In short, it is in our national security interest to help Ukraine transform into a country where the rule of law governs and corruption is held in check.

But change takes time, and the aspiration to instill rule of law of values has still not been fulfilled. Since 2014, Ukraine has been at war, not just with Russia, but within itself, as political and economic forces compete to determine what kind of country Ukraine will become. The same old oligarch-dominated Ukraine where corruption is not just prevalent, but frankly is the system. Or the country that Ukrainians demanded in the Revolution of Dignity. A country where rule of law is the system, corruption is tamed, and people are treated equally, and according to the law.

During the 2019 presidential elections in Ukraine, the people answered that question once again. Angered by insufficient progress in the fight against corruption, Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly voted for a man who said that ending corruption would be his number one priority. The transition, however, created fear among the political elite, setting the stage for some of the issues I expect we will be discussing today.

Understanding Ukraine's recent history, including the significant tension between those who seek to transform the country, and those who wish to continue profiting from the old ways, is, I believe, of critical importance to understanding the events you asked me here today to describe. Many of these events, and the false narratives that emerge from them, resulted from an unfortunate alliance between Ukrainians who continue to operate within a corrupt system and Americans who either did not understand that system, that corrupt system, or who may have chosen, for their own purposes, to ignore it.

It is seems obvious, but I think bears stating under the circumstances, that when dealing with officials from any country, or those claiming contacts -- or connections to officialdom, one must understand their background, their personal interest, and what they hope to get out of that particular interaction before deciding how to evaluate their description of events or acting on their information.

To be clear, Ukraine is full of people who want the very things we have always said we want for the United States, a government that acts in the interest of the people, a government of the people, by the people, for the people. The overwhelming support for President Zelensky in April's election proved that. And it was one of our most important tasks at the embassy in Kyiv to understand and act upon the difference between those who sought to serve their people and those who sought to serve only themselves.

With that background in mind, I would like to briefly address some of the specific issues raised in the press that I anticipate you may ask me about today. So just to repeat. I arrived in Ukraine on August 22, 2016, and I left Ukraine permanently on May 20, 2019. Several of the events with which you may be concerned occurred before I was even in the country before I was ambassador. Here are just a few:

The release of the so-called Black Ledger, and Mr. Manafort's subsequent resignation from the Trump campaign. The Embassy's April 2016 letter to the Prosecutor General's Office about the investigation into the Anti-Corruption Action Center or AntAC. And the departure from office of former Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who I have never met. These events all occurred before I arrived.

There are several events that occurred after I was recalled from Ukraine. These include President Trump's July 25th call with President Zelensky; all of the many discussions that have been in the press surrounding that phone call; and any discussion surrounding the reported delay of security assistance to Ukraine in summer 2019. So that happened after I departed.

As for the events during my tenure in Ukraine. I really want to make clear and I want to categorically state that I have never, myself or through others, directly or indirectly, ever directed, suggested, or in any other way asked, for any government or government official in Ukraine or elsewhere to refrain from investigating or prosecuting actual corruption.

As Mr. Lutsenko, the former Ukraine prosecutor general, has recently acknowledged, the notion that I created or disseminated or verbally told him a do-not-prosecute list is completely false. And that is a story that Mr. Lutsenko himself has since retracted.

Equally fictitious is the notion that I am disloyal to President Trump. I have heard the allegation in the media that I supposedly told our embassy team to ignore the President's orders since he was going to be impeached. That allegation is false. I have never said such a thing to my embassy colleagues or anyone else.

Next, the Obama administration did not ask me to help the Clinton campaign, or harm the Trump campaign, and if they had, I would never have taken any such steps. I have never met Hunter Biden, nor have I had any direct or indirect conversations with him. Of course, I have met former Vice President Biden several times over the course of our many years in government, but neither he nor the previous administration ever directly or indirectly raised the issue either of Burisma or Hunter Biden with me.

With respect to Mayor Giuliani, I have only had minimal contact with him, a total of three that I recall. None related to the events at issue. I do not know Mr. Giuliani's motives for attacking me. But individuals who have been named in the press who have contact with Mr. Giuliani may well have believed that their personal and financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.

Finally, after being asked by the Department in early March to extend my tour, to stay on an extra year until 2020, in late April, I was then abruptly asked to come back to Washington from Ukraine on the next plane. You will understandably want to ask why my posting ended so suddenly.

I wanted to learn that, too, and I tried to find out.

I met with the Deputy Secretary of State, who informed me of the curtailment of my term. He said that the President had lost confidence in me, and no longer wished me to serve as an ambassador. He added that there had been a concerted campaign against me, and that the Department had been under pressure from the President to remove me since the summer of 2018. He also said that I had done nothing wrong, and that this was not like other situations where he had recalled ambassadors for cause. I departed Ukraine for good this past May.

Although I understand, everyone understands, that I served at the pleasure of the President, I was nevertheless incredulous that the U.S. Government chose to remove an ambassador based, as far as I can tell, on unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives. To make matters worse, all of this occurred during an especially challenging time in bilateral relations with a newly elected Ukrainian President. This was precisely the time when continuity at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine was most needed.

Before I close, I must share with you the deep disappointment and dismay I have felt as these events have unfolded. I have served this Nation honorably for more than 30 years. I have proudly promoted and served American interests as the representative of the American people and six different Presidents over the last three decades. Throughout that time, I, like my colleagues at the State Department, have always believed that we have enjoyed a sacred trust with our government.

We make a difference every day. And I know many of you have been out to embassies around the world, and you know that to be true. Whether it's a matter of war and peace, trade and investment, or simply helping an American citizen with a lost passport. We repeatedly uproot our lives, and we frequently put ourselves in harm's way to serve our Nation, and we do that willingly, because we believe in America and its special role in the world.

We also believe that in return, our government will have our backs and protect us if we come under attack from foreign interests.

That basic understanding no longer holds true. Today, we see the State Department attacked and hollowed out from within. State Department leadership with Congress needs to take action now to defend this great institution, and its thousands of loyal and effective employees. We need to rebuild diplomacy as the first resort to advance America's interest, and the front line of America's defense. I fear that not doing so will harm our Nation's interest, perhaps irreparably. That harm will come not just through the inevitable and continuing resignation and loss of many of this Nation's most loyal and talented public servants. It also will come when those diplomats who soldier on and do their best to represent our Nation, face partners abroad who question whether the ambassador really speaks for the President, and can be counted upon as a reliable partner.

The harm will come when private interests circumvent professional diplomats for their own gain, not for the public good. The harm will come when bad actors and countries beyond Ukraine see how easy it is to use fiction and innuendo to manipulate our system. In such circumstances, the only interests that are going to be served are those of our strategic adversaries like Russia, that spread chaos and attack the institutions and norms that the U.S. helped create and which we have benefited from for the last 75 years.

I am proud of my work in Ukraine. The U.S. Embassy under my leadership represented and advanced the policies of the United States Government as articulated first by the Obama administration, and then by the Trump administration. Our efforts were intended, and evidently succeeded, in thwarting corrupt interests in Ukraine who fought back by selling baseless conspiracy theories to anyone who would listen. Sadly, someone was listening, and our Nation is worse off for that.

So I want to thank you for your attention, and I welcome your questions. Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much for your testimony. Mr. Goldman.

MR. ROBBINS: Excuse me, just before we begin. Pardon me, I have a terrible cold this morning and I apologize if I'm hard to hear. Mr. Chairman, I'd just like to put the following on the record before we begin today's deposition.

As you know, the Department of State, in which the ambassador is still employed, has asserted that its lawyers should be allowed to attend this deposition so that they can assert privileges or objections the Department might wish to assert on behalf of the executive branch. As we have told both State Department lawyers and committee lawyers, it is not our place to get in the middle of that or to take sides in a dispute between the Congress and the executive branch, and we don't intend to.

Ambassador Yovanovitch has been subpoenaed to testify, and as we read the law, she is obliged to be here and testify, and she will. We have repeatedly asked the State Department's office of the legal advisor to provide us with a written statement that we could read on their behalf so that their concerns regarding what they term, quote, "executive branch confidentiality interests," end quote, could be heard by this committee. We have asked them to specify in writing particular topics with respect to which they wish us to point out their interests. And although we were told we would receive such a statement, we have not.

So that Ambassador Yovanovitch can be as diligent as possible in complying with her employer's wishes, I will do my best, during the course of this hearing, to point out questions that might elicit information that I understand to fall within the scope of their concerns. I will also tell you now that the Department told us that they don't want our appearance today to be construed as a waiver of any privileges they may hold.

I want to be clear that I am not asserting any of those privileges on the client's behalf because, of course, we don't have a right to assert those privileges at all. If they exist, they belong to the Department, and we will, of course, make those objections subject to whatever ruling the chair chooses to make in the wake of those objections.

And with that on the record, I turn this over to counsel for the majority.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for that opening statement, Ambassador Yovanovitch. I think everyone recognizes and appreciates your long service to this country.

EXAMINATION

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  We are going to get into the circumstances surrounding your abrupt removal, but in order, I think, to fully understand that, we need to back up a little bit. And I want to focus at the outset on press reports and other indications of Rudy Giuliani's involvement in Ukraine.

When did you first become aware that Rudy Giuliani had an interest in or was communicating with anyone in Ukraine?

A  Probably around November, December timeframe of 2018.

Q  And describe those circumstances when you first learned about it.

A  Basically, it was people in the Ukrainian Government who said that Mr. Lutsenko, the former prosecutor general, was in communication with Mayor Giuliani, and that they had plans, and that they were going to, you know, do things, including to me.

Q  So you first heard about it from the Ukrainian officials?

A  That's correct.

Q  Did you understand how they were aware of this information?

A  So I can tell you what I think, you know, this is perhaps not a fact. But the impression that I received is that Mr. Lutsenko was talking rather freely about this in, you know, certain circles, and so others heard about it who wanted to let us know.

THE CHAIRMAN: Can you move the microphone a little closer.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Sorry.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Were these Ukrainian Government officials?

A  Yes.

Q  Can you describe for us who the former Prosecutor General Lutsenko is, and give us some context as to his background and what your assessment of him is?

A  Yeah, he's a Ukrainian politician. He’s been in politics I would say, probably, the last 20 years or so, and he has held many high government positions. He's a political ally of former President Poroshenko, or at least was until the time I left, I don't know where that status is now. And he is a man who was the head of the Poroshenko faction and the Rada, which is the Ukrainian parliament, until the spring of 2016 when he was voted in to become the prosecutor general.

Q  Is he a lawyer?

A  No.

Q  So how did he become the prosecutor general?

A  Because the Rada had to take a prior vote that would allow that exception, which I believe is actually even in the constitution, either constitution or law.

Q  So he was the prosecutor general the entire time that you were in Ukraine. Is that right?

A  That's correct.

Q  And can you just describe briefly what the role of the prosecutor general is in Ukraine?

A  Yes. And because Ukraine is a country in transition, that role was in the process of becoming reformed. So the prosecutor general's office is, or position, is a very powerful one, it's a hold-over from the Soviet Union days. And that individual is in charge of both investigatory actions, like the FBI, for example, as well as the actual prosecution. So it's tremendous power.

And Mr. Lutsenko was brought in to reform that office to split the offices, investigatory and prosecutorial, and to make real reforms so that -- because the PGO, Prosecutor General's Office, was viewed as an instrument of corruption basically, to grant people favors, they could open cases, they could close cases based on money passing hands or whatever was most opportune, and it trickled down to the ordinary people's lives as well. So it was seen as a place where ironically corruption thrived and he was brought in to clean that up.

Q  Was he successful in cleaning that up?

A  No.

Q  How would you assess his character?

A  He's very smart. He can be very charming. He, I think, is an opportunist and will ally himself, sometimes simultaneously, I believe, with whatever political or economic forces he believes will suit his interests best at the time.

Q  Would you call him someone who is corrupt?

A  I have certainly heard a lot of people call him corrupt, and there are certainly a lot of stories about his actions that would indicate that.

Q  You mentioned in your opening statement that there were false statements that were spread about you. Was he one of the individuals who spread those false statements about you?

A  Yes.

Q  Now, let's go back to first learning about Rudy Giuliani's involvement. What did you understand in late 2018 to be Mr. Giuliani's interest in Ukraine?

A  I wasn't really sure, but he had clients in Ukraine, so that was one possible thing. But he also obviously is the President's personal lawyer. So I wasn't really sure what exactly was going on.

Q  Did you come to learn what his interest in Ukraine was?

A  Well, you know, I read the press and watch TV just like everybody else in this room, so yeah, I learned.

Q  Did you have any further conversations with Ukrainian Government officials about Mr. Giuliani's activities in Ukraine?

A  Yes, I did. Most of the conversations were not with me directly, people on the embassy staff, but yes, I did have other conversations.

Q  And from your staff members or your own conversations, what did you come to learn about Mr. Giuliani's interest in Ukraine?

A  That basically there had been a number of meetings between Mr. Lutsenko and Mayor Giuliani, and that they were looking -- I should say that Mr. Lutsenko was looking to hurt me in the U.S. I couldn't imagine what that was. But, you know, now I see.

Q  What do you see now?

A  Well, that I'm no longer in Ukraine.

Q  Fair enough. But describe the evolution of your understanding as to how Mr. Lutsenko was trying to hurt you in the U.S.?

A  I think, and again, I am getting this partly from conversations with people who may or may not know what really happened, as well as what has been in the media, both in Ukraine and here in the United States. So I'll tell you what I think. I can't say that --

Q  Let me just interrupt you there. Is some of your knowledge based on Mr. Giuliani’s statements himself?

A  To the press.

Q  Okay.

A  So I think that there was -- Mr. Lutsenko was not pleased that -- that we continued at the embassy to call for cleaning up the PGO, the Prosecutor General's Office, and he came into office with, you know, three goals: One was to reform the office, one was to prosecute those who killed the innocent people on the Maidan during the Revolution of Dignity, and one was to prosecute money laundering cases to get back the $40 billion-plus that the previous president and his cronies had absconded with. None of those things were done. And we thought those were great goals, and we wanted him to encourage him to continue with those goals. That did not happen.

And so, we continued to encourage him, and I don't think he really appreciated it. What he wanted from the U.S. Embassy was for us to set up meetings with the Attorney General, with the Director of the FBI, et cetera. And he would say, I have important information for them. As perhaps many of you know, there are, you know, usual processes for that kind of thing. We don't have principals meet and, you know, the foreign principal springs new information that may or may not be valid to an American cabinet member, we just don't do that.

And so what we kept on encouraging him to do was to meet with the legat, the legal attache, the FBI at the embassy. That is precisely why we have the FBI in countries overseas, to work with host country counterparts and get information, whatever that information might be, develop cases, et cetera. He didn't want to share that information. And now, I think I understand that that information was falsehoods about me.

Q  What falsehoods about you?

A  Well, for example, as I mentioned in the testimony, in the statement, the opening statement, that I gave him a do-not-prosecute list, a list of individuals that he should not touch.

Q  And did you do that?

A  No.

Q  Did you learn whether there was any additional information that he wanted to share with U.S. Government officials?

A  Well, I think, you know, it was other things along that line.

Q  One of the things that has been publicized quite significantly is information that Prosecutor General Lutsenko may have had in connection to either Paul Manafort or the 2016 election?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  Did you come to learn anything about either of those topics?

A  He didn't share anything with me.

Q  Did he share anything with any other Ukrainian officials that you then learned about it from, or learned about this from?

A  I think, yeah, I think they may have been aware that that was more broadly what he also might share with Mr. Giuliani.

Q  Well, let me ask the question this way: Other than information about you --

A  Uh-huh.

Q  -- what other information did you come to learn while you were at post about what Mr. Lutsenko wanted to share with American officials?

MR. ROBBINS: So you're asking now while she was ambassador as opposed to things she's read in the paper and media since she was recalled?

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Yes, I'm asking while you were there, what did you understand?

A  Yeah, it was very amorphous, because while there was sort of that gossip out there, the gossip that I was going to be recalled, and you know, people would ask me, and I'd say No, no, I'm here, I'm working. But it was very amorphous, and so at the time, I didn’t know. When it became clearer was on March 24th with the publication of The Hill interview with Mr. Lutsenko.

So that, you know, that was sort of the first kind of public, on the record, in the United States, and then over the ensuing days there was more in the U.S. media, Mr. Giuliani spoke publicly, and Donald Trump Jr. also tweeted that I should be removed.

Q  So let's separate out your removal from any of the other information.

A  Okay.

Q  Because we are going to get to your removal, and we're going to focus on that. But just to get the lay of the land here. What did you -- when you referenced The Hill, what did you come to learn from The Hill about information that Lutsenko was trying to share?

A  Well, I think, I mean, I think I've already told you. So he shared information that there was -- he raised questions -- again, this happened before I arrived, but he raised questions about U.S. Government assistance to the PGO, and whether there was a discrepancy in the funding and whether he should be investigating it, and that the embassy had assured him, again, before I arrived, that we had fully accounted for all U.S. funds, and that we were not concerned about this. So that was one line that he talked about. There was the do-not-prosecute list. There was, I mean, you know, a number of issues.

Q  Was there anything about the 2016 election or Paul Manafort?

A  I think, yeah, I think that was in The Hill article as well.

Q  And what about former Vice President Joe Biden or Burisma?

A  I think that was in the article as well.

Q  So after you learned about this in The Hill, did you have any additional conversations with people, either Americans in the embassy, or Ukrainian officials about the reports?

A  Well, in the embassy we were trying to figure out what was going on. I also, of course, was in touch with folks in Washington at the NSC, and at the State Department to try to figure out what was this, what was going on.

Q  What did you learn?

A  Not much. I mean, I think people were not sure. On the 25th, the day after The Hill article came out, the State Department had a pretty strong statement that said that Mr. Lutsenko's allegations were a fabrication, and then, you know, over the weekend, there was a lot more in the media. And, you know, the State Department was trying to figure out how to respond, I think, during that time and the following week. But I didn't get very much information.

Q  At that point, were you aware that Mr. Giuliani had met with Mr. Lutsenko previously?

A  Yeah, I think it became pretty clear.

Q  What do you mean by that?

A  Because I think it was in the media, and I think they said it.

Q  So at this point, just so we're clear. Mr. Giuliani was never an employee of the State Department, right?

A  Not to my knowledge.

Q  You said that you met with him, I think, three times. Can you describe those meetings?

A  Uh-huh.

THE CHAIRMAN: Just ask -- before we get to that, counsel. Did you know at the time or have you learned since why Mr. Lutsenko was engaged in pushing out these smears against you? Why did he want to get rid of you?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, again, I can tell you what I think, but I don’t know for a fact.

THE CHAIRMAN: You know, based on what you've learned from colleagues, what you've learned in the press, what is your best understanding of why Lutsenko was trying to push you out of Ukraine?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I think that he felt that I and the embassy were effective at helping Ukrainians who wanted to reform, Ukrainians who wanted to fight against corruption, and he did not -- you know, that was not in his interest. I think also that he was, I mean, it's hard to believe, I think he was personally angry with me that we weren't -- we did work with the PGO's office, but he wanted us to work with him in different ways, you know, and that we didn't have a closer relationship, and that I was not facilitating trips for him to the United States with our cabinet members, when there was, frankly, nothing to talk about because he wasn't a good partner for us.

THE CHAIRMAN: You had mentioned earlier that you were trying to make sure that Ukrainian officials used proper legal channels --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- if they had information that they wanted to share with U.S. law enforcement?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Right.

THE CHAIRMAN: Do you think that your insistence or advocacy for following the proper procedures in terms of using legal and legal channels was part of the reason why he wanted you removed?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Maybe. Maybe. I mean, he clearly wanted to work around the system where I think there's less transparency, there are more opportunities to, you know, kind of fiddle the system, shall we say.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Okay. And when you say work around the system, did you come to understand that that was a role that Mr. Giuliani could play for him, for Mr. Lutsenko?

A  Well, now it certainly appears that way.

Q  But when did you come to understand that?

A  You know, now, you know, with the advantage of hindsight, you're going to think that I'm incredibly naive, but I couldn't imagine all of the things that have happened over the last 6 or 7 months, I just couldn't imagine it.

So we knew that there was something out there. We were asking ourselves, you know, what is going on? But then it became clear with The Hill interview and all the subsequent things that came out in the press.

Q  So the State Department issued a statement essentially denying what was reported in The Hill?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  Did you ever receive any pressure from anyone at the State Department to reconsider your position or in any way consider some of the advocacy of Mr. Giuliani?

A  I don't quite understand the --

Q  I'm wondering if you got any messages or suggestions or directions from the State Department that were consistent with what Mr. Giuliani was discussing and what his interests were?

A  No.

Q  You also said that, I believe, after this information came out in The Hill in late March, you had a number of conversations both with people in the embassy and people back in Washington. Who were you speaking to within the State Department about this issue?

A  Assistant Secretary -- or Acting Assistant Secretary Phil Reeker of the European Bureau, who is my boss. I spoke once with David Hale, who is the Under Secretary for Political Affairs. And at the NSC with Fiona Hill.

Q  And what was the message that you generally received from them?

A  Total support.

Q  They understood that this was a fabrication?

A  Yeah, I mean, until today, nobody has ever actually asked me the question from the U.S. Government of whether I am actually guilty of all of these things I’m supposed to have done. Nobody even asked, because I think everybody just thought it was so outrageous.

Q  Did you ever have any conversations after November, December 2018, with Ukrainian officials about Mr. Giuliani up until the time that you left in May?

A  I think perhaps in the February time period, I did where one of the senior Ukrainian officials was very concerned, and told me I really needed to watch my back.

Q  Describe that conversation.

A  Well, I mean, he basically said, and went into some detail, that there were two individuals from Florida,

Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman, who were working with Mayor Giuliani, and that they had set up the meetings for Mr. Giuliani with Mr. Lutsenko. And that they were interested in having a different ambassador at post, I guess for -- because they wanted to have business dealings in Ukraine, or additional business dealings.

I didn’t understand that because nobody at the embassy had ever met those two individuals. And, you know, one of the biggest jobs of an American ambassador of the U.S. Embassy is to promote U.S. business. So, of course, if legitimate business comes to us, you know, that’s what we do, we promote U.S. business. But, yeah, so --

Q  So did you deduce or infer or come to learn that the business interests they had were therefore not legitimate?

A  Honestly, I didn’t know. I didn’t know enough about it at the time. I thought it was exceedingly strange. And then later on in April -- at some point in April, there was an open letter, as it’s called, from somebody in the energy business, Dale Perry, who kind of put out a lot of information of meetings that individuals had had, and he also indicated that these two individuals wanted a different ambassador in place, that they had energy interests that they were interested in, according to this open letter, that they had energy interests, selling LNG to Ukraine.

Again, you know, that’s like apple pie, motherhood, obviously we would support exporting LNG to Ukraine at the U.S. embassy.

Q  Is that because in part --

MR. ROBBINS: For the benefit of the court reporter, that’s LNG, which stands for, I believe, liquefied natural gas.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Can explain why you supported the export of LNG to Ukraine?

A  Well it never actually came up. But if an American business walks through the door, we usually help them.

Q  And am I correct that the importation of LNG into Ukraine would alleviate Ukrainian dependence on oil from other countries, including Russia?

A  Yeah, I mean, multiple sources of supply are always an important thing.

Q  Who was the Ukrainian -- senior Ukrainian official that you spoke to in February of Parnas and Fruman?

A  Minister Avakov, A-V-A-K-O-V.

Q  And just for the record, what is he the minister of?

A  He was then and he is still now in the new administration, Minister of Interior.

Q  Had he spoken with either Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Parnas, or Mr. Fruman directly, to your knowledge?

A  He told me that Mr. Giuliani was trying to reach out to him, and had actually reached him when Mr. Avakov was in the United States in either late January or early February, and they had spoken briefly on the phone, but that he didn’t actually want to meet with Mayor Giuliani because of his concerns about what they were doing.

Q  What were his concerns as expressed to you?

A  He thought it was -- so he thought it was very dangerous. That Ukraine, since its independence, has had bipartisan support from both Democrats and Republicans all these years, and that to start kind of getting into U.S. politics, into U.S. domestic politics, was a dangerous place for Ukraine to be.

Q  Why did he think that he would be getting into U.S. domestic politics by speaking with Mr. Giuliani?

A  Well, because -- well, he told me that, but because of what you had mentioned before, the issue of the Black Ledger. Mr. Manafort’s resignation from the Trump campaign as a result. And looking into that and how did all of that come about; the issue of whether, you know, it was Russia collusion or whether it was really Ukraine collusion, and, you know, looking forward to the 2020 election campaign, and whether this would somehow hurt former Vice President Biden. I think he felt that that was just very dangerous terrain for another country to be in.

[11:39 a.m.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  So your understanding in February and your meeting with Minister Avakov was that he was aware at that time of Mr. Giuliani’s interests in those topics?

A  Yes.

Q  Did you have an understanding as to whether other Ukrainian Government officials were also aware of Mr. Giuliani’s interest in those specific topics?

A  I -- I got the impression that it was relatively openly discussed at the very, very most senior levels, but nobody else was sharing this with me at that time.

Q  And so, was it your understanding that the Minister Avakov or other senior Ukrainian officials were aware of Mr. Giuliani’s connection to President Trump?

A  Yes, everybody knew that.

Q  What did they know?

A  That he was the President’s personal lawyer.

Q  Was it your understanding that they believed that Rudy Giuliani spoke on behalf of, or for the President?

A  I think -- I think they didn’t know. I think they hoped that he did, and --

Q  Hoped that he did or didn’t?

A  Hoped -- well, the individuals who were meeting with Mr. Giuliani certainly hoped that Mr. Giuliani was speaking on behalf of the President.

Q  Why did they hope that?

A  Because I think that they were hoping that -- so in the case of Mr. Lutsenko, I think he was hoping that Mr. Giuliani would open doors for him in Washington. I think that he was also hoping in the early period -- you need to remember that this was during presidential elections in Ukraine. And President Poroshenko, the polling numbers were not good for him.

And so I think there was always a hope that President Trump would endorse President Poroshenko. And so this is something that President Poroshenko wanted. And I think Lutsenko -- Mr. Lutsenko was hoping that maybe, as a result of providing information that is of interest to Mr. Giuliani that maybe there could be an endorsement.

Q  So in addition to Mr. Lutsenko, were the other Ukrainian officials that you spoke to, such as Minister Avakov, also aware of this connection?

A  Which connection?

Q  Sorry, between Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump.

A  Yes.

Q  And did they under -- I guess I’m trying to understand why it was of concern to the more anticorrupt or democratic Ukrainian officials about Mr. Giuliani’s activities there, and what they perceived Mr. Giuliani to be representing.

A  Well, I think, first of all, they weren’t entirely sure, right? And they -- but I think that what they hoped is that they could -- you know, that they would get something out of the relationship as well.

Am I not understanding the question?

THE CHAIRMAN: Let me ask one clarification. You described the conversation you had with Minister --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Avakov.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- Avakov, and the minister raising concerns about how the actions of these two individuals or Mr. Giuliani might pull Ukraine into U.S. politics. And you mentioned the Manafort ledger. You mentioned the issue of Ukraine collusion versus Russian collusion.

Did the issue also come up in that conversation or others about the Giuliani and his associates’ interest in the Bidens and Burisma?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah. I mean, looking backwards to what happened in the past, with a view to finding things that could be possibly damaging to a Presidential run.

THE CHAIRMAN: By Joe Biden?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Uh-huh.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  That was a yes, just for the record?

A  Yes.

Q  Thank you.

You mentioned this Minister Avakov, who still is the Interior Minister. Are you aware of whether he took a trip to the United States in or about April of this year?

A  I’m not aware of that. It doesn’t mean he didn’t, but I’m not aware.

Q  As the ambassador, how involved were you in organizing any government-led trips for any Ukrainians to go to the United States?

A  So it really depends. I mean, Ukrainians are here probably in many of your offices every day of the week. And sometimes, the embassy is facilitating that, the embassy in Kyiv is facilitating that, and sometimes people are making independent trips and so forth.

You know, when it’s higher level, for Ministers in this example, you know, often people have private visits to the United States, like Mr. Lutsenko did when he met with Mr. Giuliani in January. Mr. Avakov came to the United States and was promoting a book once, for example. And we didn’t -- obviously, that is not U.S. Government business, so we didn’t, you know, facilitate all of that. But when he was going officially and meeting with counterparts, we would definitely facilitate with that.

Q  After your conversation with Mr. Avakov in February, did you report back to the State Department what he said?

A  Yes.

Q  And what was the feedback that you got from your superiors at the State Department?

A  Well, you know, everybody is sort of shocked. We have a long relationship with Mr. Avakov, and the things he has told us are mostly credible. You know, we kind of tried to find out more about that and what was going on, but, you know, not with any results.

Q  Was there concern that Mr. Giuliani was actively involved at the highest levels of the Ukrainian Government at this point?

MR. ROBBINS: Sorry, concern by whom?

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Within the State Department.

A  Yes, but, you know, I mean, we now have lots more information than we did at the time. And so, you know, we were trying to put our arms around it. We weren’t quite sure what was going on.

Q  Was Mr. Giuliani representing the State Department when he was having these conversations with Ukrainians?

A  No, no.

Q  And after this meeting with Minister Avakov, who did you speak to at the State Department?

A  I don’t really recall, but it would either have been Phil Reeker, the Acting Assistant Secretary of State -- and I’m pausing because maybe he wasn’t already encumbering that job -- or it would have been Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent.

Q  Did you communicate -- how did you communicate usually with Washington from the embassy?

A  On -- well, we communicate with Washington in many different ways, but on this, it was either on a secure phone or in what we call a SVTC, a secure video teleconference.

Q  Any cables on the topic?

A  No.

Q  Why not?

A  It just felt too political.

Q  So your concern at this point was that this was political, that this related to domestic politics, which -- and explain why that was a concern of yours?

A  Well, you know, as I stated in my opening statement, in the Foreign Service at embassies, we have to leave politics in the United States. I mean, we represent all Americans. We represent our policy. And for us to start, you know, meddling around in, you know, Presidential elections, politics, et cetera, we lose our credibility that way. We need to be, you know, as credible to this side of the aisle as to that side of the aisle. And so, we didn’t know what was going on, but I was not comfortable with putting anything in front channel.

Q  You mentioned this information from Dale Perry. Who is Dale Perry?

A  He had an energy company in the Ukraine, which, according to this open letter that he put out in April, he was kind of putting on pause for a while.

Q  He was putting his company on pause?

A  I said that kind of loosely, but I think that he was going to be -- it’s been a long time since I’ve read it. He was going to, you know, focus on his business in the United States rather than in the Ukraine. Maybe that’s a better way of putting it.

Q  And can you describe the sum and substance of this open letter and why it caught your eye in particular?

A  Well, because it was the first -- except for the meeting with Mr. Avakov, it was the first time that I heard the names of Mr. Parnas and Fruman. And there was some detail there about meetings and so forth.

Q  And what did you come to understand about Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman?

MR. MALONEY: Excuse me. Would it be possible for the witness to speak into the microphone?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes, of course. I’m sorry.

I’m sorry, what was the question?

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  I asked what the open letter revealed about Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman?

A  That they had business interests in the United States, that they were looking to, I think expand is probably a better way of putting it, their business interests in Ukraine through this energy company, and that they needed a better ambassador to sort of facilitate their business’ efforts here.

Q  And at that point, did you understand what their concern was about you?

A  Not really. I found it completely mysterious.

Q  And did you learn whether Mr. Giuliani shared the concerns of Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman in and around April?

A  I don’t recall when, you know, when -- well, actually, I think Mr. Avakov actually mentioned it to me in February, that these were the two individuals that had helped Mr. Lutsenko make contact with Mr. Giuliani.

Q  And did you become aware of whether Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman met with any other senior Ukrainian officials?

A  I’m not aware of it.

Q  Other than encouraging your -- or speaking out against you, was there anything else in that Dale Perry open letter that was particularly relevant to your role as the ambassador in Ukraine?

A  I don’t recall. I mean, I simply don’t recall.

Q  Now, let’s talk for a second about the three contacts you had with Mr. Giuliani. Can you describe those for us?

A  Uh-huh. The first time I met Mr. Giuliani was in the 2003-2004 timeframe, and I was the deputy at the embassy in Ukraine. And Mayor Giuliani placed a courtesy call with his wife on our ambassador at the time, Ambassador Herbst. And the ambassador asked me to sit in on that call.

Q  Okay. Did you -- let me ask it this way: While you were ambassador of Ukraine, did you ever meet with Mr. Giuliani?

A  Yes, I met with him twice. The first time was in the spring, I think it was June of 2017, 2017. And -- yes, it was 2017. It was at a dinner that one of the -- Victor Pinchuk, who’s a businessman/oligarch in Ukraine, and he has a YES Foundation where he invites prominent people from all over the world, not just Americans, to come and address students and do various things. And then he always has a dinner where he invites, you know, top Ukrainian politicians and several ambassadors.

So it was a dinner for about 25 people, and then at the end of that dinner, I introduced myself to Mayor Giuliani as the ambassador.

Q  And did you talk about anything more substantively than small talk?

A  No. I mean, I introduced myself. I told him, you know, if there was anything I could do to help him, I’d be happy to help.

Q  And then when was the next time?

A  And then the next time was that fall in November of 2017, where he invited me -- he was coming to Ukraine, and through one of his associates, he invited me to a breakfast at the hotel that he was staying in.

Q  Who was his associate?

A  John Huvane, H-u-v-a-n-e.

Q  And what was the purpose of the breakfast?

A  I wasn’t exactly sure. But, you know, obviously Mayor Giuliani is an important person in the United States, and so I agreed to go. And he -- yeah. So not quite clear why he wanted me there.

Q  What did you discuss at the breakfast?

A  He -- it was -- he had just been in Kharkiv, which is a city to the north in Ukraine, and he had -- some of the people who were present -- I don’t recall all of the people who were present -- are from -- were from Kharkiv, one of the Rada deputies from Kharkiv, also a businessman and oligarch named Fuchs from Kharkiv.

So he had just been up there, and he had been talking to the mayor, Mayor Kernes, about helping them set up a system similar to our 911 system; and then the other thing is helping them set up police forces, city police, municipal police forces similar to our own, because in Ukraine it’s all run at the national level.

Q  And so you never -- you didn’t speak to him since

A  No.

Q  -- November 2017?

A  No.

Q  Are you aware of whether Mr. Giuliani spoke to anyone else in the embassy in Kyiv?

A  I don’t think so. I think they would have told me if that had been the case.

Q  How about Mr. Parnas or Mr. Fruman?

A  No. When the open letter came out, I did ask our economic and couns -- excuse me, commercial attaches whether, you know, I mean, did these individuals reach out and were they interested in setting stuff up and how did we help them, because clearly we hadn’t helped them very well. And nobody had heard those names before.

Q  Was it your view that what you understood Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to be in Ukraine, did they contradict, to your understanding, U.S. policy in Ukraine?

MR. ROBBINS: I’m sorry, are you asking whether she formed that view while she was in office or whether, in retrospect, she has that view today?

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Let’s start while you were in office. In the February meeting with Minister Avakov, where you understood that Mr. Giuliani was promoting -- well, let me ask you, was he promoting investigations related to Paul Manafort and the collusion and Burisma and Joe Biden?

A  It wasn’t entirely clear to me what was going on. I mean, I’m sorry to be not specific, but it wasn’t entirely clear.

Q  But you understood that he was speaking to the Prosecutor General Lutsenko about those topics?

A  Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Q  Sorry, you need to say yes.

A  Yes. Excuse me.

Q  And what was your assessment of whether those interests -- or how did those interests relate to official U.S. policy?

A  Well, I mean, when I think about official U.S. policy, I think of people who are in government shaping that policy, creating the policy, or implementing it, whether they are in the executive branch or, you know, in Congress. Obviously, there’s a partnership there for that. So private individuals, for the most part, I mean, that’s not official U.S. anything.

Q  Right. And so, as someone who was effecting official U.S. policy, what was your view of Mr. Giuliani’s efforts there?

A  Well, we were concerned, like I said. You know, I mean, we talked to Washington, what do you think is going on here? It was worrisome, in the sense that the Ukrainians also didn’t know how to understand it. And obviously, some felt that they could -- like Mr. Lutsenko, that they could manage that relationship and it would benefit them.

Q  Now, you came to understand, right, that Mr. Giuliani was pushing Mr. Lutsenko to open investigations into these topics, is that right, while you were there?

A  You know, it’s hard to remember when exactly I sort of put it together.

Q  Well, Mr. Lutsenko -- while you were still there, Mr. Lutsenko announced the initiation of investigations on these topics. Do you recall that?

A  I guess I haven’t at the moment, but --

Q  I’m sorry?

A  No.

THE CHAIRMAN: Let me, just for clarification, follow up on my colleague’s question. He asked you about whether what you understood at the time to be the efforts of Mr. Giuliani and his associates were furthering, or antagonistic to U.S. policy interests.

If Mr. Giuliani and his associates were pushing Ukraine to involve itself in U.S. domestic politics, let alone the 2020 election, would that have been inconsistent with U.S. policy, inconsistent with U.S. interests?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I mean, I think the short answer is probably yes. I mean, I don’t think we had a policy -- because this is sort of unprecedented. It’s not like we had a policy that Ukraine should not become involved in our domestic politics or, you know, somehow become involved in 2020 elections, but clearly, that is not in U.S. interests for Ukraine to start playing such a role.

THE CHAIRMAN: And it wouldn’t be in Ukraine’s interests either?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Would you call that, to some extent, antidemocratic?

A  Let me just say that I think that American elections should be for Americans to decide.

Q  Do you recall a speech you gave on March 5th?

A  I do.

Q  And I believe in that speech, you said that it is -- I don’t remember the exact quote, but it is inappropriate for governments to engage in domestic politics in other countries. Is that right?

A  Yes.

Q  Or, actually, in their own -- I don’t think you specified as to other countries, right?

A  I don’t actually recall saying that particular thing, but I’ll take your word for it.

Q  It was an interesting quote so -- here it is. I believe you said: Government resources should never be used to target political opponents.

A  Yes.

Q  What did you mean by that at that time?

THE CHAIRMAN: Could you move the microphone a little closer.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes. Thank you for reminding me. What I meant was -- I mean, this was a speech where it was during Presidential elections, and what we were seeing was that President Poroshenko’s polls were going down. There were a lot of people afraid that Poroshenko was going to lose and what would that mean for them and their interests. And so we were seeing the rollback of some reforms that the Poroshenko administration had done, and that we had, you know, thought was very important that we had helped them with.

And so that was the purpose of that speech was to say, these are important accomplishments, and you need to keep on working at that and don’t roll it back.

And so that particular point was that in the former Soviet Union, in a number of countries, including Ukraine at one time, if you’re in power you have a lot of what they call administrative resources, especially in a country where there is, you know, a vertical power, as they call it, where the President can tell the mayor, or the governor, because they appoint those individuals, you need to, you know, bring out this crowd, here’s money to pay off voters or whatever. And so that was a reference to that, that that is not an acceptable practice.

Q  So you were trying to promote in Ukraine the idea that politicians targeting their political rivals was inappropriate, right?

A  Well, I mean, democracy is all about the competition between political rivals, but one needs to do it in an appropriate way and not take government resources to do so.

Q  Would that also apply to using government resources to impact elections in other countries?

A  Yeah. I mean, I would think so, although, again, that was not the purpose of this speech.

Q  Understood. Were you aware, after you expressed your concerns back to the State Department in D.C., were you aware whether anyone tried to curtail Mr. Giuliani’s activities in Ukraine?

A  I -- curtail? I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, I think there was concern.

Q  Okay. And did anyone act on that concern in any way?

A  I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

Q  You don't know of anything, but you can't be sure whether anyone did or not?

A  Yes.

Q  Did you document these concerns anywhere?

A  Yes. At the request -- and as I said before, I don't -- I didn't want to put anything in writing, certainly not front channel; but at the request of Under Secretary Hale, he asked me to send him a classified email, sort of putting out what -- this would have been like about March, like, maybe 27th, 28th, that Sunday that the tweet came out. And he asked me to send him an email on the classified system putting down my understanding of what was going on, which was very unformed still, and then why were people doing this. And so I did send that email to him.

Q  Did this follow the conversation that you had with Mr. Hale?

A  Yes.

Q  Can you describe the nature of that -- the nature and substance of that conversation with Mr. Hale?

A  Well, I had told -- I had sent an email to the State Department, because there was just an avalanche of attacks on me, on the embassy, in the press, and sort of Twitter storms and everything else. And so, I had told David Hale, among others, via email, that the State Department needed to come out and come out strong, because otherwise it just wasn't a sustainable position.

Q  Why not?

A  Well, if you have the President’s son saying, you know, we need to pull these clowns, or however he referred to me, it makes it hard to be a credible ambassador in a country.

Q  And so what did you want Mr. Hale to do?

A  What I wanted was the Secretary of State to issue a statement that said that, you know, I have his full confidence or something like that, to indicate that I, in fact, am the ambassador in Ukraine, and that I speak for the President, for the Secretary of State, for our country.

Q  In contrast to Mr. Giuliani?

A  I didn't put it that way.

Q  But was that what you meant?

A  Well, what I meant was that -- exactly what I just said.

Q  So it wasn't necessarily in direct relation to Mr. Giuliani. It was as much in response to the attacks on you from --

A  Yes.

Q  -- others, including the President's son?

A  Yes.

Q  And what did Mr. Hale say in response to that request?

A  He said he would talk to the Secretary.

Q  Did you ever hear back about that?

A  No.

Q  Was a statement ever issued?

A  No.

Q  Did you ever speak to the Secretary directly --

A  No.

Q  -- about any of this?

A  No.

Q  Did you ever speak to Ulrich Brechbuhl directly about this?

A  No. So I spoke with the Acting Assistant Secretary Phil Reeker, and he was talking I think to people on the seventh floor about this.

Q  So Mr. Reeker was relaying messages?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  And did he relay back to you what the responses were from the seventh floor?

A  Yes.

Q  And what were those?

A  I was told that there was caution about any kind of a statement, because it could be undermined.

Q  I'm sorry, it could be what?

A  It could be undermined.

Q  The statement could be undermined?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  By whom?

A  The President.

Q  In what way?

A  Well, a tweet or something. I mean, that was not made specific to me.

THE CHAIRMAN: I just want to make sure I'm understanding. The statement you're talking about, is that the requested statement by the Secretary of State?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah.

THE CHAIRMAN: So you were informed, basically, that the statement was not going to be issued by the Secretary of State because it could be undermined by the President?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes. No statement was going to be issued, not by the Secretary, not by anybody else.

THE CHAIRMAN: Because if the Secretary did issue a statement, it might be undermined by the President?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Uh-huh.

THE CHAIRMAN: Is that a yes?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes, that is a yes.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Now, you say you sent this email to Mr. Hale on the classified system, but were any of the contents of the email actually classified or was it just in order to maintain confidentiality?

A  I think it was just that it was so sensitive that, you know, I wouldn't have wanted to put it on the open system.

Q  Okay. I'll probably circle back to this a little bit in the next -- in our next round, but I want to just jump for the last couple minutes to the April 21st phone call that President Trump had on election night with President Zelensky.

A  Yes.

Q  Did you know that that call was going to happen?

A  Yeah, uh-huh.

Q  When did you learn that it was going to happen?

A  We had been recommending it, because it was clear that Zelensky was going to win, and win in a landslide. So we had been recommending it, you know, probably the previous week and, you know, as we thought about elections, even prior to that, you know, what is our engagement going to be with the new team and so forth?

And so most appropriate is for the President of the United States to make a call, and he did, on that Sunday night I think it was, Ukraine night.

Q  Did you help prepare the President for the call in any way?

A  No.

Q  Were you on the call?

A  No.

Q  Did you listen in?

A  No.

Q  Were you provided with a transcript or a summary of it?

A  No.

Q  Did you get a readout of what --

A  All I was told is that it was a good call and the two Presidents hit it off.

Q  Who --

A  And that it was a short call.

Q  Who told you this?

A  I -- I don't recall, actually. It was somebody in the State Department probably.

THE CHAIRMAN: Can I just ask on that, would it be customary for the ambassador to get a readout of a conversation between the President of the United States and the President of the country to which they're the ambassador?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: It depends on the administration.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Would it be useful, as ambassador, to know --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: It would be very useful.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  And when you say, it depends on the administration, what happened in the Obama administration?

A  We would get a transcript.

Q  You would get a transcript?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  And what happened during your tenure in the Trump administration?

A  And when I say "transcript," I mean, sometimes it was a transcript, sometimes it was a summary.

And what was your question?

Q  And what happened in the Trump administration?

A  Well, there weren't that many calls, at least to Ukraine. And, you know, sometimes we would get sort of an oral readout or, you know, brief little points, but never a -- to my recollection, at least, never a full, you know, transcript.

Q  And what about in the Bush administration, when you were an ambassador in W. Bush?

A  Right. Again, because I was in Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, there weren't that many Presidential calls.

Q  Understood.

MR. GOLDMAN: I think our time is up. So we'll resume after the minority, but would you like to take a quick bathroom break?

MR. ROBBINS: For sure.

THE CHAIRMAN: Let's take a 5-minute break and resume.

[Recess.]

THE CHAIRMAN: All right, folks. Let's come back to order. Counsel for the minority, you have one hour.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Good afternoon, Ambassador, Steve Castor with the Republican staff. Thanks for coming in. And I'd like to state at the outset, I'm not a career Foreign Service person. I'm a congressional staffer and have been for some time, specializing in investigations.

So, to the extent I mispronounce some of these names or mix up something, please accept my apologies in advance. I mean no disrespect. Our staff, and certainly our members, have the utmost respect for you and for the men and women of the Foreign Service, and they do such an important job on the front lines of diplomacy. So --

A  Thank you.

Q  Can you just help us understand the direction you've been given, in terms of what constitutes executive branch confidentiality and privileges?

MR. ROBBINS: So anything she would know, Mr. Castor, on that subject, she would know through advice of counsel. So would you just as soon get that information from me, since it would be privileged coming from her?

MR. CASTOR: Certainly, sir.

MR. ROBBINS: So I tried to share that with you at the outset. The State Department has advised us, in discussions that we've had with them, that there may be communications as to which they would wish to assert not executive privilege as such, because that's a privilege that belongs to the President, but, rather, a different category of privilege which extends, in their view, to executive communications between members of the executive branch other than direct communications with the President himself.

Because I thought it appropriate to assert on their behalf such privileges where they were appropriate, I invited them to give us a document, a letter, if you will. I believe I shared this fact with you over the phone.

I had reason until yesterday to believe that we would, in fact, receive such a letter, which I had told them I would share with the committee at the outset of these proceedings so that the scope of their objections would be clear at the outset, and it would spare me the obligation of having to anticipate what those objections might be.

In the end, for reasons I cannot provide, because I don't know, I never received such a letter. So I guess I could do my best to tell you what I think they think, but I can't be sure I'm right.

MR. CASTOR: Thank you.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Ambassador, do you believe you're authorized to testify here today, on behalf of the State Department?

MR. ROBBINS: That sounds like a -- calls for a legal conclusion. I can tell you, as her counsel, that -- and I believe, again, you know all these things since I've shared them all with you as I have with majority counsel -- she received a direction by the Under Secretary to decline to appear voluntarily.

It did not address the question whether she should or should not appear in response to a subpoena. A subpoena thereafter issued. She is here pursuant to that subpoena. I have shared with both sides of the aisle a letter explaining why, in my view, it was appropriate, indeed required, for her to appear pursuant to that subpoena.

The question whether she is, quote/unquote, "authorized" strikes me as a question of law. As I expect you know, she is not a lawyer, and anything she would venture on that question would be the result of privileged communications, which I am directing her not to reveal.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Can you help us understand the Washington chain of command, how administration policy was communicated to you?

A  Yes. I mean, you know, it happens in different ways, but, you know, we communicate by phone, through cable traffic, through emails. And because Ukraine, you know, it was a very challenging period during the time that I was there. It was a very challenging period during the time that I was there. And so we often would have interagency meetings via secure teleconferencing. And so, you know, through all those ways, you know, we work as a team together.

Q  And who did you report to back in Washington?

A  Either Assistant Secretary Wess Mitchell, and then when he left, Acting Assistant Secretary Phil Reeker. They are my, you know, formal bosses, shall we say. The day-to-day was generally with the Deputy Assistant Secretary. So in the beginning, it was Bridget Brink, and then it was George Kent.

And just to clarify, not all communication goes through me. We have a big interagency at the embassy, and so, you know, there's lots of communication back and forth.

Q  And what communications did you have with the White House or the National Security Council?

A  There was less of that. The State Department, as you may know, likes to manage that themselves through Washington, and -- but often, they were on emails. Sometimes I would reach out, hopefully always copying my colleagues at the State Department, and that sort of thing.

Q  You mentioned --

A  And they would be obviously running the interagency meetings.

Q  You mentioned Dr. Fiona Hill this morning --

A  Yes.

Q  -- as one of the National Security Council officials that was in your -- in this area of interest?

A  Uh-huh. Yes.

Q  Any other National Security Council officials? Was she your primary liaison at NSC?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  And how frequently did you communicate with her?

A  Not that often.

Q  By "not that often," is that weekly, monthly?

A  Yeah. I mean, on the phone, fairly rarely. You know, interagency meetings, you know, we would have them. She wouldn't always chair them, but, you know, sometimes -- it would depend what would happen, but every 2 weeks.

I'm being helped here.

Yes. And -- I'm sorry, I've lost my train of thought.

So how often --

Q  Communicate with Fiona Hill?

A  But she would be on emails too.

Q  Was she providing direction to you, or were you providing direction to her? How did that information flow?

A  Well, it's a partnership. I mean, obviously, the NSC works for the President directly. And so, you know, they may share information or tell us what to do, and we provide information about what's going on in the field. We provide suggestions. You know, in the previous example about the telephone call between -- the first telephone call between President Trump and President Zelensky, we thought that that was an important first step in engaging a new administration, for example.

Q  Can you tell us about the political environment in the Ukraine leading up to the election of President Zelensky?

A  Well, it was -- so 5 years after the Revolution of Dignity. And the Revolution of Dignity really sparked a big change in Ukraine. I think the Poroshenko administration did a lot, but, clearly, the electorate felt that it didn't do enough.

And so Zelensky in two rounds won over 70 percent of the vote. I mean, that's a pretty big mandate. And I think it seemed to be based on this issue of corruption. He said it was his number one goal, although he was also very focused on bringing peace to the country in the Donbass.

And I think that there was, you know, as is true, I think, probably in any country during Presidential elections, a lot of -- a lot of concerns among people. This was I think a big surprise for the political elite of Ukraine, which is relatively small. And so, I don't think they saw it coming really until the very end. And, so, there was surprise and, you know, all the stages of grief, anger, disbelief, how is this happening?

Q  When did you and the embassy first realize that Zelensky may be elected?

A  Well, we were watching the polls. I mean, you know, that's one of the things we do. And he was rising in the spring and kind of over the summer, but, you know, not much happens over the summer. So I asked to meet with him for the first time in September of 2018.

Q  And at what point did you realize that he was likely to win?

A  You know, it's hard to look back and actually know without sort of reference to notes and stuff. I think -- I mean, we were taking him seriously, very seriously by December. And, you know, January, February, I think we felt he was probably going to be the next President.

Q  And how did you feel about that? What were your views of Zelensky? Did you think he was going to be a good advocate for the anticorruption initiatives, as he was campaigning on?

A  We didn't know. I mean, he was an untried politician. Obviously, he has a background as a comedian, as an actor, as a businessperson, but we didn't know what he would be like as a President.

Q  And what were your views on President Poroshenko?

A  I think President Poroshenko, you know, like many leaders, is a very complicated man. And so he has worked in -- he has been active in Ukrainian politics since, I want to say, the late 1990s, certainly the early 2000s, when I was there before. He is a businessman and very accomplished in many different ways.

And he came into office -- I believe he might be the only President who was voted into office in the first round, not going to a second round. People really wanted to give him that mandate, because the country was in a surprising war in 2014, and they thought that even though he was an oligarch himself, that he could bring the country forward.

And I think what we've seen in his administration is that he made a lot of important changes. There were more reforms in Ukraine during President Poroshenko's term than, frankly, in all the preceding -- under all the preceding Presidents.

But I think that, you know, as time passed, as the, shall we say the old system wasn't as scared anymore as they were in 2014, as they felt there was more space to kind of pursue their own interests, it became harder to pursue those reforms and there was less interest. Because when you reform, especially on the very sensitive issue of corruption issues, every time you make a decision, you're probably going against your own interests or a friend's interests or something like that when you make a new law or whatever it might be. And so it's hard.

And so there was kind of a slowing down. And I think what we've seen in 2014, in 2019, is that what the Ukrainian people want is transformation. They don't want just a couple of changes here and there and kind of sugarcoating it on the top.

Q  So the Ukrainian people thought that he wasn't changing fast enough?

A  That is our analysis.

Q  And that first became real crystal clear in December 2018, or --

A  Well, no. I mean, he was -- in about 2016, he was starting to go down in the polls, before I arrived. And I think it's because there was a lot of political in-fighting between him and his prime minister. People apparently didn't like that. But I think there was also a sense in the country that he was attending to his own personal interests as well, and people didn't appreciate that.

Q  And can you explain a little bit about how, as the ambassador, you have to toggle between the current President, the incumbent President, and what could be a new President?

A  Right, right. So, you know, our role is obviously to represent the United States, but it's also to, you know, meet with as many different kinds of people as possible, as many political forces as possible, not just me, but, you know, there's a whole embassy that is involved in this, and, you know, to get information, obviously, so that we can let Washington know what we think is happening in a country, what our analysis is of this, what it means for our interests, and provide advice, policy options for how to move forward.

I mean, often Presidents don't like it when you are meeting with their political rivals, but, I mean, we're pretty transparent, and we let people know that, you know, this is what the U.S. does. We meet with everybody who's a legitimate political force out there. And, you know, often the other -- we wouldn't, you know, publicize it, but often, the people that we are meeting with do. So it wasn't like there were any secrets or anything like that.

And, you know, you do business with the current President. You do -- you -- we talked to his campaign manager often about, you know, where they were, what their strategies were, what they thought was going to happen, et cetera, et cetera. We met with, you know, not just Zelensky but with the others who were running for President. And we conveyed that back to Washington.

Q  And what do you think President Zelensky felt about you?

A  Well, until I read the -- you know, the summary of the conversation of the July 25th call, I thought he liked me.

Q  So the transcript of the July 25th call took you by surprise?

A  Yes.

Q  And do you have any reason to know why President Zelensky felt that way?

A  Well, I can't say I know. I can't say I know.

Q  What do you think?

A  Well, what I think is that he thought that that would be something pleasing for President Trump.

Q  Do you think that some of the interested parties that you discussed in the first round this morning had gotten to Zelensky, or do you think Zelensky had just --

MR. ROBBINS: Do you really want her to engage in that degree of speculation? I mean, she'll answer the question, but she’s already made clear that she was totally surprised by the contents of that conversation. So anything she could tell you -- and she will respond, but it's all guesswork. If that’s what you'd like, that’s what she'll give you.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Have you learned anything since that information came out to help you better understand exactly what happened leading up to that call?

A  The July 25th call?

Q  Yes.

A  No.

Q  The various anticorruption initiatives in Ukraine, could you walk us through sort of the landscape of the various entities? There's, you know, the National Anticorruption Bureau, and then the prosecutor general has a special prosecutor. Could you sort of walk us through the anticorruption institutions?

A  Uh-huh. So after the 2014 elections, the Ukrainian people had made clear in that election that they were done with corruption, and they wanted to live a life with dignity, called the Revolution of Dignity. And what that term means for Ukrainians is that it's rule of law, that what applies to you applies to me. It doesn't matter whether, you know, we hold different jobs or different status in society. It should be about the rule of law. And we wanted to support that effort, and there was kind of an all-out effort.

And in the very, very beginning, one of the things -- and the Ukrainians, and we supported them in other ways on anticorruption issues, but I will just address the question. So they thought that it would be a good idea to set up this architecture, as you call it, of a special investigative office that would be all about the crimes of corruption above a certain level of public officials. And so it would be devoted to that. So they would set up that organization, kind of like an FBI, but for a particular mission.

Secondly, there would be a special independent anticorruption prosecutor, which, as you said, reported to Mr. Lutsenko. And then there would be a special anticorruption court. So that you would have, you know, this continuum of new organizations with vetted individuals who are trained who are handling these crimes, people who would get reasonable salaries so that they wouldn't actually be forced to go out and take bribes.

And so when I arrived in the summer of 2016, August 2016, the NABU, the investigatory branch had already been established, as had the anticorruption prosecutor, they were all -- they were both established. The court was not established until much later, and it only started working in September of this year, September 2019.

So, you know, first of all, I mean, there's so many forces working against these courts, but it was -- against these institutions, but it was also kind of an issue that when they had court cases ready to go, they would go into the same old court system as before, which had not been reformed at that time.

Q  And who was the special prosecutor?

A  Mr. Kholodnitsky.

Q  Was he the only special prosecutor or did somebody precede him?

A  He's the only one.

Q  And he's still there today?

A  Yes. I believe so. Yes.

Q  What is your impression of his work? Better than Lutsenko, worse?

A  Well, if I may, I don't think that comparisons are helpful here. I think that in the beginning, perhaps Kholodnitsky was committed, you know, to his mission, but I think over time, there's a lot of pressure, as I said, from all of the forces that will, you know, help you with funding, shall we say, or, alternatively, have what they call kompromat, or compromising information on you. They play hardball there.

And so I think it became harder and harder to resist, and it appeared that he was not making progress in the way that we had originally hoped. And then he was -- there was a tape that was revealed where he was heard coaching individuals on how to testify and various other things. And so that's clearly not an acceptable practice for a prosecutor.

Q  Who was he trying to coach?

A  I don't recall at the moment.

Q  Was he trying to coach people that were under actual investigation?

A  Yes. I'm sorry, I didn't realize. I thought you wanted the name. Yeah.

Q  And he reported to Lutsenko?

A  Yeah. It was kind of complicated. I think it was -- he did. Although it was sort of more of a dotted line, but yes, he did report to Mr. Lutsenko.

Q  And what was your relationship with Kholodnitsky? Did you have meetings with him? Did you have an exchange of ideas?

A  I mean, yes, but not very often. We had a -- you know, many other people in the embassy handled that relationship.

Q  Now, during your tenure, did you ever have to call for the resignation or firing of any Ukrainian official?

A  In the speech that you referred to on March 5th, when we were very concerned about some of the rollbacks, as I said, as they were looking at the Presidential elections coming up. And one of the things I said is that it was inappropriate, or words to that effect, for somebody who had engaged in those kinds of activities to still be in his job.

Q  Was that taken as that you were calling for Kholodnitsky's ouster?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  And was that position something that you carefully thought out before the speech, or was it just a product of where the conversation took you? Did you go into the speech knowing that you were going to be --

A  Yes.

Q  You did, okay.

And was that the position of the embassy?

A  Yes.

Q  And, so, you planned that out, and before you did that, did you make any -- your position known? Did you try anything on the nonpublic side?

A  Yes.

Q  And could you describe those efforts?

A  We worked with Mr. Lutsenko on that, because he was one of the individuals -- there were various stages, and he was one of the people who was responsible at the end.

Q  This do-not-prosecute list -- and you'll have to excuse me if -- you know, you've stated that it's been -- Lutsenko's recanted various statements about the do-not-prosecute list, but if I may, can I walk through with you your understanding of where this comes from?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  Okay. How many -- how frequently did you meet with Lutsenko?

A  Maybe about 10 or 12 times over 3 years, maybe more.

Q  Was it a regular -- did you have like a regular standing meeting --

A  No.

Q  -- or did you just meet with him when he asked you?

A  As with, you know, Mr. Kholodnitsky, we have a pretty big embassy in Ukraine, and so there are a number of offices that handle law enforcement or prosecutorial, et cetera, issues.

And so those people mostly handle those relationships. And, you know, if there was a need for me to meet with him then I would meet with him, or if he requested a meeting, for example.

Q  When did the do-not-investigate list first come into your awareness?

A  From --

MR. ROBBINS: I'm sorry, forgive me, but that question sort of presupposes that it's an actual thing.

MR. CASTOR: Well, it's an allegation that Lutsenko has made.

MR. ROBBINS: Would you mind just rephrasing it? When did the allegation of such a list come to your attention as opposed to presupposing that it's an actual thing in the world, which it is not.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  When did this allegation first come to your attention, and when do you think Lutsenko is alleging the communication happened between you and him?

A  Well, according to the article, or the interview in The Hill, from, I think, it was March 24th, that's when I first became aware of these allegations. And he claims that it was -- in that interview, he claimed that it was in the first meeting with me.

Q  And when was the first meeting with him, if you can remember generally?

A  October 2016.

Q  So clearly, this took you by surprise. Is that fair?

A  That is very fair.

Q  And did you communicate your surprise or your anger to Lutsenko's office or him directly after it came to your attention?

A  I don't think so. I didn't think there would have been any point in that.

Q  Or by that time, had your relationship soured to the point where it wasn't worth it to you?

A  Well, I wasn't aware until I read that article of how sour the relationship was.

Q  After the article, did you have any meetings with Lutsenko?

A  No.

Q  When is the last time you met with him?

A  You know, maybe in the fall of 2018.

Q  Did you develop any intelligence between the fall of 2018 and March 24th that the relationship with Lutsenko has gone south?

A  Well, as I described previously, Mr. Avakov let me know that Mr. Lutsenko was communicating with Mr. Giuliani.

Q  When was the meeting with Avakov, again?

A  In February of 2019.

Q  When you read about this allegation, why didn't you try to reach out to Lutsenko and holler at him and say, Why are you saying this? This is completely untrue.

A  I didn't really think there was any point.

Q  Did any of your embassy staff communicate at a lower level?

A  I'm sure they did, but I don't know.

Q  But not at your behest?

A  No.

Q  When you were in your opening statement this morning, which, by the way, I'm not sure if you brought copies of that, but it might be helpful for the members.

MR. ROBBINS: We're happy to provide whatever you need.

MR. CASTOR: You're making some copies, okay. We heard during the break that The Washington Post has it and there’s all sorts of discussion about it, and so here in the secure environment, we --

MS. LI WAI SUEN: It was provided electronically before. We provided an electronic copy to the House staff.

MR. CASTOR: Okay, me? Okay. We didn't get a copy of it so --

MS. RUBENSTEIN: We provided it to the security folks, is that who? It wasn't provided to either Democratic or Republican staff, as we understand it.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Anyway, it's apparently been provided to The Washington Post, so some of our members during the break asked me to ascertain if you know how that may have happened.

MR. ROBBINS: Anything she would know about that, she would know through counsel, so she's not going to answer that.

MR. CASTOR: Did you provide it to The Washington Post?

MR. ROBBINS: I'm not going to answer that either.

MR. CASTOR: Why?

MR. ROBBINS: Because I'm not going to answer that.

MR. MEADOWS: Steve, can I ask one follow-up?

MR. CASTOR: Certainly, sir.

MR. MEADOWS: So, Counselor, if, indeed, you gave it to The Washington Post, did you believe that that was something that would be supported by this committee?

MR. ROBBINS: I'm sorry, I'm not going to engage in any answers regarding work product or attorney-client privilege, and I'm not the witness. So if you have another pending question for the ambassador, you should ask it.

[12:57 p.m.]

MR. MEADOWS: Ambassador, are you aware of anyone connected to you that might have given that to The Washington Post?

MR. ROBBINS: Anything she would know regarding that, she would know through counsel, if at all, and she's not going to answer that question.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you saying that it's subject to an attorney-client privilege, your communications with The Washington Post?

MR. ROBBINS: I'm sorry. Any communication that she may have had between -- no, no. Well, they have a copy. We made the copies available to the security -- to the security folks for the committee from either side of the aisle.

Anything that the witness knows -- and I'm not saying she knows anything -- but anything she knows, she would know through counsel, and she's instructed not to answer that question.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you asserting an attorney-client privilege for communications that you have had with The Washington Post?

MR. ROBBINS: No. Let me try it again. I'm asserting an attorney-client privilege with respect to communications between me and the witness.

The question is pending to the witness. The question was, does the witness know how, if at all, The Washington Post got a copy of this document. That calls for privileged communications, period. That's the subject of my objection.

MR. JORDAN: I think that, Mr. Chairman, you can instruct him to answer that question, I believe. And I would also ask, did --

THE CHAIRMAN: Counsel will please direct their questions to the witness and leave the counsel for the witness to advise the witness of what the witness can answer or not answer based on attorney-client privilege.

MR. JORDAN: Did -- if I could, Ambassador, did prior -- if, in fact, you did -- did you talk to the State Department about the possibility of releasing your opening statement to the press?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I haven't talked to the State Department.

MR. ROBBINS: You can answer that.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I haven't talked to the State Department.

MR. JORDAN: Did your counselor talk to the State Department about releasing your opening statement to the press?

MR. ROBBINS: Same exact objection. She would know that, if at all, only by virtue of privileged communications between the lawyers and her, and she’s not going to answer that.

Next question.

MR. CASTOR: There's a -- you know, part of our deposition rules, there's a prohibition against disclosing the contents of the testimony. And so in case that's helpful for you to understand why there's some concern.

MR. ROBBINS: Yeah. I'm totally mindful of that.

MR. ZELDIN: Ambassador Yovanovitch --

THE CHAIRMAN: Let me clarify for the Members. There's no prohibition on what this witness can say to us or to the public. The Members are prohibited from discussing the contents of the deposition.

MR. ZELDIN: Ambassador Yovanovitch, do you believe that it is appropriate for your opening statement to be provided to The Washington Post?

MR. ROBBINS: If you have an opinion on that, you can answer it.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I think that there’s a lot of interest in this deposition.

MR. ZELDIN: Is it your opinion that only your opening statement should be provided to The Washington Post?

MR. ROBBINS: If you have a view on that, you can answer it.

MR. BITAR: Sorry. For the record, the opening statement is being circulated in hard copy. It was provided prior to the interview to the nonpartisan security staff of the House Intelligence Committee. They had not made sufficient copies at the time, but at the request, more copies were made and they are circulating now, so all Members should have a copy. Thank you.

MR. ZELDIN: Ambassador Yovanovitch, would you like to answer that question? Do you believe that only your opening statement should be provided to the press?

[Discussion off the record.]

MR. ROBBINS: If you have an opinion, you can answer his question.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Okay. I actually don't really have an opinion on that. I haven't thought about this in terms of what is most appropriate or not appropriate to share with the greater public, but I do know that there is a lot of interest in this.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  How did the -- how does the embassy and the State Department collect information from social media?

A  I'm sorry. Could you repeat?

Q  Could you help us understand how the embassy and the State Department back in Washington collects information on social media?

A  I can't really answer the question, because I don't know all the inner details of how the press section works to gather information. But they provide us with a press summary, or they used to provide me, I mean. They provide the embassy with a press summary and it goes out to other people at the State Department as well.

Q  And is part of that monitoring social media accounts from --

A  Yeah. I mean, in today's age, yeah, social media is really important.

Q  And who determines which social media accounts are monitored?

A  I don't really know. I mean, I think it's probably a corporate decision in the press section of what are the issues that we're most interested in at the time. And I'm sure that over time it often changes, because, you know, different media influencers, or whatever you call them, you know, are into different topics that might be of interest to us.

Q  And when the efforts to bring you back took shape, did the embassy begin to step up their efforts in trying to figure out where these initiatives were coming from by looking at social media accounts?

A  Well, I think what the embassy was -- you know, after the March 24th Hill article, I think then -- and then there was just an explosion in parts of the media and on social media. And so -- so we, you know, were interested in, you know, kind of keeping track of the story so that we would know what was going on.

Q  And --

A  Because I mean, there's an interest -- obviously, I had an interest since I was being directly attacked --

Q  Yeah.

A  -- but there's also -- I mean, it's not like the Ukrainians where we were working were not following this as well. And so, you know, one had to be aware.

Q  Are you familiar with something called CrowdTangle?

A  No.

Q  It’s a software for mining open source materials.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  So you're not familiar with that?

A  No.

Q  At any point did you -- did you know who, you know, which Americans were being monitored?

MR. ROBBINS: I'm sorry. By "monitored," you mean --

MR. CASTOR: On the social media. We were talking about social media, mining social media, trying to better understand --

MR. ROBBINS: I'm sorry. Mining? That is to say, like, data mining?

MR. CASTOR: Yes.

MR. ROBBINS: Okay. Are you presuming that there was data mining going on?

MR. CASTOR: Presuming that social media -- it's my understanding of her testimony that social media accounts were studied and examined and --

MR. ROBBINS: I'm sorry. Do you want to restate your testimony as to how social media is followed in the embassy at the time you were ambassador, because I think there may be a misunderstanding about the nature of that work?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah. And, honestly, I don't really know. I mean, I received the finished product, which is a summary of what folks in the press section thought was the most important, you know, whether it's hard print, a CNN or a FOX interview, you know, tweets or Facebook postings or whatever. I'm not -- I'm just not involved in the details of how -- how things happen, you know, how --

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  And do you know if the embassy staff that dealt with this liaised with Washington for extra assistance or did they handle it all themselves?

A  At a certain point, to take advantage of the 7-hour time difference, because this was, you know, kind of a pretty -- pretty big task for our press section, they did request assistance from -- from Washington, yes.

Q  And who in Washington is responsible for that?

A  Public Affairs in the European Bureau was who I think that they reached out to.

Q  And did you have any discussions with any officials in D.C. about that?

A  Yeah. I felt that our staff in Kyiv was really being kind of run ragged, and could we get some more assistance.

Q  And who did you speak with?

A  I know I spoke with George Kent. I'm not sure if I spoke with anybody else. And he was, just to remind, he was the deputy assistant secretary. So -- yeah.

Q  And did you have a request or did your media affairs officials put the request through? Did you just ask for resources or did you ask for a specific request?

A  Well, we thought that what would be most helpful, since it was a 7-hour time difference, that, you know, when we, you know, go home, that maybe Washington could take over, like, looking and seeing what, you know, what's playing out in real time, and they could do a little summary and, you know, send it back to us so that we could have that kind of really good coverage.

Q  And did that occur?

A  No.

Q  And did you ask for reasons why that didn't occur?

A  Well, I mean, what we were told is that folk sin Washington were too busy to do this, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, it's always kind of a, you know, personnel or resource issue and so forth.

Q  Okay. How many times did you discuss this with George Kent?

A  I don't know. Maybe once or twice.

Q  Once or twice.

A  I mean, I don't recall.

Q  Is it possible your staff was having additional communications with George Kent's folks?

A  Oh, I’m sure, yeah.

Q  And did they get any feedback as to why they couldn't support the request?

A  Yeah. I mean, it was a resourcing issue, is my understanding.

Q  It was a resource issue?

A  Yeah.

Q  Were there certain political --

A  And so, I mean, so they would -- you know, obviously it's dealt with at the working level first. And then when there was no, shall we say, the kind of response we would have liked, then I talked to George at some point and saying, Really, you know, you really can't help us? And the answer was no.

Q  In your opening statement, I guess it's page 6 --

A  I might have different pagination.

Q  Oh, okay.

A  Okay. I have different pagination, I believe, from you, so you might have to --

Q  It's page 6 of the statement, the bullet point. It begins with, "As for events during my tenure in Ukraine."

A  Uh-huh.

Q  "I want to categorically state that I have never myself or through others directly or indirectly ever directed, suggested, or in any way asked for any government or government official in Ukraine or elsewhere to refrain from investigating or prosecuting actual corruption."

Was there ever an initiative to urge the, you know, any of these prosecutors from not prosecuting good government, you know, people that were interested in good government and anticorruption initiatives?

A  Could you restate that question?

Q  Was there ever any communication to the prosecutors offices whether they should not prosecute people in favor of supporting anticorruption initiatives, good government actors? Were the good government actors ever at risk for prosecution?

A  Yeah. I mean, it happens all the time. It's one of the ways that a corrupt government can pressure people.

Q  And did you or the embassy ever urge the prosecutor not to prosecute those individuals that were in favor of good government and anticorruption initiatives?

A  Well, what we would say is that any kind of prosecution of whoever, whether they are, you know, good actors or bad actors, needs to be done according to the law and there needs -- and it needs to be not politically motivated.

Q  And so the question is, did you ever think that someone was being prosecuted wrongly because they were a good government actor, they were trying to support anticorruption initiatives?

A  I think there was probably a lot of politically motivated prosecution going on in Ukraine.

Q  And did you ever urge the prosecutor not to prosecute those individuals or entities?

A  I think that -- I think there's kind of a line there. And so, you know, conversations about you need to be sure that, you know, there is a real case that is not politically motivated, that this isn't just harassment and pressure, so those conversations, you know, certainly took place.

Q  And were names used?

A  Yeah, probably.

Q  And entities?

A  I'm not -- no.

Q  Can you remember the names?

A  I think that the -- the head of NABU was -- there were a number of cases that looked like harassment cases to us that were opened up against him.

Q  And can you think of anybody else? Who's the head of NABU?

A  You know, I'm sorry, I'm blanking on his name right now.

Q  Can you think of anybody else, other than the head of NABU, that was -- that you urged not to prosecute?

A  I wouldn't say it like that.

Q  Okay. How would you say it?

A  I would say that when we had conversations, we would say that any prosecutions need to be done, you know, legally, by the law, not politically motivated.

Q  But then you indicated that actual names did come up from time to time?

A  Well, the only one I can recall is NABU, and I'm not even recalling that, but I will in a second.

Q  Is Sintac the right name?

A  Sytnyk.

Q  Sytnyk. Okay.

A  Thank you.

Q  Can you remember any other names?

A  No.

Q  But there were names?

A  No. I don't think so.

Q  So there weren't names?

A  I think we just discussed one person, Mr. Sytnyk.

Q  Okay. So it's a name, not names?

A  To the best of my recollection.

Q  And I guess what I'm getting to is, is it possible Lutsenko took that name as an example of somebody not to prosecute?

A  I can't really speak for his motivations or what was in his mind.

Q  Before the removal of Lutsenko's predecessor, Shokin, there was effort on behalf of the U.S. Government, including Vice President Biden, to have Shokin removed, correct?

A  Well, one thing, just to remind, as I said in my opening statement, which you now have, I was not present at that time, but I can tell you what I understand to be the case.

Q  Yes. Please do.

A  So Vice President Biden, the IMF, pretty much every -- every country that is present in Ukraine all felt that Mr. Shokin as prosecutor general was not doing his job.

Q  Which led to calls to oust him?

A  Yes.

Q  And the legislature has to remove him. Is that correct?

A  Yes, that's correct.

Q  And then that occurred.

A  Yes.

Q  And then Lutsenko comes on board.

A  Yes.

Q  And was he, in your experience -- because you're very knowledgeable about the region, so when I ask you in your opinion, you have a very informed opinion -- was Lutsenko better or worse than Shokin?

A  I mean, honestly, I don't know. I mean, I think they're cut from the same cloth.

Q  Equally bad?

A  I'm not sure that these comparisons are helpful.

Q  Okay. And there was also an issue with the special prosecutor, Kholodnitsky?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  Were there any -- any other beacons of hope in the prosecutorial world of Ukraine?

A  Well, it was kind of an unreformed office, shall we say. So I think -- I think some of the people, who I didn't actually personally know, but some of the people who came in in the early days after the Revolution of Dignity, were considered to be quite good. And I think some of them have been brought back again under -- under this new President, Zelensky. So, you know, I'm always hopeful about the possibility for change.

Q  There was never as much of a clamor to remove Lutsenko as there was Shokin. Is that fair to say?

A  Yeah, I think that's fair.

Q  And what do you account for that?

A  I would say that there was, I think, still a hope that one could work with Mr. Lutsenko. There was also the prospect of Presidential elections coming up, and as seemed likely by, you know, December, January, February, whatever the time was, that there would be a change of government. And I think we certainly hoped that Mr. Lutsenko would be replaced in the natural order of things, which is, in fact, what happened.

We also had more leverage before. I mean, this was not easy. President Poroshenko and Mr. Shokin go way back. In fact, I think they are godfathers to each other's children. So this was, you know, this was a big deal. But we had assistance, as did the IMF, that we could condition.

MR. GOLDMAN: Could I just make one point of clarification? You said President Poroshenko and Mr. Shokin go way back?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. GOLDMAN: Do you mean Shokin or Lutsenko?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, I think they probably all go way back. It's a small elite. But President Poroshenko and Shokin go way back, because my understanding is that they are each other's -- godparents for each other's children.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  What do you know about the investigation of Burisma?

A  Not very much. And, again, that happened before I arrived.

Q  Do you know when they were being investigated and what exactly for?

A  So was it -- actually, I think I'm more familiar with the case against Zlochevsky, the head of Burisma. Is that what you're talking about?

Q  Both.

A  Okay.

Q  Do you know if Burisma was under investigation separate from its leader?

A  I believe so. And I believe that -- and, again, I need to stress that this all happened before I arrived. But I believe that with Burisma, the -- as I understand it, again, mostly from media reports -- that the investigation was dormant by the time that Lutsenko came to be prosecutor general, and that -- but I also understand, you know, from things in Ukrainian media and people would sort of mention, that the investigation was never formally closed by Lutsenko, because it's, frankly, useful to keep that company hanging on a hook, right? And so -- so it was dormant, but it wasn't fully closed and done with.

Q  There was a -- press reports in the Ukraine that -shortly before you came back the end of March -- that the Ukrainian state prosecutor's office was reexamining issues related to Burisma. Do you have any familiarity with that?

A  Well, that question was asked earlier, and I don't actually remember that. So, no, I don't.

Q  Do you have any idea why the -- why Burisma -again, this is before your time, but just wondering if you have any idea why they would make an effort to put U.S. people on their board.

A  I mean, I don't know, but I can give you an opinion.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Is that --

MR. ROBBINS: Is it more than a guess?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I mean, it's an opinion. It's a guess.

MR. MEADOWS: Yeah. I would think, Ambassador, it would be an informed opinion. Ambassador Volker was able to give us some of the same commentary. We would like to hear it from your perspective since he held you in very high regard.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I -- so just to be clear, I mean, I don't actually know, but I think that they probably did it for the same reason most companies put, you know, people with name recognition, experts, et cetera, on their boards, to increase prestige, to let people know that they are good companies, well valued, and so forth.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Do you know if they sought out experts in corporate governance for their boards?

A  I'm not familiar with that. I don’t know.

Q  Or experts in fighting corruption for their boards?

A  I don't know.

Q  Or did they just pick names of, you know, prominent people?

A  I really don't know. I mean, I don't know how they went about selecting them.

Q  Did a lot of the Ukrainian companies do this? Is it a fairly widespread practice that sophisticated companies in Ukraine, you know, name U.S. officials to their board?

A  Well, I'm not sure they're officials.

Q  Or U.S. persons. Sorry.

A  So, yes. I think, you know, over time, this has -this has been happening. So DTEK, which is one of the largest companies in Ukraine, owned by a Ukrainian, has a number of internationally recognized people.

I had mentioned Victor Pinchuk earlier, who hosted Mayor Giuliani and other -- other people for his foundation. On his foundation are, you know, former officials from around the world, including Americans.

So, yeah, I mean, I think that people feel that this gives greater gravitas, shall we say, to their board, whether it's a foundation or whether it's a company.

Q  Do you think it has any effect? Do you think --

A  I don't know. You know, what do you mean by "effect"?

Q  Does it foster, you know, anti -- you know, an anticorruption environment? Does it -A Well, I mean, just to say I’m not sure that that's why people put, you know, luminaries on their board, to foster an anticorruption environment.

Q  Do you know if NABU encourages people to -encourages companies to put officials like this on a board, or U.S. persons, or AntAC?

A  There -- one of the ideas for good governance -- so this is separate from private corporations or private foundations, such as the YES Foundation that Pinchuk ran.

One of the things that I think started after the Revolution of Dignity was that the state monopolies, and there are many in Ukraine, that they would establish boards for those organizations.

Is that maybe what you're talking about?

Q  Uh-huh.

A  And so what the government did was they would run these open and transparent kind of competitions for who would be on those boards. And the idea was you get experts and you do get people who would, you know, foster an open environment and so forth.

So -- and, you know, to your point, I mean there were international experts on those boards, for the gas monopoly, Naftogaz, and others.

Q  And do you think that worked? Do you think that it helped?

A  I do think it -- you know, in -- with the public companies, the monopolies, yes, I do think it was helpful.

MR. CASTOR: And my time is just about up, but I wanted to turn to see if any of our Members had something quickly.

MR. ZELDIN: How much time do we have?

MS. LAX: Less than a minute.

MR. CASTOR: Oh. Sorry. So we're -- we'll --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: We're done?

MR. CASTOR: We'll take a break with our first hour.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Okay.

MR. CASTOR: Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Ambassador, would you like to take a brief lunch break?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Sure. I mean, I'm at your disposal, I'm ready to go.

THE CHAIRMAN: Why don't we resume at 2 o'clock?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Okay.

THE CHAIRMAN: Give people a chance to grab a bite to eat. And so we'll resume at 2 o'clock.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Okay. Thank you.

[Recess.]

[2:07 p.m.]

THE CHAIRMAN: Before I turn it back to Mr. Goldman, I wanted to just follow up on one of the questions that my colleagues in the minority asked.

They asked you, Ambassador, about what advice you had given Ukraine in terms of whether they should engage in politically motivated prosecutions or prosecutions that were not based on the law or facts, what in themselves would be corrupt.

And I think you said that you gave general guidance along those lines, that they shouldn't -- they should follow the rule of law and they shouldn't engage in political prosecutions. And you mentioned that one of the -- or the one person you mentioned in this context that was by specific name was the head of NABU.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Uh-huh.

THE CHAIRMAN: And then you were asked, well, could this have been the do not prosecute list that Lutsenko was referring to.

I just want to ask again, Lutsenko recanted that whole allegation, right?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: So when counsel for the minority asked you, well, could that have been what Lutsenko was referring to, Lutsenko himself has said it was nonsense.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes, that is true.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  We left off a little bit on the April 21st call between President Zelensky and President Trump right after President Zelensky won the election, and you said you got a general readout of the call afterwards. Who did you speak to to get that readout?

A  I don't recall. I don't recall. And when I say "general," I mean really general: It was a good call, they hit it off.

Q  Did you speak to any Ukrainian officials about the call?

A  I don’t recall, because, I mean, that happened on a Sunday night. On Wednesday night, I got the call to return to the United States. So there wasn't a lot of time in there.

Q  Okay. So let's move into that, then. It was just 3 days after that call that you got a call to go back to the States?

A  Yes.

Q  Who called you to order you to do that?

A  The director general of the State Department.

Q  Who's that?

A  Carol Perez.

Q  What did she say to you?

A  Well, in the first call, which happened at quarter of 10 in the evening Kyiv time, she said that she was giving me a heads-up, that things were going wrong, kind of off the -- off the track, and she wanted to give me a heads-up. She didn't know what was happening, but there was a lot of nervousness on the seventh floor and up the street.

Q  What did she mean by "up the street"?

A  The White House.

Q  Did you understand what she meant about nervousness?

A  No. And I asked her. I said, well, thanks for giving me a heads-up. What's the problem? Tell me what's going on. And she said she didn't know.

I asked her, well, is this, you know, about the allegations about me by Lutsenko -- and, of course, now it was also by Mayor Giuliani.

And she didn't seem to be aware of that, and she said, I don't know, I don't know anything about that.

And she said that she would try to get more information and she would call me back. Because I said, Okay. So we have this heads-up that there’s a problem, but what’s the next step? Because I don't know what the problem is.

And she said she would try to get more information and she would try to call me at midnight.

Q  Did she say whether anyone had asked her to call you to give you this heads-up?

A  I got that impression, but now I don't recall. I mean, that's kind of the impression I have now.

Q  And when you said by now Giuliani was also speaking out against you, do you mean that by that time you were aware that Giuliani was --

A  Uh-huh.

Q  -- make -- calling --

A  Yes.

Q  -- for your removal?

A  Yes.

Q  Who else were you aware of who was publicly calling for your removal?

A  Well, as I recounted earlier, there were -- you know, there was a lot in social media from various people, including Donald Trump, Jr. So, I mean, there was a lot out there.

Q  What about from the President himself? Were you aware of his feelings towards you at that point?

A  No, but he had posted some things. There were some tweets out there, not directly about me, but some tweets out there about, you know, Ukraine, concerns about Ukraine.

Q  And you obviously understood that -- well, I won't put words in your mouth.

Did you understand that if Donald Trump, Jr., is speaking and Rudy Giuliani is speaking, that they represented to some extent the President's views as well at that point?

A  I didn't know, but, you know, that was certainly an inference one could draw and --

Q  Well, would that inference -- go ahead.

A  And I would also add that I told you in my opening statement that I had been asked to extend. But then about, I would say, the week after the Hill article the State Department, Phil Reeker in this case, was saying, well, it's not going to be possible to extend you -- I mean, I obviously realized that as well -- and we'll have to talk about dates for your departure.

So there was already discussion of when I would go. But when I got the call from Carol, and I think that was the 24th of April, or I should say Ambassador Perez, she -- I had understood and Phil Reeker had understood that there was agreement at the State Department that I could stay on through July 2019, after the July Fourth party, which is our -- it's the biggest representational thing that we do in a host country, and that had been my original plan for departure. And I thought, well, we can just go back to plan A. And there seemed to have been agreement about that. And then I got the call from Ambassador Perez.

Q  Okay. I want to go through this step by step. But just going back to what your understanding was as the motivating factor for Ambassador Perez's call to you, to that point you had only received support from the State Department all the way up to the seventh floor. Is that right?

A  Yeah. I mean, they -- I mean, they took back the offer of an extension, but were working with me on, you know, what a good departure date would look like and so forth.

Q  And did you get the sense that the State Department had issues with your performance in any way?

A  Quite the opposite.

Q  So I think that's sort of what I'm getting at. So from the State Department's perspective, everyone on up to Secretary Pompeo supported the work that you were doing in Ukraine and had no problems with your performance, to your knowledge?

A  Yes. That is my understanding.

Q  Okay. And then you see on social media that Donald Trump, Jr., and Rudy Giuliani are calling for your ouster. Is that right?

A  Yes.

Q  And then Ambassador Perez calls you and says, just a heads-up. There's some nervousness, I think was your term.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  I mean, there don't seem to me to be too many conclusions, but I don't want to put any words in your mouth.

What did you think was driving this concern at that point?

A  Well, that's why I asked her, is this about, you know, the allegations against me that are out there. And she said she didn't know, but that she would try to find out and would try to call me back.

Q  So what happened when --

THE CHAIRMAN: Can I ask you one clarifying question?

My colleague asked, as far as you knew in the State Department, everyone was pleased with your performance, indeed, they wanted you to extend another year.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And I think my colleague asked you, all the way up to the Secretary? But did you, in fact, know where the Secretary was in all of this?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I had understood that -- well, I’m not exactly sure who decides on extensions of this kind, but I had understood that there was a seventh floor blessing, if not the Secretary himself, those around him who are, you know, long-term colleagues and that he trusts and that can speak for him.

So I had understood that there was a blessing of that extension. But to answer your question, I don't really know.

THE CHAIRMAN: And did you ever find out when, you know, the allegations were being made or the attacks were being made by Donald Trump, Jr., or Rudy Giuliani, did you ever find out what the Secretary of State's position, whether the Secretary of State was going to defend you or not, apart from the refusal by the Secretary to issue a statement in your defense?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: What I was told by Phil Reeker was that the Secretary or perhaps somebody around him was going to place a call to Mr. Hannity on FOX News to say, you know, what is going on? I mean, do you have proof of these kinds of allegations or not? And if you have proof, you know, tell me, and if not, stop.

And I understand that that call was made. I don’t know whether it was the Secretary or somebody else in his inner circle. And for a time, you know, things kind of simmered down.

THE CHAIRMAN: I mean, does that seem extraordinary to you that the Secretary of State or some other high-ranking official would call a talk show host to figure out whether you should be retained as ambassador?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, I’m not sure that’s exactly what was being asked.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, they were asking if -- what basis they -- was Hannity one of the people criticizing you?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: So some top administration official was going to him to find out what the basis of this FOX host was attacking you for?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Uh-huh.

THE CHAIRMAN: And did you ever get any readout on what the result of that conversation was?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No, I didn't, although I was told that it did take place.

But what we thought we saw was, you know, as a result of the media monitoring, which I'm sure everybody does, what we thought we saw was that there -- it simmered down for a while.

THE CHAIRMAN: Until what point?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, there would be, you know, like, little blips and stuff. But I think when it took off was really after the elections, the 21st of April, the second round.

THE CHAIRMAN: And so you don't know who it was that reached out to Mr. Hannity, but at some point after that conversation, things settled until after the election?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That's what it appeared to us. And I should add, to the best of my recollection.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Do you recall when this conversation that the Secretary or someone close to him had with Sean Hannity was?

A  So the article, I think, was on the -- was on the 26th -- is that right? -- 26th or the 24th of April, the Hill article, that sort of --

Q  Of April or March?

A  Of March. Thank you. And so it would have been the following week.

Q  So soon after the Hill, and--

A  Yes.

Q  -- so it simmered down, you said, through the election?

A  That's what I seem to recall. There were -- you know, it was -- it was out there, but it seemed to be, you know, simmering rather than at a high peak.

Q  Do you know whether there was anyone else publicly advocating for your removal? You just added Sean Hannity. I just want to make sure we have the full universe of people that you recall.

A  Well, there were a lot of people opining about -about me and what should be done. I can't remember everything that everybody said, but there were a lot of people out there.

Q  Okay. So Sean Hannity, Donald Trump, Jr., and Rudy Giuliani. Did you have an understanding that these were all close advisers of the President?

A  Well, they appeared to be close to the President from, you know, far, far away.

Q  From Ukraine?

A  Yeah.

Q  Understood.

A  From my vantage point from far away, I should say.

Q  Did you ever learn about any public concerns expressed back in 2018 by Congressman Pete Sessions about your performance?

A  I learned about it in that article from The Hill by John Solomon.

Q  So you didn't know about it in realtime?

A  No.

Q  You had only heard about it --

A  No.

Q  -- in that article?

So you -- when there were discussions, I think you said, on the seventh floor -- well, let me take a step back.

When were you given the offer of an extension?

A  So the Undersecretary for Political Affairs, David Hale, was in Ukraine. He arrived the evening of the 5th, stayed a couple days. And at the end of that trip to Ukraine he said that, you know, with elections coming up and, I mean, he could see how complicated it was. At that time we thought parliamentary elections would be in October. Obviously it's always complicated to -- sorry -- it's always complicated to get another ambassador named and confirmed. It's a long, drawn-out process.

And so concerns about having Kyiv be empty at the top. And so he asked me to -- whether I would consider staying for another full year. I -- yeah.

Q  And you said the 5th. Is that -- what month?

A  Of March.

Q  5th of March.

A  Same day as --

Q  Around the time you gave the speech?

A  Yeah.

Q  And did you agree to do that?

A  Not initially. You know, it's a tough post. I mean, I loved my work there, I thought we did great work, but, you know, it was a tough post. But in the end, I did agree.

Q  Around when did you agree?

A  He asked me to call him, like, that following Monday or something -- or be in touch. I think I emailed him the following Monday.

Q  Now, you also just referenced a conversation you had with Phil Reeker shortly after the Hill articles came out? Is that right?

A  Uh-huh. Yeah.

Q  And what did he say to you about this potential extension?

A  Well, Phil was the person -- so David Hale broached this with me. And then Phil was the person who was kind of working it through the system with the personnel people, Director General Carol Perez, with whoever on the seventh floor needs to bless these decisions and so forth.

And my understanding was that it had been -- it had been approved and that, you know, then they were going to go forward for the formal paperwork.

Q  I guess I just want to understand, when you had the conversation you described with Phil Reeker where he said -- he indicated to you that you were not going to be able to stay for the full year --

A  Oh, yeah. That was --

Q  -- you went back to plan A?

A  Yeah.

Q  So that was after the Hill articles, right?

A  Well, the Hill article was at the end of March, and then there was a little bit of a pause in all of this. Then the second round of Presidential elections was the 21st of April. And then the 24th -- yeah -- the 24th of April was when I got the call from Ambassador Perez, and -- yeah.

So the conversation with Phil was shortly after -- you're right -- shortly after the -- about a week after the Hill article came out that probably --

Q  So this would be early April?

A  Yeah, very early April. Perhaps even the end of March.

Q  Why -- well, did Mr. Reeker explain you to why it would be impossible for you to stay for your year only 2 or 3 weeks after you had agreed to do it?

A  Not really. I mean, it was pretty clear why.

Q  And what was pretty clear? Can you explain?

A  Well, that this was -- you know, my presence at post was a sensitive issue for the administration.

Q  So he didn't explain to you, he just assumed that you understood?

A  Yeah.

Q  And why did you understand that it was -- had become a sensitive issue? Because of the article in The Hill?

A  Because of the article in The Hill, because of all of the attendant, you know, tweets and postings and interviews and talk shows and various other things, and the fact that, as we discussed earlier, the State Department did not feel that they could actually even issue, in the face of all of this, a full-throated kind of statement of support for me.

Q  And can you explain again why you understood that the State Department could not issue a statement of support?

A  What I was told is that there was concern that the rug would be pulled out from underneath the State Department if they put out something publicly.

[2:27 p.m.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  By whom?

A  The President.

Q  And in what way would the rug be pulled out from under them?

A  You know, that perhaps there would be a tweet of disagreement or something else.

Q  Did you have an understanding that the State Department brass or the State Department executives understood that the President did not support you?

A  I mean, yeah, that seemed to be the conclusion.

Q  And did you understand why?

A  Well, again, I assumed that it was as a result of the partnership, if that's the right word, between Mr. Lutsenko and Mr. Giuliani.

Q  And then the relationship between Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump?

A  Yeah, I think that's a fair conclusion.

Q  So you said Ambassador Perez said she would get back to you at midnight on the night of April 24th. Did she call you then?

A  She called me about an hour later, so it's now 1 a.m. in the Ukraine.

Q  And what did she say to you then?

A  She said that there was a lot of concern for me, that I needed to be on the next plane home to Washington.

And I was like, what? What happened? And she said, I don't know, but this is about your security. You need to come home immediately. You need to come home on the next plane.

And I said, physical security? I mean, is there something going on here in the Ukraine? Because sometimes Washington has intel or something else that we don't necessarily know. And she said, no, I didn't get that impression, but you need to come back immediately.

And, I mean, I argued with her. I told her I thought it was really unfair that she was pulling me out of post without any explanation, I mean, really none, and so summarily.

Q  She didn't give you an explanation for why it had to be so soon?

A  She said it was for my security, that this was for my well-being, people were concerned.

Q  What did you understand that to mean?

A  I didn’t know because she didn't say, but my assumption was that, you know, something had happened, some conversations or something, and that, you know, now it was important that I had to leave immediately because -- I didn't really know.

Q  So what did you do next?

A  Well, I went home and I told, you know, my secretary, my staff assistant, and the number two at the embassy, the management officer, I asked them to come to my residence at 8 a.m. in the morning -- I, of course, had a full slate of meetings that day -- and to, you know, to start the wheels going in motion to buy me a ticket. I couldn't leave on the next -- I mean, there wasn't a next plane because it was 1 a.m. when I got this news, right? So the next plane was at 6 a.m. or something like that on Friday morning. To get tickets. To inform them what had happened. To sort of give advice and instruction.

I didn't know how long I would be in Washington. Carol couldn't tell me that. And I had asked -- I said, you know, well, this doesn't look good. I mean, I can see where this is going. So could you just leave me here for another week, I will pack out and I will go.

And she said, no, you have to be, you know, you have to leave immediately. This is for you. We're concerned about you. And I said, well, you will let me come back to pack out, and she couldn't even give me an answer on that.

Q  Did you speak to anybody else at the State Department about this directive?

A  Yeah.

MR. ROBBINS: Do you mean then or ever?

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  No. Sorry. The day after you got the call and you were in the embassy trying to get everything organized, did you -- prior to flying back to D.C., I think that's the best way to put it -- did you speak to anybody else other than Ambassador Perez at the State Department about the request for you to come home?

A  I'm sure I did. I don't recall right now. And, actually, I wasn't really in the embassy that day because the embassy is a little bit outside of town. I mean, I kept my meeting schedule for that day.

Q  Okay. Before you flew home, did you have a better sense of why you were --

A  No.

Q  -- requested to come home?

A  No.

Q  What did you do when you arrived in D.C.?

A  Well, it was a Friday afternoon, and so I had the whole weekend to think about this. And my niece lives here, so I saw her, I saw friends.

Q  Who did you first meet at the State Department after arriving in Washington?

A  So that would be Monday morning. And there wasn't really any -- there weren't any meetings on Monday morning. At about 1 o'clock, I think it was, I met with Assistant Secretary Phil Reeker, who previewed the next meeting, which was with Deputy Secretary Sullivan, which took place at around 4 o'clock.

Q  What did Mr. Reeker say to you at that point?

A  Mr. Reeker said that I, you know, I would need to leave. I needed to leave as soon as possible. That apparently, as I stated in my statement, the President had been -- had wanted me to leave since July of 2018 and -- or the summer, I should say, the middle of the summer of 2018 -and that the Secretary had tried to protect me but was no longer able to do that.

Q  Who had concerns as of July of 2018?

A  President Trump.

Q  And was that the first that you had heard of that?

A  Yes.

Q  What did you say in response?

A  I was shocked.

Q  Did he explain why President Trump had concerns?

A  No. No. I think there was just a general assumption that it must have had to do with the information that Mr. Lutsenko provided to Mr. Giuliani. But we really didn't get into that because, you know, we, Phil and I had -or Ambassador Reeker and I had had previous discussions about this. And, yeah, there just didn't seem to be much point.

Q  Can you, without getting into all the details, can you summarize those previous discussions just so we understand what knowledge you had going into that meeting?

A  Well, most of the discussions with Ambassador Reeker, you know, first it was about extending me for a year. Then after the Hill article he wanted to -- he was talking to me about, you know, my departure plans.

Initially he had thought it would be good if I went to work for -- to be a political adviser to one of our four-star generals. He had just departed EUCOM, so General Scaparotti (ph) did not have a political adviser and he thought that maybe I could leave Ukraine early and go and incumber that position. And initially I was sort of thinking about that, and then I just didn't have the heart for it, frankly.

And so then -- then it became, well, when would you leave Ukraine? And then I thought we had -- I mean, I think we all thought that we had come to an agreement that I could leave right after the big representational event in July to honor our Independence Day.

Q  Okay. And just to be clear, in any of those conversations with Mr. Reeker, Ambassador Reeker, leading up to what I guess was the April 29th meeting on that Monday --

A  Uh-huh.

Q  -- had he indicated to you that the concerns about you had escalated all the way up to President Trump?

A  No, I don’t think -- no.

Q  So when you -- when he said that to you in that meeting, that was the first you had heard of that?

A  Yes.

Q  And in addition to any shock, did you say anything else to him? Did you ask why? Did you get an explanation as to why?

A  I'm sure I did ask why, and I’m sure, you know, I expressed my anger, I'm sure I did all those things, but now I can't really recall the conversation.

Q  Can you -- and then you then met with the Deputy Secretary?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  Can you describe that meeting for us? What did he say to you?

A  Yeah. So the Deputy Secretary said that, you know, he was sorry this was all happening, that the President had lost confidence, and I would need to depart my post. That, you know, he had -- you know, I said, what have I done wrong? And he said, you've done nothing wrong. And he said that he had had to speak to ambassadors who had been recalled for cause before and this was not that.

And he, you know, expressed concern for what I would do next, and, you know, kind of how I would -- you know, kind of my state of mind, shall we say.

And he also, I think, he repeated what Phil had already told me, which is that this was coming from President Trump, this was, you know, final, and that I -- that the reason they pulled me back is that they were worried that if I wasn't, you know, physically out of Ukraine, that there would be, you know, some sort of public either tweet or something else from the White House. And so this was to make sure that I would be treated with as much respect as possible.

He said that my departure date was up to me. If I wanted to keep the previously agreed upon date of, you know, after the July Fourth event, that would be okay, but he could not guarantee what would happen.

Q  What did you say to him?

A  Well, you know, I expressed my dismay and my disappointment. I asked him what this meant for our policy, what was the message that --

MR. GOLDMAN: Do you want to take a minute?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah, just a minute. I'm just going to exit it for 1 minute.

MR. GOLDMAN: Yeah, we can go off the record. Can we pause the time?

[Discussion off the record.]

MR. GOLDMAN: Back on the record, and start the clock. Ambassador Yovanovitch, we understand this is a difficult and emotional topic, and we thank you for your honest recollection and answers.

MR. ROBBINS: Is there a pending -- I just want to hear if is there a pending question that she had not finished answering or if you just want to ask a new one.

MR. GOLDMAN: I'll just ask a new one.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  I think where we were was I had asked you, you were explaining what your reaction to Deputy Secretary Sullivan was?

A  I was upset. And I, you know, I wanted an explanation because this is rather unusual. But he could not offer one beyond the fact that the President had made a decision. And it is the President's to make, as we know.

I did ask him though, you know, what does this mean for our foreign policy? What does it mean for our position on anticorruption? What message are we sending to the Ukrainians, to the world? How were, you know, I mean, beyond me, how were we going to explain this? And what are we going to say, you know, not only to the people at U.S. Embassy Kyiv, but more broadly to the State Department?

And I told him I thought that this was a dangerous precedent, that as far as I could tell, since I didn't have any other explanation, that private interests and people who don't like a particular American ambassador could combine to, you know, find somebody who was more suitable for their interests. That, you know, it should be the State Department, the President, who makes decisions about which ambassador. And, obviously, the President did make a decision, but I think influenced by some who are not trustworthy.

Q  Who are you referring to?

A  Mr. Lutsenko.

Q  You don't have any information that President Trump ever met with Mr. Lutsenko, though, do you?

A  There was a rumor in Kyiv that during the meeting between Mr. -- Mayor Giuliani and Mr. Lutsenko in January that the President got on the line.

Q  Did you ever verify whether that was true or not?

A  No.

Q  But your understanding is the information came from Lutsenko via intermediaries to the President?

A  Yes.

Q  And if this -- you asked what this would do to the anticorruption message. What do you mean by that?

A  Well, I felt that -- I felt that in the public discussion of this, in social media and in other media, they were portraying this as, you know, Lutsenko going after me because I had stymied what he wanted to do, and that I was, you know, upholding our policy about helping the Ukrainians transform their -- themselves so that it wouldn't be a system of corruption.

And if I were to leave as the symbol of that effort, I think it would send a message. And I wanted to know how the State Department was going -- was thinking about that, how they were going to manage that message in a way that would be least damaging to our interests.

Q  Now, you referenced the specific attacks on you. Were you also aware by this point of public statements encouraging Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden or some sort of collusion between Ukraine and the Democratic National Committee in 2016 by that point?

A  Yeah, I think I was probably aware of that at that point.

Q  For example, Rudy Giuliani on the morning of April 24th, went on "FOX and Friends," said, quote, "Keep your eye on Ukraine," unquote, and discussed both of those investigations. Were you aware of that?

A  Yes, I aware of that. And, actually, I do now recall that actually Minister Avakov also laid that out in February.

Q  Are you also aware that on the night of April 25th that President Trump went on Sean Hannity's show and discussed Ukraine?

A  Yes. He was asked a question about Russia and he answered by responding about Ukraine.

Q  And what was your reaction to that?

A  Well, you know, I mean, I was concerned about what this would all mean.

Q  In what way?

A  Well, obviously, for me personally, not to make it all about me, but for me personally. But also, what does this mean for our policy? Where are we going?

Q  And can you just briefly describe would it be beneficial -- well, I'll get to that in a minute.

So you understood in realtime as you were being recalled suddenly that there was a flurry of media activity in connection to these investigations in Ukraine. Is that right?

A  Yes.

Q  Now, did you have any understanding of the nature of these investigative theories? Did you know whether they were accurate or inaccurate or factual or had been investigated? Did you know anything about them by this point?

A  I mean, my understanding, again, from the press was that, you know, the allegation that there was Ukrainian interference in our elections in 2016, that it wasn't Russia, it was Ukraine, that that had been debunked long ago.

But, again, it wasn't the subject of my work. And so I -- again, because it’s so political, I mean, it really kind of crosses the line into what I feel is proper for a foreign service officer, you know, I didn't go digging into that.

Q  But were you aware that the Intelligence Community had uniformly concluded that Russia was responsible for the interference in the election?

A  Yes.

Q  And were you aware by that point that Robert Mueller, the special counsel, had issued a dozens-of-page indictment detailing in great detail the Russian interference in the election?

A  Yes.

Q  Would it benefit Russia if Ukraine were -- if the allegations that Ukraine was involved in the 2016 election were true?

A  I think so.

Q  How so?

A  Because, you know, I think most Americans believe that there shouldn't be meddling in our elections. And if Ukraine is the one that had been meddling in our elections, I think that the support that all of you have provided to Ukraine over the last almost 30 years, I don't know that -- I think people would ask themselves questions about that.

Q  Is there anything else about the meeting with Deputy Secretary Sullivan that you recall?

MR. ROBBINS: You mean the first meeting?

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  The meeting on April 29th.

A  No, not right now.

Q  Did you meet with anybody else after you met with Deputy Secretary Sullivan while you were in Washington, D.C., about this matter?

A  Well, at his request I met with him again the following day, which I think --

Q  I'm sorry, when you say "him," Deputy Secretary Sullivan?

A  Yes, sorry. And, I mean, it was a relatively short meeting. I think he just wanted to make sure I was okay. And, you know, he was kind of trying to point me to the future on "So what do you think you would like to do next in the Foreign Service" type thing. So --

Q  Did you feel like the State Department supported you still at this point?

A  Yes. I mean, I think it was not a well-known story at that time, but I think that anybody who was aware of it was very supportive of me.

Q  And did you meet with Secretary Pompeo at all while you were in Washington?

A  No.

Q  Did you ever meet with him after that point?

A  No.

Q  Did you ever receive any communication from him?

A  No.

Q  Did you meet with any anybody else from the State Department on the 30th or around that time?

A  So maybe it was April or May 1st, the Wednesday of that week, I met with Carol Perez, who is the head of personnel, the Director General. She, you know -- so Deputy Secretary Sullivan had said, you know, help her, you know, find -- find employment basically.

And so Carol asked me what I would like to do next. And I asked whether it would be possible to be a fellow at Georgetown University. And that was arranged for me, and I'm very grateful.

Q  Just going back to Secretary Pompeo. Did you ever ask to meet with him or speak to him?

A  No. I asked to speak with the counselor, Ulrich Brechbuhl, who had been handling this matter.

Q  What do you mean by handling this matter?

A  Exactly what I said. I mean, he was -- he seemed to be the point person that Ambassador Reeker was talking to.

Q  Did you speak with Counselor Brechbuhl?

A  No.

Q  Why not?

A  He didn't accept the meeting request.

Q  What effect, if any, do you think that this abrupt recall has had on your career?

A  Well, I mean, I wasn't planning a long career afterwards. I mean, my plan A had been that I would come back after my tour, a normal tour in the Ukraine, and retire. So it's not like I was expecting an ambassadorship or anything else. So I don't think from a State Department point of view it has had any effect.

Q  Because you were able to land at Georgetown, that's been --

A  Yes.

Q  On May 14th, so this would have been about 2 weeks later, Rudy Giuliani told a Ukrainian journalist that you were recalled, quote, because you were part of the efforts against the President, unquote. Do you recall that statement?

A  I do

Q  How did you react to that?

A  You know, it was just more of the same. I mean, I had no idea what he was talking about.

Q  Did you ever badmouth President Trump in Ukraine?

A  No.

Q  Do you ever speak ill of U.S. policy in Ukraine?

A  No. You know, I mean, I was the chief spokesperson for our policy in Ukraine. And I actually felt that in the 3 years that I was there, partly because of my efforts, but also the interagency team, and President Trump's decision to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine, that our policy actually got stronger over the three last 3 years.

Q  You were very focused on anticorruption efforts in Ukraine. Is that right?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  What impact do you think --

A  Yes.

Q  -- it would have -- what impact do you think it had for someone acting as an agent of the President to be encouraging Ukraine to open investigations for U.S. political purposes? How did that impact the U.S. anticorruption message?

A  Well, I would say it's not -- could you rephrase the question or repeat the question?

Q  Sure. I was just asking that if Rudy Giuliani is promoting these investigations that are related to American politics --

A  Uh-huh.

Q  -- and you have testified here today about how part of the anticorruption message is that investigations in Ukraine should be conducted devoid of any political influence, how would that impact your message, your anticorruption message, if an agent of the President is promoting investigations related to political interests?

A  Well, that's what I was concerned about, and that’s what I asked the Deputy Secretary.

MR. GOLDMAN: Okay. I think our time is up.

THE CHAIRMAN: Let me ask you before we turn it over, and what was his response when you raised that concern?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, he said he’d have to think about that.

THE CHAIRMAN: I yield to minority.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Where you aware of the President's deep-rooted skepticism about Ukraine's business environment?

A  Yes.

Q  And what did you know about that?

A  That he -- I mean, he shared that concern directly with President Poroshenko in their first meeting in the Oval Office.

Q  What else did you know about it? Was it a source of discussion at the embassy that the President was not confident in Ukraine's ability to move past their corruption issues?

MR. ROBBINS: So I should just say that we have been instructed by the State Department that conversations directly with the President of the United States are subject to a potential executive department-based privilege. I don't know exactly which one they would invoke if they were here, but I rather suspect that a direct communication, as your question is addressing, would elicit such an objection. It isn't an objection that we hold.

MR. CASTOR: Okay.

MR. ROBBINS: It's one that we have pledged to assert.

MR. CASTOR: Got it. I got it.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  The administration had concerns about corruption in Ukraine, correct?

A  We all did.

Q  And were there efforts --

A  We all did.

Q  -- you know, once President Zelensky was elected, were there efforts to convince the White House, convince the National Security Council, that Zelensky was a genuine reformer?

A  That really would have been after I left. So he was elected President on the 21st of April. I had the phone conversation with Carol Perez on Wednesday the 24th. I departed the Ukraine for the first time on the 26th of April.

On the 29th, I basically, even though I was still ambassador technically, I basically took myself out of all -- kind of all of these sorts of issues because I didn't feel it was proper, to tell you the truth.

And so I was in Washington for a couple weeks. I went back to Ukraine to pack out for a week. And the day that I departed Ukraine permanently was May 20th, which is the same day that President Zelensky was inaugurated. So I didn't -- I wasn't privy to whatever the conversation was.

Q  Can you testify to the difference the changes in aid to Ukraine with the new administration starting in 2017? The different initiatives, you know, as far as providing lethal weapons and --

A  Yeah. Well, I think that most of the assistance programs that we had, you know, continued, and due to the generosity of the Congress actually were increased. And so that was a really positive thing, I think, for Ukraine and for us.

In terms of lethal assistance, we all felt it was very significant that this administration made the decision to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine.

Q  Did you advocate for that?

A  Yes.

Q  And did you advocate for that prior to the new administration back in 2016?

A  Well, yeah.

Q  What was the hold up there? What was the issue preventing it?

A  So I arrived in Ukraine towards the end of August, August 22nd of 2016, and President Trump was elected that November, and then there was the inauguration in January.

So there wasn't -- there wasn't as much discussion about all those things. I mean, I certainly had a strong view that this would be a good thing. That was held by the interagency both in Ukraine and I think in Washington as well. But there were not, you know, just given the end of the administration, there was not sort of a big ongoing discussion about that issue at that time.

Q  Was it a heavy lift to change the policy in the new administration?

MR. ROBBINS: So, again, we have been given advice by the State Department that questions of internal policy discussions within the State Department are subject to some executive department-based --

MR. MEADOWS: But, counsel, with all due respect, this is not a personal conversation. This is policy that obviously affected Ukraine that we are all very well aware of. And so to suggest for her commenting on policy that has already been implemented that somehow violates some privilege, that just doesn't add up.

MR. ROBBINS: And I hope the Congressman will appreciate that I'm not making this objection, I'm just relaying --

MR. MEADOWS: What I'm saying is that objection in the obscure manner in which you're invoking it goes contrary to all the other testimony that she's been giving. You know, it's amazing, every hour you wake up, every other hour you wake up.

And so I think it's totally appropriate, the chairman, I believe, would agree, totally appropriate for her to give her personal professional opinion on Ukrainian policy.

THE CHAIRMAN: Let me just interject here.

The State Department has not provided counsel with any itemized list, as counsel requested, about what questions could be answered or could not. They chose not to give any guidance.

In light of that, it is the position of the chair that the question is appropriate and the witness should be permitted to answer it.

MR. MEADOWS: I thank the chairman.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Could you repeat the question?

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Basically trying to understand the difference in the Obama administration to the Trump administration in aid and support that was provided to Ukraine. You indicated -- you testified that you were in favor of lethal weapons. And I think I had asked, was it a heavy lift on your end or your allies to get the lethal weapons?

A  These are big decisions, and so properly there is a lot of discussion about it. And I can't compare, because I was not in those discussions in the Obama administration. But I think -- I'm trying to remember exactly when the President made the decision. But it was -- there was a long, a long lead up to it. I think it was a year and a half into the administration.

I also would say, these are big decisions, especially for a new administration.

Q  What was the rationale not to provide lethal weapons?

A  I think that some may have had concerns that it could be escalatory.

Q  But ultimately you felt that the lethal weapons were more important?

A  Are you asking for my opinion?

Q  Yes.

A  Yes. I felt that it was important, although it was also important -- I mean, I think, just to be clear, it's not like we were providing unlimited numbers of Javelins. We were providing a very set amount, and there are a lot fewer Javelins than there are Russian tanks.

So it was a symbolic message to Russia and also to the Ukrainians that we support Ukraine. And it was, I think, you know, every Russian tanker knew that those Javelins were coming to Ukraine -- or maybe were already in Ukraine -- and it gives them pause when they are given an order.

So I thought it was important that if this war became a tank war again, because it isn't right now, it was important that Ukraine have them at their disposal for that kind of massive onslaught. But its primary import was the symbolic message that it sent.

Q  Were you satisfied that the administration was doing what was necessary to support Ukraine?

A  In what respect?

Q  In, you know, helping them deter Russian aggression, helping them with foreign aid, foreign assistance?

A  Yeah.

Q  Was it enough?

A  I think that, you know, I was the ambassador to Ukraine, so you always want more, right? So I think on the nonmilitary side, we actually were sort of at capacity in terms of what the Ukrainian government, Ukrainian civil society could absorb.

I think on the other side, on the military security side, I think we were still exploring ways that we could provide additional assistance to Ukraine.

Q  But things were moving in the right direction. Is that a fair statement? Increasing?

A  Certainly in the interagency. And, yes, increasing.

Q  Were you encouraged by that?

A  Yes, I thought that was a positive.

Q  And so were you pleased with the direction the administration was heading with Ukraine policy?

A  On the official policy side everything seemed to be in order.

Q  And on the unofficial side?

A  Well, we had these other issues that were sending perhaps a contradictory message to the Ukrainians.

Q  But outside of the Lutsenko and the Giuliani?

A  Well, I have to say that it was, you know, people would ask me, are you being recalled?

Are you speaking for the President? Our country needs a representative, whether it's me or somebody else, that speaks for the administration.

Q  That didn't -- you mentioned earlier this morning that that didn't really take root until the fall of 2018. Is that fair? Or did it start happening earlier?

A  So --

Q  You had about 2 years, right, before the Lutsenko allegations really.

A  Yeah. So my understanding -- or one of the things I've heard, and maybe that's a rumor, is that the first meeting, we actually heard this from one of Mr. Lutsenko's deputies, that the first meeting between Mr. Lutsenko and Mayor Giuliani was actually in June of 2018. There was the Pete Sessions letter. There was, you know, as I now know, the President's concerns that started in the summer of 2018.

I think that, you know, since there seems to be a back channel, shall we say, between Ukrainian officials and American officials -- or American people -- I think that while I may not have been in the loop, I think others were.

Q  Backing up a little bit, what was Vice President Biden's role with Ukraine policy, to your knowledge?

A  He was --

Q  Did he have an official responsibility?

A  Well, he was the Vice President. And he was the one who sort of led the effort, an interagency effort on helping Ukraine after 2014, the Maidan (ph), pulling our assistance together, pulling our policy together. He was very active in terms of managing the relationship with President Poroshenko and with the prime minister.

Q  And you may have mentioned this when we were speaking before lunch, but when did the issues related to Burisma first get your attention? Was that as soon as you arrived in country?

A  Not really. I first became aware of it when I was being prepared for my Senate confirmation hearings. So I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of questions and answers and various other things.

And so there was one there about Burisma, and so, you know, that's when I first heard that word.

Q  Were there any other companies that were mentioned in connection with Burisma?

A  I don't recall.

Q  And was it in the general sense of corruption, there was a company bereft with corrupt?

A  The way the question was phrased in this model Q&A was, what can you tell us about Hunter Biden's, you know, being named to the board of Burisma?

Q  Once you arrived in country did the embassy staff brief you on issues relating to Burisma?

A  No, it was -- it was not -- I don't recall that I was briefed on that. But I was drinking from a fire hose when I arrived. I mean, there were a lot of things that were going on. And as we spoke before, Burisma and the Zlochevsky case was dormant. Not closed, but dormant.

[3:09 p.m.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Was it the general understanding that Burisma was a company Burisma was a company that suffered from allegations of corruption?

A  Yes.

Q  And it's -- the head of the company?

A  Mr. Zlochevsky?

Q  Yes, the former minister.

A  What about him?

Q  That he had at various times been under investigation.

A  Yes.

Q  And was that characteristic of other oligarchs in the Ukraine, or was that specific to him?

A  Well, it is characteristic that there are --

Q  Are they all under investigation? Do they all battle allegations of corruption or --

A  They all battle allegations of corruption. Some of them are investigated, some for cause, some because it's an easy way, as we discussed before, to put forward political pressure on your political opponents. So yeah.

Q  Did Burisma ever come up in your meetings with Lutsenko?

A  I don't believe so. I mean, to the best of my recollection, I don't think so.

Q  So subsequently, when Lutsenko raised issues of Burisma, that caught you by surprise?

A  Yeah.

Q  Did Lutsenko mention any other companies in his -- you know, in his allegation that --

A  I don't believe so.

Q  -- you know, he was given instruction not to investigate?

A  I don't believe so.

Q  Did anyone at the State Department -- when you were coming on board as the new ambassador, did anyone at the State Department brief you about this tricky issue, that Hunter Biden was on the board of this company and the company suffered from allegations of corruption, and provide you guidance?

A  Well, there was that Q&A that I mentioned.

Q  But once you became the ambassador, did you have any debriefings with the State Department that alerted you to this, what could be a tricky issue?

A  No. It was, as I mentioned, it just wasn't a front burner issue at the time.

Q  And did it ever become front burner?

A  Well, only when Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Lutsenko kind of raised it to what you see now, starting with that Hill interview.

Q  You talked about the Vice President, Vice President Biden's advocating for the removal of Shokin, among other institutions. The IMF was advocating for his removal, you mentioned. Did the -- did anyone ever formally call for Lutsenko's resignation in the same public way, whether it was the IMF or --

A  I don't believe so.

Q  Okay. And can you account for why that is? Is it because Lutsenko wasn't quite as bad as Shokin, or it just hadn't -- it hadn't reached the dramatic climax there?

A  Well, as I mentioned before, when you asked me this question, I think that, you know, we were hopeful in the beginning that we could have a really good working relationship with him. He had three goals that he wanted to pursue, and so, we were hopeful in the beginning, even though we weren't seeing progress.

And then, of course, it got closer to Presidential elections. It was pretty clear that Mr. Zelensky was going to win, which he did. And we were hopeful that he would replace Mr. Lutsenko, which he has done.

The other thing I would say is that, you know, as I said before, you know, it's -- these are -- to use your phrase, these are heavy lifts, and you need to make sure that the international community is speaking with one voice and you have to have a certain amount of leverage to do it, because Mr. Lutsenko was a close -- I mean, not without controversy, but he had a close working relationship with President Poroshenko.

Q  When you called for the removal of Kholodnitsky in March, could you -- and I know I asked you this this morning, and I apologize for asking you again, if you think I am, but could you just walk us through all the facts that you had that led to your decision to call for his removal, to the extent you can remember them.

Obviously, this is earlier this year, many months have elapsed, but if you could just walk us through the thought process there, I think that might be helpful.

A  Yeah. We were very concerned that there was a tape, which he acknowledged was genuine, and that everybody would understand once the circumstances were out, where he is coaching witnesses for how to avoid prosecution, et cetera, in anticorruption cases that, as I understood it, were in front of both NABU and his office.

That seemed to us -- not just to us but to the entire international community and any Ukrainian that was paying attention, to be beyond the pale. I mean, this is a man who was put in his position to fight corruption, and yet there he is on tape coaching witnesses how to obstruct justice.

And so there was a process that the Ukrainian Government went through. Mr. Lutsenko, in the end, made a decision that, you know, he was not going to remove Mr. Kholodnitsky. And I would say that it really undermined the credibility of the special anticorruption prosecutor when you have the guy who's there at the top not holding true to the mission of that office.

Q  Was there any blow-back to your call for removal?

A  Yes. There was -- there was a lot of criticism.

Q  On which different fronts?

A  Well, the -- Kholodnitsky himself, as you can imagine, was not happy with that. There were -- you know, there was other criticism in kind of pro-Poroshenko, pro-administration media and so forth.

Civil society, others who, you know, perhaps are more genuine in their desires to transform Ukraine, were very happy. So, you know, as always, in any controversy, there's two sides.

Q  And your decision to call for the removal, was that something that was the product of just people on -- you know, U.S. officials in country, or was that something you socialized with Washington before you did it?

A  I believe -- you know, I'm forgetting now, but I believe I socialized it with Washington. If I didn't, somebody else did.

Q  And was it more of a heads-up or is that something you need to get authorization for?

A  I think it was more of a heads-up.

Q  But nobody expressed any concerns?

A  No.

MR. CASTOR: I want to pivot to Mr. Zeldin.

Twenty-two minutes.

MR. ZELDIN: Ambassador, going back to page 6 of your opening statement this morning, we discussed the bullet starting with "as for events during my tenure in Ukraine." And there was a brief discussion to follow in question and answer with regards to which cases you did, in fact, end up asking the government to refrain from investigating or prosecuting, and the NABU case was the only specific case that was referenced in that Q&A this morning.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: And if I may just correct the record, that I think what I said is there was a discussion. I don't believe I have ever said, you know, don't prosecute this individual. But what I did say is that it's important to do these things according to the rule of law and not on a politically motivated basis.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you recall how many cases you discussed with Ukraine?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

MR. ZELDIN: Was the NABU -- can you give us an estimate? I mean, are we talking about 5, 20, 50, 100?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Honestly, I don't know. And as I told your colleague, the -- most of the relationship with any of these law enforcement offices was not -- that's not what I did. There were others in the embassy, whether it was the FBI, whether it was other State Department officers, other agencies. They were the ones who handled those relationships.

MR. ZELDIN: But in addition to the NABU case, did you discuss any other individual cases with Ukraine?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah, probably.

MR. ZELDIN: And can you estimate? Are we talking about five or are we talking about 5,000? Can you give us some perspective as to how many individual cases you discussed with Ukraine?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, it certainly isn't 5,000. I wish there were that many cases on anticorruption in Ukraine. But honestly, I don't know, and I don't want to mislead you.

MR. ZELDIN: But the number is more than one, but you can't tell us anything beyond that?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes, that is correct.

MR. ZELDIN: And when you would discuss individual cases with Ukraine, how would you reference the case in your conversation? Earlier, there was back-and-forth where you stated that there was -- you don't recall ever discussing an entity and you only recall discussing a name once. So how would you reference the case in your conversation with Ukraine if you weren't referencing it by entity or name?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, earlier, what we were specifically talking about was the allegations against me, that I was giving instructions not to prosecute, right? So when you asked the question, you were asking did we talk about cases. That's a different set of circumstances.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. I'm asking how many cases, individual cases did you speak to Ukraine about? The only answer I've been able to get so far is that the answer is more than one. You can't recall ever referencing entities in that conversation, and you only recall referencing a name once. So I'm asking, in that conversation with Ukraine about individual cases, how did you reference the case if you weren't referring to entity or name?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I mean, I'm sorry, I don't -- I can't answer your question. I don't know.

MR. ZELDIN: Did you use case numbers? Did you -- was there code? How did you reference these individual -- how did you have a conversation with Ukraine about an individual case, not referencing name or entity?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I mean, I -- ask me again. I just don't know what you're trying to get at.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. You stated that you spoke to Ukraine about individual cases of corruption. You stated that you spoke to them about more than one case, but you don't know how many cases. How did you engage in a conversation with Ukraine on -- how did you reference an individual case with Ukraine if you weren't referencing entity or name?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So here’s the thing: I know that we spent a lot of today talking about anticorruption cases. That’s not the whole universe out there. So when I spoke to you about Mr. Sytnyk in that respect, I mean, that is what I recall in that sphere, but I know there were other areas. And how would we have referred to it? Certainly not by case number, I'm not in the weeds like that, but by somebody's name. But --

MR. ZELDIN: How many corruption cases -- aside from NABU, did you speak to Ukraine about other corruption cases?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, at this point, I only recall that -- you know, and in this context where you are asking me whether -- or one of you was asking me whether I told people not to prosecute, right? So, in that context, what I recall now is the conversation with regard to Mr. Sytnyk.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. But just to clarify so that there's no misunderstanding, my question is, how many individual cases did you speak to Ukraine about related to corruption? Is your answer one, or is your answer more than one?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: You know, at this point, I can't recall anything else.

MR. ZELDIN: To clarify one other thing about your opening statement, turning to page 7, the next bullet after the one that we were just discussing, there's a sentence that said: I have heard the allegation in the media that I supposedly told the embassy team to ignore the President's orders, quote, "since he was going to be impeached." That allegation is false.

Just to clarify, so we understand the wording of your opening statement, when you say, "that allegation is false," is that specifically with regards to that quote, or are you saying that you never told the embassy team to ignore the President's orders?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Both. I never told anybody in the embassy or anyplace else to ignore the President's orders. That would be wrong.

MR. ZELDIN: That's why I'm asking the question, just so we're on the same page. Go ahead.

MR. ROBBINS: She hadn't finished her answer. Are you done?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah. I just I guess also wanted to say that I certainly never said that the President was going to be impeached, because I didn't believe that at the time, I mean, you know, when I was still in Ukraine.

MR. ZELDIN: Thank you. I wanted to understand what you were saying when you said the allegation is false, to make sure you weren't specifically just referring to your quote and you were, in fact, talking about --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Thank you for clarifying.

MR. ZELDIN: Have you read the July 25th transcript of the call between President Trump and President Zelensky?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: And did you read what President Zelensky had to say about you?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: When did you first meet President Zelensky?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: In September of 2018.

MR. ZELDIN: And how would you characterize your relationship with President Zelensky?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I mean, I didn't meet him often enough to have, you know, kind of a relationship, but I thought that we were off to a good start. I met with him for over an hour on the 20th of April, the day before the final round of Presidential elections.

All of us thought that that was a really positive sign of, you know, Ukrainian -- the new administration's, because we were pretty sure he was going to win, interest in a strong relationship with the United States. And so I thought it was a pretty good relationship.

MR. ZELDIN: So President Zelensky, as you know, in the transcript didn't have some nice things to say about you. He referred to you as, quote, "a bad ambassador." This is going to be hard to hear, but in order to ask the question. Quote: Her attitude towards me was far from the best, as she admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as a new President well enough.

Is there anything in your interactions with President Zelensky directly that you recall that would support that statement of President Zelensky?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No. I was very surprised by that statement.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you know where President Zelensky formed his opinion about your loyalty to the prior ambassador, your attitude towards President Zelensky, calling you a bad ambassador? Do you know where President Zelensky got that from?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I have no idea.

MR. ZELDIN: And how would you characterize your relationship with Poroshenko?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Complicated.

MR. ZELDIN: Did you get along with him? Was it cordial, adversarial?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: It was cordial, but I think he believed that I was insufficiently supportive, that I -- I and the embassy talked too much about the things that still needed to be done without giving proper credit with the things that had been done and had been accomplished.

MR. ZELDIN: How would you characterize your relationship with former Vice President Biden?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I mean, I've met him, I don't know, a handful of times over, you know, the years that I've been in government service.

MR. ZELDIN: What was the closest that you've worked with Vice President Biden? What position? When? When did you have that opportunity to interact with him the most?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Probably when I was ambassador to Ukraine in the waning days of the Obama administration, where there -- I only met him once in that period of time in January of 2017, his last trip to Ukraine.

But there were phone calls between former Vice President Biden and the Prime Minister and the President, and so there would be preparatory calls to, you know, get him up to speed on the issues, and then we would often be on the line as well.

MR. ZELDIN: Earlier, you were asked about Burisma and Hunter Biden. Vice President Biden was the point man for relationships between the Obama administration and Ukraine. Were you aware at that time of Hunter Biden's role with Burisma?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes. As I mentioned, I became aware during the Q&A in the prep for my testimony.

MR. ZELDIN: Were you aware of just how much money Hunter Biden was getting paid by Burisma?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No, I wasn't aware of that.

MR. ZELDIN: Did you know that he was getting paid by Burisma?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I can't say that as a fact, but I assumed he was.

MR. ZELDIN: You have -- you now know that Hunter Biden was getting paid money from Burisma for his position?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes, according to the news reports.

MR. ZELDIN: But while you were serving with Vice President Biden, you were not aware of, at any point, Hunter Biden being paid for that position?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, as I said, I assumed he was since it is, you know, corporate practice that you pay board members, but this was not, as we discussed earlier -- Burisma wasn't a big issue in the fall of 2018 -- 2016, when I arrived.

MR. ZELDIN: When you state that Burisma, the investigation was dormant, if I understand your testimony at the beginning of the day, you base that word from press reports that you read?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah, but I think there was also -- you know, I think there was other -- other information, and I don't recall exactly what. But the impression that I had was that it wasn't closed because it was convenient to -- it was a convenient lever to put pressure on Burisma or the owner of the company.

MR. ZELDIN: What's your source outside of press reports?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't recall.

MR. ZELDIN: Is it possible that you didn't -- I'm trying to understand, because -- I'm trying to understand your testimony, because earlier in the day you said that, based on press reports, your understanding was that it was dormant. You may have had additional information it was dormant, or you don't know?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes. And all I can tell you is it was a long time ago and it just wasn't a big issue.

MR. ZELDIN: So I just want to understand your position. Obviously, you knew that Burisma was dormant, based on press reports. That was what you stated earlier.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Uh-huh.

MR. ZELDIN: But you're saying that you may have had other information, but you don't recall that now?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I may have had other information, but I don't recall how I had that impression that it was being used as a lever to turn the pressure on and off. Maybe that, too, came from the press, or maybe it was, you know, somebody who told me that. I just don't recall.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware of a May 4th, 2018, letter sent to Lutsenko from three Senate Democrats, Menendez, Leahy, and Durbin?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: 2018?

MR. ZELDIN: May 4th of 2018?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Can you refresh my memory?

MR. ZELDIN: May 4th, 2018, there was a letter sent to the prosecutor general from three Democratic Members of the United States Senate: Robert Menendez, Patrick Leahy, and Richard Durbin.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Zeldin, can you show her the letter?

MR. ZELDIN: Yes, we can enter it into an exhibit if we want to make a copy if we want to pause the time.

THE CHAIRMAN: Do you have only the one copy?

MR. ZELDIN: I would be happy if there's a way to make a copy, we can formally enter it into as an exhibit.

So we'll come back to the question with regards to May 4, 2018. I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Jordan.

MR. JORDAN: Ambassador, so in your testimony on page 4, you talk about two wars, the war with Russia and, of course, the war on corruption, which we've talked a lot about today. I just want to make sure I got everything straight from the first hour with questioning from, I believe, Mr. Goldman and maybe Mr. Castor.

So Shokin and Poroshenko were good friends. You said they were godfather to each other's children.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: Right?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: And Mr. Shokin is a bad guy. Everyone, I think you said that pretty much the whole darn world wanted him fired. Is that right?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes. And just to recall, that was before I arrived.

MR. JORDAN: But then the guy they replaced him with is also a friend of Mr. -- of the President, right?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't know if they're friends in the same way, but they've certainly, you know, been political allies for a great many years, on and off.

MR. JORDAN: I think you said in the first hour this morning, you said Mr. Lutsenko is cut from the same cloth as Mr. Shokin. Is that right?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: And you've indicated here several times that Mr. Lutsenko is not the kind of prosecutor we want when you're dealing with a war on corruption.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That's certainly my opinion.

MR. JORDAN: In your testimony, your written testimony, you said that in oligarch-dominated Ukraine, where corruption is not just prevalent, it is the system -- so this is like this is as important as it gets. So the one bad guy goes, the other bad guy comes in, and Mr. Poroshenko is the guy responsible for both of these bad guys being the top guy to deal with corruption. Is that fair?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Uh-huh.

MR. JORDAN: Then, as Mr. Zeldin indicated --

THE CHAIRMAN: I'm sorry, can you just say yes or no?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: As Mr. Zeldin indicated -- oh, in your statement then on the same page, you said: In the 2019 Presidential election, you got this reformer coming along who has made ending corruption his number one priority. See that on page 4, middle of page 4?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Uh-huh.

MR. JORDAN: And that's referring to current President Zelensky. Is that right?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That's correct.

MR. JORDAN: So this is like this is what you want, this is the guy. You got Poroshenko, who had Shokin, who’s bad, Lutsenko he replaced him with, who's just as bad, cut from the same cloth. And now you get a guy elected who is as good as it gets, right?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, let me just recast that, if possible, and if my counsel allows. So just as I don't believe Ukrainians should be interfering in our elections, I don't think Americans should be interfering in Ukrainian elections.

MR. JORDAN: I'm not asking that. I'm just saying -- I'm just looking at what you said. You said, this guy Zelensky's number one priority, what he ran the entire campaign on was ending corruption. Fair enough?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That's what he said, but let me just tell you, assuming I can say this, what my advice was to the State Department, that we don't -- you know, we can’t really make -- there were many people very comfortable with Mr. Poroshenko. But we don't have either the pull nor should we try to indicate in any way that we have favorites, number one.

Number two, all three of the top candidates -- there was also Yuliya Timoshenko, who you probably know. All three of the top candidates are flawed in some way, as, you know, frankly, all of us are. But we could probably work with each of them. And that what we need to do in the preelectoral period is to -- somebody, I think you asked, you know, how do we do that outreach during campaigns and everything.

We need to keep those lines open so that whoever wins, we will be able to get in through the door and start advancing our -- continuing our advances, if it was Poroshenko, of the advance of U.S. interests, or start advancing those interests with new partners. So that's what was the most important thing. So we didn't have a dog in that fight. I just want to make that clear.

MR. JORDAN: I'm not asking that. I'm just saying, this guy comes along, runs a campaign base, on your testimony, your written testimony, that his number one focus was dealing with corruption, and he wins overwhelmingly. So he wins, he gets elected, and yet, when he's having a call with the President of the United States, he says he's glad you're being recalled.

And I'm wondering, like, how does that happen? The guy who is all about dealing with anticorruption and focused on that who wins a major overwhelming win, how does he form that judgment if that has been the entire focus and, as you say, an actual war that goes on in his country dealing with corruption?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't know. As I told you before, everybody before, I was very surprised, because I thought we had a good beginning to a good relationship.

MR. JORDAN: But I think you said to Mr. Goldman, you thought he was responding to what President Trump said to him when he said that you were bad news. Is that -- you said that earlier?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I think there's a certain element to that.

MR. JORDAN: But he didn't just -- it seems to me if he was responding that way, he would say, okay, Mr. President, I agree with you, but he didn't say that. He said, she admired the previous President and was on his side. And you just told me you don't do that.

So I'm wondering how the current President of Ukraine felt that you were on the side of Mr. Poroshenko and said this to the President of the United States.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I have no idea, because I think if you ask President Poroshenko, he would not agree with that statement.

THE CHAIRMAN: The time is expired. Would you like to take a little break?

MR. ROBBINS: Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Why don't we take about a 5- or 10-minute break.

[Recess.]

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay, let's go back on the record.

I just had a couple follow-up questions and then I want to pass it over to Mr. Mitchell.

My colleague in the minority asked you if official policy towards the Ukraine was, in your view, good policy, and I think you said that it was. Is that right?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And, indeed, you were the spokesperson for that official policy?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: I think what you've described, though, is the problem wasn't the official policy. The problem was the unofficial or back channel being executed by Mr. Giuliani, his associates, and possibly others. Was that the issue?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes. It complicated things.

THE CHAIRMAN: And it complicated things, not the least in part because the message you were advocating, as the representative of the United States, was, Ukraine, you should be fighting corruption; and here you had people that were potentially engaging in corruption, advocating through a back channel to the White House?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So when we say "people," are we talking about Ukrainian people?

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, it may involve Ukrainian people, but if the policy of the United States is not to be engaging in political prosecutions or political investigations, and you have a lawyer for the President advocating with Ukrainian officials to do exactly that, to engage in political investigations and prosecutions, didn't that run directly contrary to U.S. policy and an anticorruption message?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I believe it did.

THE CHAIRMAN: I also wanted to ask you, Mr. Zeldin read you a portion of the call record in which he quoted the call record as saying, referring to you: Her attitude towards me was far from the best, as she admired the previous President, et cetera. Mr. Zeldin didn't read you the line immediately before that, so let me read that to you. President Zelensky says: It was great that you were the first one who told me that she was a bad ambassador, because I agree with you 100 percent.

Now, do you know whether President Zelensky is referring to the fact that the President had brought you up in the conversation first, or whether the President had brought you up in a prior conversation?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't know. I had assumed it was the April 21st phone call, that first phone call, because that, to my knowledge, is the only time -- other time that they talked. But you're right, I mean, maybe it could be earlier in this transcript.

THE CHAIRMAN: Do you know whether part of the reason you didn't get a readout of the first call may have involved the President bashing you in the first call?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: It's possible.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, President Zelensky desperately wanted a meeting with the President at the White House, didn't he?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And that kind of a meeting is important for a new President to show they have a relationship with the U.S. President?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And this is at a time in which Ukraine is militarily dependent on the United States?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Economically dependent on the United States?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: To a certain extent, yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Diplomatically dependent on the United States?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: We are the most important partner for Ukraine.

THE CHAIRMAN: And because we're the most important partner for Ukraine, the President is the most important person in that partnership with the United States?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: So maintaining, establishing a relationship is really important to this new President Zelensky?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Critical.

THE CHAIRMAN: And does President Zelensky, therefore, in this conversation, have an incentive to agree with the President?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes, I think so.

THE CHAIRMAN: And if he believes that the President doesn't like the former U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine, does it make sense for him to express his agreement with the President?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah, absolutely, especially since I was already gone.

THE CHAIRMAN: And prior to this call, there had been an effort to get Ukraine to initiate two investigations that would be politically beneficial to the President, one involving the 2016 election and one involving the Bidens. Is that right?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And those efforts you now can tell us involved Rudy Giuliani and some of his associates?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So yes, I think that's true. Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: My colleague will ask you more questions about this, but at the time that this was going on -- and most of our questions to you have been what you knew at the time that this was going on when you were the ambassador. You now know a lot more has come out since and text messages and whatnot.

Generally, what can you tell us now, looking back on what was going on that you only dimly understood, what can you tell us now that was going on in the run-up to this call?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I -- I mean, I don't have -- I mean, since I wasn't there, I mean, I left May 20th, and this -- of course, this phone call took place 2 months later. So I -- I can't actually really tell you beyond what I've seen of the texts back and forth and so forth that, you know, this investigation unearthed.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, when you got recalled as ambassador, were you replaced as ambassador?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Bill Taylor, Ambassador Bill Taylor went out as Charge.

THE CHAIRMAN: And what was Ambassador Sondland's role?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Ambassador Sondland is, of course, our ambassador to the EU, and he took a special interest in Ukraine and Georgia I know. I don't know whether he took on other countries.

THE CHAIRMAN: And had he taken on that interest while you were still there or that happened after you left?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: It started while I was still there. And he came in February. He and Ambassador Volker sort of put together a delegation of EU important figures to come to Odessa, Ukraine, when we had a ship visit. And so, that was actually a really good initiative to show the U.S. and Europe together supporting Ukraine. This, as you will recall, was several months after the Russians seized three ships and the 21 sailors.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Mitchell.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  Good afternoon.

A  Hi.

Q  You testified earlier that the first time you became aware of the May 2018 letter from then-Congressman Sessions was the following year in approximately late March of 2019, as a result of the John Solomon article in The Hill. Is that correct?

A  That is correct.

MR. HECK: Mr. Mitchell, please pull the mic closer.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  Are you aware of the reporting that Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman, who we've discussed earlier are associates of Mr. Giuliani, had dinner with Congressman Sessions the day that that letter was sent?

A  Well, I've become aware of reporting to that effect recently.

Q  And you testified earlier that you learned from, I believe, a deputy of Mr. Lutsenko that there were rumors that Mr. Giuliani had met with Mr. Lutsenko sometime in the summer of 2018. Is that correct?

A  Yes.

Q  That's around the same time that Congressman Sessions sent this letter about you?

A  Yes.

Q  You also testified earlier today about a meeting that you had, I believe, with Mr. Giuliani in approximately June of 2017. Is that right?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  In connection with the Victor Pinchuk Foundation?

A  Yes.

Q  And you indicated obviously, Mr. Giuliani was there and you were there?

A  Yes.

Q  Was Mr. Poroshenko there as well?

A  No.

[Majority Exhibit No. 1

was marked for identification.]

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  I'm going to hand you a press release from the Pinchuk fund. I'm going to mark it as Majority Exhibit No. 1. Take your time reading it, ma'am, but I'm going to direct your attention to the very last paragraph.

A  [Witness reviewed the document.]

Q  So I'm going to direct your attention to the very last paragraph. This is a point that I think we can quickly dispatch with. It says: Besides giving the lecture, Rudy Giuliani met with the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, the Prime Minister, the Kyiv mayor, as well as Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Yuriy Lutsenko. Do you see that?

A  Yes, I do.

Q  Were you part of that meeting?

A  No.

Q  Were you aware that Mr. Giuliani met with Mr. Lutsenko in connection with this Victor Pinchuk Foundation?

A  I don't think I knew that.

Q  Have you seen the indictment against Mr. Parnas, Mr. Fruman, and others that was unsealed yesterday, I believe it was?

A  I haven't read it, but I've read about it.

[Majority Exhibit No. 2

was marked for identification.]

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  I'm going to hand you Majority Exhibit No. 2, and, again, I'm going to direct you to particular spots in the indictment. I'm going to start the bottom of page 7. Paragraph 17, are you there?

A  Yes.

Q  It says in the middle: These contributions were made for the purpose of getting influence with politicians so as to advance their own personal financial interests and the political interests of Ukrainian Government officials.

A  I'm sorry, where are you reading?

Q  Page 7, paragraph 17.

A  Okay. I'm with you now.

MR. ROBBINS: You're starting in the middle of a sentence.

MR. MITCHELL: Correct.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  I'll start at the beginning: Much as with the contributions described above, these contributions were made for the purpose of gaining influence with politicians so as to advance their own personal financial interests and the political interests of Ukrainian Government officials, including at least one Ukrainian Government official with whom they were working.

Do you know who the Ukrainian Government officials with whom they were working?

A  No.

Q  On page 8, the following page, the paragraph in the middle, it's paragraph number 1. It says: At and around the same time Parnas and Fruman committed to raising those funds for Congressman 1, Parnas met with Congressman 1 and sought Congressman l's assistance in causing the U.S. Government to remove or recall the then U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, the ambassador. Do you understand that reference to be to you?

A  I do.

Q  And then the next sentence says: Parnas' efforts to remove the ambassador were conducted, at least in part, at the request of one or more Ukrainian Government officials.

Do you know who those one or more Ukrainian Government officials are?

A  No.

Q  What was your reaction when you first saw these allegations concerning you in this indictment?

A  Again, I mean, just feel shock.

Q  Do you have any reason to believe that the Ukrainian Government officials referenced here could involve Mr. Lutsenko?

A  I think that would be a good guess.

Q  Now, you testified earlier, with regard to Mr. Lutsenko, that the Burisma investigation was dormant -and I might have written this down incorrectly, but I want to make sure I have it correct -- because it was useful to have that hook I think is what I wrote down. Do I have that right?

A  Yes.

Q  What did you mean by that?

A  That because -- because Ukraine is not yet a rule of law country, prosecutions are used as leverage over people for -- to acquire funds, to get them to do certain things or whatever. And so, if you have a case that is not completely closed, it's always there as a way of keeping somebody, as I said before, on the hook. That was, you know, something that I had understood by that phrase "dormant."

Q  So it could keep Burisma on the hook?

A  Yes.

Q  It could keep anyone involved in Burisma on the hook?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  You have to answer yes or no.

A  Yes. Yes.

Q  And it could keep anyone interested in the investigation on the hook?

A  What do you mean by that?

Q  So if Mr. Lutsenko, as I believe you are suggesting -- correct me if I'm wrong -- had the Burisma investigation in his back pocket, and that he had the authority or the power to revive the investigation at will --

A  Yes.

Q  -- he could use that as a hook to, or as leverage against Burisma, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  Against people involved with Burisma --

A  Yes.

Q  -- or people who would actually want that investigation to go forward?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  Is that correct?

A  Yeah.

Q  You testified a little bit about the July 25th call.

A  Yes.

Q  And that was long after you had left --

A  Yes.

Q  -- the ambassadorship in Ukraine, and since you've been working at Georgetown. Is that correct?

A  Yes.

Q  When did you first learn of the contents of the July 25th call between President Trump and President Zelensky?

A  The day it was made public, like about 2 weeks ago, by the White House.

Q  What about the general subject matter of that call? Did you learn anything about what was discussed between the two Presidents from sources other than simple press reporting?

A  Yes. In passing, Deputy Assistant George Kent had mentioned that there was this phone call.

Q  And did Deputy Assistant George Kent say anything about what took place during that call?

A  He -- I mean, I'm trying to recall now exactly what he said, but he -- he did indicate that there had been a request by the President for assistance, as we now know, but my understanding of that conversation with Mr. Kent was that President Zelensky had not sort of agreed, and that he noted that, you know, it was the previous administration that was responsible for some of these things and that he was going to have his own prosecutor.

Q  And what was your reaction to Mr. Kent's recitation of the substance of this call?

A  My reaction was that, you know, to be frank, a little bit of dismay that President Trump had made those requests. And I was happy that President Zelensky had apparently not acceded.

Q  And, again, that was based on information that Mr. Kent had provided to you and what you believed to be the truth at the time?

A  Yes.

Q  And since then, you've read a copy of the rough transcript of that call?

A  Yes.

Q  And it turns out that Mr. Kent's recitation was inaccurate at least in one regard. Is that right?

A  Yeah. I mean, I think there's room for interpretation, but yeah, I now have a different view.

Q  And do you happen to have a copy of that call in front of you now?

A  Yes. This call, is that what you're talking about?

MR. GOLDMAN: Yes. It's marked as an exhibit.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No, that's our copy.

MR. MITCHELL: Let’s go ahead and mark it.

MR. ROBBINS: You're not going to mark our copy.

MR. MITCHELL: No. We'll go ahead and mark it as exhibit No. 3.

[Majority Exhibit No. 3

was marked for identification.]

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  Prior to me getting to the text of this call, what was Mr. Kent's reaction to the substance of the call when you had that initial discussion about it?

A  So just to clarify, he was not on the call so he was getting, you know, readouts, et cetera. I think he thought it was, you know, a relatively positive reaction from the Ukrainian President.

Q  So, in other words, the fact that President Zelensky did not accede to this request by President Trump was viewed positively by both you and Mr. Kent?

A  Yes.

Q  I'll take you to page 3 of the call. And President Trump at the bottom says: Good, because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that's really unfair.

Do you know -- who do you believe President Trump was talking about when he said, you had a prosecutor who was very good and was shut down?

A  Well, I don't know, but I believe that it's Mr. Lutsenko.

Q  Mr. Lutsenko was still in office at the time of this call, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  But had Mr. -- excuse me, President Zelensky announced by the time of this call, July 25th, that Mr. Lutsenko was going to be replaced?

A  Yes, I believe he had.

Q  Do you have any opinion as to why you believe that President Trump would speak positively about Mr. Lutsenko?

A  I mean, the only thing I can conclude is that he had been told good things about Mr. Lutsenko.

Q  By people who had possibly met with Mr. Lutsenko?

A  Uh-huh. Yes.

Q  Like Mr. Giuliani?

A  Most likely.

Q  Do you know whether anyone in the State Department at the time had generally a positive view of Mr. Lutsenko?

A  Well, you know, it's hard to speak for everybody, but certainly the people that I knew did not have a good opinion of Mr. Lutsenko.

Q  For all the reasons that you testified about earlier?

A  Uh-huh.

THE CHAIRMAN: Yes?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes. Excuse me.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  So despite President Trump's comments to President Zelensky, wouldn't Mr. Lutsenko's removal have been viewed positively by your colleagues at the Department of State?

A  Yes.

Q  On page 2, going back a page, at the bottom, the very bottom, last sentence, it says: We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps. Specifically, we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes. And that's President Zelensky, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  And you testified a little bit earlier about Javelins being U.S.-made anti-tank missiles. Is that right?

A  Yes.

Q  Made by Raytheon?

A  Yes.

Q  If you know, did the Ukrainians believe that it was important for them to have Javelins for their own defense?

A  Yes, they thought it was important.

Q  And were you involved, when you were ambassador to Ukraine, about any discussions involving providing Javelins to the United States -- or, excuse me, to Ukraine?

A  Yes.

Q  And I believe you testified earlier that you were supportive of providing those. Is that correct?

A  Yes.

Q  Because it was not only in Ukraine's best interests, but it was also in the best interests of the United States as well for Ukrainians to have these anti-tank missiles. Is that correct?

A  I thought it strengthened the bilateral relationship and sent a powerful signal of our support for Ukraine.

Q  Then immediately after President Zelensky mentions the Javelins, on the top of page 3, President Trump mentions CrowdStrike, and then he also says, The server, they say Ukraine has it.

A  Yeah.

Q  Do you have any understanding of what the President was talking about there?

A  Well, I didn't at the time that I first read this summary, but obviously, there has been explanation in the news.

Q  And what's your understanding?

A  Well, that the server that was used to hack the DNC was somehow in Ukraine or moved to Ukraine, controlled by the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians then put out some sort of disinformation that it was Russia. And that this is what the President is referring to that it's important to get to the bottom of it.

Q  In that same paragraph he continues, and I'm not starting at the beginning of the sentence, but he mentions Robert Mueller and he says: They say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it if that’s possible. Do you see that?

A  Yes.

Q  Do you have any understanding of what the President is referring to there?

A  I think it's the belief that Ukraine was behind interference in our 2016 elections.

Q  And then President Trump continues at the top of page 4, and he mentions: The other thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that. So whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it. It sounds horrible to me. Do you see that?

A  Yes.

Q  And you testified earlier that your understanding here is that the President, President Trump, was encouraging President Zelensky to conduct an investigation involving Hunter Biden. Is that correct?

A  That's how I understood it.

Q  And what was your reaction when you saw this transcript for the first time, and particularly, these requests that we just went through by President Trump?

A  Well, I was surprised and dismayed.

Q  And in your experience, do U.S. Presidents typically ask foreign governments to conduct particular investigations like the ones that are requested here, or are they just general requests, such as fighting corruption, for example?

A  I think generally -- generally, there's preparation for phone calls and there are talking points that are prepared for the principal. And obviously, it's up to the principal whether they choose to, you know, keep it general, keep it more specific, whatever the case might be. But it's usually vetted and it's usually requests that would be in our national security interests, right?

[4:26 p.m.]

MR. MITCHELL: As opposed to the President's personal political interests?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Correct.

MR. MITCHELL: Which is what was happening on this call.

Is that correct?

MR. ROBBINS: Again, she was not present for this call. She was not the ambassador during this call. All she can do is interpret it as a reader after the fact, and I don't really think this is within the compass of her expertise.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  Well, based on your decades of experience, Ambassador, did you find this call and these requests to be outside of the norm?

A  Usually specific requests on prosecutions and investigations goes through the Department of Justice through our MLAT process. That's the mutual legal assistance treaty.

Q  Is it your understanding that that’s what happened here?

A  Well, as far as -- as far as I know, no.

Q  Also on page 4, at the top, President Trump said, "The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news, so I just want to let you know that."

Do you see that?

A  Yes.

Q  What was your reaction when you saw that?

A  Again, I hate to be repetitive, but I was shocked. I mean, I was very surprised that President Trump would -- first of all, that I would feature repeatedly in a Presidential phone call, but secondly, that the President would speak about me or any ambassador in that way to a foreign counterpart.

Q  At the bottom of that same page, President Trump says, "Well, she's going to go through some things."

What did you understand that to mean?

A  I didn't know what it meant. I was very concerned. I still am.

Q  Did you feel threatened?

A  Yes.

Q  Did you feel that you might be retaliated against?

A  You know, there's a universe of what it could mean. I don't know.

Q  Well, what did you interpret it to be?

A  Maybe. I was wondering -- you know, soon after this transcript came out there was the news that the IG brought to this committee, all sorts of documentation, I guess, about me that had been transferred to the FBI.

You know, I was wondering, is there an active investigation against me in the FBI? I don't know. I mean, I just simply don't know what this could mean, but it does not leave me in a comfortable position.

Q  Are you concerned about your employment?

A  Yes.

Q  Are you concerned about your pension?

A  Yes.

Q  Do you have concerns about your personal safety?

A  So far, no.

Q  But you hesitate in saying, "So far, no," or you condition that on what might happen in the future. So what --

A  Well, I would say a number of my friends are very concerned.

Q  You talked about earlier that you spoke to Mr. Kent prior to the release of this transcript. Have you spoken with anybody at the Department of State after the release of this transcript about this transcript?

A  Yes, but not anybody who is, like, working on these issues. So I have friends at the State Department who are not necessarily, you know, focused on these issues. So, yes, but not in a work context, if that's what you're asking.

Q  So you didn't speak to Mr. Kent, for example?

A  [Nonverbal response.]

Q  I'm sorry.

A  Oh, no, I did not.

Q  What about any Ukrainian officials that you may still be in contact with? Have you had an opportunity to talk to them about this call after it was released?

A  No. I mean, I have talked to Ukrainians, but not about this.

Q  When you read this call transcript, did you raise any concerns about the transcript through any sort of official channels with the Department of State?

A  No.

Q  And did anyone at the Department of State reach out to you about their concerns concerning this call after the transcript was released?

A  Yes.

Q  Other than the friends who don't work on these issues?

A  Yes.

Q  And who was that?

A  Mike McKinley.

Q  I'm sorry?

A  Mike McKinley.

Q  What was your conversation with Mr. McKinley about?

A  He wanted to see how I was doing, and he was concerned that there had been no outreach to me.

Q  And what --

A  I should also -- oh, yeah. He wanted to know how I was doing and he was concerned that there had been no outreach and no kind of public support from the Department.

I also wanted to say that that's from kind of a senior level. The European Bureau did have a deputy director of an office, of the Ukraine office, reach out to me. The deputy director of the Ukraine office was also instructed to reach out to me.

Q  Was also instructed to reach out to you?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  And what's the name of that individual?

A  Brad Freden.

Q  And who instructed Mr. Freden to reach out to you?

A  The principal deputy assistant secretary for EUR, so Phil Reeker's deputy.

Q  And can you just describe generally that conversation that you had with Mr. Freden?

A  Yeah. I mean, he called to see how I was doing -- you know, obviously we had worked very closely together before, when I was in Ukraine -- and said that, you know, everybody was concerned and wanted to see how I was doing and did I need anything.

Q  And did he have any sort of reaction about the call itself or was he just -- was he just reaching out to see how you were doing?

A  He was reaching out to see how I was doing.

Q  What about the conversation with Mr. McKinley?

A  He also wanted to see how I was doing, wanted to know, you know, kind of what communication with the Department had been like.

Q  Did you call -- did you discuss the contents of the call with Mr. McKinley?

A  I think, you know, if we did, it doesn't -- it doesn't come back to me. I mean, I think it was the meta of, you know, everything else that's going on.

Q  Have you spoken to Mr. McKinley about his resignation?

A  He called me before it became public to let me know.

Q  Other than just notifying you that this was going to happen, did he talk to you about why he was resigning?

A  Yes. He said that he was concerned about how the Department was handling, you know, this cluster of issues.

Q  Can you elaborate further, please?

A  I think he felt that the Department should stand by its officers.

Q  And was he referring to you in that regard?

A  Yes.

Q  Was he referring to others as well?

A  I think perhaps George Kent as well. And for all I know, there may have been others as well.

Q  Can you explain why he was referring to George Kent?

A  Well, he's also been asked to come and testify.

Q  All right. So Mr. Kent has been asked to testify, and Mr. McKinley indicated that he was disappointed that the Department was not standing behind its employees. Is that correct?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. So did he explain to you why he believed that the Department was not standing behind Mr. Kent?

A  He did. He noted that there had been a difficult conversation with the State Department lawyers and that George had shared that with him.

Q  A difficult conversation between the State Department lawyers and?

A  George Kent.

Q  And Mr. Kent. Okay. About coming to testify?

A  I think it was about the response to the subpoena for documents. I think that was the issue where there was a disagreement.

Q  What did Mr. McKinley say in that regard?

A  That he was concerned about the way George had been treated.

Q  But did he explain how George had been treated?

A  He said that there had been an argument and that he was going to, you know, share this further up, is what he said -- I don't know what "up" means or who that means -- and that -- because he didn't feet that ostracizing employees and bullying employees was the appropriate reaction from the Department.

Q  What was the argument?

A  I don't exactly know, but I do know that it had to do with the subpoena for documents.

Q  So Mr. McKinley didn't describe to you exactly the nature of the document -- or excuse me, the nature of the argument, simply that it was about the documents?

A  Yeah. And that George and at least one lawyer, perhaps more, had had a disagreement about that.

Q  Okay. And just to be clear, when we say "the documents" and you said disagreement about that, what we're talking about is a production of documents in response to a congressional request. Is that right?

A  Yes, I believe that's correct.

Q  And at the time -- when did you have this conversation with Mr. McKinley?

A  Well, it was the Sunday after -- actually, I think I'm conflating two conversations now.

I think he first just reached out to me, you know, as a human being, basically. And then I think he called me later, perhaps sometime midweek last week, maybe, to just share the information and ask me whether -- you know, how I was being treated.

Q  Okay. It was during this more recent conversation that you discussed this disagreement about the production of documents?

A  Right, right.

Q  So that would have been in response to a congressional subpoena. Is that correct?

A  Yes.

Q  And do you know whether the disagreement surrounded on whether the Department of State should produce documents in response to the subpoena?

A  Actually, I don't know.

Q  Do you know whether Kent was arguing for the production of documents?

A  I can't tell you. I don't know.

Q  Do you know whether the argument was at all related to whether Mr. Kent should come and testify before this committee?

A  He -- Mike didn't say that, so I don't know.

THE CHAIRMAN: If I can just interject with a question. Are you aware of any specific documents for which there was a concern that they may be provided to the committee?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No. I have been instructed by my lawyers --

MR. ROBBINS: Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Okay. Sorry.

THE CHAIRMAN: Any -- anything --

MR. ROBBINS: That's only one time an hour that I wake up.

THE CHAIRMAN: Any time a witness --

MR. ROBBINS: That's the moment.

MR. MEADOWS: Let the record reflect there was one time you woke up for the other side.

THE CHAIRMAN: I'll yield back to Mr. Mitchell.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  Without divulging any communications that you may have had with your attorney --

A  Okay. Yeah.

Q  -- have you had any disagreements with the Department of State about any production of documents concerning you?

A  No.

Q  All right.

A  But I should also say, I haven't had --

MR. ROBBINS: Ah.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Okay. All right.

MR. MITCHELL: Were you about to say that you have not had any conversations with the Department of State about these matters?

MR. ROBBINS: Her lawyers have done all the talking.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  I believe you said that -- I believe you used the word "bullying." Is that right?

A  Yes.

Q  What did you mean by that?

A  Well, it wasn't my word. It's what -- it's what Mike said.

Q  And in the context of the way in which Mr. McKinley used the word "bullying," what was your understanding of that term?

A  My understanding was that in this dispute, whatever it was between L, the legal people and Mr. Kent, that the lawyers bullied George. That was my understanding, but he didn't go into the details and I don't know what form that would have taken.

Q  All right. Did Mr. McKinley mention any other individuals from the Department of State who may have been involved in this dispute regarding the production of documents?

A  I can't recall whether he named anybody.

Q  Do you recall whether Mr. McKinley mentioned Secretary Pompeo during the course of this call?

A  Not -- not that I recall. I mean, no, I don't think he did.

Q  And you said that Mr. McKinley said that the Department is not supporting the employees. What did you understand that to mean?

A  Well, I think, you know, as we had discussed earlier, that there are all sorts of attacks and allegations out there, and the Department is not saying anything about it. That's very unusual if, in fact, there is no cause for my removal.

MR. MITCHELL: I think my time is up.

THE CHAIRMAN: And just to let Members know, we are going to turn the air back on. It's feast or famine here, and we're -- my staff tells me it started to smell like a locker room in here.

So we'll turn it over to the minority and we'll turn the air back on.

Mr. CASTOR: Mr. Jordan.

MR. JORDAN: Ambassador, last hour with Mr. Mitchell, you mentioned -- you were talking some about your conversation with George Kent.

What's George Kent's title again at the State Department?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the European Bureau.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. And you'd dealt with him before?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. JORDAN. Okay. And you officially left your duties in the Ukraine?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: May 20th.

MR. JORDAN. May 20th. And then when were you hired at Georgetown for the teaching position?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I took home leave, and I started on I think it was July 25th.

MR. JORDAN. July 25th. Okay. And Mr. -- yeah. That's interesting.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I hadn't actually made that connection.

MR. JORDAN. Mr. Mitchell said you talked to Mr. Kent about the call that President Trump had with President Zelensky. Is that right?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes, uh-huh.

MR. JORDAN. And can you give me the date of that conversation you had?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No. I mean, some time after that.

MR. JORDAN. Some time after what?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: After the call.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. And some time before September 25th?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: Was it in September? Was it in August? Was it in July?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't recall exactly, but it was probably some -- well, it might even have been in September.

I would say probably August, but I also know that they were on vacation, so maybe it was even in September.

MR. JORDAN. So you got a readout of what transpired -- you were not on the call.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

MR. JORDAN. Right? Mr. Kent was not on the call?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

MR. JORDAN. But you got a readout from what happened on the call prior to any of us in the public knowing about the contents of the call between President Trump and President Zelensky?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I think readout is a, you know, a big term.

MR. JORDAN. And you --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: He shared with me some -- some information about it.

MR. JORDAN. And you think that was in August or early September?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: [Nonverbal response.]

MR. JORDAN. So weeks before the -- September 25th, the date the rest of us got to see what was in that --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Right.

MR. JORDAN: -- and got the transcript and it was public. So you got that information weeks before?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. JORDAN. Why did you get that information? Did you have any other responsibilities with -- continuing responsibilities with Ukraine and your former position there?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

MR. JORDAN: Why would Mr. Kent share that with you?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I think he knows that I still care about the bilateral relationship and I'm still interested.

MR. JORDAN. Is that normal?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah. I mean, I think that -- that there are conversations about, you know, all sorts of things that take place.

MR. JORDAN. I guess what I'm asking is you got a call between two heads of state. You have certain staff, I assume NSC staff, some State Department staff, potentially Justice Department, I don't know who's all on that call, but it's probably not something that should be shared and probably not common knowledge. And yet the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State shares it with someone who is no longer involved with Ukraine, who's teaching a course at Georgetown. And I'm just wondering, is that -- has that ever happened before, to your knowledge?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I'm sure it has.

MR. JORDAN. Really?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah.

MR. JORDAN. People would just share the contents of two heads of states, the President of the United States' call with someone who's not working in that particular area?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I -- I mean, you're asking me my opinion.

MR. JORDAN. Okay.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So I'm sharing my opinion that I'm sure something like that has happened before.

MR. JORDAN: Did anyone else talk to you about the contents of the call between President Trump and President Zelensky prior to September 25th when it was made public?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

MR. JORDAN. Did Mr. Kent say that he had shared this information with anyone else prior to when the rest of the country got to see it?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No. I mean, I don't think he said that.

MR. JORDAN. Okay.

MR. CASTOR: Have you talked to anybody else about your testimony?

MR. ROBBINS: I'm sorry. Could I hear that question again?

MR. CASTOR: Have you talked to anybody else at the State Department since you've been invited to testify about some of the facts here?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No. But I was subpoenaed to testify.

MR. JORDAN. Hey, Steve, just give me one second. Just a quick follow. I apologize, Steve.

That call is classified? The call between President Trump and President Zelensky, do you know if it was unclassified at the time that he shared information about the contents of the call?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't know.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Other than with your lawyer, who have you had discussions with about your testimony today?

A  My brother. My brother has come up --

Q  And your family members. I'm sorry. I don't want to ask you about discussions with your family.

A  Yes. I have not discussed my testimony with anybody.

Q  Okay. So since you've been invited to testify, or subpoenaed -- initially it was a voluntary invite and then it turned into a subpoena -- you haven't had any discussions with the key players?

A  No.

MR. CASTOR: I want to mark as exhibit -- are we up to 4?

MR. GOLDMAN: Yes.

MR. CASTOR: And we don't need to do majority, minority? We just call it No. 4?

MR. GOLDMAN: We're all friends.

MR. ROBBINS: Sorry. Could we have just one moment?

Mr. CASTOR: Sure.

[Discussion off the record.]

[Majority Exhibit No. 4

was marked for identification.]

MR. ROBBINS: I have a -- for minority counsel.

MR. CASTOR: Sure.

MR. ROBBINS: The witness would like to expand on a prior answer --

Mr. CASTOR: Of course.

MR. ROBBINS: -- that she gave a moment ago.

Mr. CASTOR: Please, please. At any time, feel free to do that. There's nothing wrong with --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Thank you.

So you had asked me about discussions with State Department lawyers, and I answered that I wasn't having any conversations with State Department lawyers.

But I've been reminded that in August one of the staffers reached out to me on my personal email, and I alerted the State Department about that, the request to, you know, come and talk to the committee.

And so subsequently, and I think it was the week before Labor Day, I had a telephone conversation with Cliff Johnson, words redacted                  from the State Department Legal Affairs office, as well as words redacted                          from the Legislative office.

So just to be sure that I'm absolutely factual.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  We've marked Exhibit 4. This is a letter. I'll give it to you first.

A  Thank you.

Q  This is the letter we are referring to in the last round with Mr. Zeldin. I'll ask some questions and then I'll ask Mr. Zeldin if he has any additional.

This is the letter to Lutsenko from Senators Menendez, Durbin, and Leahy, dated May 4th, 2018?

A  Yes.

Q  Do you need a little bit of time to look at it or -- are you familiar with this letter? Is this the first time you've seen it?

A  I don't think I've seen it before.

Q  But this was during your tenure as the ambassador?

A  Yes. Yeah, but Congress doesn't always and doesn’t have to share correspondence with foreign governments with us.

Q  Of course. I’m just asking if you've seen it or if you know of anybody at the embassy that was aware of this issue.

A  I -- you know, I just don't recall ever having seen this before.

Q  When senators, especially senators involved with the committees of jurisdiction, transmit letters, is that ordinarily something that gets called to the embassy's attention?

A  It just depends.

Q  Or does it happen so frequently that it's not necessarily an issue?

A  I would say it just depends.

Q  Okay. And so you had no advance notice this letter was coming? Nobody at the -- on any of the Senate staffs communicated with the embassy, to your knowledge?

A  I don't believe so.

Q  And do you know if anybody at Lutsenko's office communicated with the embassy that they received this letter? Do you know how they handled this letter?

A  I don't know that Mr. Lutsenko or anybody in his office communicated with us about this, and I don't know whether they responded, or any of that.

Q  Is there anything else about this communication, about this set of facts, that you can share with us that you do remember, whether it was at the time or subsequently?

A  I mean, do you want to ask me a more specific question?

Q  I'm just asking if --

A  Yeah.

Q  -- if you can recall anything else about this letter, three senators, I believe they're all on the Foreign Relations Committee, writing to express great concern about reports that Lutsenko's office has taken steps to impede cooperation with the Mueller probe.

A  Uh-huh. Yeah.

Q  So the question is, can you recall any additional set of facts about this particular letter?

A  No. No, I can't.

Q  And do you have any facts about the Mueller probe and officials in Ukraine cooperating or not cooperating with the Mueller probe outside of this letter?

A  No.

Q  Did you know it was an issue or an alleged issue?

A  No, I didn't. But, you know, before I was saying that we have a mutual legal assistance treaty with Ukraine. And so when there are matters, you know, that appropriately would be taken up by DOJ or the FBI or something like that, they go through those channels.

And they don't always, depending on what the issue is, whether it's either so insignificant or whether it's, you know, compartmentalized and very closely held, they don't always share with us those things.

I'm assuming -- well, yeah. So I'm not aware.

Mr. CASTOR: Mr. Zeldin, do you have any additional follow-up on this one?

MR. ZELDIN: Ambassador, you just testified that someone had reached out to you personally in August on your personal device?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I'm sorry?

MR. ZELDIN: In clarifying an answer to a question asked by the majority, I just want to understand what you were saying. A staffer or somebody reached out to you in August?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. On my personal email.

MR. ZELDIN: And what was that about?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: They -- from the Foreign Affairs Committee, and they wanted me to come in and talk about, I guess, the circumstances of my departure.

MR. ZELDIN: Come in and talk where? Who -- where were they calling from?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No. This was an email.

MR. ZELDIN: An email. Where were they emailing you from?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I presume Washington. It was House Foreign Affairs.

MR. ZELDIN: A House Foreign Affairs staffer --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah.

MR. ZELDIN: -- reached out to you in August?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Uh-huh.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you remember when in August that was?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I want to say, like, maybe August -- mid-August, maybe. Maybe mid-August.

MR. ZELDIN: Did you know this person?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: And how did -- where did you know that person from?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: She had previously worked at the State Department.

MR. ZELDIN: And how do you know that person at the State Department?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Because she worked at the State Department.

MR. ZELDIN: Where did you work together at the State Department?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, I'm not exactly sure. I think she worked in DRL and in the office that handles human rights, and it must have been either in connection with my Ukraine work or previous work in the European Bureau. I don't recall exactly when we met.

MR. ZELDIN: And when was -- how often do you communicate with this person?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That was the only time.

MR. ZELDIN: When was the last time you had communicated with that person?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, I should actually clarify. So she emailed me. I alerted the State Department and, you know, asked them to handle the correspondence. And she emailed me again and said, you know, who should I be in touch with?

MR. ZELDIN: To try to get you to come in and testify to the House Foreign Affairs Committee?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: It wasn't clear to me whether it was going to be -- whether this was a discussion with her, whether this was a discussion with other staffers, whether it was a deposition. I mean, it just didn't get that far, because I transferred that information to the State Department lawyers -- well, H, actually.

MR. ZELDIN: And what specifically was she asking you to speak about?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I think -- I think it was the circumstances of my departure, or maybe she just kept it more general and said to catch up, but I understood it as that.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you know if she had reached out to other people about that?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't know.

MR. ZELDIN: And you -- one more time. And what did you do after you received the email?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I alerted the State Department, because I'm still an employee and so matters are generally handled through the State Department.

MR. ZELDIN: Was that person responded to by you or someone else?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I believe, yes, by words redacted                          in the Legislative Affairs office.

MR. ZELDIN: Did you receive any subsequent requests to testify to the House Foreign Affairs Committee or to come in to speak to someone at the House Foreign Affairs Committee following that initial email? Was there any follow-up?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, as I said, there was the second email where she said, oh, okay, you know, who should I be talking to?

I didn't respond to that email, because I had already transferred everything to the State Department and I figured they would be in touch, and they were.

MR. ZELDIN: Shifting gears, a question. Do you know who a member of the Ukraine parliament is named Andrei Derkach?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: And what can you tell us about Andrei Derkach? Did you have any personal interaction with this person?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don’t think so. I don't think so. He was the son of a former intel chief and was a Rada deputy, as you just pointed out.

MR. ZELDIN: Was this -- was Andrei Derkach respected in the Ukraine, not respected? Do you know anything about his character or reputation?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I think he was generally believed to be kind of part of the old system, shall we say, and so not terribly respected by those who were trying to reform Ukraine.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware of Andrei Derkach ever lying about anything stated publicly?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I just don't know him and know him that well, and I can't recall at this time.

MR. PERRY: Good afternoon, Ambassador. Scott Perry from Pennsylvania.

You strike me as a person who loves her country and loves her enterprise.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Thank you.

MR. PERRY: I appreciate your indulgence and patience today.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Thank you.

MR. PERRY: I want to go back to your opening statement, page 7 for me here. I don't know where it is for you. But the line in quotes, "since he was going to be impeached."

And I'm just wondering, you said the allegation is false, but would there be anything that you could think of where one of your team members or somebody close to you would -- you might imply something that you said would imply or that they would infer a negative connotation regarding the administration, administration policy, the President particularly, other than that exact verbiage? Like, instead of saying "since he was going to be impeached," you might say, "Well, he's not going to be around very long," anything like that at all?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

MR. PERRY: Nothing at all that you would think that would be negative that you -- they could imply or infer?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Not -- not what -- not what you're talking about, no.

MR. PERRY: Okay, ma’am.

Moving on. Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, I think -- I'm hoping you're aware, so I'm going to ask you a couple questions. I think he's a donor to the Clinton Foundation and the Atlantic Council. Also Mr. Pinchuk and Burisma helped fund the Atlantic Council.

And the Atlantic Council, I don't know whether you're aware, but I'm asking to ask you if you are, released a report regarding their assertion of Shokin’s corruption. Are you aware of that?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No, but it's in line with the kind of work that they do.

MR. PERRY: Okay. And that, like I said, Victor Pinchuk and Burisma both helped to fund the Atlantic Council and maybe even some of the Burisma members are on the board of the Atlantic Council.

Once they released that report, shortly thereafter, Shokin got fired, and then very shortly thereafter Burisma went to the new prosecutor general and asked for a reset.

Does that -- and I know that earlier you kind of implied that you didn't want to get involved or didn't see it as your position to get involved in the politics, the elections, et cetera, of kind of either country in some way, the United States of America or Ukraine, but because of some of the relationships there, are you -- do you know who Victor Pinchuk is? Do you have a relationship with him?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. PERRY: What is your relationship?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: He's one of the wealthiest men in Ukraine. He's the son-in-law of former President Kuchma. And so he is wealthy and obviously very involved in his businesses.

But he also is interested in politics, I think funds, you know, various political actors. At one time, he had his own political party. At one time, he was a Rada deputy himself.

And he also has this YES Foundation, the Yalta Economic Summit, which previously was held in Crimea, now is held in Kyiv every year, and he invites all sorts of luminaries from all over the world to come to that.

And then throughout the year he does various events where he'll invite somebody, like Mayor Giuliani, for example, and then they'll have events, and one of the events is a dinner.

So they do all sorts of things with --

MR. PERRY: But it didn't strike you at all concerning -- I mean, with corruption being a kind of a -- one of the hallmarks, unfortunately, of the country of Ukraine, it didn't strike you -- well, you didn't know anything about the Atlantic Council's report?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, it sounds from the way you're describing the timeline of events --

MR. PERRY: Chain of events, correct.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: -- that that would -- that the release of that article or report would have been well before I arrived in Ukraine.

MR. PERRY: Okay.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: And as I said before, I wasn't aware of that particular report from the Atlantic Council.

MR. PERRY: Fair enough, then. But then moving on, regarding the 2016 elections, and you arrived in August of 2016, did you have any concerns regarding corruption about Ukraine’s involvement in the Manafort investigation, Burisma Holdings, et cetera, and the fact that in December of ‘18, so that’s about 2 years -- a little over 2 years after you arrived, there were two convictions in Ukraine regarding election interference of the United States? So did that concern you?

And just as a curiosity for me, and maybe everybody else, what do you see the ambassador’s role in that, especially with the collaborative agreement that the United States has with Ukraine with this alleged or actual corruption and the convictions?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, my understanding is that the lower court -- are you talking about Mr. Leshchenko?

MR. PERRY: There were two convictions. I don’t have the individuals’ names at this time. But I’m sure we can get them.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, there was -- so I’ll tell you what I know.

MR. PERRY: Sure.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: There was a court case, and you’re correct that in the lower courts, they were found guilty. And I’m not exactly sure what the charge was, but it was overturned in the upper courts.

MR. PERRY: But it wasn’t overturned until recently?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That’s correct.

MR. PERRY: So at that time, you’re the ambassador at that time, and, of course, you see everything that’s going on in the United States regarding the charge of Russian collusion and Russian interference into the election, and even though I think you said at some point that the Ukrainian involvement was debunked, apparently it wasn’t debunked in 2018 when these two individuals were convicted.

What was your role, if any, or what did you see your role as in regarding our collateral relationship in the form of a treaty regarding corruption between the United States and Ukraine, you as the ambassador? Did you have any interest? Did you do anything? Should you have done anything?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I -- so you put a lot of things on the table, and so if I could just separate them out.

MR. PERRY: Yes, ma’am.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So the issue of Burisma, I think, has been addressed. Or do you have other, more specific questions?

MR. PERRY: Well, I mean, it was part of -- it seems to be an ongoing part of the conversation, whether in the past with Pinchuk during the investigation heretofore, because you knew it was out there, it had been started, it was, what was the word you called?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Dormant.

MR. PERRY: It was dormant, but it was hanging out there maybe as leverage. And now, of course, it’s come to light again and has been in some light.

So, again, to me corruption’s a big issue. We’ve got a new President who just won a 70 percent election on corruption itself. There’s all this corruption conversation going around, but quite honestly, no disrespect intended, I don’t know what the ambassador’s involvement is in dealing with that, so that’s why I’m asking.

What is it? What should it be? What do you view your role to be? What was the expectation from the State Department?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I think -- I mean, my role was to set direction, to support various offices. We had the FBI there, we had the narcotics law enforcement office, the State Department has a big presence there. We have a number of different offices, USAID, et cetera, et cetera, all of whom have, you know, some portion of some of the issues that you’ve raised.

And so my job is to set direction, provide support, and, you know, kind of be the public persona. I don’t get involved in everything. People raise issues as they think it’s appropriate or I need to get involved.

So I don’t know if that gives you a sense --

MR. PERRY: Did you have any conversations with the Department of State, your bosses, George Kent or otherwise, regarding Burisma, regarding the fact that it was involved in the investigation, and that Mr. Biden, Vice President Biden’s son was a board member, or any -- or with the Department of Justice? Did you have any conversations at all regarding those proceedings and those occurrences over that course of time?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So Mr. Kent was the deputy in the embassy until last summer, so we worked obviously very closely together at that time. We, to my knowledge, we never discussed Hunter Biden and his board role and all of that, or to my recollection, I should say.

MR. PERRY: Okay.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: He did share with me his understanding of what happened, what occurred with regard to the British court case against Zlochevsky, the head of Burisma. That, you know, again, happened before my arrival. That was, you know, pretty much it.

MR. PERRY: So it was Leshchenko who was one of the two persons convicted in 2018. Both were convicted of attempting to influence the 2016 U.S. election. I’m sure you must have had a keen awareness of it and the conviction. Just, do you have any further thoughts on that and what you were thinking at the time?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah. I mean, honestly, I didn’t believe the charges. I thought that they were politically motivated against Leshchenko. We -- I guess all of these things are judgment calls, but --

MR. PERRY: Okay.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: -- I did not feel --

MR. MEADOWS: So let me make sure. I want the spelling of this. Is this L-e-s-h-c-h-e-n-k-o? Is that Leshchenko?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes. Yeah. I mean --

MR. MEADOWS: Go ahead.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: -- there’s many different ways you can spell it, but that’s one.

MR. MEADOWS: Well, for this North Carolina guy, that’s as close as I’m going to get. All right.

Go ahead. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I’m sorry.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So I felt it was kind of a politically motivated charge against Mr. Leshchenko, and I -- again, you know, it felt too political to me. There were no instructions from the State Department or DOJ or, you know, Washington to, you know, go in and do X, Y, or Z, and so I really felt that we wanted to stay away from --

MR. PERRY: Okay.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: -- what seemed to be internal Ukrainian political fights kind of using us.

MR. PERRY: It didn’t concern you as the ambassador, with everything that we were embroiled here in the United States, that you didn’t hear anybody, anything from higher up in the State Department or in the Department of Justice regarding the conviction, regardless of what your view of it was? Does that seem -- because it was affecting the United States election. And I don’t have to probably remind you of what’s been going on for the last 2-1/2, 3 years here.

So it didn’t strike you that you didn’t get a phone call, an email, or anything, you know, saying what’s happening here? Is this legitimate? Should we be concerned? Is this something we should pursue?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: The court system in Ukraine, and certainly at the time that we’re talking about, was still not reformed, and so the court system didn’t have a great deal, and still does not enjoy, a great deal of credibility.

MR. PERRY: Okay.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So I think people, you know, just didn’t find it to be credible.

MR. MEADOWS: So, Ambassador -- excuse me, Scott, if I can jump in, because I want to follow up, I guess, on a couple of questions that have come up earlier.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Uh-huh.

MR. MEADOWS: Because you’ve said that you have not gotten involved really in the political sense, and yet here we have --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I try very hard.

MR. MEADOWS: Here we have a conviction of U.S. meddling, and you just viewed that as not being significant and you just dismissed it?

I just find that -- you know, everything else you’ve been saying today, you know, that just is hard to believe that, based on the backdrop of what we have, that you just dismissed that and suggested that it just wasn’t credible.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, that was our view, that it wasn’t credible. The court process was continuing. And in the end, they were acquitted.

MR. MEADOWS: So let me go a little bit further.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Okay.

MR. MEADOWS: So you’re saying -- sorry, I jumped on the end of your statement. The court process was continuing and they’ve been -- it’s been overturned by a higher court now. Is that what you were going to say?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. MEADOWS: So earlier you were asked about people that you might have mentioned, when Mr. Zeldin was asking you questions, and you could only recall.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Mr. Sytnyk.

MR. MEADOWS: And so I’ve got some names that I just want to kind of lay out for you to maybe would refresh year memory. And one the of those names, actually the reason why I spelled it out, was this very individual that Mr. Perry is bringing up, that according to some of our sources would indicate that the State Department and your group may have mentioned that you wanted certain guardrails around Mr. Leshchenko. Is that correct?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

MR. MEADOWS: So you’ve never had a conversation with anybody at the State Department regarding Mr. Leshchenko in terms of saying, well, we need to make sure that he’s off limits?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

MEADOWS: No special treatment for him?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

MR. MEADOWS: All right. Well, you mentioned, was it Nayem? Is that correct? Have you mentioned that before?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Have I mentioned what?

MR. MEADOWS: So who was the one individual you said that you weighed in on?

Mr. CASTOR: Sytnyk.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Sytnyk. Sytnyk.

MR. MEADOWS: All right. How about AntAC? Does that name ring a bell to you?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. MEADOWS: So have you weighed in verbally with regards to any special treatment for AntAC?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No. But here’s the thing. What I have consistently done is said that any prosecutions need to be done according to the law and not be politically motivated.

MR. MEADOWS: And that’s consistent with your earlier testimony. However, earlier, when Mr. Zeldin was asking you about individual cases that you might have brought up and he was saying case numbers, there seemed to be a little bit of confusion. I guess is this one of the cases that you might have brought up with other individuals at the State Department?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: There was -- at the State Department? We probably --

MR. MEADOWS: Or anywhere else.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah. So there was -- one of the leaders of AntAC was -- there were demonstrations, I think, in the -- I can’t remember whether it was the fall or the spring of 2016, and one of the individuals that leads AntAC was -- there was, like, some hooliganism charge or something like that where he had -- there was some charge like that. Again, I’m sorry, it was a long time ago. I don’t recall the details.

So this is, again, not an anticorruption case. But, again, cases should be dealt with in a consistent manner, and, again, not politically motivated, and according to the rule of law.

And I think, you know, in that hooliganism case, I think members of the embassy probably did raise the issue that he seemed to be scapegoating and being held to a different standard than others who were maybe more aligned with the administration.

MR. MEADOWS: So you did weigh in on that one in terms of --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: It was not an anticorruption issue.

MR. MEADOWS: Okay. So let me give you another name, then. Is it Shabunin, S-h-a-b-u-n-i-n?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That’s actually the name of the individual.

MR. MEADOWS: All right. So that’s the individual with AntAC?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That was up on hooliganism charges.

MR. MEADOWS: All right. And how about Nayem, N-a-y-e-m? Does that ring a bell?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Mustafa (ph) Nayem?

MR. MEADOWS: I’m sorry. I’m not Ukrainian. So you --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Neither am I. Yeah. I don’t recall him actually --

MR. MEADOWS: So you don’t recall weighing in with regards to that individual in any --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don’t think he was ever arrested or charged with anything.

MR. MEADOWS: I didn’t say that. I said did you weigh in in terms of putting guardrails in terms of --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

MR. MEADOWS: -- the treatment of that particular individual with anyone from the embassy?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: And can I -- and I would also say, we don’t put guardrails on individuals.

MR. MEADOWS: Okay. Well, let’s change the words, because those are my words. So obviously you’re saying we’re looking at it a little differently. And obviously with regards to the one individual, you did say you felt like they were getting a bum deal. Is that correct?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah. I think what we try to do is to talk about the principles that should govern the way, you know, whether it’s law enforcement or other things are conducted, but we don’t say yea or nay.

MR. MEADOWS: Yeah. And so I want to make sure I’m -- you know, I’m saying weighing in. It was actually weighing in with the prosecutor, is what I’m talking about.

So when you’ve weighed in with the prosecutor on any of these four people, or the four names that I’ve given you, have you weighed in with the prosecutor from the embassy to the prosecutor in Ukraine at all?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I’m not sure that conversation took place with the prosecutor.

MR. MEADOWS: Well, with anyone associated with the prosecutor?

And I think you know where I’m going with this, but if I need to spell it out, I’m willing to do that.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So --

MR. MEADOWS: I just want to -- I want to make sure you clarify the record, because you’ve seemed like you’re trying to get the testimony right, and that’s why I’m giving you these names.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Uh-huh. So you’re saying that I weighed in.

What was actually happening is that on this particular case with Mr. Shabunin, the Presidential administration was weighing in with me and with us at the embassy, because they felt that we had influence with Mr. Shabunin and to see whether he could, you know, curtail his criticism, shall we say, of Mr. Poroshenko and events in Ukraine.

And they -- when there was this incident, which I don’t recall very well, they raised that and said, you know, you see clearly he’s a bad apple -- my words now, not theirs. And, you know, again, I said, well, you know, I mean, obviously you have processes, but they need to be according to the principles that we’ve been talking about for all this time.

MR. MEADOWS: So let me switch gears real quickly, because I don’t know that we’ve got much time left.

How much time do we have left.

Mr. CASTOR: The time expires at 5:27, so we’ve got about 7 minutes.

MR. MEADOWS: All right. So let me switch gears and follow up on something that Mr. Jordan had asked about. He was talking about the conversation you had in August with Mr. Kent.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. MEADOWS: And Mr. Kent shared, I guess, the details or his perception of a classified phone conversation between two leaders with you. Is that --

THE CHAIRMAN: If I could just interject. No one has said it was classified except --

MR. MEADOWS: Well, I mean, we had to have it unclassified for us to see it. I mean, it says "unclassified" on the top.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, you’re positing, though, that the witness has said that this is a classified call or that that’s an established fact.

MR. MEADOWS: Well, let her answer that.

Did he indicate that it was a classified call?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

MR. MEADOWS: Did you have any idea that it perhaps could be a classified call between two foreign leaders?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: [Nonverbal response.]

MR. MEADOWS: You’re a career diplomat. I can’t imagine that --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah. I didn’t think that the particular thing, the particular part that he shared with me actually was classified.

MR. MEADOWS: What particular part did he share with you?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, as I said --

MR. MEADOWS: Did he talk about a whistleblower at all in that conversation?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No, no.

MR. MEADOWS: So why did he reach out to you?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I’m not sure he reached out to me.

MR. MEADOWS: Well, you said he called you, right?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No, I didn’t. I mean, I think -- again, I can’t recall whether it was in -- I think you were asking me whether it was in August or September. But we, you know, at a meeting or something, we spoke about this. It wasn’t over a phone.

MR. MEADOWS: So at a meeting at Georgetown? Where was the meeting? I mean, because you weren’t in your official capacity. I’m just trying to --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah.

MR. MEADOWS: -- get a sense of why all of a sudden the two of you would be talking about something that we didn’t find out about until weeks later.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Right. I’m sorry. I can’t remember the circumstances of the conversation.

MR. MEADOWS: Do you remember where the conversation took place?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I do not. I do not.

MR. MEADOWS: So you just know that it took -- so it may have been in a meeting or it may have been in a phone call, but you don’t recall?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a phone call, because -- I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a phone call.

But I -- you know, as to -- so you’re asking why? I think because he knew that I was still interested, still interested in Ukraine.

MR. MEADOWS: So he was -- he knew you were interested in a phone call that took place that you didn’t know had --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Interested in the bilateral relationship.

MR. MEADOWS: I beg your pardon?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Interested in the bilateral relationship, and, you know, hoping --

MR. MEADOWS: So did he say anything negative about the President of the United States in that conversation with you?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No, I wouldn’t say that.

MR. MEADOWS: So it was a -- he said it in a positive manner about -- I mean, help -- bring me into the room, into the conversation. How did he characterize the President’s actions, in a positive or negative manner?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I think it was just a factual manner, that this occurred and this was Zelensky’s response.

[5:25 p.m.]

MR. MEADOWS: And so Zelensky didn’t see it as a big deal is what he said?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: He said that President Zelensky, that he noted that, you know, some of the things that President Trump was talking about happened, you know, under the previous administration, and that he would have his own person, you know, as prosecutor general.

And, you know, I don’t think that Mr. Kent was on the call either, and so maybe he didn’t have full information, but he took that to mean that President Zelensky had not accepted the proposal.

MR. MEADOWS: Do you recall how he shared with you how he found out about the call since he wasn’t on it?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No, I don’t know.

MR. MEADOWS: So he just said it’s water cooler talk? I mean, how would George Kent -- how would Mr. Kent, Ambassador Kent know about that?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don’t know.

MR. MEADOWS: Okay. And then finally, I guess, is, once the characterization he made of the call when you read the transcript for yourself, was that consistent with the way that he characterized it?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: It didn’t seem to -- well, I think that the call, the summary of the call is a little bit -- you can interpret it in different ways. And so it seemed that Mr. Zelensky was more open to the various proposals than I had understood.

MR. JORDAN: Ambassador, did he call you to talk about the corruption element of the phone call, or did he call to tell you that you were mentioned in the phone call?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: As I said, I am pretty sure it was not a phone call, number one.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. But the conversation, what was it about, both of those issues or -- because I’m not exactly sure what he communicated to you other than that there was this call between President Trump and President Zelensky, and then he characterized elements of, you know, what took place on that phone call in a meeting with you. What did he tell you?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, he told me what I just relayed to your colleague. He did not say, however, anything about me. I had no idea that I featured in this conversation.

MR. JORDAN: So he didn’t tell you that you were mentioned in the phone call between President Zelensky --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

MR. JORDAN: Interesting, okay. Thank you.

MR. MEADOWS: And since we’re out of time, I just want to know one thing. Ambassador Volker said awful nice things about you, and he said that you’re called Masha.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. MEADOWS: Where did you get that name from?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, despite my posting to Ukraine, I’m actually half Russian, and it’s a Russian nickname.

MR. MEADOWS: I yield back.

THE CHAIRMAN: Would you like to take a little break?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: How much longer?

MR. ROBBINS: How close are we to being done is the key question?

THE CHAIRMAN: I would hope -- although I can’t guarantee, I would hope that maybe a 45-minute round, a 45-minute round, we should be close to done, but I don’t want to promise, depending on -- but we’re going to do our very best. Do you want to just keep motoring through?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, why don’t we keep motoring through, but if it’s another 45 minutes after that, I am going to have to take a break.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay, that sounds good.

I just had a quick follow-up question before I yielded to my colleagues. You were Ambassador to Ukraine for how long?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Almost 3 years.

THE CHAIRMAN: Almost 3 years. And did you develop in these 3 years a deep interest in Ukraine and its future?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I did. And I would also just say that this was my second tour in Ukraine, so yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And when you stop being an Ambassador to a country, does that mean that you no longer have any interest in that country?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

THE CHAIRMAN: And people in the Diplomatic Corps would know you were still interested in the happenings in that country, would they not?

MR. ROBBINS: That is correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And, indeed, when you left prior posts in Armenia and elsewhere, people would continue to keep you informed on how Armenia was doing, I imagine.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Still do.

THE CHAIRMAN: Still do. So not unusual at all once you leave a post for colleagues to continue sharing with you information about how that country is doing and how relations are between the U.S. and that country?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That is correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Maloney.

MR. MALONEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ambassador Yovanovitch, my name is Sean Maloney. I represent a district in New York. We’ve been here for more than 7 hours so, first of all, thank you very much for your patience with us.

And I think it’s useful sometimes at that point in the day just to summarize, and so I just have a few summary questions and I just want to make sure I understand your testimony. And so please disagree with me if you think I'm misstating anything, but you spent more than 30 years in the Foreign Service. Is that correct?

MS. Y0VAN0VITCH: Thirty-three years.

MR. MALONEY: And you were the United States Ambassador to Ukraine; and having spent hours listening to you, it sure seems like you were committed to that job. Is that fair to say?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes, very much so.

MR. MALONEY: And you were good at it, weren't you, ma’am?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I think so.

MR. MALONEY: And you had the approval of your bosses at the State Department. In fact, they wanted to extend your tour. Is that fair to say?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. MALONEY: And then along came Rudy Giuliani, and he represented a group of American businessmen, now indicted, who believed that you were somehow in their way. Is that fair to say, that you were in the way of their business interests in Ukraine?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That appears to be the case.

MR. MALONEY: We're talking about Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. MALONEY: And he was also, of course, advancing

President Trump's desire and interests, which the President has admitted in getting an investigation of the Bidens going in Ukraine. That's true as well, isn't it?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: It appears to be the case.

MR. MALONEY: But, again, you were in the way, at least in the minds of Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump and Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman. You were an obstacle, it seems, to President Trump's political interests and the financial interests of Mr. Giuliani's now-indicted associates. Is that the sum and substance of your testimony today?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, that appears to be how events have unfolded.

MR. MALONEY: And so, they partnered -- I believe that was your word -- they partnered with Mr. Lutsenko to get you fired. Isn't that right?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. MALONEY: They got a story in The Hill newspaper about you. They fired up Sean Hannity. They got a Republican Congressman, Pete Sessions, to write a letter criticizing you. They made a bunch of illegal -- apparently illegal campaign contributions we now know about. They even tried to dump a bunch of dirt on you, as I understand through the State Department IG. Is that all correct? You want me to leave off the last one?

MR. ROBBINS: Well, she's not a lawyer. She can't comment on whether these are campaign finance violations or not.

MR. MALONEY: I appreciate that, Mr. Robbins.

There was a story in The Hill newspaper. Sean Hannity got involved, Pete Sessions wrote a letter, and there are apparently illegal campaign contributions, all related to you, isn't that right, and the desire to get you fired?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That appears to be the case.

MR. MALONEY: Well, and it worked, didn't it, Ambassador?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. MALONEY: They got you out of the way. It seems to me they threw you to the wolves. Is that what happened?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, clearly, they didn't want me in Ukraine anymore.

MR. MALONEY: And so, if you were going to sum up why you were such a problem for the political interests of the President in trying to get this investigation started of the Bidens and the financial interests of Mr. Giuliani's now-indicted associates, why were you such a thorn in their side that you had to be fired?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Honestly, it's a mystery to me; but all I can conclude from everything that I've seen over the last 5 or 6 months is that they felt that our policy to try to make Ukraine stronger and more resilient, through the anticorruption policies as well as through, you know, the other assistance that we've talked about today, and that our policies and our actions, and specifically my actions, as the leader of the U.S. embassy, were, you know, problematic for them. I don’t know why that would be, though, because it is our policy.

MR. MALONEY: Well, Madam Ambassador, I want to tell you that I've spent years working at the White House in State government, years now in the Congress. I've spent a lot of time around a lot of senior government officials, a lot of members of the Foreign Service. I attended the Georgetown School of Foreign Service.

I want to let you know that I don't recall ever seeing someone treated as poorly as you've been treated, and I think you're owed an apology by your government. And I think you've served the country well and honorably for a long, long time, and you didn't deserve this. And I appreciate your appearance today, and I just want to let you know that some of us feel very badly about what's happened to you.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: I'd just like to say amen to that.

Representative Heck.

MR. HECK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Madam Ambassador, my name is Denny Heck. I have the privilege to represent the 10th District of Washington State.

My questioning will be brief, beginning with: Once you reach ambassadorial ranking at the State Department, does the Department have any systematic feedback or performance for ambassadors, however formal or informal?

MS. Y0VANOVITCH: Yes. We have an evaluation process every year that is written, and then there are counseling sessions, you know, three or four during the year. But there's a written document of how you have done that year.

MR. HECK: Did you have that evaluation performed while you were in Ukraine?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. HECK: Once or twice or three times?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Actually, I'm not even sure, because there was -- it was at least four times, maybe even more, because there was a change of administration. So the direct supervisor, the Assistant Secretary changed, et cetera, et cetera. So a number of evaluations.

MR. HECK: Were any of those evaluations negative?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

MR. HECK: Did any of them cite serious concerns for any aspect of your performance?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

MR. HECK: Is that also true of your entire 33 years at the State Department?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Pretty much.

MR. HECK: Is it fair or accurate to say that during your 33 years at the State Department, more or less, you had a steady progression of responsibilities given to you?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. HECK: Thank you for your service, ma'am.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Malinowski.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Thank you.

Ambassador, I first want to echo Representative Maloney's comments.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Thank you.

MR. MALINOWSKI: As you know, we served in the same institution on two separate occasions. I served at the NSC. What you're describing is completely alien to me, I guess with the caveat that I have seen it in other countries, but not in the United States of America, and shocked and dismayed is very diplomatic language that you used for what you described ensued.

I want to spend a little bit of time running through with you some of the things you said about our anticorruption policies. I want to have -- I want to make sure that everyone has a better understanding of what we as a country, we as a government are actually about.

That there was a comprehensive anticorruption policy being pursued by the administration through you, through the embassy and other agencies. That would have involved providing financial support, grants through USAID to anticorruption organizations operating in Ukraine. Is that correct?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That is correct.

MR. MALINOWSKI: It would have involved a lot of advocacy aimed at strengthening the various anticorruption institutions in the country. You mentioned the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine, NABU, for example, which was, would you agree, good in concept but needed improvement in terms of how it was operating?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes, that is correct.

MR. MALINOWSKI: More support, more resources.

My understanding -- there's also an anticorruption court, which was an important reform, but also would you say something that needed significant improvement?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, and it's only just been stood up. It just started working in September of this year.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Understood. My understanding is that over 100 cases, specific cases, have been referred from NABU to the anticorruption court that have not yet been acted on. Does that sound right to you?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That sounds right as of about the time that I left, but I don't know what the status is now.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Understood. So we would have been pushing these institutions to accelerate, intensify that work to show better results. Is that correct?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah. That's what the Ukrainian people want.

MR. MALINOWSKI: There was a law on illicit enrichment of public officials which was struck down by the courts, and then we were advocating that it be reintroduced by the new administration. Is that correct?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes, and it was specifically one of the issues that I mentioned in that March 5th speech.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And I think you also mentioned in that speech the need to fight corruption in the defense sector. You mentioned Ukroboronprom, the main defense company.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Uh-huh.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And there have been a lot of, you know, illicit contracts, people profiting on the side from arms acquisitions, and you were very concerned about that. You asked for an audit of that company. Is that correct?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That is correct, because this was all taking place at a time when Ukraine was actually in a shooting war with Russia.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And then we have discussed the all-important office of the special anticorruption prosecutor, Mr. Kholodnitsky.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Kholodnitsky.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Kholodnitsky. And in that speech, you pointed to the coaching of suspects in anticorruption cases, and you pointed out that nobody could serve effectively in that capacity who was caught doing such things.

The day after actually you gave that speech, Under Secretary Hale visited Ukraine. Is that --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: He arrived that night.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And so, those issues might -- were those issues raised by Under Secretary Hale?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes, they were raised in bilateral meetings. And I obviously told him about the speech and gave him a copy and so forth.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And was that speech cleared in the Department?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

MR. MALINOWSKI: But you did discuss it, as you mentioned before, with folks back home?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: It wasn't a surprise to anybody. I can't remember whether I had the conversation or somebody else did.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And nobody objected to the thrust of it

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No. We were quite concerned about the rollback of these reforms.

MR. MALINOWSKI: So this was a comprehensive anticorruption strategy with a lot of asks, probably many that I didn't mention and don't know about.

So my next question is, to your knowledge, did Mayor Giuliani, in any of his meetings with Ukrainian officials, in any of his public statements or interviews, did he press the Ukrainians to pursue those reforms to this system of corruption, these specific things that the U.S. Government, under the Trump administration, was asking the Ukrainians to do?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I'm not sure, but I did notice that the -- one of the papers that you provided, which was Mr. Giuliani's speech at the YES Conference, he talked about the importance of fighting corruption and so forth. But I'm not sure --

MR. MALINOWSKI: In general terms, but did he --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: In general terms.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Did he raise the anticorruption court? Did he raise the need to strength NABU and to --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Not that I'm aware of.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Did Ambassador Sondland, in his engagements with the Ukrainian authorities, press on these specific, not anticorruption in general, but press on these specific reforms and changes that we were seeking?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't think so. Recalling that, you know, his sort of interest in Ukraine or engagement with Ukraine started sort of at the end of February, and I was gone by April 20th -- or May 20th.

MR. MALINOWSKI: To your knowledge, did the President or anyone purporting to speak for the President press the Ukrainians on these specific reforms?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, of course --

MR. MALINOWSKI: I mean you, of course.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: -- we. We represent the President.

MR. MALINOWSKI: But, I mean, these emissaries, these sort of more informal folks who were coming in who were not you the ambassador or the State Department, were they pressing on this specific reform agenda?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I do feel that Ambassador Sondland, as a businessman himself, understood that corruption was taking a heavy toll on Ukraine, and so he did the top note.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Right. But as far as specifics --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't recall the specifics, yeah.

MR. MALINOWSKI: But as far as specifics, did these individuals raise any specific cases or issues other than Burisma and this theory about what may have happened in 2016, to your knowledge?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Not to my knowledge

MR. MALINOWSKI: So it's been argued, you know, since this has become a major public issue, that perhaps the subsequent decisions that were made to hold up the provision of the Javelins, military aid, to hold a potential Presidential meeting with President Zelensky, that they were linked to broader concerns about corruption in Ukraine.

Is there any evidence that the folks who were communicating those decisions were, again, raising any specific concerns with regard to corruption, policy corruption reforms in Ukraine, other than Burisma and what they think happened in 2016?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Not to my knowledge.

MR. MALINOWSKI: I mean, that's interesting, don't you think, that with all this rhetoric about corruption, and we have highly specific policies pursued by the Trump administration through the State Department, through official channels, and yet, with military assistance at stake, none of those issues get discussed. Do you find that odd?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of important bilateral issues that need to be discussed at the highest levels.

MR. MALINOWSKI: So, speaking of the subsequent decisions -- and I know you were not there for the ultimate discussions about the aid being suspended, but I did want to ask you how you believe the Ukrainians would have perceived those decisions in this context.

You have, at the time that you were there, signs that there is perhaps a parallel policy. You've said that the official administration policy, as represented by the State Department, was very positive towards Ukraine. You strongly supported it, that it was, in one respect, better than the Obama administration's policy.

But did it begin to seem as if there was, perhaps, a parallel policy, represented by Mr. Giuliani and those around him, that had a different set of priorities?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, in retrospect, you know, that characterization seems to be correct. But at the time, you know, we weren't seeing, you know, all of the pieces. I mean, we could feel that there was stuff out there, but we hadn't put it all together.

And so, you know, I mean, I was telling everybody, you know, keep on charging forward. This is our policy. This is agreed policy that Republicans, Democrats have all approved.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And before the aid was suspended, it would have been fair, perhaps, for the Ukrainian Government to share your view that the official policy was as you were representing it. Is that fair to say?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Except I think that there were other emissaries, you know, perhaps sharing other things or focusing on other things that would have maybe confuse people.

MR. MALINOWSKI: But would the knowledge on the part of the Ukrainians that there were now consequences, aid was suspended, a meeting was being held up, would that not have raised the level of alarm?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes. Yes, absolutely.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And so in a sense the parallel policy, no pun intended, started to trump the official policy at that point, in retrospect, based on what you know?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: In retrospect, yes.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And if you’re a foreign government, and you're receiving a message from people who you believe are emissaries of the President, would you believe that if it's coming from the President, then that's what you listen to above what you may be hearing from the State Department or other agencies that, again, no pun intended, the President trumps all others?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Eleanor Holmes Norton.

MS. NORTON: Madam Ambassador, I want to commend you on the way you've handled yourself here today and as Ambassador.

I'd really like you -- my question really goes to your role as ambassador during such change in leadership in Ukraine, whether you felt your role was changing at all during that kind of upheaval in the country itself and, if so, how?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: You mean with regard to elections, Presidential elections?

MS. NORTON: No, with regard to the -- you are the ambassador. These changes are occurring during your tenure. You have to relate to not only these changes, but to changes in personnel. I'm trying to find out how you related to changes in personnel during your time as Ambassador.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes, during -- with the new Zelensky team?

MS. NORTON: Excuse me?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: With the new Presidential team?

MS. NORTON: Yes.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So that didn't fully occur until actually the day I left, because the day I left permanently, May 20th, was the day of President Zelensky's inauguration. But, again, we could see it coming, and so you want to make sure the relationships are solid, that there is, you know, some kind of a game plan, at least, for how we're going to be engaging with the new team and so forth.

And so, you know, after that first meeting that I had with President Zelensky in September where I still didn't believe that Poroshenko wouldn't be the -- you know, reelected, but we started, you know, having meetings with him. And in November, we started introducing him to visiting U.S. VIPs, as appropriate.

So when -- we've mentioned the David Hale visit. When David Hale was in town in March, we made sure that he had some time with Zelensky, because we wanted to, first of all, socialize Washington to the fact that there might be a pretty significant change; but secondly, you know, let Zelensky know that we -- you know, our foreign -- our leaders, we want our leaders to be able to meet with you, engage with you, and start that process.

And, you know, we had a whole team that was covering, obviously, the elections. And as Zelensky's team members became evident, people in the political section were reaching out to -- you know, to their appropriate contacts and so forth, because we want to make sure -- we have a very strong -- despite everything we've discussed today, we have a very strong bilateral relationship with Ukraine.

And we want to make sure that that continues, because we have huge equities in that country, you know, starting with the fact that we don't want Russia to win that war. And so, we wanted to make sure that from day one, the doors would still be open to us, as the new Zelensky government, you know, became acclimated to its new role.

Did that answer the question?

MS. NORTON; Yes. But were there discussions, specific discussions of military aid from the United States to Ukraine during -- before you left, and during those changes within the country, and were there differences or was that consistent with respect to how that military aid was viewed?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Right. So yes, there are constant discussions of military assistance to Ukraine, both on the American side, on the Ukrainian side, and, you know, with other international partners that also are providing security and military assistance.

So there's a whole process that obviously is led by DOD of consultations on these issues. Where do the Ukrainians think they need help, which one of the foreign partners could best help Ukraine with that particular request, and so forth. So that goes on pretty much all year.

And then, of course, there is the budget process that the Congress is in charge of, and there are, you know, multiple discussions, as you probably know better than I, about, you know, what is most appropriate, what can we do? And, you know, Members have strong views and, obviously, those views are incorporated as well.

MS. NORTON: Finally, were there any instructions from Washington during these changes that you were experiencing, or were you essentially left to decide for yourself how to operate as ambassador?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: You know, that's a really good question. So it’s -- you know, it's kind of an iterative process, that we're always in touch with each other. So we're -- you know, with modern communication, whether it's by email, whether it's by phone, whether it’s, you know, a formal cable back to the Department, whether it's, you know, visitors coming, but we're always sharing what we're seeing, what we’re thinking, what our advice is, what the possible challenges might be, how Washington can formulate the best policy to meet that challenge. And it's kind of an iterative process.

So we -- but, you know, I don't get to answer, you know, the specific question. It's very rare for an ambassador to get, you know, kind of a full instruction on Monday of the things you need to do that -- you know, that week. I mean, we might get an instruction to go in on a particular issue that we feel strongly about with regard to arms control or Iran or something, but usually, it's a very iterative process when it comes to bilateral affairs.

MS. NORTON: Well, thank you, Madam Ambassador, for your service in a very tough situation.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Mitchell.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  Madam Ambassador, are you familiar with an individual named Dmytry Firtash?

A  I know who he is.

Q  What do you know about him?

A  He is living in Vienna now and is fighting extradition to the U.S. by the FBI.

Q  And do you know what he's been charged with in the United States?

A  I think it's money laundering charges.

Q  Do you know if he has any sort of -- Mr. Firtash has any sort of relationship with Mr. Parnas?

A  I'm not sure.

Q  What about with Mr. Fruman?

A  I'm not -- I'm not sure.

Q  Mr. Shokin?

A  Yes.

Q  What's their relationship?

A  I don't know what the relationship is, but I saw, I think, it was last week that he testified in some court process in Vienna.

Q  "He" being Mr. Shokin?

A  Yes.

Q  And do you know who represents Mr. Firtash in the United States?

A  I'm not sufficiently confident to say.

Q  Do you know whether Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova represent Mr. Firtash?

A  I've read that in the press.

Q  But you have nothing -- no other knowledge other than what you've read in the press about them?

A  No.

Q  Okay. And you indicated that Mr. Firtash resides in Vienna?

A  Yes.

Q  And are you aware that Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman were arrested a couple of days ago at Dulles Airport with tickets to Vienna?

A  I read that in the news.

Q  And are you aware that Mr. Giuliani has also said that he had tickets to Vienna?

A  I wasn't aware of that.

Q  Are you aware of any Congressmen traveling to Vienna this year?

A  I'm sure lots of Congressmen travel to Vienna.

Q  To meet with Mr. Firtash?

A  That I'm not aware of.

Q  Now, you testified earlier that you had a conversation with Mr. Avakov in about February of 2019, I believe, which you discussed with Mr. Avakov Mr. Giuliani's activities in Ukraine. You learned about what Mr. Avakov believed Mr. Giuliani was up to. Is that correct?

A  Yeah, although, you know, he focused more on Mr. Lutsenko and Mr. Fruman and Mr. Parnas.

Q  But Mr. Giuliani was also discussed during that conversation?

A  Yes.

Q  And you also indicated that you had at least one conversation with I believe a deputy of Mr. Lutsenko about the fact that Mr. Giuliani had met with Mr. Lutsenko sometime in the middle of 2018. Is that correct?

A  I didn't have that conversation. The Charge at the time in Ukraine had that conversation.

Q  And who was that?

A  Joseph Pennington.

Q  About what time period did you have that conversation with Mr. Pennington?

A  It would have been -- it was the week -- the week that I left. So the end of April.

Q  Did you have more than one conversation with Mr. Pennington or just that one about this topic?

A  I think on, you know, what Yenin told him, Mr. Yenin told him, just the one.

Q  But what about generally on the topic of Mr. Giuliani's activities in Ukraine, did you have more than one conversation with Mr. Pennington about that?

A  I mean, the short answer is probably. I don't recall any particular conversation that stands out. Again, I tried to -- we were super busy at the embassy, because there was a Presidential election. We were covering it. We were trying to figure out how to move our policies forward in a time of change. And all of this I thought, I hoped was a distraction.

And so I tried to, you know, look at the media and not dwell on it too much. And my instructions to the team were full speed ahead. We have not been instructed by Washington to change our policy or activities in any way, and we need to be out there and demonstrating that we are still at work. We are still representing the American people.

Q  Do you recall having any conversations with Kurt Volker about Giuliani's activities in Ukraine?

A  No. About maybe a week, a week and a half after The Hill article, we had a conversation, but about the Donbass. And he started the conversation by saying, You know, it's going to be okay. It will all blow over. I know it's unpleasant now. But that was the extent of the conversation.

Q  And when you say, "it will all blow over," he was referring to the article in The Hill?

A  Yeah, the article, the -- you know, the tweets, the social media, the interviews, et cetera.

Q  And what about conversations with George Kent about Giuliani's activities in Ukraine, did you have more than one conversation with Mr. Kent about that topic?

A  Yes.

Q  Do you recall roughly when the first time would have been when you had conversations with Mr. Kent about Giuliani's activities in Ukraine?

A  Probably in the November-December 2018 time period, because that's when Avakov, Minister Avakov, not to me, but to embassy people, or an embassy person, said, you know, that there's something out there, she needs to be -- she, me, needs to be careful. And so, you know, the next phone conversation -- I mean, I didn't have anything specific to report except for what I just told you now.

Q  And it sounds like you had more than one conversation with Mr. Kent about this topic?

A  Yes.

Q  So the first one would have been late 2018. When was the next time that you had an occasion to talk to Mr. Kent about this?

A  Well, so the next time was probably when I was here in Washington for the Chief of Mission Conference in early January. And I saw, you know, George. So we discussed these issues. But, you know, there wasn't anything really there at that time.

Q  That you were aware of?

A  Yes, exactly. I mean, I didn't know at that time that Mr. Lutsenko was actually in the U.S. in January to meet with Mr. Giuliani.

Q  So when you had this conversation with Mr. Kent in January of 2019, you knew, generally, of Mr. Giuliani's activities, but you knew a lot less then than you know now?

A  Yeah.

Q  Can you describe the nature of that conversation that you had with Mr. Kent?

A  Yeah. So there was, you know, as reported, that there was this -- these contacts between Giuliani and Lutsenko. That was very nebulous and I didn't have much to go on, but there was also another issue that dealt with Mr. Giuliani, where the embassy had received -- so, just backing up to explain it.

The embassy had received a visa application for a tourist visa from Mr. Shokin, the previous prosecutor general. And he said that he was coming to visit his children, who live in the United States. And so, the consular folks, you know, got the application, recognized the name, and believed that he was ineligible for a visa, based on his, you know, known corrupt activities.

And they alerted me to this. And I said, Well, what would you do if he wasn't -- if it wasn't Mr. Shokin, if it was some other businessman that we didn't recognize the name? And they said, We would refuse the visa. And so, my understanding is that that's -- that that is what happened, either a formal hard refusal, or what we call a 221G, which is an administrative refusal, asking for more information.

The next thing we knew -- so I alerted Washington to this, that this had happened. And the next thing we knew, Mayor Giuliani was calling the White House as well as the Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs, saying that I was blocking the visa for Mr. Shokin, and that Mr. Shokin was coming to meet him and provide information about corruption at the embassy, including my corruption.

Q  Did you know the purported purpose of Mr. Shokin's travel to the United States at the time when you had this discussion with the consular folks about following normal protocol --

A  No.

Q  -- and not making any exceptions for Mr. Shokin?

A  No. What he told -- I mean, we can only go by what a visa applicant tells us. What he told us was that he was going to -- I don't know if it's child or children, but a child, at least, in the United States, and so, we assumed that that was the truth.

Q  And you indicated that you notified, or you alerted Washington. What do you mean by that?

A  Well, you know, I called, again, the Deputy Assistant Secretary, George Kent, to let -- you know, since he's the person who is responsible day-to-day for Ukraine policy, I think I called him to let him know that this was out there. I wasn't sure whether there would be -- I mean, what I was imagining is that maybe President Poroshenko, since they have a close relationship, might complain, or that maybe the Ambassador here might complain.

I mean, because I thought that since he was a man who previously held a high position and continues to know those individuals that there might be complaints, and you never want to blindside Washington. So we let them know.

And, again, I know that Mr. Kent talked to Assistant Secretary of State Wess Mitchell. And Wess -- Mr. Mitchell was completely supportive, that this had been the right decision.

And when -- you know, of course, when the calls came from Mr. Giuliani to the White House and to the Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs, they got in touch with the European Bureau, and Mr. Mitchell, you know, held firm. I mean, it was a consular decision. The consular folks felt that they had made the right decision. And, you know, there was the added issue that, you know, basically the notorious reputation of Mr. Shokin. And, frankly, at the end of the day, he lied on his visa application.

Q  How did he lie?

A  He told us that he was going to visit a child or children, but then the next thing that we know is he was really going to see Mayor Giuliani.

Q  And you learned that?

A  From Mayor Giuliani.

Q  Mr. Giuliani stated such?

A  Yeah. I mean, I didn't hear that directly, obviously, but --

Q  Did you have any conversations with Ambassador Sondland about Giuliani's activities in Ukraine?

A  The only activity I had was -- I'm sorry, the only conversation I had was after The Hill article, after the weekend of, you know, all the attacks and Hannity and everything else and the tweet from Donald Trump Jr., I called Mr. Sondland to ask him his advice of -- you know, when this appeared to be a Ukraine story, when it was Lutsenko's interview, the State Department was supportive. There was actually a visiting delegation of Congressional Members.

They were very supportive and raised this in all issues, that this is not the way to treat our ambassador. I really appreciated that. But then when the story seemed to shift to the United States, then obviously it became much more delicate.

Q  And what did Mr. Sondland say when you talked to him about this topic?

A  He hadn't been aware of it, that the story had shifted, and he said, you know, you need to go big or go home. You need to, you know, tweet out there that you support the President, and that all these are lies and everything else. And, you know, so, you know, I mean, obviously, that was advice. It was advice that I did not see how I could implement in my role as an Ambassador, and as a Foreign Service officer.

Q  Why not?

A  Well, for one thing, the State Department was silent. I just didn't see that there would be any advantage to publicly taking on a fight with those who were criticizing me in the United States.

Q  Was that your only conversation with Mr. Sondland about this?

A  Yes. I mean, when it was a Ukraine story, I had talked to him about it, and he was quite helpful. But, you know, when it shifted locus, then that was the only one.

Q  You testified earlier that Mr. Brechbuhl, I think you said, was running point on -- during the time period that you were recalled. Is that correct?

A  Yes.

Q  Did you have any conversations with Counsel Brechbuhl at any time about Mr. Giuliani's activities in Ukraine?

A  No, I've never met him.

MR. MITCHELL: Chairman, do you have any?

THE CHAIRMAN: I do. How much time do we have left?

MR. STOSZ: Four minutes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Four minutes.

Were you aware of whether Victoria Toensing or Joseph diGenova played any role in assisting Mr. Giuliani with getting Ukraine to conduct these two political investigations?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

THE CHAIRMAN: You mentioned that there was a rumor that the President may have joined, by phone, a meeting between Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Lutsenko. What was the time of that meeting?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That was the January 2018 meeting.

THE CHAIRMAN: And where did you hear this particular rumor from?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: From Mr. Yenin. And I didn't hear it directly. I heard it through Joseph Pennington, the Charge at the time. The --- I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?

THE CHAIRMAN: You were telling me where you had heard that rumor from.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Oh, Mr. Yenin, the deputy -- well, he was one of the deputy prosecutors to Mr. Lutsenko and he handled international affairs.

THE CHAIRMAN: So this came from the Ukrainians, this information or rumor that the President may have joined this meeting by phone?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Did you hear that from anyone else?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No, I don't think so.

THE CHAIRMAN: Did he tell you where he had heard that from?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Again, I didn't have the conversation, but I -- my understanding was he was either -- that he had heard it from Mr. Lutsenko.

THE CHAIRMAN: So you're saying was that Mr. Lutsenko had told him that the President had phoned into their meeting?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Uh-huh.

THE CHAIRMAN: Is that a yes?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That's a yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: While you were Ambassador to Ukraine, did you ever raise any concerns with the State Department about Giuliani's activities in Ukraine?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, you know, there was a series of conversations, as we learned more and more. And I don't know if that constitutes raising concerns. I would say it does constitute raising concerns, but it's not like I sent in a formal cable outlining everything. It felt very -- very sensitive and very political.

THE CHAIRMAN: And who did you express those concerns with?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: The European Bureau.

THE CHAIRMAN: And who in particular?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: George Kent; Phil Reeker, when he came on board.

THE CHAIRMAN: And what was their response when you raised the concerns that Giuliani was involved in activities that may be at odds with U.S. policy?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, they were concerned too.

THE CHAIRMAN: And how did they express their concerns to you?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I mean, I don't really know how to answer that question. I mean, it was -- it was kind of a what are you hearing, what do you think is happening? You know, it was that kind of a conversation.

THE CHAIRMAN: And one last question before I yield to the minority. Did anyone at the State Department try to stop those efforts?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don’t think so. I don't think they felt they could.

THE CHAIRMAN: Do you want to take a break before we --

MR. ROBBINS: Yes. I wonder if I can inquire how much longer we're going tonight?

THE CHAIRMAN: Let me ask the minority, do you expect you'll use the entire 45 minutes? Okay. We have a few more questions I think on our side. So would you like to take a break?

MR. ROBBINS: Well, among other things, I've got to plan a trip back to New York. So are we going past 7 o'clock tonight?

THE CHAIRMAN: Yeah. I think we are, yeah. All right, let's take a 10-minute break.

[Recess.]

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay, let's go back on the record, and the time is with the minority.

MR. CASTOR: Thank you.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Ambassador, once again, we want to you know, restate our appreciation for your participation here today as well as your 30-plus year career. We value your service and we thank you for it.

The fact that we're asking questions here today and some of the questions, you know, may or may not be the questions you'd like to be talking about here today, we're doing our best to try to find the facts, but thank you again for your service, and we have the utmost respect for your career and just wanted to officially say that to you.

A  Thank you.

Q  In your February meeting with Minister Avakov, what specific issues did he say Mr. Giuliani was trying to raise with him?

A  He said that Mr. Giuliani wanted to meet him.

Q  And Avakov was trying to avoid that meeting?

A  Yes.

Q  And did he ever come to learn what Giuliani was trying to impart to him at that meeting?

A  I don't believe he did. I think he assumed it had -- it was related to Mr. Lutsenko's work with Mr. Giuliani, because it was Mr. Lutsenko and Mr. Fruman and Parnas who were trying to persuade Mr. Avakov to meet with Mr. Giuliani.

Q  To your knowledge, was Mr. Avakov, was he anti-Trump?

A  I think he was pro-Avakov.

Q  Okay. He had some -- he had some negative statements in the media about the President. Are you aware of that?

A  No. I mean, maybe I was at the time, but it hasn't -- it didn't register with me.

Q  You didn't especially identify him as an anti-Trump person?

A  I think he is a very pragmatic man.

Q  He asserted on Twitter the President was diagnosed as a dangerous misfit. Did you have any awareness of that?

A  No. When did he do that?

[Exhibit No. 5

was marked for identification.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  This is in a Facebook post. I have a Politico article here. Maybe it's just helpful if I pass it around. I'll mark it as exhibit 5. I got copies. This is a Politico article from January 2017, so this is the beginning of your term. Have you ever seen this article before?

A  I don't know. I mean, I can't read through it, and I'm not sure I would remember from early 2017.

Q  Okay. It just -- it goes through various efforts of Ukrainians that were just trying to sabotage Trump, and Avakov is quoted on page 14: Ukrainian's Minister of Internal Affairs, Arsen Avakov, piled on, trashing Trump on Twitter in July as, quote, "a clown and asserting that Trump is, quote, an even bigger danger to the U.S. than terrorism."

The subsequent paragraph talks about the Facebook post, but does this refresh any of your recollection? Did you realize that he was as hotly anti-Trump as these comments?

A  As I said, I mean, this obviously was before I arrived in Ukraine, and so, I might have seen it at the time. But during -- during my time in Ukraine, I mean, Avakov is a very pragmatic man. He's looking for partnerships. If the President of the United States is Donald Trump, he's going to work with Donald Trump. If it is you, he's going to work with you, and he's going to find partnerships and ways to make that work.

Q  This Politico report talks about somebody by the name of Alexandra Chalupa, if I'm pronouncing that name correctly. Did you ever hear of her before?

A  Yeah.

Q  What do you know about her?

A  Only what is in the press.

Q  Have you ever met her?

A  No, or at least to the best of my knowledge, I haven’t met her, because, I mean, press also reported that she worked at the Ukrainian Embassy. So I've been obviously to the Ukrainian Embassy here, and I may have met her at an event or something.

Q  Do you know about any efforts that she undertook to work with the Ukrainian Embassy to further negative information about the now-President Trump?

A  All I know is what I've read in the media.

Q  Has Chalupa ever come up at the embassy in your discussions at post?

A  No, I don't think so.

Q  On page 13 of this report, it talks about the Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S., Chaly, publishing an op-ed chastising the President. Does that ring any bells? Do you have any familiarity with that?

A  Where does it say that?

Q  It's on page 13 of 18.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  The bottom paragraph: The Ambassador Chaly penned an op-ed for The Hill in which he chastised Trump for a confusing series of statements?

A  Yeah, I do remember the op-ed.

Q  Okay. What do you know about Ambassador Chaly's perspective on President Trump?

A  Well, I think my recollection of the op-ed was that he was concerned about some statements that candidate Trump at the time had made with regard to, you know, whether Crimea was Russian or Ukrainian. And so, I think that was the reason for the op-ed. I mean, obviously, this is a very sensitive issue for the Ukrainians.

Q  The story goes on to just talk about how the Ukrainian officials were, in fact, supporting Hillary Clinton, not President Trump. Is that a fair assessment of Ukrainian officials at the time, during the 2016 period leading up to the election?

A  I mean, when you say supporting Hillary Clinton, I mean, I've read these articles, but, you know, I'm not sure that -- I mean, I can't judge the validity of what was happening here in the United States.

Q  Fair enough. We spoke couple different times about the communication you had with George Kent.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  And I thought it might be helpful to just go through the whole episode again from beginning to end, where you could just tell us exactly what happened, where it happened, anything you remember about that communication?

A  I don't think I have anything to add to what I've told you previously.

Q  So I guess we're asking you to just recount it again, because it came up during the questioning of a couple different Members and at a couple different times, and we're just trying to get a full accounting of it, if we may.

THE CHAIRMAN: Can I just suggest, because it's getting late, that she has talked about this quite a lot. If you have a specific question, I think, rather than having her repeat everything she's already said.

MR. MEADOWS: Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, we don't tell you how to ask questions and we haven't all day. And I don't think when it's the minority's time, it is appropriate, Mr. Chairman, to instruct us on how to ask questions.

THE CHAIRMAN: I'm making a recommendation to my colleague. He can follow it or not follow it. And the witness can say she's already answered the question if she wishes or she can go through it all over again, but in the interest of time -- it's been a long day for the Ambassador -- I'm recommending that we not simply retread ground we've already covered.

MR. JORDAN: Ambassador, what specifically did Mr. Kent tell you about the phone call between President Zelensky and President Trump?

MR. ROBBINS: I think we've covered this and I'll instruct the witness not to answer it yet another time.

MR. MEADOWS: Your objection, Counselor, is based on what? I mean, I'm just telling you, based on the transcripts that we have to date, it is unclear exactly what the full scope of her testimony is.

And so, I would suggest that there's been a lot of redundant questions here by the majority, and if you will just allow us to clarify, we want to make sure that we don't have the ambassador's words tangled up with our understanding.

MR. ROBBINS: Yeah. I don't accept the premise that -- I'm sorry, I wasn't quite finished. I don't accept the premise that the witness needs to clarify anything. I don't accept the premise that there have been lots of redundant questions.

And the predicate of the question that was pending is, I know you've said this several times, but just so I can hear it one more time. That sounds like a question that lawyers call -- I'm not done.

MR. MEADOWS: Well, I'm not done either. We can ask it in a different way, Counselor, if that's what we need to do.

MR. ROBBINS: All right. Well, I've stated my objection and the objection is pending, and I'll let the chairman rule as he wishes.

MR. JORDAN: Ambassador, when I asked you the question earlier, you said he did not talk to you about the fact that you were mentioned in the call. So we know that wasn't what happened. And all we’re asking is -- we know that wasn't discussed. So all we're asking is, what was specifically discussed?

If it wasn't -- I think many people would think the first thing he would tell you is, Hey, there was a call between President Trump and President Zelensky, and you were mentioned in the call. That would seem to me to be the most obvious thing. But you told me directly a couple hours ago that that was not the case. He did not tell you that you were mentioned in the call. So all we're asking is, what did he say specifically about the call?

MR. ROBBINS: You can answer it one more time and that's it.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: The reason I was so emphatic about the fact that he didn't say that, that I was featured in this phone call, is that I would have remembered that. I mean, I can tell you that for sure. So --

MR. JORDAN: And if he knew that, Ambassador, you would have thought Mr. Kent would have probably told you that first thing, right?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I think he would have told me.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. So all we're asking is, he made a point to talk to you about the call, but he didn't tell you the most obvious thing. Maybe he didn't know that, I don't know. So what did he tell you?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So, you know, he -- this was a relatively short conversation. He said that the two Presidents had spoken. I said, good, because, you know, that's the sort of thing you always want, right, to strengthen a bilateral relationship, that kind of leadership engagement.

And what I recall him saying is that Trump had -- President Trump had asked for -- you know, for some assistance on the investigations, and that President Zelensky had said that, you know, all of the concerns that President Trump had, that happened, you know, in the previous administration and this was a new team and that he was going to be having his own prosecutor general. That's what I recall of the conversation.

MR. JORDAN: Okay, thank you.

MR. CASTOR: Mr. Perry had some questions.

MR. PERRY: Thank you.

Ambassador Yovanovitch, I want to talk to you a little bit about social media activities. During your tenure in Ukraine, did your -- you talked about this a little bit, but I'm -- did your staff monitor social media accounts unrelated to visa applications? And I know you said you didn't get into the nuts and bolts of it, but --

MR. ROBBINS: May I just ask -- she'll answer the question. I just want to understand what the Member means by the word "monitor," because there have been some stories floating around the internet suggesting all kinds of surreptitious monitoring, and that word can --

MR. PERRY: I'm not going to use "surreptitious."

MR. ROBBINS: I understand, but the word connotes a number of different kinds of things, and I just want to be sure that the record is clear as to what the Member means when he uses the word "monitor."

MR. PERRY: Well, I would ask the ambassador to let us know what the scope of their monitoring was, but to me it would mean that you check on a regular basis the accounts and the activities of certain individuals that you're interested in.

MR. ROBBINS: That's fair enough. Please.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah. I think -- I mean, that's what our press section did on issues that were of, you know, interest to the Ukraine-U.S. relationship, to other related issues. Obviously, when this whole set of issues came up, we were also following that.

I don't know exactly -- you know, discuss what the word "monitor" is and so forth. I don't know exactly how they -- how the press team did it, but I think they -- they knew who was most active, for example, on issues of, say, NATO membership, or IMF issues, et cetera, that would have been of interest. And I think over time, these things, you know, who we would follow -- I think that's the word we use -- might change over time, because an issue becomes less interesting over time for whatever reason.

MR. PERRY: Okay, let me ask you this: Who in the press office that would do this following or monitoring should we be interested in talking to, you know, to find out the scope? Is there a person that we can address that to, these questions?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, I guess I would say, you know, the head of the section.

MR. PERRY: You don't know the name?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I'm sorry, I'm getting tired, but I will remember by the end of this.

MR. PERRY: Do you know how they selected the specific people -- and I think you just said, but I want to clarify -based on the subject they might be covering, whether it was the IMF or -- is that how they selected the individuals?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah. So we have -- you know, the press section is obviously very integrated into the rest of the work of the embassy. So they know what is of interest to us, you know, whether it's somebody in the econ section, the defense attache, somebody else. And so, they will, you know -- is it FOX News that's covering them most? Is it the New York Times? And so, they will -- you know, again, the term I know is "follow," but I don't precisely know what that means. They will follow those accounts, whether it's Facebook, whether it's Twitter or whatever.

MR. PERRY: Okay. So would that include following Americans?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah. I mean, many of -- you know, New York Times, FOX.

[6:47 p.m.]

MR. PERRY: Let me -- I'm going to give you a list of names, and you can just say yes or no, if you know.

Did your staff request assistance from any D.C. bureau to monitor or follow the social media account of Jack Prezobiak (ph)?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't know.

MR. PERRY: Donald Trump, Jr.?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I'm not into that level of detail in terms of --

MR. PERRY: I'm just going to, if you don't mind, I'm going to ask you a list of names. You can say, I don't know, no, yes, but I want to go through the list of names.

So you said, "I don't know" to Donald Trump, Jr., right?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Uh-huh.

MR. PERRY: Laura Ingraham.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't know.

MR. PERRY: Sean Hannity.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't know.

MR. PERRY: Michael McFaul.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't know.

MR. PERRY: Dan Bongino.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't know.

MR. PERRY: Ryan Sevettera (ph).

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't know.

MR. PERRY: Rudy Giuliani.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Don't know.

MR. PERRY: Sebastian Gorka.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Don't know.

MR. PERRY: John Solomon. I'm getting to the end.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Okay. Don't know.

MR. PERRY: Lou Dobbs.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No, I don't know.

MR. PERRY: Pam Gellar.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Pam Gellar?

MR. PERRY: Pam Gellar.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

MR. PERRY: Sara Carter.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No. I mean, I don't know.

MR. PERRY: Okay. Do you know if -- or did you promote the use of any following --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: And can I -- excuse me, sir.

MR. PERRY: Yes, ma'am.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Can I just say that just because I don't know doesn't mean that a request wasn't made. There's, you know, lots of people doing this --

MR. PERRY: And I understand that. We're just trying to -- just trying to establish who knew what at what level and so on and so forth so we have a full view of what was happening and why it was happening. It's not meant to be intrusive or invasive or derogatory or anything like that. We're just -- and like I said, that's why I asked, too, if not you, who would know this information, because we're going to have to find out.

Do you know if you promoted the use of the following search terms intersecting with the above people: Yovanovitch, Ukraine ambassador, Ukraine Soros, or Ukraine Biden?

And I'm just going to -- well, I'm going to let you answer. Do you know if that was included in the mechanics of the search intersection?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No, I don't know.

MR. PERRY: Okay. Can you just explain how any of this following or searching would be related to your official duties as ambassador?

MR. ROBBINS: That, of course, assumes that any of that happened.

MR. PERRY: Okay.

MR. ROBBINS: Right? So we don't know that and neither does she. She already told you that, right?

MR. PERRY: Well, she's told me she didn't know.

MR. ROBBINS: Right. So how is she going to possibly know the answer to that question?

MR. PERRY: I'm not going to put any words in her mouth or thoughts in her mind. I'm just asking the question, sir.

All right. Did you discuss any of this activity with George Kent?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't know how to answer that question, because I wasn't involved in requesting, you know, these kinds of --

MR. PERRY: Well, it seems to me if -- you either weren't involved or it wasn't happening, or if it was happening and you didn't know, then there would be no reason for you to discuss it, but so --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So let me just go back to your previous conversation, where I did -- you know, when my staff -- because you put this in the context of the embassy requesting help --

MR. PERRY: Right.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: -- from Washington. So when that help -- and I don't know whether this is exactly what they were requesting or whether it was something else or in addition to, but when they didn't get the support they felt they needed --

MR. PERRY: The assistance.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: -- I -- you know, they told me. And so I talked to George about that. But that level of detail and whether that is exactly the same thing, I cannot --

MR. PERRY: Okay. Fair enough. But you did ask main State Department resources be made available on a 24/7 basis for following or monitoring?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't recall putting it quite like that. The conversations we --

MR. PERRY: How would you put it?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, what we were saying is because of the 7-hour time difference, that they could pick up when we went home type thing.

MR. PERRY: Okay. Let me ask you a couple other questions that are unrelated to the social monitoring or following.

Did you or anyone on your staff request unmasking of any individuals?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Is that a technical term?

MR. PERRY: Unmasking. You're not familiar?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Sorry.

MR. PERRY: Okay. Is there a better way to describe that?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: What does it mean?

MR. PERRY: If someone is -- their identity is unknown, you can make a -- and their -- and that identity is involved in official classified conversations, then there can be a request be made to see who that individual is, because they won't be listed by name in the description, it will be listed a different way, and so you can ask.

MR. BITAR: I'm sorry. One administrative matter. This is an unclassified briefing, so I just want to make that clear. If your question relates to unmasking of intelligence-related products or reports, that's going to be a separate matter that we --

MR. PERRY: Okay. I'm asking about unmasking of any kind, so not necessarily related to --

MR. MEADOWS: But it could include that.

MR. PERRY: It could include that.

MR. MEADOWS: And that wouldn't be classified.

THE CHAIRMAN: I don't think there is such a term of art apart from intelligence products, so --

MR. MEADOWS: Yeah, but we're not asking who, Mr. Chairman. We're just asking if the request was made, and so I don't know how that would be classified. It appears that she doesn't know anything about that, but the very fact that she asked is not classified unless we're talking about whom she asked to have unmasked.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, I think she said she's not even familiar with that term.

MR. MEADOWS: Well, let her answer. But, I mean --

THE CHAIRMAN: As long as it doesn't involve anything in the classified realm, you certainly may answer if you know.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Okay. So --

MR. MEADOWS: You can answer. He's got to run.

MR. PERRY: I'll be back.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Okay.

MR. PERRY: Sorry. Thank you.

MR. MEADOWS: It's nothing you said.

MR. CASTOR: Welcome to Congress.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So I got lost a little bit in the conversation. Are we talking about --

MR. GOLDMAN: Let's ask him to repeat it. Oh.

MR. MEADOWS: You can ask the pecans.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Would you mind repeating the question? Or -- we can't. Okay. So--

MR. MEADOWS: So I think the gentleman from Pennsylvania was talking about in general terms as it relates to monitoring, was there any -- let me phrase it this way.

Was there any special request to look at potential conversations that may not be normally monitored through open source methods? How about that?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So it sounds --

MR. MEADOWS: Is that qualified enough?

THE CHAIRMAN: If you're just talking about what is the press section following in terms of what newspapers and what columns, whatever, I don't really think that's generally described as monitoring, but the witness can certainly answer to the best of her ability.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So, you know, the press section just by its very name, it’s all unclassified stuff, right? And all the press section did was look at, you know, what does The New York Times publish, The Wall Street Journal publish about Ukraine or U.S. bilateral relations with Ukraine, that sort of thing.

And now with the advent of social media, obviously there are many other kinds of outlets that are reviewed for, you know, what's out there in the news, what do we know, what do we need to take action on, et cetera.

MR. MEADOWS: But in the nonclassified realm. Is that what you're saying?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: It's all unclassified. It's press, yes. It's press review.

MR. MEADOWS: Right. So let me follow up, then, on one thing. This extraordinary activity that you asked the State Department to do, the 24/7, or however you want to classify it, when did that happen?

MR. ROBBINS: Okay. So I want to object to the insertion of the word "extraordinary" as if it's something not routine in some respect.

MR. MEADOWS: Well, the additional request -- I'll rephrase it, counselor -- the additional request that she made of the State Department to provide additional resources to monitor social media of certain individuals, when was that made?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I'm not sure. At some --

MR. MEADOWS: Was it made after the Hill article that --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: At some point after that, yes.

MR. MEADOWS: So was it directly related to the negative publicity that you were getting this request?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: It was related to the news blowing up around us.

MR. MEADOWS: Yeah. It seemed to relate all to the negative stories about you and the request for additional resources, is what it appeared. So you're saying the timing came after the Hill article?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Uh-huh.

MR. MEADOWS: All right. I'll yield back.

MR. ZELDIN: I have one quick question, hopefully.

Earlier on, answering questions from the majority with regards to the July 25th call, you testified that it is your belief that President Trump was referring to Lutsenko. Do you know, in fact, he was referring to Lutsenko and not Shokin on that phone call?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Hello again. Our round ends at 7:11, in case you're looking at the clock.

Is it fair to say -- it's been related to us that at all times U.S. officials involved in this matter have acted with the highest degree of personal and professional integrity and with the best interests of the United States. Is that something you can --

A  Which matter?

Q  The matter we're here discussing, about the, you know, the call and the subsequent activities.

A  So the July 25th call?

Q  Uh-huh.

A  Um --

Q  And the relationship with Zelensky and the various, you know, efforts to, you know, bring him in for a White House meeting, some of the back and forth that there has been with the statement that occurred after you left.

THE CHAIRMAN: So clarification, counsel. Are you asking the witness if --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah. I’m not --

THE CHAIRMAN: -- she thinks that what took place on the call was appropriate?

MR. CASTOR: Subsequent to the call.

THE CHAIRMAN: Subsequent to the call? I'm not sure what you're asking, and I'm not sure the witness understands what you're asking, either.

MR. CASTOR: You know, Ambassador Volker testified about the difficulties that Rudy Giuliani presented, you know, in U.S.-Ukrainian relations, but he was very clear that at all times, he told us, U.S. officials acted with the highest degree of personal and professional integrity.

Is that something that you would agree with, based on the facts that you have at your disposal?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I would say two things. In my dealings with -- in my dealings with Kurt Volker, and we are friends as well as colleagues, over the last 30-something years, I have -- I consider him to be a man of honor and somebody who's a brilliant diplomat. And, you know, I think he is working in the interests of our country.

With regard to the specific question that you are asking, I just -- you know, I wasn't there. I don't have the knowledge to be able to address it properly.

MR. CASTOR: But you think the individuals at the --

[Discussion off the record.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Ambassador Volker mentioned the fact that to the extent there are corrupt Ukrainians and the United States is advocating for the Ukraine to investigate themselves, that certainly would be an appropriate initiative for U.S. officials to advocate for. Is that right?

A  If that's what took place.

Q  Have you ever used WhatsApp?

A  Yes.

Q  Is that a texting app? Is that something that's used by diplomats to communicate with -- back and forth across the overseas communications?

A  I mean, it's used by lots of people.

Q  Okay. So you don't attach a negative connotation to anybody that uses WhatsApp?

A  No.

Q  That's a legitimate app to use?

A  So do you want to be more specific in your question?

Q  Well, the Federal Records Act -- in compliance with the Federal Records Act, you know, texting over WhatsApp presents some unique issues for those that are, you know, concerned about -- from a Federal Records Act perspective.

A  In terms of retention of documents?

Q  Yes.

A  Well, we were told that we needed to -- and forgive me, you know, I don't know all the technical terms -- but that we needed to kind of upload our texts to the cloud. And I got a special, I don't know what the right word is, but it was somehow done for me.

So, you know, my belief is based on, you know, the conversations when this first came out, that we needed to retain our texts, I mean, I think that that was being done for me and my texts are somewhere safe.

Q  So assuming people are keeping their texts, the use of WhatsApp is completely appropriate, as far as you know?

A  Yeah. That's what the State Department told us. I mean, if I could just clarify, assuming it's not confidential or classified.

MR. CASTOR: Mr. Jordan, are you ready?

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  On Monday, we're going to be hearing from Fiona Hill.

A  On Monday?

Q  Uh-huh. And I just -- as we try to prepare for that interview, what do you think are the types of issues Dr. Hill can contribute to this discussion?

A  Well, she is -- she was the director, obviously, as you know, of the National Security Council, the European division at the -- and she is a well known expert not only in the region, but on Russia itself, and has written a landmark book on President Putin.

So she would obviously have a lot of firsthand knowledge about our relations and what took place with regard to Russia, with regard to Ukraine, and other European countries.

Q  How frequently did you speak with her in your --

A  Not that -- not that often.

Q  Not that often?

A  Yeah. I mean, you know, I would call on her when I was in Washington. You know, she would run some of the NSC meetings. And sometimes she was on emails as well, you know, in the back and forth with Washington.

Q  Now, do you have any personal knowledge or direct information regarding why the President curtailed your term?

A  Only what Deputy Secretary of State Sullivan told me.

Q  And you don't know if it actually was the President, then, that was responsible for curtailing your tour?

A  Well, I guess I assumed that the deputy secretary was telling the truth.

MR. CASTOR: That’s all I have. Does anybody --

MR. MEADOWS: Yeah. Just one.

There was a bicameral, bipartisan codel to the Ukraine, I think, where they had the honor of your presence. And the way it was characterized by some of my colleagues was that they believed that you had a pro-Poroshenko mindset. Would you agree with that characterization or disagree with it?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, that's really interesting.

I thought that he was -- we could obviously continue to work with him, but it was clear that he was unpopular, and we did not believe at that time that he was going to be reelected president.

What I would also say, though, is that with regard to Zelensky, who was the other top candidate there, we didn't know what kind of a President he was going to be. He'd never held elective office. So, you know, there was a big question mark there. You know, he's very engaging, he, you know, said many of the right things, but we just didn't know.

MR. MEADOWS: The way it was characterized to me -- and you correct this, because, obviously, I'm just trying to figure out how accurate that is -- the way it was characterized to me was that you believed that the United States had made a substantial investment in the existing President, and that it was a known quantity, and that it was in the U.S. best interests if he were to remain as President, because of the unknown nature of Mr. Zelensky.

Would you agree with that?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Not -- no. Not --

MR. MEADOWS: What part would you disagree with?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I -- I thought that over time -- in the beginning, President Poroshenko was, as everybody was, was really driven by the inspiration of the Revolution of Dignity. And they moved on reforms and so forth in part because they were inspired, in part because their backs were up against the wall, there's this war with Russia, they were going bankrupt, and we were conditioning our assistance that they had to do certain things in order to receive the money that they needed to keep the country afloat.

So they were desperate, they were scared that if they didn't take action people would turn against them again, and I think they were inspired. So there were many, many motivations.

But as time passed and the country, you know, got a little bit of breathing space, they weren't, you know, fearing that they were going to go bankrupt, things were getting a little bit better, I think that space which, you know, in any country is never, you know, forever, the space for making reform, the kinds of things that we thought were best for Ukraine and our bilateral relationship with Ukraine and the reforms the Ukrainian people wanted, that space got narrower and it was harder to move things forward.

MR. MEADOWS: So it would be fair to say that my colleagues were wrong, in that you were more in the pro-Zelensky camp?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, I would never want to say that a Member of Congress is wrong, but --

MR. MEADOWS: I can, but go ahead.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: But I -- you know, it's interesting to see how --

MR. MEADOWS: So you were more pro-Zelensky?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I was more, you know, here is the analysis. We don't get to vote in this election.

MR. MEADOWS: Yeah, but you have an opinion, Ambassador. Come on. You've been here 30 years. You get paid to give your opinion from a foreign ops standpoint.

So you had no opinion on who the President -- what would be in the best interests of the United States, which President would be the best fit for us going forward? You had no opinion?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So I'll answer it with two sentences.

I thought we could work with any of the top three candidates. I think I said that before, and I continue to believe that.

I thought that Poroshenko's time was up, because the Ukrainian people were so angry with him, and that we needed to make the best efforts we could to work with Zelensky so that it would be a strong bilateral relationship.

MR. MEADOWS: So let me finish with this last question, then. So there was never a communication from you to anyone else in the State Department that you can recall where you said it would -- where you indicated that it was not better for the United States that Poroshenko would stay in office? You never communicated that to anybody at the State Department?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I mean --

MR. MEADOWS: That you can recall.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: When?

MR. MEADOWS: Well, prior to his election.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I mean, there were -- there was a lot of discussion. Who are these people? What would be the best for Ukraine? Best for us? How do we move the relationship forward? And so forth.

I think, you know, from a conservative point of view, I think there were a number of people who thought that we know Poroshenko, we are comfortable with him, et cetera.

MR. MEADOWS: And that's exactly my point. That's what my colleagues were saying.

So was that the prevailing thought that you had and others had, so --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I don't think from the embassy point of view, because we could see that his number was up.

And so from our point of view, I mean, one just has to go with what you can see is going to happen and position the United States in the best way possible.

MR. JORDAN. Ambassador, which of the three top candidates were viewed as the reformer and more of the outsider?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I think President Zelensky was viewed as the outsider, but also as the reformer.

MR. JORDAN. That's consistent with what Special Envoy Volker told us, that he was the reformer. And as the reformer, he would be viewed as the one most likely, as you said in your statement, that would be focused on making -- or ending corruption would be his number one priority. Is that fair to say as well?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That's what he said his platform was.

MR. JORDAN. Okay. So he's the outsider, he's the reformer, and his entire campaign was about ending corruption in Ukraine?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: And bringing piece to the Donbass.

MR. JORDAN. Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: We are almost to the end. This is the lightning round. We just have a few more questions.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Okay.

THE CHAIRMAN: And then hopefully we’ll be done.

My colleagues in the minority asked you quite a bit about the press operation.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Uh-huh.

THE CHAIRMAN: That's not an operation that's unique to the Ukraine embassy, is it? This is something that almost every embassy of any size around the world would engage in, and that is, monitoring the press to see what issues are Ukrainians talking about, what are other people talking about, what rumors may be going viral, what issues are coming up? That's something every embassy does, is it not?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: It is. And every embassy has to do it to be current.

THE CHAIRMAN: You were also asked by my colleagues whether everyone in the State Department acted in the best interests of the Department, or something along those lines.

We now know from text messages that have been produced that there was an effort to condition that sought-after meeting between President Zelensky and President Trump with getting a deliverable from Ukraine, and that deliverable was: We want Ukraine to investigate the Bidens and we want Ukraine to investigate 2016.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Uh-huh.

THE CHAIRMAN: I think you've said that it was not in the interests of Ukraine to be pulled into the next Presidential election. Is that right?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: So an effort to condition a meeting that Ukraine desperately wanted and it was Ukraine's best interests on sucking them into the 2020 election would not have been good policy or conduct by the State Department?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: It was certainly not good policy, especially since, as I understand those texts and what occurred, is that this was not a foreign policy goal, something that is in the interests of all of us, a public good, but it was kind of a partisan game.

THE CHAIRMAN: It was in the interest of a political goal?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Uh-huh.

THE CHAIRMAN: And that is to help the Presidential campaign in -- I'm sorry. You have to answer "yes" or "no."

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I think -- I think the answer was "yes."

THE CHAIRMAN: And the goal was a political one to assist the President's campaign in 2020 through these two investigations?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That's how I understand, you know, what is in the media and what was in the texts.

THE CHAIRMAN: And if it would not be appropriate to condition a sought-after meeting with the White House on these political investigations, I assume you would also -you would also share the view that it would be even more damaging to condition vital military support on these two political investigations?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: I have just a couple more questions, and if these repeat anything, I apologize, so just tell me I already went there and I won’t bother it.

Were you aware that Kurt Volker introduced Andrey Yermak, one of President Zelensky's senior advisers, to Mr. Giuliani?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I'm aware of that because of the media reports of that.

THE CHAIRMAN: But that took place after you had left?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: After I departed.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. In the call record, the President, after President Zelensky talks about the need for more Javelins, our President says that he would like to ask a favor, though.

How would the President of Ukraine take a request from a U.S. President for a favor?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I think, as we stated before, or as we discussed before, we are the single most important partner for Ukraine. And so I think a Ukrainian President would try, if at all possible, to do whatever an American President requested.

THE CHAIRMAN: Did anyone from the Trump administration or anyone acting on its behalf encourage the Ukrainian government or law enforcement officials not to cooperate with the investigation of Special Counsel Mueller?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Not to my knowledge. I'm not aware of that.

THE CHAIRMAN: And do you know whether Mr. Giuliani played any role in that?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I’m unaware.

THE CHAIRMAN: After President Zelensky in the call record says, "The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in Ukraine were bad news, so I just wanted to let you know that" -- I'm sorry, that's President Trump speaking -- the President thereafter, referring to you, says, "Well, she is going to go through some things."

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: What did you -- what was your reaction when you saw the President had said that to his Ukrainian counterpart, that you were going to go through some things?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I was shocked. I was shocked and I was -- I was shocked and I was apprehensive about what that meant.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Malinowski.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Thank you. Just one question.

You mentioned, Ambassador, that Ambassador Sondland at one point had advised you to, quote, "go big or go home," and "go big" meant putting out a tweet or public statement saying that, I think you mentioned, that you supported President Trump and rejected all of these false accusations. Did he --

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Something like that.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Did he actually say, "support President Trump"? Was that his advice, that you publicly say something to that effect?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yes. I mean, he may not have used the words "support President Trump," but he said: You know the President. Well, maybe you don't know him personally, but you know, you know, the sorts of things that he likes. You know, go out there battling aggressively and, you know, praise him or support him.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Is that a normal request from a political appointee to a career ambassador, in your experience?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: He said that in response to my request for advice on, How do I deal with this? I've never seen anything like this. I don't know what to do. And that was his response.

So, I mean, I have to admit that the advice took me aback, but I did ask him.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Okay.

Finally, I would say to all of my colleagues on both sides that I would be honored if you followed me on Twitter, and I will not accuse you of monitoring me. My handle is @malinowski.

MR. MEADOWS: How do you spell that one?

MR. MALINOWSKI: It's hard. Almost as hard as Yovanovitch.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Exactly. Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you. Just a few last things. You ultimately --

THE CHAIRMAN: I thought your handle was @pecan.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  You left Ukraine for good May 20th. Is that right?

A  That's correct.

Q  And that was the day of Zelensky's inauguration?

A  Coincidentally, yes.

Q  Were you aware at all of the formation of the U.S. delegation to the inauguration in Ukraine?

A  Not really. I mean, I was, you know, so busy, frankly, packing out and everything. I had heard that Ambassador Sondland was on the delegation, for example. But, I mean, I wasn't following. I mean, I was super busy trying to sort of pull everything together and leave Ukraine.

Q  So you were not really engaged in the prep for the inauguration --

A  No.

Q  -- in any way?

A  Huh-uh.

Q  Who led that?

A  I think -- yeah. I think at that time, Joseph Pennington was charge.

Q  Were you aware of a Bloomberg article on May 14th, so it would have been 6 days before you left, where Lutsenko stated that he had, quote, no evidence of wrongdoing, unquote, by either of the Bidens?

A  Yes. I recall that.

Q  You mentioned earlier Naftogaz.

A  Yes.

Q  What is Naftogaz?

A  It is the gas monopoly that is owned by the Government of Ukraine.

Q  Has it had some corruption issues in the past, to your knowledge?

A  It has. You know, it's really cleaned up its act. I mean, we consider it to be one of the success stories in Ukraine. But that doesn't mean it's done. I mean, there's still issues going forward.

Q  Did the act cleaning up occur in conjunction with the fact that they added a supervisory board to the company?

A  I think that was important. I think the most important thing, though, was actually the head of Naftogaz, a guy by the name of Andrei Kobalyev, who is, you know, as clean as they come, and was fearless and determined to sort of shake everything up and really made some amazing steps forward, I mean, from a country that was getting the vast majority, something like 93 percent, of its gas from Russia to importing zero from Russia.

So, I mean, if you think about that from a security standpoint, huge steps forward.

Q  Right. Do you know when they added a supervisory board?

A  I want to say, like, 2017.

Q  And would that be somewhat similar to Burisma's board that we were talking about earlier, same concept?

A  Well, I don't exactly know what the, you know, the duties of the board for Burisma are or how they select their members, et cetera. But I suppose in principle it's kind of similar.

Q  In principle in the sense that both boards include international individuals, right, non-Ukrainians? Is that your understanding?

A  Yeah. Yeah. And I assume that both boards, you know, do traditionally what boards do, set direction and so forth.

Q  Are you aware of any efforts this past year by Secretary Rick Perry of the Department of Energy to change some of the members on the Naftogaz board?

A  I read about that in the media.

Q  But were you aware of that while you were at post?

A  No. This happened after -- according to the media, this was happening after I left.

Q  And you didn't hear from any of your Department of State colleagues about this?

A  No.

Q  Did you ever hear about a March 2019 meeting in Houston between Parnas, Fruman, and a senior Naftogaz executive, Andrei Favorov?

A  Yeah. That was in the open letter that I referenced many hours ago.

Q  The Dale Perry open letter?

A  That's right. That's where I heard of that.

Q  And what did you understand occurred in that Houston meeting?

A  Well, you know, all I understood was what was -what was said in that article. I have no way -- or open letter -- I have no way of knowing whether it's true or not, but that Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman wanted Mr. Favorov to take over and become the head of Naftogaz.

Q  Why?

A  I don't know, but I assume that they thought that that would be in their best interests.

Q  Did you ask anyone at your embassy to follow up on this Dale Perry open letter, look into this?

A  This was at the -- I want to say it was at the end of April, and I had a lot of other things going on then.

Q  Okay. There's a new prosecutor general now, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  It’s absolutely no chance I'm going to be able to pronounce the name. So am I correct that he was appointed August 29th?

A  That sounds right.

Q  Okay. Are you familiar with him from before his appointment?

A  I've met him a couple of times.

Q  What do you know of him by reputation or otherwise?

A  By reputation, I think we think that he's clean and he's a reformer. He spent the last couple of years -- the reason I don't really know him well or better is that he -his wife has a job somewhere in Europe. And so he was living in Europe but came back to help President Zelensky with his campaign, and so I met him in that context.

Q  And could you just say his name for the record and spell it, if you could?

A  Is it Ryboshapka?

Q  Sounds right. I'm not going to debate you.

A  Spell it? R-y-a-b -- no. Sorry. Yeah.

Q  Yeah. I think they have --

A  So this is what I would do R-y-b-o-s-h-a-p-k-a.

Q  Okay. And you'll recall I that July 25th call between President Trump and Zelensky that President Zelensky said that the next prosecutor general was 100 percent going to be his guy. Is this person 100 percent his guy, as far as you know?

A  Well, he came back from Europe to help him run the election campaign and now he's in the administration. I mean, when he was on the campaign he was saying that he was going to go back to Europe, but evidently not.

Q  Okay. Two more questions.

Are you aware of whether any other U.S. officials pressed any Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden or the 2016 election, perhaps outside of the State Department?

A  No.

Q  And my last question for you is that you testified in response to some of Mr. Malinowski's questions about sort of parallel policies in Ukraine. One was the official U.S. policy of the State Department that you were promoting and one was the shadow Giuliani-Trump policy.

Now, looking back with the benefit of hindsight, can you describe how these two policies were proceeding on parallel tracks and what the impact was? Can you kind of summarize for us?

A  Well, I mean, for one thing, it was -- although we really tried to keep our eye on the ball at the embassy, because, again, it was a challenging time, there was an election campaign, an election for president, and we needed to know what was happening and we needed to manage that and manage the relationship and whatever the future of the relationship would be. So it was distracting in many ways.

But the other thing is, because there were -- there was, you know, the press interview and then all of the other subsequent articles, social media postings, et cetera, Ukrainians were wondering whether I was going to be leaving, whether we really represented the President, U.S. policy, et cetera. And so I think it was -- you know, it really kind of cut the ground out from underneath us.

MR. GOLDMAN: I yield back.

MR. MEADOWS: Mr. Chairman, before you close it out, I think we had 4 minutes left, and I want to follow up on one thing that you had --

THE CHAIRMAN: Please.

MR. ZELDIN: We had more than 4 minutes.

MR. MEADOWS: Okay. Okay.

THE CHAIRMAN: Go ahead.

MR. MEADOWS: All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ambassador, there's been, and Chairman Schiff kind of alluded to this, and when we start talking about Javelins and foreign aid, for the record, I want to make sure that we're clear. The foreign aid that was -- has been reported as being held up, it doesn't relate to Javelins, does it?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No. At least I'm not aware that it does.

MR. MEADOWS: Because foreign military sales, or FMS, as you would call it, is really a totally separate track, is it not? Foreign military sales get approved, but they're actually a purchase that happens with, in this case, it would have been Ukraine. Is that correct?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So, yes. President Zelensky was talking about a purchase. But separately, as I understand it, and, again, this is from news accounts, the security assistance that was being held up was security assistance, it wasn't the FMS.

MR. MEADOWS: But it was actually aid that had been appropriated and it had nothing to do with Javelins. Would you agree with that?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: That's my understanding.

MR. MEADOWS: Yeah. Because it's critically important in his context when he says, "We're almost ready for the Javelins," that happens on cycles that are not necessarily just appropriation cycles.

In your history as a foreign service diplomat, you've seen that, I assume, over and over again. Is that correct?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Yeah. I assumed that what it meant is that, you know, they were getting paperwork together, et cetera, and working with our military colleagues.

MR. MEADOWS: And when the aid ultimately came through, it didn't impact the purchase of those Javelins even when the aid ultimately was approved. Would you agree?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Not to my -- not to my knowledge.

MR. MEADOWS: Right.

MR. ZELDIN: In response to one of the chairman's questions related to aid from the United States to Ukraine and investigations, you responded that that was not a good policy. What policy were you referring to when you said it was not a good policy?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: So I don't remember exactly what I said, but --

MR. ZELDIN: If you want, I could rephrase the question in a way that might make it easier for you to respond without even reflecting on the question and answer.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Okay. Please.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware of a policy where aid from the United States to Ukraine was linked to investigating the Bidens?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: No, I am not. An official policy. There's no official policy.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware of an unofficial policy?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Well, I mean, reading the texts and so forth, it made me wonder whether there was an unofficial policy.

MR. ZELDIN: Now, Ambassador Volker's testimony when he was here, he was testifying that Bill Taylor's text was as a follow-up to a Politico story that he had read that he was concerned about.

The texts that you reference also include responses to Ambassador Taylor where it says, the President has been absolutely crystal clear there's no quid pro quo.

So with regards to the texts, are you talking about some of the texts or all of the texts in saying that there was an unofficial policy?

MS. YOVANOVITCH: I think that I probably should decline to answer that question, because I was not in the policy world at that point.

MR. ZELDIN: That's a fantastic answer, and I'm glad you're giving that answer, because I wouldn't say that there would be an unofficial policy without having all of your information to be able to say there actually was an unofficial policy.

So I think that -- I would have no further questions based off of that answer to the last question.

THE CHAIRMAN: Ambassador, we want to thank you very much for a very long day, and we want to thank you very much for a very long and distinguished career.

And we are adjourned.

MS. YOVANOVITCH: Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 7:31 p.m., the interview was concluded.]

Testimony from Former State Department Official Michael McKinley

PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE,
joint with the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
and the
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
WASHINGTON, D.C.

INTERVIEW OF: P. MICHAEL MCKINLEY

Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Washington, D.C.

The interview in the above matter was held in Room HVC-304, Capitol Visitor Center, commencing at 10:07 a.m.

Present: Representatives Schiff, Himes, Sewell, Carson, Speier, Quigley, Swalwell, Castro, Heck, Maloney, Demings, Krishnamoorthi, Nunes, Wenstrup, Stewart, Stefanik, and Ratcliffe.

Also Present: Representatives Wild, Lieu, Espaillat, Deutch, Raskin, Khanna, Wasserman-Schultz, Bera, Malinowski, Phillips, Rouda, Rooney, Bishop of Utah, Mullin, McCaul, Jordan, Meadows, Zeldin, Perry, Roy, Titus.

Appearances:

For the PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE:

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For the COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM:

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For the COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS:

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For P. MICHAEL MCKINLEY:

JOHN D. CELLA
JOHN B. BELLINGER III
ARNOLD & PORTER KAYE SCHOLER, LLP
601 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Washington, D.C. 20001-3743

THE CHAIRMAN: Alrighty, let's come to order.

And before we begin, I just want to -- excuse me, members. Before I begin, I just want to confirm that all of the members and staff in attendance are either members and staff of the three committees -- the Oversight Committee, the Intel Committee, or the Foreign Affairs Committee. Is anyone present who is not a member or staff of those committees?

Okay. Seeing no hands.

Good morning, Ambassador McKinley, and welcome to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which, along with the Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees, is conducting this investigation as part of the official impeachment inquiry of the House of Representatives.

Today's voluntary transcribed interview is being conducted as part of the impeachment inquiry. We thank you for complying voluntarily with the committee's request on short notice that you provide testimony relevant to the inquiry in light of your resignation from the State Department on Friday, October 11.

Ambassador McKinley has served our country as a distinguished diplomat and four-time ambassador since 1982. Most recently, prior to resigning, he served since November 2018 in a unique role as senior advisor to the Secretary of State, a position reflective of his seniority, experience, and role as dean of the career Foreign Service.

Ambassador McKinley, we will ask you to introduce yourself and your career experience more fully at the outset of today's interview for the benefit of the record and all of those present.

Given your unique position and vantage point, we look forward to hearing your testimony today, including your knowledge of the sudden removal of Ambassador to Ukraine Yovanovitch; the treatment of Ambassador Yovanovitch, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, and potentially others; and the Department's response to congressional investigations, including the impeachment inquiry.

We will also seek your perspective on evidence that has come to light in the course of the inquiry, including the President's July 25, 2019, call with Ukrainian President Zelensky, as well as the documentary record about efforts before and after the call to get the Ukrainians to announce publicly investigations into the two areas President Trump asked Zelensky to pursue: the Bidens and the conspiracy theory about Ukraine's purported interference in the 2016 election.

Finally, given your experience and to restate what I and others have emphasized in other interviews, Congress will not tolerate any reprisal, threat of reprisal, or attempt to retaliate against any U.S. Government official for testifying before Congress.

It is disturbing that the State Department, in coordination with the White House, has sought to prohibit Department employees and discourage former employees from cooperating with the inquiry and has tried to limit what they can say. This is unacceptable. Thankfully, consummate professionals have demonstrated remarkable courage in coming forward to testify and tell the truth.

Before I turn to committee counsel to begin the interview, I invite the ranking member or, in his absence, a minority member of the Foreign Affairs or Oversight Committees to make any opening remarks.

MR. JORDAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ambassador, thank you for appearing here today. Thank you for your service to our country.

On September 24th, Speaker Pelosi unilaterally announced that the House was beginning a so-called impeachment inquiry. On October 2nd, Speaker Pelosi promised that this so-called impeachment inquiry would treat the President with fairness. However, Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Schiff, and the Democrats are not living up to that basic promise. Instead, Democrats are conducting a rushed, closed-door, and unprecedented inquiry.

Democrats are ignoring 45 years of bipartisan procedures designed to provide elements of fundamental fairness and due process. In past impeachment inquiries, the majority and minority had co-equal subpoena authority and the right to require a committee vote on all subpoenas. The President's counsel had the right to attend all depositions and hearings, including those held in executive session. The President’s counsel had the right to cross-examine witnesses and the right to propose witnesses. The President's counsel had the right to present evidence, object to the admission of evidence, and to review all evidence presented, both favorable and unfavorable. Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Schiff's so-called impeachment inquiry has none of these guarantees of fundamental fairness and due process.

Most disappointing, Democrats are conducting this impeachment inquiry behind closed doors. We are conducting these deposition interviews in a SCIF, but Democrats are clear: These are unclassified sessions. This seems to be nothing more than hiding this work from the American people. If Democrats intend to undo the will of the American people just a year before the next election, they should at least do so transparently and be willing to be accountable for their actions.

With the chairman's indulgence, our counsel has a couple of points we'd like to raise on procedure as well.

MR. CASTOR: Just, respectfully, we request copies of the subpoenas, certificates of service. We don't know whether these subpoenas have been authentically signed or stamped. The House Clerk, House counsel requires that the chairman sign these personally in ink, and the Clerk requires -- at least when we were in the majority for years, the Clerk requires that we comply with all the rules.

We request sufficient notice. We need to prepare our members. And so, in the minority, we don't always have the lead time that you do, and we don't know your queue. And so we just ask for a little bit more notice for some of these witnesses so we can prepare in a meaningful way and so we can participate.

And, you know, the word "consultation" is different from "notice." It's a different word; it has a different meaning under House rules. And so, to the extent there is a 3-day consultation requirement, we would just ask the majority to honor that.

Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: I thank my colleagues. We can have the opportunity to discuss these issues without taking up the witness's time.

The record should reflect, however, that Republican members and staff are present and able to ask all the questions they want and have been for all of the prior interviews, notwithstanding what the President and many of his supporters have been representing publicly. And that will be the case today as well.

And, with that, I recognize Mr. Goldman.

MR. MEADOWS: Mr. Chairman? Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Obviously, we've talked about confidentiality in here. And my inquiry is, I am assuming that, based on the releases that some of my Democrat colleagues were quoted in various newspaper articles yesterday with specific facts that came from the hearing yesterday, that those releases are not deemed a breach of House rules. Is that correct?

THE CHAIRMAN: I would just say to my colleague, who has been present for many of these interviews, as you know, I have repeatedly admonished members not to discuss what takes place during the depositions.

We have had a problem with members coming in in the middle of depositions and leaving before they're concluded who may not have been present for the advisories that they're not to discuss what takes place. But members should not be discussing what takes place during the depositions.

MR. MEADOWS: So is that a violation of the House rules?

THE CHAIRMAN: I --

MR. MEADOWS: I mean, I just need to be -- listen, if we're going to play by the same set of rules, Mr. Chairman, we need to know what is fair for everyone. And I think that you will attest that there has not been a leak of information from the Republican side that would be to our advantage written in any of the periodicals.

THE CHAIRMAN: I could certainly never attest to that, Mr. Meadows. And I think quite to the contrary, quite to the contrary --

MR. MEADOWS: So is it a violation of House rules or not, Mr. Chairman?

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, I will allow you to consult House rules. But I will say once again --

MR. MEADOWS: Well, the House rules would say that, indeed, you're the one that has to rule on that. And so I'm asking you to rule on it.

THE CHAIRMAN: And I have stated, if you were here, I think, yesterday as well, members should not be discussing what takes place during the depositions.

And so that is my response to your parliamentary inquiry, and I'm now recognizing Mr. Goldman.

MR. MCCAUL: Can I make an opening statement, Mr. Chairman?

THE CHAIRMAN: We were going to limit it to one opening --

MR. MCCAUL: And I'll keep it very short. I want to echo Mr. Jordan's --

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, just -- I will allow it, Mr. McCaul, but, in the future, one opening statement per side.

MR. MCCAUL: Okay.

Well, I'd like to echo the same concerns about the -- and I’m disappointed that the Speaker didn't proceed with a resolution so that this could be more transparent and open. I, like my colleague here, share the concerns. We need clarification on the rules that apply to confidentiality. And, specifically, we've abided by these rules, as the chairman has requested.

There's a tweet that came out yesterday from Jeremy Herb that says: State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent told lawmakers that he was told by his supervisor to lay low after he raised complaints about Rudy Giuliani's efforts in Ukraine undermining U.S. foreign policy, according to Representative Gerry Connolly on House Oversight.

So do the rules apply or not? And what are the sanctions to violation of the rules?

THE CHAIRMAN: I thank the gentleman for his opening statement.

We're going to now move to the interview of the witness.

MR. MCCAUL: I guess that's a nonanswer.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, you said you wanted to make an opening statement, not frame a parliamentary inquiry.

MR. MCCAUL: I would like to know, from the chairman's point of view, what the rules are.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Chairman, as I just said to your colleague, I have repeatedly -- now, you haven't been here for all the interviews, but I have repeatedly admonished the members not to discuss what takes place during the depositions, and I will admonish them again today not to discuss what takes place during the depositions.

I will say this, though, to my colleagues, on the point of the investigation, which is a distinguishing factor which my colleagues seem to be willfully ignoring. Unlike Watergate and unlike the Clinton impeachment, there is no special counsel who has investigated the President's misconduct vis-à-vis Ukraine. We are, therefore, forced to do it.

The special counsel in the Clinton impeachment inquiry and the special counsel in the Watergate investigation did not conduct their investigations in open session. Congress did after it was handed to them. And, therefore, you cannot properly analogize this to either one of those prior impeachments.

Mr. Goldman, you are recognized.

MR. MEADOWS: Mr. Chairman, if you're going to make --

THE CHAIRMAN: There will be --

MR. MEADOWS: If you're going to make analogies to precedent, let's go ahead and make sure for the record that we're accurate with that reflection. I mean, when you start talking about special prosecutors and what happened and didn't happen, you, again, are willfully selecting facts and omitting others. So if we want to have a debate and a colloquy about what happened and what didn't happen --

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Meadows --

MR. MEADOWS: -- let's do that, Mr. Chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Meadows, I allowed two opening statements on your side.

MR. MEADOWS: Well, but then you opined --

THE CHAIRMAN: I have allowed myself two opening statements, and I'm now recognizing Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

This is a voluntary transcribed interview of Ambassador Michael McKinley, conducted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, pursuant to the impeachment inquiry announced by the Speaker of the House on September 24th.

Ambassador McKinley, could you please state your full name and spell your last name for the record?

MR. MCKINLEY: Peter Michael McKinley. I go by Michael, Mike. McKinley, M-c-K-i-n-l-e-y.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you.

Now, along with the other proceedings in furtherance of the inquiry, this transcribed interview is part of a joint investigation led by the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in coordination with the Committees on Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform.

In the room today are majority staff and minority staff from all three committees, as well as members from the majority and minority from all three committees.

This is a staff-led interview, but members, of course, may ask questions during their allotted time, as has been the consistent format for the inquiry thus far.

My name is Daniel Goldman. I'm the director of investigations for the HPSCI majority staff. And I want to thank you very much for coming in today for this interview on such short notice. We greatly appreciate that you are willing to speak with us.

I will now let my counterparts from the minority introduce themselves.

MR. CASTOR: Good morning, Ambassador. Thank you for being here today. I appreciate your cooperation. My name is Steve Castor, staffer with the Republican -- the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

MS. CASULLI: Good morning, Ambassador. I'm Laura Casulli, deputy general counsel for the HPSCI minority.

MR. KOREN: Professional staffer with House Oversight Republicans.

THE CHAIRMAN: What's your name, sir?

MR. KOREN: Michael Koren.

MR. GOLDMAN: Now, this transcribed interview will be conducted entirely at the unclassified level. However, the transcribed interview is being conducted in HPSCI secure spaces and in the presence of staff with appropriate security clearances. We also understand that your attorneys have the appropriate security clearance as well.

It is the committee's expectation that neither questions asked of the witness nor answers by the witness or the witness's counsel will require discussion of any information that is currently or at any point could be properly classified under Executive Order 13526.

Moreover, EO-13526 states that, quote, "in no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified," unquote, for the purpose of concealing any violations of law or preventing embarrassment of any person or entity.

If any of our questions can only be answered with classified information, please inform us of that, and we will adjust accordingly.

Today's transcribed interview is not being taken in executive session, but because of the sensitive and confidential nature of some of the topics and materials that will be discussed, access to the transcript of the transcribed interview will be limited to the three committees in attendance. You and your attorney will have an opportunity to review the transcript as well.

Before we begin, I'd like to go over some of the ground rules for this interview.

The way that this interview is conducted will proceed as follows: The majority will be given 1 hour to ask questions; then the minority will be given 1 hour to ask questions. Thereafter, we will alternate back and forth between majority and minority in 45-minute rounds until all questioning is complete.

We will take periodic breaks, but if you need a break at any time, please let us know.

You are permitted to have an attorney present during this interview, and I see that you have brought two. At this time, I would like to ask counsel to state their appearances for the record.

MR. BELLINGER: My name is John Bellinger at Arnold & Porter.

MR. CELLA: My name is John Cella, also at Arnold & Porter.

MR. GOLDMAN: There is a stenographer taking down everything that is said and every question that's asked and every answer you give in order to make a written record for this interview. For the record to be clear, please wait until the questions are completed before you begin your answer, and we will ask that all members and staff wait until you finish your answers before asking another question.

The stenographer cannot record nonverbal answers such as "uh-huh" or shaking of the head, so it's important that you answer each question with an audible verbal answer.

We ask that you give complete replies to questions based on your best recollection. If a question is unclear or you are uncertain in your response, please let us know. Also, if you do not know the answer to a question or cannot remember, simply say so.

We understand that you have received a letter from the State Department outlining some general concerns about privileges but that does not specifically invoke any privilege. You may only refuse to answer a question to preserve a privilege that is properly asserted and recognized by the committee.

If you refuse to answer a question on the basis of privilege, staff may either proceed with the interview or seek a ruling from the chairman on the objection, in person or otherwise, at a time of the majority staff's choosing. If the chair overrules any such objection, you should answer the question.

And, finally, you are reminded that it is unlawful to deliberately provide false information to Members of Congress or staff. It is imperative that you not only answer our questions truthfully but that you give full and complete answers to all questions asked of you. Omissions may also be considered false statements.

As this interview is under oath, Ambassador McKinley, would you please stand and raise your right hand to be sworn?

Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give is the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

MR. MCKINLEY: Yes.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you.

And let the record reflect that the witness has been sworn.

And, with that, Ambassador McKinley, I will offer you the opportunity to make some opening remarks.

MR. MCKINLEY: Thank you for your invitation to appear before you today. My understanding is that I could best be of assistance by clarifying the circumstances of my resignation. The following is an account of what led to my decision to step down when I did.

I want to make clear from the start that Ukraine was not among the issues I followed with Secretary Pompeo. I was not aware at the time of the efforts of Ambassadors Volker and Sondland to work with the President's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and I was not aware at the time of the President's phone call with President Zelensky.

I do think I can shed some light on how events have impacted State Department professionals and what motivated my resignation.

The timing of my resignation was the result of two overriding concerns: the failure, in my view, of the State Department to offer support to Foreign Service employees caught up in the impeachment inquiry; and, second, by what appears to be the utilization of our ambassadors overseas to advance domestic political objectives.

I have served my country loyally for almost four decades in difficult environments. I've served as Ambassador to some of our largest missions in the world, including Peru, Colombia, Brazil, and Afghanistan. All my confirmations were unanimous, and I was nominated by both Democratic and Republican administrations.

I know there are difficult choices and compromises to be made on many of the issues we work. I also know that, as a Foreign Service officer, it is my duty to serve the incumbent administration faithfully, consistent with my oath to the Constitution. It was, therefore, also my duty to resign when I felt I could no longer do so.

By way of background, when Secretary Pompeo first asked me in May 2018 to return to the Department from my posting in Brazil as Ambassador, the pitch was to help rebuild the institution and restore State as the lead foreign affairs agency for the United States Government.

Although I still had 18 months to run in Brazil, and knowing full well the challenges of returning to a building many saw as broken and demoralized, I decided I had an obligation to the Foreign Service to accept.

Over the subsequent months, there were positive changes. Personnel cuts to the Department workforce ended, and the hiring freeze was lifted, to include for family members overseas. The Secretary selected distinguished Foreign Service officers to serve as the Under Secretary for Political Affairs and the Director General of the Foreign Service. While the other senior positions in the Department continued to be overwhelmingly held by political appointees, dozens of career Foreign Service officers were successfully nominated for ambassadorships.

The recruitment of the next generation of Foreign Service officers began again, and promotions returned to normal levels. State once again played the lead role on policy and in seeking negotiated solutions to long-running conflicts and crises in different parts of the globe. There was certainly room for further improvement, but the hollowing out of the Department under Secretary Tillerson was reversed.

Morale never entirely recovered, however. In August 2019, the State Department's inspector general released a critical report about the leadership of the Bureau of International Organizations. It became apparent, however, that the Department would not be taking the key corrective actions that many employees had anticipated.

It was in this environment that the whistleblower account appeared in the press. I was disturbed by the implication that foreign governments were being approached to procure negative information on political opponents. I was convinced that this would also have a serious impact on Foreign Service morale and the integrity of our work overseas.

The initial reports were followed on September 25 by the release of the transcript of the President's telephone conversation with President Zelensky, which included negative comments on Ambassador Yovanovitch. The disparagement of a career diplomat doing her job was unacceptable to me.

Inside the building, meanwhile, there was no discussion whatsoever, at least in my presence, by senior State Department leadership on what was developing. At this point and over the coming days, I suggested to senior levels of the Department that a statement of support for Ambassador Yovanovitch’s professionalism should be released. I received a polite hearing from officials I spoke to but no substantive response to the concern I was raising.

On Saturday, September 28, I sent an email to senior officials proposing a strong and immediate statement of support for Ambassador Yovanovitch’s professionalism and courage, particularly to send a message to Department employees that leadership stood behind its employees in this difficult moment. I was told that the decision was not to issue a statement.

It was also that weekend of September 28-29 when I first spoke with Ambassador Yovanovitch about the situation. Ambassador Yovanovitch confirmed to me that she would welcome more public support from the Department, that no one had reached out to her from senior levels of the Department, and that she had retained private counsel.

I spoke with EUR Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent, who had been deputy chief of mission in Ukraine under Ambassador Yovanovitch and who stated he, too, would welcome more Department support. He also noted that I was the first senior Department official to reach out to him.

Realizing that there was no change in the handling of the situation and that there was unlikely to be one, I decided to step down. I informed the Secretary on September 30 before he left for a trip to Italy and Greece, suggesting mid-November as the departure date.

During the Secretary's absence, however, I continued to raise my concerns with other senior Department officials. At a meeting with the Deputy Secretary and under secretaries, I mentioned the impact on Department morale of unfolding events. I also had conversations with the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, the counselor, and the Under Secretary for Management. They listened, but, again, I do not remember receiving a substantive response.

On Thursday, October 3rd, I met with EUR Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent just after he had finished chairing a bureau meeting on how to collect the data requested by Congress. Kent noted his unhappiness with the tenor of the meeting in which a Department lawyer attended. He later wrote a memorandum to the file summarizing his experiences that day and sent it to me.

I forwarded it to the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, the Department's acting legal advisor, and the Deputy Secretary. I noted the seriousness of what was reported in the memorandum and raised the significant legal costs being incurred by our Department colleagues through no fault of their own. No one answered me.

Although my original intention had been to transition quietly out of the Department by mid-November, by the week of October 7th I no longer felt that I could be effective as the liaison to the seventh floor of the Foreign Service. I accelerated my departure, informing the Secretary that October 11th would be my last day.

In closing, I would like to say that no one wants to end a career on this note. I repeat: Since I began my career in 1982, I have served my country and every President loyally. Under current circumstances, however, I could no longer look the other way as colleagues are denied the professional support and respect they deserve from us all.

Thank you.

[The statement of Mr. McKinley follows:]

******** INSERT 1-1 ********

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  -- Thank you very much, Ambassador McKinley.

There are some that have called you the dean of the Foreign Service, so I would like to just go through briefly your career, distinguished career, with the State Department.

You mentioned you joined in 1982. What various posts have you served in during that time?

A  If I can summarize, I have served about 10 years of my career in Washington, D.C., in the Department, and I've served the rest of those years overseas.

Unusual for a Foreign Service officer career, I haven't concentrated on one or two regions. I've spent a lot of time in Latin America, I've spent a lot of time working on Africa, I've spent a lot of time working in Europe, and I've spent the time in Afghanistan and in the Department, and so perhaps have had wider experience of policies and issues than I might otherwise have had if I'd stayed in one bureau.

I have also worked on issues related to supporting free-trade agreements across the years, particularly with Colombia and Peru, supporting our companies overseas in almost every posting I've been. I've worked on conflict negotiations in Africa, in Latin America, and most recently in Afghanistan, and placed a great deal of emphasis, as all of us as diplomats should, on supporting the American people overseas in the communities that live overseas in the countries I've served, but also protecting their interests in whatever way that presents itself overseas.

Q  When were you in Afghanistan?

A  I was there from 2013 to 2016, almost 3-1/2 years.

Q  And as we understand it, you also served as the deputy chief of mission and charge d'affaires at the U.S. Mission to the European Union. Is that right?

A  That is correct, between 2004 and 2007.

Q  And at the time that -- is that the same office that Ambassador Gordon Sondland now oversees?

A  That's correct.

Q  And then in November 2018 you were asked to come back to Washington. And what role were you asked to serve?

A  If I can make a correction, I was approached in May of 2018 --

Q  Thank you.

A  -- and interviewed with the Secretary in May of 2018. And starting in June of 2018, I alternated between Brazil and Washington on a roughly 65/35 percent basis, as I did the full transition back to Washington in November of 2018.

The role I was asked to fill was reflective of the moment the Department was living. Under Secretary Tillerson, somewhere in the region of 20 percent of our senior Foreign Service Officer Corps either left or was forced to leave the State Department, and the building really did not have senior positions filled. This has been well-publicized and discussed over the months of Secretary Tillerson's tenure.

And Secretary Pompeo came in with a mission of staffing up senior leadership in the Department as quickly as possible. He wanted Foreign Service officers to be part of that senior leadership. He reached out to me, he reached out to others, to come back to the Department, work with him, rebuild the building.

In my particular case, it was not a question of being brought back to be chief of staff. He wanted me in the capacity as an advisory role and, I believe, a connection to the building. And it was made clear from the start that, with my varied background, I could feel free to work on a range of issues and provide advice.

I was not meant to be operational. I made clear to the Secretary at the time that, as assistant secretaries were confirmed and under secretaries were confirmed, the line of implementing policy, developing policy came from other offices. And so, at no stage during the time I was senior advisor, did I envisage an operational role with him.

Q  So, as the senior advisor, you were the link between the seventh floor, which is common parlance for the leadership floor, and the Foreign Service officers. Is that right?

A  It became an informal reality. Because, at the time, as I said, there were few Foreign Service officers at the senior levels of the Department. That began to change over the months, but during that period I was indeed someone that people in the Service, career people in the Service felt they could come and talk to.

Q  And over the course of your slightly less than a year there, other than the issues that you raised as causing concern and ultimately your resignation, how did your role develop? Explain a little bit about what your day-to-day activities were like.

A  The day-to-day work I did was related to staying on top of events. So I read voraciously to be able to see where there might be an interest in input or different thoughts or advice that I could provide the Secretary on what was happening around the world.

I didn't have a formal structure to the day other than attending the Secretary's morning meetings, which are held almost every day in his office with different constellations of senior officials. I did not participate in most of the Secretary's meetings, for example, with foreign dignitaries. That's just something I did not do.

But as the Secretary settled in and began defining issues he was working on, one of the areas that became a central focus of the work I did was with the special envoys that were being appointed to work different conflicts or crises in the world, including North Korea, Afghanistan. I did not do work on Syria or Iran. But when a special envoy was named for Venezuela, I worked on Venezuela as well and felt I had some added value, given my history working on negotiations and conflicts throughout my career.

I was also interested in seeing the Department regain some of the focus on economic policy which it had lost under Secretary Tillerson and trying to see areas where the Department could again have a seat at the table internationally, both in supporting our businesses overseas, but as we grew concerned, for example, about China's growing influence in different regions of the world, what would be the proactive response to trying to develop a different paradigm for engaging, for example, with Southeast Asia, with Pacific Compact islands, dealing with offers that were being made in different Latin American countries that faced difficult financial circumstances and were being approached by China.

I'm mentioning that at some length because it's actually something I was interested in and took on and discussed and worked with the Secretary.

But in the early months, I was also a person whom acting assistant secretaries came to to get a sense of, should we be presenting paperwork this way? How do we approach certain policy issues for the Secretary? And the fact is, what was happening was the Secretary was restoring process to the building, and paperwork just began to flow the way I've largely been familiar with throughout my career. But I played that sort of informal counsel role.

And, finally, I supported him on his trips overseas, again, in the capacity of staying abreast of breaking news in different parts of the world, but also joining him in a number of the meetings he might have in different locations.

Q  And other than the Secretary, was there anyone else in leadership that you had regular communication with on a daily basis?

A  I'd have to say the answer is probably no.

Q  Now, you mentioned that you were particularly involved with some of the special envoys. I'm sure you're aware that Ukraine also has a special envoy, Kurt Volker. Did you engage with Ambassador Volker in any way in his role as the special envoy to address the eastern Crimea area of Ukraine?

A  Although Kurt Volker and I were colleagues when we were in Brussels together in the 2000s -- he was at NATO, I was at the European Union mission -- I never saw Kurt when I returned to Washington.

Q  Did you --

A  I never spoke to Kurt. I never saw him. I may have shaken his hand in the corridor a year and a half ago. That is it.

Q  Uh-huh. Was that your desire, or was that his?

A  No, no. What I'm trying to suggest, again, is I wasn't operational. As the Secretary put in place or empowered -- what the Secretary also did was to empower acting assistant secretaries.

So, whereas, under Tillerson, there were questions about whether these individuals could actually take charge of their bureaus and carry forward the business of State, under Pompeo, while awaiting Senate confirmations of assistant secretaries that were being nominated, full authority was being given to front offices of bureaus to go ahead and do the business of the diplomacy in the regions and issues they were responsible for.

So I wasn't out there, you know, checking on bureaus, seeing what they were doing. There was a natural empowerment taking place over months.

On the European issues, I really didn't engage much on many of them, but I certainly never engaged on Ukraine across the timeframe I was there.

Q  So you view it as a good thing that you didn't have much engagement with Ambassador Volker?

A  No. It certainly wasn't a conscious decision at all. It just never came across my desk. I never ran into him, and I wasn't working Ukraine.

The issues I gravitated to, as I mentioned, were more focused on supporting the conflict negotiations that were developing in different parts of the world and particularly on national economic policy questions. And I also continued to work on issues like trying to support the reforms that were being put into place to strengthen the Foreign Service.

Q  You said in your opening statement and you just reiterated that you were not particularly involved or had much visibility into matters relating to Ukraine in your role as senior advisor.

At any point over the last year or so, did you know in real-time, did you follow in real-time anything that was going on, including, perhaps, with Ambassador Yovanovitch’s recall in April and May?

A  I followed it in the sense that I was aware of what was happening in different parts of the world. In any given month, you could ask me, do you know what’s happening somewhere, and I would've read about it. Did I work on it? Did I take any active stance on it? The short answer is no.

Q  What do you remember knowing at the time about Ambassador Yovanovitch's recall?

A  Only what I saw in the media. I never spoke about her recall with anyone in the Department.

I did run into her sometime after she returned to offer -- you know, we ran into each other, and we spoke about her transition. I offered her moral support. And that's where it stayed until the developments over the last few weeks.

Q  Back in the spring, did you know why she was being recalled?

A  Only from media accounts. So I can sit here and speculate, but it would be speculation. I saw nothing in writing. I heard nothing. I heard no Department official speaking about the reasons for her recall.

Q  During the beginning part of this year, in the January-through-March/April timeframe, were you following news accounts and the media about nongovernment actors and interests in Ukraine?

A  I certainly saw that being reported, yes.

Q  And in particular, Rudy Giuliani?

A  At the time, I -- you know, if you're going to take me back 6 months ago, I can't remember exactly who I was focusing on. But if his name was in the media at the time, of course I focused -- of course I noticed it.

Q  Without necessarily placing a time on it, were you aware of --

A  Yes.

Q  -- Rudy Giuliani's efforts?

A  I was reading -- absolutely. I was reading the media, and it was very evident.

Q  Did you have any discussions with anyone at the State Department about Mr. Giuliani's --

A  I don't think --

Q  -- public pronouncements?

A  I don't think his name ever crossed my lips. And no one spoke to me about Rudy Giuliani.

Q  So when did you become aware of the reason for Ambassador Yovanovitch's recall?

A  The details of it, I became aware as the information began to flow after the whistleblower account, and it became very evident just how much was political in her removal.

Q  Were you aware of any documents that were submitted to the State Department's Inspector General's Office in or about May of this year related to --

A  No, I was not. And the first time I was aware that these documents had surfaced was when Inspector General Linick approached the committees with a package of documents.

Q  And have you reviewed those documents?

A  No, not at all.

Q  So what did you -- describe the circumstances around your coming to understand why Ambassador Yovanovitch was recalled.

A  Well, it was a question of putting the pieces together.

So after the whistleblower account came out and I started reading in much greater depth what was happening in the media, it became evident to me that Masha had been caught up in something that had nothing to do with the way she performed her duties in Kyiv.

When the transcript of the call was released -- I'm just going to state it clearly -- as a Foreign Service officer, to see the impugning of somebody I know to be a serious, committed colleague in the manner that it was done raised alarm bells for me. It absolutely did.

And that's when I became, I think -- with the chronology I've tried to give you. And I've done the chronology mostly from recollection. I, frankly, became very concerned that we had to do something for her. That's when I took it on.

Masha had not reached out to me, for example, in the preceding weeks or even months. So this was very much a reaction to what was being revealed in the media.

Q  Former Ambassador Yovanovitch actually has been with the Foreign Service almost as long as you had.

A  Yeah. Yeah.

Q  Did you come across her in your career?

A  Yes, I did, but we were not close friends. And I think we interceded most when we were both in Europe in the 2000s. But, you know, I didn't go back and look up what her career track was, but I was certainly aware of her for a long time.

Q  And what was her reputation as a foreign professional?

A  Her reputation was as an excellent, serious, committed, up-and-coming back in the earlier years before any of us had ambassadorial or DCM positions. I certainly remember her being one of those people who seemed to be destined for greater things.

Q  And you said that the call record raised alarm bells for you. What do you mean by that?

A  Simply the reference to the Ambassador in a disparaging form in the call transcript. It's as simple as that.

When you're working overseas, every President has the right to remove an ambassador they don't have confidence in. And this is standard, and it's part of Department practice ever since I've come in. So, whatever the rationale, Presidents have the right to remove ambassadors and select other envoys for the post in question.

It was the issue of suggesting that she wasn't -- I don't have the transcript in front of me. All of you know what's in the transcript, so I'm not even going to try to paraphrase it. I mean, what is it? One sentence? Two sentences?

But the fact of the matter is, as a Foreign Service officer who's worked in difficult situations, worked in difficult environments, where we have to deal with ugly people on the ground and where you're dealing with challenges, where you're dealing with threats that can become personal, when you're dealing with conflicts, when you're dealing with issues related to the security and welfare of Americans or the people who work for you in a mission, the one thing you don't want to have is questions being raised about how you're doing your job with the foreign government in question from your own government.

Q  Right. And just so the record is clear, we will get into the call transcript, but I believe what you're referring to is the statement by President Trump in the July 25th call record where he says, quote, "The former Ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news. And the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news. So I just want to let you know that."

And then, later on, the President says, "Well, she's going to go through some things.

What did you understand him to mean when you read, "She's going to go through some things"?

A  I didn't try to read into it or understand it. The words themselves spoke for themselves.

And my reaction was, well, there's a simple solution for this. We think she's a strong, professional career diplomat who's still on the rolls, who's still a full-time Department employee. It shouldn't be difficult to put out a short statement that's not political, stating clearly that we respect the professionalism, the tenure of Ambassador Yovanovitch in the Ukraine. Thank you.

That's pretty much as straightforward and simple a statement as I was proposing.

Q  Did you view that comment as a threat to Ambassador Yovanovitch?

A  I'm not going to interpret it. What I want to say is that a statement like that to a foreign government official creates difficulties for the Ambassador on the ground.

Q  And how would a statement like this affect the morale of the career Foreign Service workers in the State Department?

A  At this point, I'm going to give you my opinion based, obviously, on my experience and on speaking to people across the evolution of developments in the last several weeks.

It had a very significant effect on morale. And the silence from the Department was viewed as puzzling and baffling.

Q  Approximately how many Foreign Service officers did you speak to about this transcript?

A  I don't know. I spoke to 8, 10, a dozen.

You know, I need to make clear, I also saw the sensitivity of my position. And so, when you take a look at my decision to resign, I wasn't sitting there broadcasting it throughout the building. The fact is -- and I wasn't broadcasting the specific steps that I was proposing for support for her. Because, at the end of the day, what I wanted to see was a statement to come out. Moreover, I wasn't interested, because of all the positive work that has been done in the building, to see morale in the building sort of conflicted, decline, be confused about what was going on. So I wasn't sitting there going down the corridor, what do you think, what do you think about what has happened?

I did speak to, you know, a couple of acting deputy assistant secretaries. It was that sort of informal corridor conversation, but I asked them, did they think this was having an impact on the building.

I did not go out and sort of broadcast, you know, "Let's go out and support Ambassador Yovanovitch." That's not the way I work. That's not the way I was going to work for Secretary Pompeo, who I agreed to work with and serve. And I was looking for a solution, I thought, that could meet what was required without getting into the broader politics of the unfolding investigation.

Q  From those conversations and those questions that you asked, what sense did you get about the impact on morale?

A  My sense was that the impact was significant, in that people were expecting some kind of statement of support for Yovanovitch.

I was not -- I repeat: It would've been unprofessional of me to go out there and start digging, "What do you mean? And what are you hearing?" I never go -- for example, there's these chat rooms or, you know, Foreign Service people or others, you know, people talk, people write, everything. I never go on them. I never read them. No one brings them to my attention. I went on instinct also on this. But I think it's very clear that this was an issue that needed to be addressed.

Q  So let's talk about that proposed statement. Who did you speak to first about the possibility of making a statement?

A  I spoke to the Secretary first. And I did so in the manner I normally do. I'll sort of raise an issue, and he'll decide whether he wants to react or not. So he listened. There was no pushback, no comment. It was just an acknowledgement that I was raising it.

Q  Approximately how long do you think this conversation was, the first conversation with the Secretary?

A  Three minutes. It was very short. The way I worked with the Secretary, I tended to be very crisp. He works very hard. He works on multiple issues. And I'm very concise when I'm presenting things.

Q  What did you say to him?

A  I said: We've seen the situation that's developing outside. Wouldn't it be good to put out a statement on Yovanovitch? Since my impression is the Department, you know, at least tried to keep her in Ukraine. I had gotten that from the newspapers.

Q  What was his response?

A  He listened. That was it. Sort of, "Thank you." That was the limit of the conversation.

Q  Did you get the sense that he agreed that the Department was supportive or --

A  I did not. I did not.

Q  Sorry, one --

A  Apologies.

Q  Did you get the sense that he agreed with your assessment that the Department had supported Ambassador Yovanovitch?

A  I did not get a sense one way or the other. I really did not.

Q  Okay. And do you remember approximately what date this conversation was?

A  It was towards the end of UNGA week -- sorry -- the U.N. General Assembly week in New York.

Q  So the transcript was publicized --

A  It came out on the 25th --

Q  Right.

A  -- which was while we were in New York, I guess.

Q  Okay. And so --

A  And that's what I was reacting to, on a personal level.

Q  And so do you recall whether it was -- that was a Wednesday. Do you recall whether it was the Thursday or the Friday that you had this conversation with the Secretary?

A  It was probably Thursday.

Q  Okay.

After this conversation with the Secretary, what did you do next, in terms of advocating for --

THE CHAIRMAN: If I could just interject with a couple questions.

MR. MCKINLEY: Sure.

THE CHAIRMAN: At the time you spoke with Secretary Pompeo, were you aware that Secretary Pompeo had been on the call?

MR. MCKINLEY: No. Not at all.

THE CHAIRMAN: And when you raised this issue with him, did he give any indication that, in fact, he was on the call?

MR. MCKINLEY: No.

THE CHAIRMAN: And, if you could, as best you can, tell us exactly what you relayed to him. And did he say anything at all in response or --

MR. MCKINLEY: No, he did not on -- I was raising issues related to, why can't we go out with a statement? This seems like an easy issue to address. My impression that Yovanovitch had received a level of support, because she did come back to the Department. And my understanding was that she was also extended or people were looking to extend her at one point. By the way, I didn't know any of that until very recently, but it was just my impression. And so I put it in those terms.

I wasn't, frankly -- and, again, I’m going to be very direct, on this. I'm a career Foreign Service officer. This has been, as many administrations have been -- there's many moments that are highly political that spill over into, you know, sort of, State Department corridor gossip or discussions. The one thing I knew above anything when I accepted this job was I wasn't going to sit and become part of the political environment.

So I didn't sit and have discussions with Secretary Pompeo about what was happening with White House politics, you know, White House approaches. And I certainly was not going to make a comment, one way or the other, about things the President did. That's simply not the way I was working. It was, I wanted to focus and did focus on issues that needed to be addressed in the foreign policy arena or in the building. But I did not initiate conversations with him nor did he volunteer to me political comments on ongoing situations at any point in the time I worked with him.

THE CHAIRMAN: Ambassador, I understand, but I just want to get as clear a record as we can on what you said to the Secretary and what he said in response.

MR. MCKINLEY: Yeah. In response --

THE CHAIRMAN: Can you go back and, as best you can, tell us exactly what you told the Secretary?

MR. MCKINLEY: I said, are you aware of -- I'm sure you're following what is happening. Wouldn't it be good if we put out a statement on Ambassador Yovanovitch?

THE CHAIRMAN: When you said, I'm sure you're aware of what's happening --

MR. MCKINLEY: That's right. Of course he said, yeah. You know, it's that kind of exchange. I mean, to formalize it as something more --

THE CHAIRMAN: No, no. I'm just -- I'm not trying to formalize it. I'm just trying to get exactly what was said during the meeting. So you asked him if he was aware of the situation, and he indicated that he was.

MR. MCKINLEY: Yeah, that he was following it.

THE CHAIRMAN: That he was following it.

MR. MCKINLEY: Okay? And I said, well, in this context, wouldn't it be a good thing if, you know, we say something quickly about, you know, Yovanovitch, given what was said about her in the transcript? And I don’t know whether he said he'd think about it. I don't even think I even got that level of response. It was a passing conversation.

And I repeat, whether you think this is appropriate or not, but across the time I've worked on the seventh floor in this latest iteration, I made a very conscious decision not to talk about anything that was political.

THE CHAIRMAN: No, I understand. But I just want to make sure we understand the full contours of the conversation. So you asked him if he was aware of what was going on with Ambassador Yovanovitch. He said that he was aware, indicated he was aware. You said, wouldn't it be nice if the State Department issued a statement of support. Did you relate anything else to him in the context of "wouldn't it be nice" --

MR. MCKINLEY: No. No.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- about the attacks on her or the impact on morale in the Department of the attacks on her. Did you relate anything along those lines?

MR. MCKINLEY: I don't believe I did it at that stage.

THE CHAIRMAN: Did you have a subsequent conversation with him about that?

MR. MCKINLEY: Not that week. So that would've been whatever, the 26th, 27th. And as I said in my statement, by the 28th, there were numerous media articles appearing about Yovanovitch, and, frankly, I did grow concerned that we needed to say something forceful on her behalf. Because I worried that there would be a mischaracterization of what she had done, and we needed to be forceful, supporting her professionalism.

THE CHAIRMAN: So --

MR. MCKINLEY: And that is why, that weekend, I raised the issue again, but not with the Secretary.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. How many conversations did you have with the Secretary about this matter?

MR. MCKINLEY: Three probably. And the subsequent ones were in the context of -- because, if I can remind, I presented my resignation on Monday, September 30th. So it wasn't very long after the initial conversation.

And in presenting my resignation, I made clear that I was looking to leave the Department, I wasn't looking to create any news story out of it, but that he should be aware that, of course, part of the reason, people were very aware that I was concerned about what I saw as the lack of public support for Department employees.

The --

THE CHAIRMAN: And what was the Secretary's response when you said that?

MR. MCKINLEY: On that subject, he did not respond at all, again.

What I -- if -- I know this is difficult to fathom or believe. Across the 8 or 9 days, whatever period it was, that I was seeking to raise this, nobody ever really said anything to me. It was, like, receive mode. And I just continued to raise the question in different ways, and I still would not receive a reaction.

I think once or twice -- somebody once said, "But we are protecting the staff. We're providing legal guidelines, which allows them the time to prepare their testimony, collect documents. We're looking at how to work with the congressional requests." And it would be left at that. But the central question I was raising about say something publicly just was not addressed.

And on the legal support --

THE CHAIRMAN: Ambassador, if I could, because --

MR. MCKINLEY: Yeah. I'm sorry.

THE CHAIRMAN: I'm going to turn it back to my colleague to go through the timeline in more detail, but I just want to make sure that we're clear on your conversation with the Secretary. In the first conversation you had with the Secretary, you essentially got no response to the request for a statement. Is that accurate?

MR. MCKINLEY: That's accurate.

THE CHAIRMAN: And in the final conversation with the Secretary where you raised the matter again, you again got no specific response to that issue when you raised it with the Secretary. Is that correct?

MR. MCKINLEY: That is correct, yeah.

THE CHAIRMAN: And was there a third conversation?

MR. MCKINLEY: Yeah. So I presented my resignation on September 30th. I spoke with the Secretary again when he called from Europe to discuss my resignation. And I think at that point I said, well, you know, we really -- I was pretty direct. I said, you know, this situation isn't acceptable. We need to -- you know, I've already made my recommendation, but I do -- I am resigning.

And that was the conversation. Again, I didn't get a reaction on that point.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. I yield back to Mr. Goldman.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  So you initially submitted your resignation on the 30th, which was 5 days after the call was released.

A  That's correct.

Q  Okay. And this initial conversation with Secretary Pompeo was either on the 26th or 27th.

A  Yeah. Probably on the 26th.

Q  After this initial conversation with Secretary Pompeo, what did you do next in your efforts to procure a statement?

A  So a number of articles began to appear on Ambassador Yovanovitch. I, frankly, grew concerned that, depending on circumstances, this kind of attention could attract negative commentary from people who were perhaps inclined to view her in a negative light.

And so it was, I do remember very clearly, a Saturday, and I just sat down and sent an email to four people, "We really need to do this."

Q  Before we get to that email, did you indicate to Secretary Pompeo what the proposed substance of a statement might be?

A  No.

Q  Just a statement of support?

A  Yeah, I -- no.

Q  Okay. And did you learn from the media that Ambassador Yovanovitch had been offered an extension, or did you learn from the Department?

A  No, I learned it from the media. I did not know about it at all.

Q  Who did you --

A  She didn't tell me.

Q  When you saw her in the halls back in --

A  No. Well, when I saw her -- whenever she got back. I don't know whether we ran into each other in June or July. But, no, no, we didn't discuss that, not to my recollection.

Q  Focusing on this email on September 28th, who did you write it to?

A  I wrote it to the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, David --

Q  David Hale?

A  -- Hale. I wrote it to Carol Perez, the Director General of the Foreign Service. I wrote it to Morgan Ortagus, the Department spokesperson, and Lisa Kenna, the Executive Secretary.

I'm trying to think. Oh, Phil, the acting -- the senior bureau official, the Acting Assistant Secretary for Europe, Phil Reeker.

Q  I'm sure you realize by now that we have received no documents from the State Department, so --

A  Right.

Q  -- we don't have this email.

A  But I'm telling you the date that I sent it. I don't have Department documents.

Q  No, we understand that.

A  Yeah.

Q  And we'll get to that in a minute. But, because we don't have it, I need to ask you to summarize what you said in it.

A  Yeah. So I wrote it deliberately, decided it was time to start creating a paper trail of my concern, and kept it short. It was, sort of, I think we need to issue an immediate statement of support for Masha's professionalism and courage -- because, frankly, I believe a lot of courage has been involved in dealing with the situation she has faced -- and send a message to the Foreign Service that we respect professionalism.

[11:11 a.m.]

MR. MCKINLEY: And so I knew that putting it on paper was enough. I didn't have to go into, you know, a 10-paragraph sort of justification. Everybody knew what I was talking about. And I believe I tried to talk to a couple of them on the telephone as well to reinforce the point.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  So we'll get to that in a second.

Did you receive -- do you recall anything else about what you said in the email?

A  No it was really short.

Q  Did you receive any response from --

A  I did. At that point I did. I received support from -- in writing -- I think Carol and Phil Reeker supported. And I think others were supportive of it as well. And so the idea was presented to the Secretary.

Q  Let's wait. Let's just go through this step by step if we could.

A  Sure.

Q  So you received an email in support from Ambassador Perez in support of the idea?

A  Yeah, absolutely, and Reeker as well.

Q  Do you recall what Ambassador Perez said?

A  It was like, okay, yes, I agree. I mean, it was that kind of -- conversational.

Q  Understood. I just want to make sure we cover everything.

A  Absolutely.

Q  And what was the response from Acting Assistant Secretary Reeker?

A  The same. Maybe there were three more words, but the same.

Q  And you said you also received additional support. From whom did you receive additional support?

A  Well, additional support, you know, Lisa Kenna agreed, I think Morgan Ortagus agreed.

Q  So everyone that you wrote to on that -- what about David Hale?

A  I did not get an answer from David Hale.

Q  Okay. You didn't get anything from David Hale. So four of the five responded in support of your idea?

A  Positive terms.

Q  All right.

Who did you reach out to on the phone from that group of five?

A  From that, I think it was only Carol and Phil. That's what I remember.

Q  Okay.

A  Again, it's going to be difficult for everyone to accept this, I wasn't taking notes the whole time I was going through this. I was not envisioning sitting in this committee. I was not sort of compiling a record. I was trying to address a situation and I was also making a decision to leave.

Q  Now, were you aware at this time that Ambassador Volker had resigned on that Friday, the 27th?

A  If I was, it never crossed my mind. Was I following the news? Yes, I was. Do I remember that? It didn't matter to me.

You know, I wasn't focused on Volker. Volker left the Department over 10 years ago. And, you know, as is his right, he had become political in what he did. So, you know, I didn't sit there and think: Oh, Kurt's another Foreign Service officer. I didn't think of him in those terms at all.

Q  All right. Let's go back to this email. Do you recall anything about the conversation that you had with Ambassador Perez following this email?

A  No. I just said this is really bad. You know, it's the kind of conversation where you're just mutually reinforcing. So you're sitting there -- not sitting there, you're on the phone, you know. Reeker and Perez absolutely agree, we've got to say something, we've got to do something, this is -- this is going to impact the building. That's the approach. And we have to support Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Q  Did you speak with any of the others on the phone, Lisa Kenna or Morgan Ortagus?

A  I may have spoken to -- I spoke to Lisa and I eventually spoke with Morgan.

Q  All that weekend of the 28th?

A  No, that day.

Q  On the 28th?

A  Yeah.

Q  What did Lisa Kenna say to you?

A  Just supportive, that's it. You know, it was not any -- any -- she really wasn't in the line of authority to get something done. I was just letting her know that I was sending this.

Q  And, Ambassador McKinley, I don’t mean for these questions to come up loaded. We're just trying to understand --

A  No, no --

Q  -- as many of the facts as we can here.

A  Well, yeah. Certainly. Sorry.

Q  If we had the documents and the emails it would be a lot easier for us.

A  Yeah. Yeah. But, anyway, so I sent an email. I got a one-word answer or a five-word answer. And then I get on the phone and say: This is really important. Yeah, it is, we need to do something.

Q  And other than David Hale there was unanimous agreement?

A  Yes.

Q  You said that you also spoke with Ambassador Yovanovitch that weekend. Do you remember when?

A  I don't know if it was on Saturday or Sunday, but I spoke to her. I wasn't going to bother her. But the answer came back that it was probably better not to issue a statement because it would draw further attention to Yovanovitch and wouldn't it be better to try to let this die down. So that was the response I got.

Q  And so it was after you received a response that you reached out to Ambassador Yovanovitch?

A  That's correct.

Q  So let's go back then and figure out.

So we understand that you had emailed five people. Four responded positively. You spoke to all four and they all responded positively about a statement.

A  Yeah.

Q  What happened next?

A  Probably a couple hours later Morgan reached out to me by phone and told me that the Secretary had decided that it was better not to release a statement at this time and that it would be in part to protect Ambassador Yovanovitch not draw undue attention to her. I dropped it.

Q  So do you know who was involved in this conversation with the Secretary on that Saturday, September 28th?

A  No, I don't know who was in the room with him. The press people are -- it's Morgan Ortagus and I think words redacted                              .

Q  Do you know if the counselor Ulrich Brechbuhl was involved in any of these discussions?

A  No. I didn't even -- no.

Q  And you didn't include him?

A  No.

Q  Why not?

A  I was going -- my appeal at that point, frankly, was to mostly career people and to the spokesperson who would have to, you know, sort of issue a statement, get approval for it. That was my rationale at that point. It wasn't because I was thinking: Oh, they are going to say this, that, or the other. I was just trying to bureaucratically create a group of support for an idea to move forward.

Q  Had you spoken to Ms. Ortagus before she reported back to you about the Secretary's wishes?

A  No.

Q  So you just received an email for her in support?

A  Yeah, I received an email. And then -- and then -- and then -- and then a request to speak by telephone.

Q  So what did she said to you, in as much detail as you can recall, about what Secretary Pompeo said about the prospect of a statement?

A  It was simply the Secretary thinks that a statement would draw undue attention to Ambassador Yovanovitch right now -- unwanted attention -- and it would be better to let this die down.

I didn't have a long conversation. I didn't talk --

Q  Did you respond to her?

A  I just said -- at that point, I just accepted it as given. And that's when I got off the phone and reached out to Yovanovitch.

Q  What did you say to Ambassador Yovanovitch?

A  I said, I'm under the -- I've been told that perhaps a statement is not something you would welcome. What is your view on that? And --

Q  Wait. I'm sorry. So Ms. Ortagus told you that the Secretary was --

A  Pardon?

Q  Sorry. Just to be clear. Ms. Ortagus told you that Secretary was concerned --

A  Not --

Q  Just 1 minute.

A  I'm sorry.

Q  Was concerned that Ambassador Yovanovitch would not want a statement in support? Where did you get that idea that you understood --

A  Probably from the conversation with Morgan. But -- you know, I can't remember exactly how I phrased it. Yeah, I think I did have the impression from Morgan, but I -- I repeat, I'm not sitting there taking notes, so I'm giving you a recollection. All I know is my direct question to Ambassador Yovanovitch was, you know, you would be -- would you or wouldn't you be interested in a statement of support?

Q  And just to be clear, we're just asking for your best recollection.

A  Yeah, no, because that's what it’s going to be, I'll tell you.

Q  And we understand that when you were having these conversations you were not expecting to have to recall word for word transcriptions of them. What was Ambassador Yovanovitch's response when you asked her that question?

A  She -- she's -- well, you've had her here, so you know she’s very careful in the way she speaks and presents. And she said: Yes, I would welcome it. And it was pretty much that. But also I asked whether others in the building had reached out to her in the preceding days or weeks, and the answer was no. And I said: What are you doing? And I remember her talking about private counsel. I never thought I'd have private counsel. And so I didn't follow up, ask questions about it, think about it.

Q  Understood.

Did she indicate to you how she reacted to reading the transcript?

A  No. Oh, there's one thing that I'd also learned over the years. I'm not sure, what stage did you send out the request for information -- sorry, the request for depositions? Do you remember the date?

Q  I think it was the 27th, so it would have been on the Friday?

A  Okay. So I would have been aware of that. And I want to underscore, and we can get into it later, I never asked Yovanovitch or Kent what they were going to say, because I realized I shouldn't be talking to them since they were embarking on a legal process. What I focused on in my conversations with them was, you know, what's the system doing for you?

Q  What else do you remember from that conversation?

A  Not much. It wasn't a long conversation.

Q  Did she indicate whether she had spoken to any other career Foreign Service officers and had any sense of the morale with the Department?

A  No. No. I mean, I was focused on her.

Q  What did you do after you got off the phone with her in connection with this matter?

A  I believe, and that's the term I'm using, I don't know whether I reached out to George Kent that evening or Sunday, but I reached out to George Kent. I think I probably got a hold of him on the Sunday. But I don't remember exactly.

Q  Did you report back to Ms. Ortagus that Ambassador Yovanovitch --

A  No, I did not.

Q  -- would welcome a statement?

A  No, I did not. Sorry. No, I did not.

Q  Why not?

A  To me, the writing was beginning to be on the wall. And also was regrouping. And, frankly, it was that weekend that I made the decision to inform the Secretary on the Monday that I was leaving. So I was focused on that, too.

Q  Were you aware that the committees issued a subpoena to the State Department on that Friday, the 27th, by the --

A  I may -- I may have been, but it’s not something that I was sitting there thinking about at all. It wasn't -- you know, was I watching the news every night, reading media reports? I was, but not with any design.

Q  So you recall speaking to George Kent on the 29th, you believe?

A  28th or 29th. I can't remember exactly.

Q  But before the Monday?

A  Yes.

Q  Over the weekend?

A  Yes.

Q  So tell us about that. Why did you reach out to him?

A  I reached out to him because I think by then -- oh, thanks to the requests for depositions, I realized other Department people were being roped in. Call me naive, but I did not know.

And then the list of people you were asking to interview came out in some way, and George was on the list. And so I reached out to George.

And the conversation was extremely short, because we don't know each other. We hadn't met until a few days later. And so he wasn't going to open up to somebody he didn't know necessarily.

And I just said: Has anybody reached out to you? Would you welcome an expression of support? And that was pretty much the extent of the conversation.

Q  And was that the purpose of reaching out to him?

A  Yes.

Q  Just to express some support?

A  Absolutely.

Q  What did he say in response to your question as to whether anyone had reached out to him?

A  No.

Q  Did he give you any opinion about how he felt about that?

A  There may have been a throwaway comment, but, no, we did not have a -- you know, we did not have a detailed conversation about it, no. I mean, it was so obvious that no one reaching out to him was unusual.

Q  You thought that was unusual?

A  I thought that was unusual, absolutely.

Q  What did you think should have occurred?

A  I think --

Q  One second, sorry. Just so the record is clear, it's easier to --

A  I apologize.

Q  No, that's fine.

What did you think should have -- what did you think the State Department should have done with regard to Ambassador Yovanovitch and George Kent?

A  I believe when -- you see, it's very easy with hindsight. So since I didn't pay attention, didn't focus on it particularly when events were developing in the late spring into early summer, I don't want to engage in hindsight gaming of this. I don't know what was done. And I have not asked specifically about what was done.

So -- and I don't want to -- clearly someone thought highly of her if she was being asked to extend only a month or two before she wasn't.

So I'm not going to do the hindsight game.

What I do believe is that as this developed over this very short period, the appropriate thing would have been for senior management to reach out. Whether it was the legal advisor, the under secretary for management, the under secretary who was responsible for Europe, there should have been at least let us know if there is or we can't help you because, whatever. Some sort of conversation.

So, you know, I was flying solo, I didn't know what the rules of engagement were. But I did know that, as a Foreign Service officer, I would be feeling pretty alone at this point. And so I reached out.

I was surprised when I found out that I was the first senior person they had been in touch with.

Q  Did you discuss with anyone else in leadership that weekend any -- about this matter?

A  No.

Q  And then September 30th you gave in your -- you gave your resignation notice.

A  That's correct.

Q  Is that right?

A  Yeah.

Q  Describe how you did that.

A  I think it was less than a 5-minute conversation. I saw the Secretary. At the time, I wasn't prepared to go into any great details. I said: It's time to move on, look at a next phase of my life, I don't believe this will have any major impact, but you are aware that -- people are aware that I've been concerned about what is the lack of support for Department officials.

And I gave the mid-November sort of exit date, thinking, you know, transition out, do my paperwork in a reasonable timeframe, and so on.

Q  Was this meeting in person on Monday?

A  Yes, it was.

Q  And did you bring up the statement again?

A  No. I said: As you're aware, I have been -- I've also been concerned about these -- this issue.

Q  Did he respond in any way --

A  No.

Q  -- to that comment?

A  No.

Q  How did he respond to your resignation?

A  I mean, there -- it was disappointment that I was resigning. So, you know, I can't -- on the resignation discussions it's typical of discussions that anybody has when they've worked with somebody. And I went in and made my point. It was obviously a surprise. And as I said, it was a very short conversation.

Q  Did you make it clear that part of the reason you were resigning was your concerns over --

A  At that point --

Q  Sorry, 1 second. Over this Ukraine matter?

A  No. As I mentioned, I made the conscious decision to go in and to just say: Time for me to go, time for me to look at something else to do with my life. As you're aware. I have expressed my views on the lack of support for Foreign Service officers in this situation. That may be part of the story at some point. And, you know, we'd figure out how we'd announce my -- you know, do the usual little Department two-liner "thank you for your service" and out the door.

Q  And he didn't address your concerns at all or this issue with Ambassador Yovanovitch --

A  No.

Q  -- in any substantive way?

A  No.

MR. GOLDMAN: I believe our time is up, so yield to the minority.

THE CHAIRMAN: Ambassador, do you need a break?

MR. MCKINLEY: No, I'm fine. Thanks.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Ambassador, thank you again for your service. We're honored to be here with you today. By my calculation, 37 years with the State Department. That is truly an extraordinary career. We appreciate your willingness to participate in the oversight process. This may come as a surprise to you, but not always are administration officials willing to participate eagerly in the congressional oversight process. So you are --

A  I assumed I was going to be up here one way or the other.

Q  You indicated in your opening statement that you were encouraged when Secretary Pompeo took over the State Department. Could you just walk us through that a little bit, your thinking, and how you were encouraged by some of the decisions he made in the wake of Secretary Tillerson's exit?

A  I'm happy to, but please stop me when I get too much into the weeds.

What happened in the year of Secretary -- or 15 months of Secretary Tillerson's tenure was an extraordinary hollowing out of the building. Not only did we lose 20 percent of our senior leadership, not only did he freeze hiring, he announced an intention to reach an 8 percent cut in staffing levels.

He froze what we call employee family member hiring overseas, which affects about 2,000-plus jobs. These are jobs that are filled by family members, usually spouses or partners, in embassies oversees that otherwise you would be hiring locally for, and which sometimes even involved sensitive positions with at least low level clearance requirements, and had a devastating impact on morale in embassies around the world, as families had to begin -- in the modern world many couples both look to have some kind of career moving forward.

It's not just a question of money. It's a question of life goals and fulfillment. And that one was -- I was sitting as ambassador in Brazil and we were looking at filling, I can't remember the exact number, but it was dozens of positions, and all of a sudden we didn't have authority to move ahead.

And you add all the positions around the world that were being frozen, we were running in into the hundreds of jobs that were disappearing that had become a central part of how we staff, work our embassies, but also how we support the modern American family oversees in deployment.

Promotions were cut by 40 to 50 percent. This was devastating to mid-level officers. Mid-level officers, because of a hiring surge in the 2000s, already had a very slow promotion track. By cutting back the number of available slots for promotion, you were essentially condemning a generation of next leadership Foreign Service to toiling at a certain level when they would obviously have reached the point where they were ready to work in positions of greater responsibility.

If I remember correctly, only 1 out of 9 Under Secretary positions were filled in that 15 months in a confirmed position. Out of 23 equivalent -- assistant secretary equivalent positions, I think we were at 3. And so senior leadership in the building was nonexistent.

I worked in the Latin America Bureau, but the experiences was mirrored in other bureaus, in which no one felt any authority to move paperwork forward or initiatives and were constantly rethinking, looking over their shoulder, how to work and what to do.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

And so when I came in -- sorry, not the when I came in -- let me make this clear, when Secretary Pompeo came in, he came in with a completely different optic and it was let's make the Department work. And many of the initiatives I enumerated in my statement were products of the work he did. I never had anything to do with that. It just began to work with the people he was working with. And he does deserve credit for rebuilding the institution, processes, creating opportunities, and, frankly, ambitions for the Foreign Service.

And so that was the environment I came into. It wasn't immediate. I still felt in the first 3 to 4 months: Are we going to get there or aren't we? But by the fall, by late 2018, it was beginning to have a really positive impact.

Q  And the job that he asked you to do, what were the duties?

A  There weren't any specific duties. When I interviewed with him, I said: What is it you expect me to do? Because there wasn't going to be a chief of staff position. And traditionally the advisor kind of position is the counselor position in the Department, so I was wondering, well, there's a counselor, and once you start filling the positions, what am I really there to do?

And he made clear that I would have the freedom to raise issues with him directly, anything I saw that should be focused on or that was of concern, and to follow what was happening in the world.

And what became the pattern of work was I did exactly that and where I thought I had added value with an opinion and or working with bureaus or working with special envoys I participated.

I, a couple of times, was asked by bureaus to help out. I remember during the DRC Congo electoral transition I ended up representing the Africa Bureau at the deputies meeting at the White House. I was asked by WHA to go talk to the Ortegas in Nicaragua to see if we could restart a national dialogue.

But those were few and far. I was approached by the bureau that supports educational exchanges around the world to make a case for funding, greater funding for the initiatives they were proposing. But I really didn't become operational very often.

Q  And you mentioned that you in part became a liaison for the career Foreign Service?

A  Yeah. I mean, it's a grand term. I don't want to make this sound like it was formal. People came and talked to me.

If I can just go back to my career. I have been in front offices since 1994. 1994 was my first deputy chief of mission job in Maputo, Mozambique. And so I have been in front offices continuously probably longer -- I don't know anybody who's been as long as that. And you meet a lot of people. And you meet a lot of people throughout the career. And so I knew a lot of people, and people would come talk to me, of all ranks.

Q  And the Secretary of State travels more than any other U.S. official. How did you, during the rollout of your new job, influence the Secretary and influence his inner circle? Which may just be Mr. Brechbuhl. But how did you go about bringing yourself into their sphere of influence?

A  On the travel schedules and decisions on where to go? The bureaus.

Q  Just in the management. I mean, you --

A  No, on the management, zero.

Q  Okay.

A  I was invited to join most of the trips. I didn't go on all of them, but I think maybe 65, 70 percent. But I never got into the management, the scheduling, who was being met, preparation of paperwork. I went on as staff support, if you will, on keeping abreast of events.

And then, depending on the places we were, if I had added value on the issues that were being worked, you know, I might be in a meeting and you're sitting around talking, what did you think of that, what did you think of this, and give a view.

Q  You mentioned that you weren't going to be the chief of staff, but you were brought in to be a senior voice within hopefully the inner circle of the Secretary?

A  On the seventh floor, yes. And I repeat, at the beginning I think I was -- in the early -- in the early stages I was, I think, the only person in that capacity from the Foreign Service. That changed.

Q  Right. And part of your duties were to help the Secretary and Mr. Brechbuhl understand the viewpoints of the career Foreign Service officers?

A  If I can suggest --

Q  If concerns were --

A  -- I never had the formalization of duties. But, yes, I thought it was what I should do, is as they worked on different issues.

I want to emphasize, they were very proactive in pushing for many of the measures that I've outlined.

Q  And with a Cabinet secretary that didn't travel as much as the Secretary of State, if you were there engaging with the Secretary on a daily basis, you'd be able to develop a rapport, an ability to influence the decisions of the day, but not as much with the Secretary of State given his travel schedule. Is that fair to say?

A  I don't like the word, you know, influencing in one way or the other.

Q  Help inform --

A  You know, help inform the decisions is a much better way to describe it. So, you know, depending on the issues, where I thought I had something of value to offer I'd speak up.

Q  And did you have success in imparting your knowledge and the information you were receiving from the building to the Secretary and Mr. Brechbuhl?

A  I absolutely believe I did. But I want to repeat, you know, a lot of what I did was, you know, focus, say, as we're getting ready to build up towards the beginning of negotiations on Afghanistan, having spent 3-1/2 years there, having spent a lot of my career on conflict negotiations, I'd sit in meetings with Ambassador Khalilzad (ph) or with the Secretary, what are we going to do, how are we going to game this, that sort of thing.

So there was that part of my work, which took up a lot of the time. I didn't spend my day worrying about the building every day. And especially once all these changes were carried out, it seemed to me the institution was moving ahead.

I'd also like to underscore the work that was done by the Secretary, by Mr. Brechbuhl, by others, to push Foreign Service officers for ambassadorship positions overseas. They absolutely were engaged on a direct and personal level in making things happen and go forward for the Foreign Service.

So my appearance here today isn't to sit and slam the Secretary. That's not what I'm here for. I've talked about a specific instance which led me to a conclusion.

Q  To the contrary, you've been very complimentary of the Secretary. I think we can note that for the record.

Did you have regular telephone conversations with Mr. Brechbuhl?

A  No. But he's a person who I spoke to on a regular basis. He's very approachable. So we worked a lot on a couple of issues together. But we're on the same corridor, so you run across each other, you say hi, you have a corridor conversation on whatever the issue is of the day. But we didn't have weekly formal -- I didn't have weekly formal meetings with anyone.

Q  Okay. When you decided to formalize your concerns in the email you mentioned that you transmitted to Under Secretary Hale, Director General Perez, Lisa Kenna, Phil Reeker, you mentioned that you kept it to the career senior people and you didn't loop in Mr. Brechbuhl. And I just wonder what your -- like why you decided not to --

A  I wanted to take the temperature with people who I knew.

Q  Right.

A  Who I knew well from previous years. These aren't people I had just met. In the case of Reeker, in the case of Carol Perez, David Hale, we knew each other.

Q  And so I think you said four of the five seemed to be in agreement with you --

A  Yeah. And perhaps David Hale was as well. I'm just -- what I said was I didn't get a response one way or the other.

Q  Right. And so was there ever a discussion among that group --

A  No.

Q  -- of trying to --

A  No.

Q  -- bring this issue to Mr. Brechbuhl's attention that maybe the Secretary needed to think this through from a number of different vantage points?

A  Not certainly in that group. I don't know if it happened separately. I simply have no idea.

Q  So the communication back was right now, at this time, it was not a good idea, the Secretary thought it wasn't a good idea?

A  That's what I was told. I'm not going to put words -- this was not communicated to me by the Secretary.

Q  And who --

A  It was communicated by spokesperson Ortagus.

Q  Okay. And did you have any additional conversations with that group to maybe overturn or revisit the decision?

A  No.

Q  Okay. And in hindsight, do you which you did?

A  [Nonverbal response.]

Q  I mean, if the communications officer, the press person essentially for lack of a better term, comes back and says, no, we're not ready to do the statement, the Secretary is not interested in that, did you have any discussions with --

A  That's an excellent question. But, again, no, I didn't do it.

Q  Okay.

A  And if I can suggest that everybody was working in their own, I won't say silos, on their issues, and I did feel I was trying to drive this more than others.

Q  Right. And did you get any feedback from Perez, Kenna, Reeker, other than what you've described so far?

A  Not really.

Q  Okay. And did you have any phone conversations with them, any of the other folks?

A  No, not that weekend. No, not at all.

Q  Into the next week, did you?

A  The next week -- and I’m now beginning to get confused, so bear with me.

Q  Oh, okay.

A  But the next week would have been the week of September 30th. Yeah, that week, I remember -- that week was the week that I presented my resignation. And at that point I did -- by that point I did let the under secretary -- I let everybody know -- not everybody -- I let the counselor, Brechbuhl, know, the under secretary for management, Bulatao, know that I was resigning, I let David Hale know.

And I believe on all three occasions, because the question inevitably was why, and I said, you know, that I, as I said in my opening statement, I was looking to resign at a slightly later date, but the situation, the lack of support, that I really believed the statement should go out, that it still wasn't too late to put a statement out, that this was critical for the Foreign Service, this was having an impact on morale.

So I talked to each of them individually during that week. And I also remember just in a general staff meeting of under secretaries when the issue didn't come up at all I said: And by the way, there's a lot of news out there and this is having a really negative impact inside the building.

And the response was essentially we do have a large mission to continue working on in supporting American diplomacy overseas, which is a legitimate point, but it didn't answer the question of why don't we also do something to signal that we're supporting our people.

Q  Did any of the folks that you signaled your intent to resign, did any of the folks express alarm, dismay?

A  Everybody expressed regret. Nobody asked me to stay. And at the time, I was expecting some form of traditional State Department, a little message, thank you for your service, out the door. But that -- but there were questions about why was I leaving.

Q  One of the things that's puzzling, I think, is you've spent your almost 40 years working complex, worthwhile issues, many of which certainly in your ambassador posts take time to work, correct? And this sort of seems like came together so quickly.

A  If didn't come together so quickly. And I --

Q  I mean, it was 8 days, right?

A  That's right. And I'm going to be very direct here.

Q  Yeah.

A  It wasn't just the situation inside the building and the lack of a statement of support.

Q  Right.

A  I read the news. I read what is happening. I think I tried to say clearly in my statement that -- I think I used the words "deeply disturbed" or "disturbed" by the implication that foreign governments were being approached to procure negative information on political opponents.

Well, actually that was another issue of concern to me and one that threw into question exactly what you're saying. I have spent 37 years being a diplomat. Being a diplomat for the United States means supporting millions of Americans overseas. It means supporting our companies to create jobs at home. It means resolving conflicts that impact the United States. It means keeping the homeland safe. It means working with our military, the agency, all of our civilian agencies on projecting our interests and influence overseas. It means projecting American values.

In Afghanistan I worked with three four-star generals, with General Dunford, General Campbell, General Nicholson. I've worked in conflict areas the world over. And by diplomats doing what they do overseas, they help keep this country secure and prosperous and also offer us the possibility of being linked to the outside world.

In terms of supporting our values, we're also the front line in promoting issues of human rights, democracy, and cooperation internationally.

In this context, frankly, to see the emerging information on the engagement of our missions to procure negative political information for domestic purposes, combined with the failure I saw in the building to provide support for our professional cadre in a particularly trying time, I think the combination was a pretty good reason to decide enough, that I had -- I had no longer a useful role to play.

Q  Is it possible that the Secretary and his people hadn't fully come to grips with how they were going to respond to this inquiry?

A  It is entirely possible. Since I never had a conversation with any of them about the Ukraine it would be silly of me to try to speculate what the reasons for their approach was. All I knew was, in terms of the building, that this approach was not producing -- was having a negative impact.

Q  The issue of impeaching the President has been at the forefront of political dialogue since the moment the President took office, correct?

A  I'm not going to make -- I'm not going to make comments on the political situation.

If I can underscore, throughout my career, and I came in in 1982 under President Ronald Reagan, there have been controversial moments right the way through that. There have been controversial domestic political moments. There have been moments when American citizens, Foreign Service officers, anyone sits there and questions what's happening, what's the impact of this or that development.

In my experience in the Foreign Service, and I don't need to go back 37 years, I don't remember occasions when in the workplace, certainly since I've been a front office person since 1994, I don't remember people raising politics, questioning who was President.

What everyone focused on, where they sat was supporting the agenda of the administration. And if we look at the role the State Department has played over the last 3 years in supporting the President's agenda, I think we have a pretty strong record of positive engagement supporting the agenda.

So we're not sitting around talking about impeachment, impeachment inquiries. In fact, when I was raising these issues, you think I was just saying, "Oh, yeah, and the President's going to be impeached or they're talking about" -- no one was doing that sort of thing.

Q  No, I understand. It took the White House a little bit of time to develop their position. They wrote to the Hill on October 8th, I think, which was after you had already -- those 8 or 9 days had already elapsed. And I'm just wondering whether the Secretary was hamstrung by decisionmaking that was out of his control?

A  And it could well be. I can't comment on that since I didn't speak with him about it and he didn't speak about it with me.

I also mentioned in my statement, I tried to put what was happening in the context of what happened in the Bureau of International Organizations. You may recall that that investigation was sparked by complaints, allegations of politicization, improper personnel practices, whatever. There's a big title on the report produced by the inspector general.

When that report came out, and the expectation was that there'd be change in the leadership of the International Organization Bureau, it was as simple as that. When it didn't happen, it certainly had a knock on effect on the Bureau.

You don't have to take my word for it because somebody sat there and leaked a townhall that the deputy secretary and the under secretary -- doing the right thing, by the way, and being open and honest -- it was still leaked. But they also made clear that it would be difficult to move ahead with certain changes that had been expected; for example, the removal of the assistant secretary in charge.

So when you look at the timeframe I'm talking about, I'm not working from sort of, you know, I woke up one morning and gee, you know, no statement for Masha Yovanovitch, I wonder what's happening?

I've been following the IO saga since I came into the Department in the summer -- since I began to work with the Secretary in the summer of 2018. I also came into the Department with the cumulative impact of watching what Secretary Tillerson did to the building. You do reach a point, and I'm 65 years old, where maybe, just maybe I should consider doing something else.

So you combine everything, but it wasn't -- it really shouldn't be cast in I woke up one day. I was concerned about the building. I was concerned about how they handled the IO investigation. I raised my concern about the impact of the IO report and the failure to follow through with more obvious courses of action.

And so I was already developing the sense of, well, I guess I'm not really effective anymore inside the building in one of the two key jobs I think I have here, so perhaps maybe it's time to move on.

Q  Right. One of the interesting and complicated issues facing interbranch conflict, whether it relates to -- in the context of a congressional investigation, is that, you know, every matter presents different facts. Every single oversight initiative develops its own rules of engagement, rules of the road, and there's reasons for that. The courts require accommodations, accommodations process requires understanding each side's interests, whether it be protecting deliberative materials or the like.

And so consequently, at the outset of any congressional investigative matter, there is a period of -- paralysis might be a good word to describe it, where each side is trying to figure out how they are going to get to what they need to do their job.

And this matter is different from Benghazi and I'm sure it's different from Iran-Contra and some of the other high profile, important congressional inquiries. Some of the embassy bombings had some extraordinary back and forth. And eventually a, you know, back and forth does settle in. I mean, when the Congress sends a subpoena, you know, it's not an "easy" button, the documents don't just magically appear. And they don't appear in -- even if the State Department wanted to turn over all the documents, it's not as simple as collecting them, photocopying them, and turning them over. They have to review the documents, they have to understand what positions they're going to take.

And so consequently, I mean, is it fair to say in your experience that it just takes a little bit of time for these conflicts to settle into a point where each side can begin to work with each other?

A  You've raised a number of issues here, and perhaps if I can answer it coming at it with a slightly different optic.

You suggest that every engagement has different rules of the road. Well, let's expand that and suggest that everybody who's involved in an issue has a different level of experience with what is happening and has a different view on what is happening. And then some people have more facts or different facts about what is happening.

If I can come back to why I did what I did, which is why I'm here, I may not know everything that was being thought through on the seventh floor. It's absolutely obvious I did not. But what I do know is that good commanders support their troops in moments of crisis.

And the cumulative impact of what I'd seen in the building, notwithstanding everything else that is happening in with this inquiry, seemed to dictate what was a very simple course of action: Say something.

As for the issue you raise about settling into in effect a battle rhythm and figuring out, especially over a long-term sort of set of engagement, whether it's on the foreign policy issue, to answer your question, or whether it's with the work of the committee at this moment, you're absolutely right, of course it takes time.

Q  Do you feel like you would have been able to influence things if you stayed a little longer?

A  No. That's why -- if I can sort of be clear on this, it's not that I got a reaction or a particularly negative reaction. I didn't get a reaction.

And so to me it was very clear that I really didn't have a role to play on this. But that's fine. I don't run the Department. I don't make the decisions on how policy should be handled. And but --

Q  But your viewpoint is so valuable?

A  Well, I don't make the decisions on how issues should be handled. But I felt that on the central question on which I've built much of my career, which is supporting our people in the Department, if I wasn't able to make any sort of impact in arguing for something I saw that is extremely straightforward and rather limited, then perhaps there were questions about whether I could continue to influence things, and so I decided to separate.

Q  You mentioned Phil Reeker was in agreement with you. He wanted to do a statement like you suggested, right?

A  Yes.

Q  And Carol Perez?

A  Yes.

Q  And Lisa Kenna?

A  Yeah, but she doesn't get involved in policy.

Q  I'm just talking about --

A  Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, I mean you talk to people. I mean, yeah.

Q  But you sent your email to these folks, you talked to them.

A  That's right.

Q  And this is the beginning of a consensus-building exercise of taking everyone's temperature, these senior people, that collectively if you -- you would hope you'd have an ability to combine yourselves to maybe talk to Mr. Brechbuhl and maybe reverse the decision. And I'm just wondering, it just sort of seems lining a disconnect that you sent this --

A  Well, it's since I did speak with Mr. Brechbuhl and I did speak to Mr. Bulatao on the following day.

I don't quite see the disconnect. Did I gather a group together?

Let me say another thing. My experience in bureaucracy is that people don't tend to speak out on certain issues or don't raise their heads on certain issues. And so if it was clear that there was a decision to see how things developed, to use the approach you're suggesting, see how things settle into place, perhaps their view was, well, you know, let's see how far Mike gets.

And I've been in the bureaucracy long enough to know that you don't put guns to people's heads to try to generate support for an initiative. So that was that.

Now, what you're suggesting, why would I not say it's not the sensible approach, of course it is.

Q  I'm not -- let me just be -- I'm not suggesting you should do one thing or the other. You've been with the State Department for 37 years, you've served our country, you can do whatever you want to do. So whatever course, you know, you took I'm not questioning that. I'm just trying to ask you some questions to see --

A  Sure.

Q  -- about your thought process, because it seems like you could have been an influential voice to help the State Department move through this challenging time.

You said rather clearly the President can remove an ambassador at any time for any reason or no reason. When Ambassador Yovanovitch was recalled, did you -- I forget if you mentioned it, but did you like reach out to her or have any communications with her when she was recalled in April or May when you first learned about --

A  No, I did not.

Q  Did any other State Department Foreign Service officers come to you? I mean, you had sort of -- you were in a role that sounds like a bit of an ombudsman. Is that a fair characterization?

A  I don't know. No, I don't -- you know, if I remember anything, maybe somebody would mention in passing, terrible what happened to Masha, it would be that level of conversation. Nobody came to me formally on this question.

Q  Okay.

A  No.

[12:10 p.m.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Was your concern primarily then when you saw the call transcript and you saw the --

A  That's correct. Yeah. You know, because if you take a look at the history of the State Department, you know, across time, people do get removed for different reasons. And what you do want to ensure is that, you know, their careers aren't ended by a decision like that, that there is a soft landing or some support.

And so it seemed, when I ran into Masha, that she was getting on with her life. So I did not engage on that at the time, no, I did not. May I should have, but I didn't. I can't go back and rewrite that chapter.

Q  The fact that she was recalled, had that issue begun to pass, or was it still a bubbling --

A  No. I mean, I don't remember it being raised with me one way or the other.

Q  When did you first learn about the call? Was it when the transcript was made public?

A  That's correct.

Q  So --

A  Well, you know, whenever -- I think, you know, if we go back and look in the newspapers, everything that came out from the whistleblower account onwards. Oh, but when did I learn about the reference to Ambassador Yovanovitch?

Q  Right.

A  Through the call -- through the --

Q  -- seen the transcript in the news?

A  -- release of the transcript, yeah, that's correct.

Q  And was there any -- before the transcript was released, was there any State Department meeting where you discussed this is a big news story --

A  No, not at all.

Q  So you probably read it the same time we did?

A  Absolutely. And maybe not even then because we were at the U.N., and there were lots of meetings taking place and work throughout the day.

Q  And I think you've told us about all your communications with Ambassador Yovanovitch, and then I understand you also spoke with Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent?

A  Yes.

Q  And could you relate to us what he told you and you told him?

A  On October 3rd, you know, I decided it was time to meet the person I'd talked to on the phone. I think I'd try -- anyways, so, you know, because I remember I did the phone call the previous weekend.

So I went down to his office and sat with him, and what he told me was that he had been in the starting throes of pulling together documentation, whatever. I didn't pay attention exactly, you know, data, documentation, whatever that had come with a congressional request for documents.

And he told me there were 10 or 15 people in the room and that among those who participated was a lawyer from the legal office. I don't have the memo because I don't -- but I can tell you, he sent it to me that night, okay. But in the memo -- forget the memo. I mean, he told it to me and then he wrote it up.

And if I remember correctly, he challenged the deadline they were working against, why weren't they given the request for documents on a timely basis and why were they having to pull together whatever they were pulling together days after the congressional request had come in.

He also raised what he saw -- there was a response, which I never read, from State Department to Congress on parameters for the whatever you were going to do. And he also raised that there were inaccuracies in there, in particular about protecting or providing legal support or services.

And you're going to have to bear with me. I'm trying to remember the chronology on this. I think we also discussed, you know, the lack of financial support for paying for private counsel, which appalled me. It absolutely appalled me.

And he made a passing reference to, you know, we'll see what happens, you know, when we -- when, you know -- I think he basically said he would have to wait for a subpoena from the committee before he could appear but that he had been engaged in trying to support Ambassador Yovanovitch earlier in the year.

He also mentioned that he thought that the lawyer was trying to shut him up, and so I didn't tell him to write it up. He wrote it up as a memorandum to the files, and he sent it to me. That was that Thursday night. And I felt absolutely obliged to send it to other people on the 7th floor. I thought it was a serious memorandum. I thought it indicated a lack of support that was broader than simply a question of statements.

What was going to happen to other State Department people who might be drawn into the inquiry? It seemed that it was urgent to address the allegations that there was bullying tactics, et cetera. So I passed the memo on, and I didn't get any answer from anybody.

Q  Is the letter that Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent was referring to, was that a letter that the Secretary had sent?

A  It was a memo.

Q  It was a memo?

A  Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's simply, you know, you write up: This happened. This happened. This happened. This happened.

And it was a memorandum to the files. You just have a record.

Q  Right. But he -- you related to us that he was concerned about inaccuracies that the --

A  That's correct.

Q  -- Department had. And was that a letter that the Secretary had sent?

A  Yeah. I think it's what was sent up here -- I'm sorry. I don't have the timeline on that, but I think, didn't you say --

Q  The Secretary had sent a letter.

A  Had sent a letter to you. Was it the Secretary sent a letter --

Q  Yeah.

A  -- on conditions and expressing his concern --

Q  Right.

A  -- over how individuals were being bullied and subpoenaed --

Q  Correct.

A  -- and all this? Right?

Q  Uh-huh.

A  Okay. So I believe what Kent was referring to was that letter.

Q  Okay. And did he --

A  I never read that letter.

Q  Other than identifying the fact that he believed there were inaccuracies, did he tell you what they were?

A  Not in any detail, no. And, frankly, to me, the mere fact that somebody feels strongly enough about what they've heard and what they're sensing about what they're saying to somebody who's working on the impeachment inquiry that they need to write it down and have a record of what was said was significant enough. And he definitely characterized it as bullying tactics.

Q  So I think you said that was October -- nobody's holding you to these dates.

A  Yeah. No, October 3rd I actually remember. The days I remember is when I actually put something on paper, which --

Q  Thursday, the 3rd?

A  Thursday, the 3rd, it was sent to me. I think my email -- I don't believe I sent it that -- I don't think I even saw that night. I think I -- I don't remember when I saw it. I sent it on Friday, October 4.

Q  Okay. So just unpacking the timeline, the call transcript is put out, I think, Wednesday, September 25th. The committees evinced an interest in taking depositions on Friday, September 27. Presumably, Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent developed his concerns on, you know, Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday of that week.

A  What he was reacting to was the meeting he had that day but also how he felt he had been treated by the Department up to that point.

Q  Right. And do you remember, was he disappointed or mistreated because he was unable to provide documents or testimony or --

A  No. No. I don't remember at all. To me, the key issue at that point was he felt that he was being bullied. To me, you know, I took the headline --

Q  Right.

A  -- because if we can go back to why I did what I did, I didn't need to sit there and, you know, memorize the details for a simple reason, because once I heard it, once I read the memorandum -- by the way, having it in writing in the system it was already a record which should cause concern to the legal adviser's office and to management in the building. And so, for me, that was enough. This is happening. You know, the issues I've been trying to raise about impact on the Department are real. We need to do something.

Q  Okay. But, as you sit here today, you don't remember whether he was disaffected by not being able to produce documents or --

A  No. No, I don't even believe -- oh, disaffected? No, sorry, but that's not the word.

Q  Angry?

A  No. On the documents, sorry, it was whatever they were being asked to do, all right, that they weren't going to have enough time to do whatever it is they were being asked to do. That's what he was angry about, okay, concerned about.

Q  Okay. But they had tried to set up a tight timeline?

A  Oh, I don’t know.

Q  Okay. I'm just trying to understand --

A  Yeah. No, I understand the questions, and I wish I had better answers. I wish -- but I don't because I don't remember the details on that. What I do remember is what he saw as accusatory behavior from the L lawyer in question, and he put it on paper. That is an usual thing to do.

Q  Right. So writing a memo to file about an interaction like that, is there relative --

A  He didn't just talk about the interaction. He talked about the letter, the content of the letter, and then the interaction, yeah. There was a lot on the interaction.

Q  So that would be an extremely rare occurrence --

A  Yes, absolutely.

Q  -- for someone to create a memo --

A  Absolutely.

Q  -- to the file about something of that sort?

A  Yes.

Q  And so the fact that he did that caused you to take it very seriously?

A  That's correct.

Q  And when you pass that information on, do you remember who you passed it to?

A  Yes. I passed it on to the Under Secretary For Political Affairs and to the legal advisor. That was my first step. And then I decided to add the Deputy Secretary. And no one, I mean, literally, not one word was said to me about it.

Q  Okay. So you passed it on Thursday, the 3rd, or Friday, the 4th?

A  I think it was Friday, the 4th. I'm pretty sure it was Friday, the 4th.

Q  Okay. And so nobody from the legal adviser's office called you?

A  Nobody contacted me. I called the acting legal advisor on Thursday to -- or did I call him on -- I can't. I apologize. Wait a minute. No. I tried all day Friday to reach -- to get a minute with the acting legal advisor. And so I did let him know this was coming. I thought it was courtesy.

Q  Okay. And did you relate your concerns to the other group of officials that you had been --

A  I put it in writing.

Q  But did you talk to Phil Reeker, Lisa Kenna?

A  No. By that stage -- sorry, by that stage, I'd already decided, well this is the way it is. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen, but I'm not going to be in the building much longer. So I'm passing on the concern for general review.

Q  We just have a couple of minutes left.

A  Please.

Q  Before our round is out, I like to pivot to our members to see if they have anything they want to ask you. That's what we've been doing in these.

A  Yeah. Sure. Sorry.

MR. JORDAN: What exactly did you put in writing?

MR. MCKINLEY: So get the memo to the files, right, the memo to the files that was sent to me. And so, on top of it, I said, I'm forwarding the following report, which is of concern on a number of levels. It includes allegations of intimidation and bullying and questions accuracy -- I don't know whether I used the word -- and raises questions about whether there are lies in statements, you know. And then I said: And this is why we really need to do something forcefully for our colleagues in the Foreign Service.

And I also mentioned, frankly, the legal fees concern that I had.

MR. JORDAN: Yeah. Because you were going to have to hire outside counsel, and you would not be able --

MR. MCKINLEY: Oh, yeah, well, that's nice question, but, no, absolutely not. Until I received -- when was it got the note from Mr. Noble? It was Saturday, midday, afternoon, I hadn't talked to any lawyer. You can check with anybody who knows me.

MR. JORDAN: I'm not --

MR. MCKINLEY: I had to be talked into approaching a lawyer. I didn't want to deal with legal. My approach to coming to this was -- I saw the request. I answered it before I even talked to any legal counsel. And my approach was, why should I need legal counsel to come here and talk about this? But that's not the way Washington works, apparently.

MR. JORDAN: No, I understand that.

In your opening statement, Ambassador, just so I know --

MR. MCKINLEY: Sure.

MR. JORDAN: -- third paragraph, you talk about the

State Department Foreign Service employees caught up in the inquiry on Ukraine. And so it's plural, and I just -- and we've talked about Ms. Ambassador Yovanovitch. You've talked about Secretary Kent. Is there a bigger list there? Is that --

MR. MCKINLEY: Apparently, there is. Sorry. Apologies.

MR. JORDAN: I just want to know who you're talking about when you say "employees."

MR. MCKINLEY: Well, I understand Bill Taylor is coming back, our Charge in Ukraine. And, you know, by the way, to show you that I wasn't sitting there trying to look at every document that was coming out, I hadn't looked at what was sent over by the committee, that George Kent referenced, and he showed me the communication from the committee, and I just glanced at it and I saw Taylor's name on it and the suggestion that there might be others. And so that's why I put that there. Sorry.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. So your concern with State Department employees is that the employees refers to folks that have been subpoenaed by --

MR. MCKINLEY: That's correct, sir.

MR. JORDAN: -- and asked to come testify? Okay. I just want to be clear.

MR. ZELDIN: Ambassador McKinley, earlier on, I believe you were testifying with regards to a hollowing out of the State Department under Secretary Tillerson. Is it accurate -- did you use the term "forced to leave" or "forced out" in describing that hollowing out? I just want to understand your earlier testimony.

MR. MCKINLEY: Yeah, I did. And my understanding is there were people -- do I know firsthand that people were -- sort of said, "Your services are no longer needed here"? I probably don't. But, you know, I heard, you know, stories of people sort of being told, "Your services are not needed," particularly at the more senior levels. So that's what that was a reference to.

If you want me to take the word back and say everybody resigned on principle -- sorry. Actually, I don't take it back. I remember when I first started using the term, when they cut the promotion rates 40 to 50 percent for senior ranks. Yep, that's a way to get people to leave. And it's just using the system by changing the rules of engagement, and there's nothing illegal about it, but you can certainly bring numbers down very quickly.

MR. ZELDIN: But you don't have any firsthand knowledge of any individual members of the State Department being forced out?

MR. MCKINLEY: You know, I could go and dig, but right now, given that we're talking about a process that took place some time ago, no, I don't, and I'm not going to try to gild that.

MR. ZELDIN: Thank you. I believe we're out of time.

THE CHAIRMAN: Why don't we take a half-hour lunch break and resume at 1 o'clock?

MR. MCKINLEY: Sure.

[1:10 p.m.]

THE CHAIRMAN: Let's go back on the record.

Mr. Ambassador, I want to briefly follow up on some of the questions that my colleagues on the minority asked, and then I'll hand it back to Mr. Goldman to continue through the timeline.

You made reference to an inspector general report whose recommendations were not followed. Can you tell us a little bit about what that inspector general investigation was about, what the inspector general found, and what their recommendations were?

MR MCKINLEY: Going back to the, I think, summer of 2018 there were allegations that individuals, particularly from in front office of the International Organizations Bureau, were being targeted on political grounds by the Assistant Secretary, if not the Assistant Secretary, one of his key assistants, somebody -- if I remember correctly, her name is Mari Stuhl (ph).

And at the time, that was when I was coming into the building, and at least two of the three Deputy Assistant Secretaries I spoke with and raised the issue. But it was an issue which was already well known inside the building, and there was a decision to refer the matter to the inspector general.

My impression across the many months that followed was whatever had happened before in the Bureau and perhaps throughout the building, we're still waiting for the second iteration of the inspector general's report on the similar subject, that concerns about politicization pretty much disappeared and with the focus on returning to systems and professionalism in the management of the building. That was my impression. That's what I'm suggesting to you.

When the report came out, I will be frank, I just glanced at the headlines, but the assumption was that the Assistant Secretary would be asked to step down.

THE CHAIRMAN: And I'm sorry, who was that assistant secretary?

MR MCKINLEY: Moley, Kevin Moley. And when that didn't happen there was a significant reaction among people in the building. I repeat, it’s not me saying so. This came across in the townhall, which Under Secretary Hale and Deputy Secretary Sullivan held with an International Organization staff.

Marie Stuhl, I think, was long gone from the building at that point, but the expectation was to be able to have a completely clean sheet going forward, that it would be helpful for the Assistant Secretary to move on. And when that didn't happen, this reaction set in.

I'm going to say again: I worked on many different issues. I took the headline of the report, which is that there were indeed improper personnel practices and targeting of individuals, and I didn't sit and look at and basically organize offices differently or meetings differently, that sort of thing, you know, I didn't get into that level of detail. Sorry I didn't.

THE CHAIRMAN: When you say that individuals were targeted improperly or politically, what do you mean by that?

MR MCKINLEY: Well, that's what the report’s entitled. So what I was aware of when I first came into the building and started speaking to my colleagues at the time, back in the June/July timeframe of 2018, and I spoke to colleagues in the International Organization Bureau, they felt that tabs were being kept on them in terms of whether they were loyal, whatever that means, to the administration or not.

I can't get more specific than that because the specifics might be related to individual policies and questions of how policies were being pursued, but that was certainly the very strong impression I think of all -- of three of the Deputy Assistant Secretaries, career Deputy Assistant Secretaries who were in position at the time.

And that was the documented both in the media before the report came out. When the initial report started coming out on this was sometime last year, and it was documented in the report. Now, but I -- so I'm sorry, again --

THE CHAIRMAN: Yeah.

MR MCKINLEY: -- I can't give you the specifics.

THE CHAIRMAN: That's fine. I just want to understand what you knew of this report and the recommendations.

MR MCKINLEY: Could I underscore that when the issue came to light last summer, one of the -- at least two of the individuals, one of them stayed on in the front office. So I want to underscore that under Secretary Pompeo, there wasn't an effort to remove anybody that was involved in raising the concerns and were supported for ambassadorships and so on.

So I want to make a clean break, if you will. What I can't make a clean break on is that the expectation, however long the inspection would take, was that there would be a conclusion that would lead to a decision to retire the Assistant Secretary. That didn't happen, and that certainly made people, again, think, what's going on?

THE CHAIRMAN: So, when the Assistant Secretary running that bureau, that Office of International Organizations, wasn't removed notwithstanding the inspector general's findings of politicization or targeting of individuals in a political way, was it your sense that this was having an adverse impact on morale in the Department?

MR MCKINLEY: Absolutely. And it wasn't only my sense; it was certainly a sense shared by the director general and the Under Secretary For Political Affairs.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, you raised at least a couple issues, it sounds like, with the 7th floor you've talked about today. One of them was obviously your concern about a statement supporting this career public servant, Ambassador Yovanovitch. And I think you said that the response essentially you got from the Secretary himself was silence.

Is that fair to say?

MR MCKINLEY: It is. I did not get anything that would approach a substantive response from anyone.

THE CHAIRMAN: And, likewise, when you raised with the 7th floor the seriousness of what Ambassador Kent or Secretary Kent put in a memo complaining about, among other things, false statements by the State Department in response to Congress, that was also met with silence, wasn't it?

MR MCKINLEY: That characterization is to the best of my recollection. We'd have to look at the memo again, but it is to the best of my recollection, and, yes, it was met with silence.

THE CHAIRMAN: And silence is a kind of response in and of itself, isn't it, when you raise a serious issue and there's no action taken and you're not given an adequate explanation for why no action was taken?

MR MCKINLEY: Yes, it is. And if you'll allow me, I don't want to leave the impression here that the decision to resign was a sudden one based on 72 or 96 hours or, you know, I don't get a response, and, therefore, I decide to take off without allowing the time for resolution. The reason I mentioned the IG report was this was definitely something that was already hanging over the Department in that period.

But, second, I don't need weeks to recognize what the impact of having the President of our country state certain things about one of the career officers to know what the impact of that can be on the service without some kind of correction or reaffirmation from the leadership of the Department.

THE CHAIRMAN: I want to ask you more about that, but before I do, I want to ask you a little bit more about the discussion with Secretary Kent. And, you know, you're hamstrung and we’re hamstrung because the State Department has refused to give us the memo that he wrote. Otherwise, we would show it to you and ask you about it.

But let me ask you about this because you mentioned that he was concerned about bullying. One of the representations apparently made in that letter from the State Department was that State Department witnesses like Mr. Kent or perhaps yourself or others were being bullied, not by the State Department but by Congress. But what Mr. Kent was raising with you was his concern that he was being bullied by the State Department. Is that correct?

MR MCKINLEY: That’s correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And he felt that what the State Department had represented to Congress included something that he thought was a lie.

MR MCKINLEY: "Inaccurate" is the term I'll use because, again, without looking back at the memo word for word, I do want to be, on a subject like that, as accurate as possible. He did question the way it was being presented, absolutely.

THE CHAIRMAN: And I think you said he conveyed to you that he thought that the State Department lawyer, perhaps among others, was trying to shut him up. Is that right?

MR MCKINLEY: He did, and he focused specifically on the lawyer.

THE CHAIRMAN: Just a couple of questions about your resignation, and I don't think anyone here is under the impression that this was a hasty decision that you made but a principled decision. And I think at the outset of your testimony, you said that this was not how you expected or had hoped to end a decades-long career in the Foreign Service. Is that right?

MR MCKINLEY: That's accurate.

THE CHAIRMAN: And I think you've articulated a couple of reasons, but I want to make sure that I understand them, for why you made this decision after 30 or 40 years. And is it fair to say a significant part of the reason you made that decision was the failure of the State Department to back a dedicated public servant, Ambassador Yovanovitch, when she was being unfairly maligned?

MR MCKINLEY: That is correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: I think you've also said that part of the reason why you decided to resign was that you couldn't be blind to what was happening, and what was happening was efforts to use the State Department to dig up dirt on a political opponent. Is that fair as well?

MR MCKINLEY: That is fair. And if I can underscore, in 37 years in the Foreign Service and different parts of the globe and working on many controversial issues, working 10 years back in Washington, I had never seen that.

THE CHAIRMAN: And I think you've just said also that you didn't consider these two acts or motivations in isolation but rather in the context of a department that also wasn't adequately responding to politicization within one of its bureaus?

MR MCKINLEY: I would like to recast that because I do believe the Secretary substantially changed the environment inside the building. Following the start of the inspector general's investigations, as far as I can tell, because once these investigations start, you're not talked to again and you shouldn't be. It's a very separate, independent institution within the building.

But what was clear to me across the months was that the Bureau began to return to functionality without complaints coming back up to me directly or indirectly about politicization, that the individuals who are -- I believe were interviewed for and referenced in the report, did not suffer consequences and, in fact, were supported in either staying in position or moving onto positions of greater responsibility.

So I do want to make very clear, in my timeframe with the Secretary in the building, I have not seen politicization of the building per se. What I was trying to reference in my statement -- and we do have to speak about special envoys and an ambassador in the field, and I'm referring to Ambassadors Volker and Sondland, as part of the State Department.

And it's certainly nothing I knew about before the revelations began, but once they did, it was extremely clear to everyone -- I don't think it's in dispute on any side of the debate -- that they were State Department officials being used in a way that certainly didn't fit into any past example we can think of.

THE CHAIRMAN: Because they're being used to dig up political dirt on an opponent?

MR MCKINLEY: That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And just to summarize then, is it fair to say that, but for those actions, the use of State Department personnel to dig up dirt on an opponent and the failure to come to the defense of a dedicated public servant, but for those two factors, you would have been very happy to continue your career --

MR. MCKINLEY: I would have considered -- no, I wouldn't have considered. I was planning to stay until the end of the year. I was planning to retire before the end of the year, absolutely. I thought that I did need to start thinking about other parts of my life. But, no, I had no intention of resigning when I resigned, no.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

Mr. Goldman.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Just so we all understand the sort of framework, I just want to go back to kind of the sequence of events. I won't reiterate some of the things you covered, including Mr. Kent -- your meeting with Mr. Kent and the meeting on October 3rd.

But where we left off last round was your meeting with Secretary Pompeo on September 30th when you notified him of your intent to resign. And I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, that you testified that he gave no meaningful or substantive response to your concerns about the support for Ambassador Yovanovitch or Mr. Kent. Is that right?

A  That's correct. But I don't remember using names. Specifically, it was support for our career professionals. I made a generic point.

Q  Understood.

Did you meet with anyone else or speak to anyone else that day about this issue on September 30th? Do you recall?

A  No. On the resignation I only told two people because I had to begin, you know, sort of looking at processing paperwork. So I spoke to the director general, and I spoke to the executive secretary, who I worked with and saw every day.

Q  Lisa Kenna?

A  Yeah. But I did not tell other people at that point. When I realized -- I don't have to realize. It's like any bureaucracy. Once the paperwork begins to flow, people begin to talk. And certainly by the end of the week, that's when I made the decision to talk to the counselor of the Department, Mr. Brechbuhl, and the Under Secretary For Management and let them know as well, and the Under Secretary For Political Affairs.

Q  Okay. Did you explain to Lisa Kenna or Director General Perez why you were resigning?

A  Yeah. I made the point that I didn't feel I could continue and be effective, no. I made the point, yes.

Q  The same point about the statement?

A  The same point, yeah.

Q  And what was their response?

A  Well, they didn't want to see me leave. But, I mean, these conversations were no longer -- I was just talking with colleagues. The decision is made. I’m not sitting there re-debating, you know, can we do this, can we do that.

It was pretty clear to me that -- and they certainly weren't going to be the decisionmakers if I did continue to pursue it, which I did in the conversations with Brechbuhl, Bulatao, and Hale. But I pursued it in short conversations.

I mean, you know, you can read when you're not going to get a response. And you can sit there and grandstand, or you can sort of accept the decision is made, and it's now beyond -- my concerns have been listened to, and I need to move on, make my own decisions.

Q  You described bringing up the idea of the concerns -- bringing up the concerns about support and the idea of a statement at an Under Secretary’s meeting. Is that --

A  Yeah. But I did it in exactly the way I told you, a throwaway sentence and on -- you know, look at what's happening out there. It's having a dramatic impact on the morale of the building. That was the extent of my statement. And the Deputy Secretary sort of underscored the importance of continuing to have people focus on the mission of State, that that continued regardless of what was happening. That was the end of the conversation.

Q  Do you --

A  I mean, it's a legitimate thing for the Deputy Secretary of State to say. I'm not questioning that.

Q  Just so we get the timeline, do you remember when that meeting was?

A  I don't know if it was -- I think it was October 1st, or was it September 30th. I don't remember. It's one of those 2 days.

Q  Okay. And before you met with Mr. Kent on the 3rd, did you have any additional conversations where you advocated for a statement of support or something similar?

A  No. No. So, you know, I was trying to recollect last night, you know, how many times did I raise it? And when I say "raised," I wasn't sitting there, you know, sort of coming in with a sledgehammer to, you know, belabor the point. I was raising it just consistently. But that October 3rd is also the day I believe I spoke with Brechbuhl and Bulatao as well as Kent. That's my recollection.

Q  And did you speak with Brechbuhl and Bulatao together or separately?

A  Separately. And it was first in the context of "I'm resigning, by the way," and then, you know, they questioned why. And then I went over what I believed needed to happen. And, you know, I think -- I don't know which one or maybe both suggested that the steps that were being taken were the appropriate ones for providing support given an evolving situation, whatever -- nothing specific but not addressing the immediate concern, which I felt very strongly, which was needing to message the Department as a whole and the individuals in question.

They weren't hostile discussions. They were perfectly friendly, in the sense that there was no berating me for my decision to step down, just questions about it. So that's the context those took place in.

Q  Do you remember if those meetings were before or after you met with Mr. Kent?

A  I'm pretty convinced -- I'm sorry.

Q  Don't apologize. To the best of your recollection.

A  To the best of my recollection, they were before.

Q  Okay. And are what was Mr. Brechbuhl's response to you reiterating your concerns?

A  He just listened carefully. That's all.

Q  Did he empathize at all or sympathize?

A  No, there were no expressions one way or the another. Like I said, I can't remember who said, you know: We're trying to, you know, make sure people have time to do things, this, that.

But I'm not going to put -- since I can't remember who said it to me, somebody said it to me in the context of those two conversations. And so -- but, you know, again, nobody was being belligerent with me about it.

Q  Understood.

Were there any specifics as to what those other procedures were that they were referencing?

A  No. I mean, I think it was just a variation on the theme: Give people time to get organized and prepare for the testimonies to come, et cetera.

It was pretty much what's already been said publicly, I think.

Q  Did you know about the subpoena for documents before you met with Mr. Kent on the 3rd?

A  Before lunch break, I think I tried to answer that I knew from the news about the subpoenas, right. And I'm sure I assumed that it included requests for documents as well as for depositions. I had not seen it. And so George had a copy of the -- I guess it's the subpoena. I didn't even sit there and look. He just showed me.

Q  Right.

A  You know, and that's where I saw the additional names that you were intending to call.

Q  And were you aware that the committees had sent a letter to the Department on September 9th just requesting --

A  No, not at all.

Q  -- documents?

A  Not at all.

Q  So you said that --

A  In fact, I just learned that now, so, okay.

Q  You said that you sent your memo -- or, sorry, you sent Mr. Kent's memo to Mr. Hale, the legal advisor, Mark String, and Deputy Secretary Sullivan, right? Did you do that all at once or --

A  No. I sent to Hale and String first, and then thought about it and figured the Deputy Secretary should have it too.

Q  And just so we are clear, none of the three actually responded to your email?

A  They didn't respond to the email. They didn't talk to me about it. They didn't telephone.

Q  Okay. And you said that, on the 4th, you were trying to get a minute of time with Mr. String. Is that right?

A  Only to tell him that I would be sending that. Sorry. So I sent -- I forwarded the document, but I didn't forward it until I had a chance to tell the legal advisor I was sending it because I thought that was courtesy.

Q  Were you able to get in touch with him?

A  Yes, eventually. I think that day I was able to reach him late, late in the afternoon. By the way, he wasn't avoiding me; we were missing each other on calls and so on.

Q  Okay. And what did he say when you indicated you were sending this?

A  Just that he would have preferred to have it in hard copy, and I said I preferred to send it electronically.

Q  Why did you prefer to send it electronically?

A  Because I wanted a record.

Q  And did you get the sense that he didn't want a record?

A  No. I'm not going to characterize because I don't know, and so -- but I certainly felt it was important to have this on record.

Q  Did you expect a followup to referring this memo to these individuals?

A  No, I did not.

Q  Why not?

A  Because my assumption -- and, yes, it's a concentrated period of time, but when people are not really willing to talk to you about an issue you're raising, people are not really willing to respond as you explain the reasons for your resignation.

And I had good personal -- good professional relationships, I think, with all of these individuals. So I am not here to, you know, question whether there's second layers of how they dealt with me. So I interpreted the lack of a response as a response, that this wasn't something they were going to engage on me with.

Q  And did you have any further conversations on Friday, October 4th, before the weekend that you can recall on this topic?

A  No.

Q  All right. Just so we understand clearly, from the time that -- or from September 26th or 27th, when you fist had the conversation with Secretary Pompeo, until October 4th, you made your feelings known about your desire for a statement to support Ambassador Yovanovitch because of your concerns about morale to Secretary Pompeo, Deputy Secretary Sullivan, Counselor Brechbuhl, Executive Secretary Kenna, Under Secretary for Management Bulatao, the communications director Ortega, Director General Perez, and Under Secretary Hale, correct?

A  [Nonverbal response.]

Q  And at no point did you receive a -- sorry. Can you say -- you nodded.

A  I said that's -- the list is correct, but the -- I certainly -- Carol -- I think I already said earlier that a number of people were absolutely supportive of doing a statement.

Q  Fair enough.

A  And doing a statement. I mean you know, we're focused on statement. I was looking at expressions of support. It can take many forms. It can take townhalls. It can take just a message inside the building. It doesn't have to be a press release. It's just a signal that the building has the back of its employees.

Q  Would an internal email from the Secretary have been meaningful to you?

A  Yes.

Q  And even that wasn't done?

A  No.

Q  Did you have any additional conversations over that weekend of October 5th or 6th with anyone?

A  I had one phone call, October 6th, Sunday evening with the Under Secretary For Management, who said, you know, did I, you know, want to perhaps put on paper some ideas of how this might be approached in terms of messaging, and that he was prepared to perhaps raise this with the Secretary.

I decided not to put it on paper because I thought it was an unusual request, and I just discussed it with him the following morning, October 7th, in the same terms, a message which says, you know, got your back, you know.

I may have mentioned at that point, and our policy on Ukraine is well known. We support, you know -- you know, I think the Department, Secretary Pompeo has been very forthright over the time he has been there in supporting Ukraine against Russia, you know, just simple things, a couple of things like that. So that was it. It was another 2-minute conversation. And that was probably --

Q  Just before we move on, you mentioned a few -- there were a few other things as well that you might have --

A  No. Well, to me, I would have thought it important to cooperate with a congressional inquiry, but anyways -- but that's simply -- that's a personal view, and, obviously, the Department has a legal position on this.

So it would have been the support for the troops, you know, perhaps looking at, you know, yeah, we're doing the right thing on policy, and we will work methodically on responding to Congress within, you know, the rule of law. It was generic, I mean, taking as long as I'm saying it now. It wasn't something I was sitting there: And this is why and this is why and this is why.

It was simply, you know, a quick, short list of suggestions. That was it.

Q  Why did you not want to put that in writing on the evening of the 6th?

A  Well, I'd spent a week with people not answering me, and so I've been a bureaucrat long enough. That's a message, and I'm not going to be the one initiating again a trail. For what purpose?

Q  Were you --

A  And I had already explained to people I was resigning. You know, I think it was, perhaps, you know, just a legitimate outreach, but that's the way I handled it.

Q  Were you frustrated at the lack of response?

A  I don't have emotions like that anymore. It was a reality and --

Q  You've been in a bureaucracy too long.

A  And so the fact of the matter is -- I'll repeat what I said earlier -- I don't get to decide, make the final decisions. I can present a point of view. It can be accepted or not accepted, but I think I can read when it's not accepted.

And then I, in this case, for some of the reasons we've already discussed, I felt that it required a more forceful reaction. And if I can also repeat, I do feel that inside the building there was an expectation of, sorry, not a -- a dismay that there was no reaction from anybody in the career Foreign Service at senior ranks to do something more public in support of our colleagues.

Q  Did you feel that an email would be futile?

A  I didn't think about it. I just decided: Not tonight, and I'll talk about it in the morning.

Q  You mentioned one thing about the rule of law and complying with the subpoena in your conversation with Mr. Bulatao on Monday. Was --

A  But it was a throwaway, you know. It's, yeah, shouldn't we respond, you know. I can't build this up into something it isn't, you know. It's a throwaway thought, that sort of, doesn't it make sense to just sort of work through the issues and see how we can move forward in response to Congress. That's it.

Q  Understood.

A  Yeah.

Q  It's just the first time you had mentioned --

A  Yeah, okay.

Q  -- raising --

A  And, frankly, I'm just remembering that right now, but that did happen.

Q  And that was my next question, is, was that the first time that you had raised --

A  The congressional thing, that directly, yeah.

Q  And do you know what prompted you to raise that matter?

A  Just 37 years of being in the government and realizing this isn't going away. That's it.

Q  And had you come to understand that the State Department had not complied with the subpoena --

A  No, I didn't --

Q  Sorry. Just one second. Can I finish?

A  Oh, sorry. Sorry.

Q  Just so the record is clear. Had you come to understand that the State Department had not complied with the subpoena deadline of October 4th?

A  No, I didn't know that.

Q  Okay. Did you --

A  I didn't focus on it. To say I didn't know, I don't know. It just wasn't the top of my mind, no.

Q  But were you aware that the Department --

A  -- I knew there was a deadline because that was part of the conversation with George Kent about the short timeframe he had to pull together whatever it was. And so I assumed there was a deadline. Did I know by October 7th that the Department had not responded to the subpoena, no, I wasn't focused on that at all.

Q  Did you know that the Department was either resisting the subpoena or intended not to comply?

A  No, I did not know, and nobody ever said anything of the sort to me.

Q  Okay. You had said in your opening statement that, I believe it was on October 7th that you decided to expedite your departure. Is that right?

A  Yes.

Q  And what happened on that day, or what prompted that decision?

A  It was over the weekend I just decided that the lack of interaction or response to me demonstrated that this was up, that I didn't have anymore a meaningful role to play even in the timeframe I had posited from our retirement up to, you know, sometime in November. And so I just wanted out, if I can be frank.

Q  So it was within a week that you ultimately decided that your original plan was not going to work?

A  Well, that I didn't want to continue working in this environment, that's correct.

Q  Okay. Were there anymore discussions that week before you left about with -- well, did you have anymore conversations with Secretary Pompeo?

A  Just regarding the resignation and, you know, the -- and I've raised again but, again, you know, I don't want to dress it up. So I said, "You know that one of the reasons was" -- it was that kind of conversation, but nothing substantive on that score.

Q  And how did he respond?

A  Again, nothing. There was no substantive response at any point to the issues I raised.

Q  Did you find that surprising and remarkable?

A  Yes, which is one of the reasons I decided it's time to move on. But I know I'm belaboring the point. I've been in 37 years, as I keep getting reminded. I know that I'm supposed to follow -- you know, that, in the State Department, we do have a fairly open system about people pushing back, not facing retribution, having the discussion, but then decisions get made. This decision was made. It happened to be -- or it seemed -- let me rephrase that -- seemed to me to be made.

I take your point about perhaps there has been discussions about an evolving response. If so, I wasn't part of it.

But it seemed to me a decision had been made. And because of the other reasons I've outlined, which is my concern about the silence impact on the building and the perception that the State Department overseas was being used in a certain way -- it was, you know, what was I sticking around for?

[1:50 p.m.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Based on your four decades of experience, and much of that overseas, do you believe that there are any national security concerns or consequences from these attacks on the career diplomats or the politicization of the State Department?

A  Since this is the specific instance we're dealing with -- but the reason I mentioned the IO Bureau and what -- the reason I can't be more specific about the IO Bureau is because everything that happened that led to the investigation happened before I arrived last summer to work with the Secretary. And, within a month or two of having arrived, the issue had already been referred to an inspector general for investigation.

But it was very clear to me at the time that the investigation was into the allegations of politicization of the Department.

When the transcript was released and, frankly, the information that just poured out every day from the media, when the Volker-Sondland emails were released, it became clear to me that State Department officials, if not the State Department itself, were being drawn again into the domestic political arena in some way. And I repeat: I feel that this is not the way we maintain the integrity of the work we do beyond our borders. We're meant to project nonpartisanship overseas.

And even in an increasingly -- an atmosphere where we debate issues more openly as a society -- and we’re not the only country that does so -- it's still important within the professional Foreign Service to be able to come across as representing the administration, whomever is President, but also to do so professionally on foreign policy issues impacting either bilateral relations, regional questions, multilateral issues, economic issues. But we cannot mix it with the internal concerns.

So, yes, I think anybody you speak to in the Foreign Service -- I can't take a poll of Foreign Service officers, but I think -- my impression is the overwhelming majority would feel the same way I do.

Q  And just because you are, sort of, the dean of the Foreign Service, can you explain to us what risks might accompany the politicization of the Department that you've referenced in those text messages or reading the Presidential conversation in the call record? How does that actually have an impact on the United States abroad or on the Foreign Service officers who are serving around the world?

A  Well, first of all, I don't consider myself the dean of the Foreign Service. I think there's many distinguished Foreign Service officers who continue to provide leadership in the building and in the field.

The impact is -- because we haven't lived this and because, I think I've already said, I don't believe that there has been any further politicization of the building in the time I was with the Secretary, it’s a potential impact down the road.

And I have seen other Foreign Services where it's very clear what people's political leanings are and, the more senior those bureaucrats are, how they play the game with different governments that are elected in their countries.

The beauty of the Foreign Service, the Foreign Service that I've known through some incredibly difficult moments for our country and in bilateral relations with different places, is I don't know the political views of the vast majority of my colleagues. They certainly don't know mine. And we are able to work together and project working for the administration of the day.

That's absolutely central to our work. The day we begin to identify ourselves as partisan, that capacity to project support for the interests of the United States and to do our work for administrations -- we are bound to work for the administration that has been elected by the American people. But you begin to break that down if you begin to inject politics into the equation.

Q  You were in the front office of various posts for the better part of 25 years, and you would have had an opportunity to review, I assume, or be present for heads-of-state meetings or review transcripts and memoranda.

When you read this call transcript, how did it compare to any other heads-of-state conversations that you've ever been privy to?

A  On that one, I'm going to retreat to the classic -- as a former State Department official, the classic State Department language. Everybody expresses themselves in their own way. What you hone in on in the transcript is, you know, the comments that were made about Ambassador Yovanovitch. But on the broader issue of what was going on in that conversation, I'm like anybody else; I'm waiting to see what the committee produces, what else emerges, how this is explained --

Q  But what about the call -- what about the parts of the call that you have referenced to be about digging up dirt on political opponents?

A  Well, no, the part of the call that I referenced -- the call is about Ambassador Yovanovitch -- the comments about Ambassador Yovanovitch. I have not made comments on any other aspect of it.

Q  Well --

A  I have referenced the Sondland-Volker emails, because, frankly, you know, it very much looked like they were discussing some form of exchange.

Now, I repeat: I'm looking at the news like everyone else and seeing where this goes. But I'm not going to sit there and draw the conclusion instantly about what was being discussed. I'm sorry.

Q  No, that's fine.

And I guess just one last question before our round is over, is that at any point in any of your conversations with any State Department employees from the time that you decided to resign or you pressed this issue about a statement, did anyone reference to you the views or the thoughts of the President of the United States?

A  No. Not at all.

MR. GOLDMAN: All right. Thank you. Our time is up. I yield.

MR. MCKINLEY: Thank you.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Under Secretary Bulatao, on Sunday the 6th, asked you to --

A  I believe that was the date. Asked me to put some thoughts on paper.

Q  But, by that point, you figured it was over?

A  That's correct.

Q  When did you send those -- like, the email to Mr. String and the other individuals?

A  Friday, October 4th. Yeah.

Q  And you didn't do your own memo; you were just forwarding --

A  No, I did not. I did -- I think you asked me or, sir, you asked me, you know, what did I say. And it was, I'm forwarding this --

Q  Right.

A  Yeah.

Q  And you told us, but when was the date that you sent the first email to Carol Perez and --

A  The 28th of September. Sorry.

Q  Okay. So it had been --

A  About 6 days earlier.

Q  Okay. So, by the 6th, Sunday the 6th, you sort of saw where this was going?

A  That's how I felt, yes.

Q  Did Bulatao, in his conversation with you, give you any indication that perhaps he was asking you to do that so that he could socialize the concern and --

A  Yeah. He suggested, give me some ideas to work with. Yeah.

Q  Okay.

A  But, as I said, I decided not to put it on paper.

Q  Do you think he's influential enough to take that idea and --

A  Yes. And if there's an impression I do not want to leave here, is I believed -- I had good relations with virtually all the individuals I have mentioned. This isn't a question of, sort of, a difficult working environment or difficult working relationships with the individuals concerned. I think we had worked very well together in the time I'd been there on different questions.

Q  Is it possible that the email that you sent to Under Secretary Hale, Perez, Ortagus, Kenna, Reeker, and then subsequently String, all these officials, is it possible that they, on their own, decided that, hey, let's have Bulatao call the Ambassador and --

A  I don't want to speculate, because I have no idea.

Q  Okay.

A  I don't want to impute motivations.

Q  Okay.

A  I believe the individuals I've referenced want the best for the Department. I'm not here to, you know, sort of, give them a bad name in that respect. I'm talking about how they approached an issue which I did see as central to the morale and well-being of the building.

The articles which were proliferating at a certain point, first on Yovanovitch, then on embassy -- not embassy -- State Department morale, they don't come out of thin air. And so, as you look at this, it was just clear to me, this wasn't just my perception, there was a broader concern. And that's what I was trying to address.

Q  One of the -- you know, you mentioned that you'd concluded that Volker and Sondland were being used.

A  They were part of. I have no idea if they were being used. I did say "used," meaning -- yes, I guess, technically, they were being used.

Q  So we spent some time with Ambassador Volker. You know, he walked us through the conundrum of Rudy Giuliani, that this is somebody that had the President's ear that was contributing to a negative narrative about the state of Ukraine, the state of President Zelensky's initiatives to undo corruption. And Ambassador Volker, you know, gave his side of the story, and he explained why he waded into the, you know, Mayor Giuliani space.

And, you know, different people can reach a conclusion that he should never have talked to Mr. Giuliani or he should've never taken any information he got from Mr. Giuliani and talked to some of the Ukrainian officials. But, you know, his side of the story hasn't been fully incorporated into some of the public news stories. Is that --

THE CHAIRMAN: Counsel, do you have a question for the witness?

MR. CASTOR: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Because -- and, again, we're not going to be able to confirm whether the representations about Mr. Volker's testimony are accurate or not accurate. So you should just respond --

MR. MCKINLEY: Sure.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- within the confines of your knowledge.

MR. MCKINLEY: Okay.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  So what I'm trying to get to is that, if you're reading accounts in the newspaper, there could be other sides of the story.

A  There could be. And every one of us individually decides how we're going to deal with a difficult situation as we pursue objectives. I also know you can make decisions not to do things. So we'll see how this washes out.

But the fact of the matter is, and with the revelations which continue to come daily, it would seem that questions should've been raised, even though the best intentions were involved, about continuing to pursue a certain initiative. And so that's my view.

Q  If some of these officials felt that the President had developed an inaccurate view of the situation on the ground in Ukraine, isn’t it in the interest of the United States to try to take some steps to correct the situation?

A  It depends on what the steps are. And until I see the full story on what Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Sondland were doing, I'll refrain from comment on that.

Q  How often did you speak with the Secretary in your duties?

A  Almost daily.

Q  Secretary Pompeo?

A  That's correct. But it would be short meetings in the morning --

Q  Okay.

A  -- you know, 5 or 10 minutes. Go over, see if there's anything breaking or pressing that had to be dealt with. And then, you know, depending on issues, I might be in meetings with him --

Q  Okay.

A  -- that went on longer.

Q  So you had enough access to him --

A  Yes. Yes. And I certainly can't complain.

Q  The letter that the Secretary sent to Congress --

A  Right.

Q  -- Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent, you know, evinced a view, I think, to you, the letter --

A  Yes, but I'm making clear, this is my recollection. And so the specifics of what Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent -- the comments he made, they're in his memorandum. You know, for me to try to paraphrase them would be misleading.

Q  You know, the language the Secretary used, you know, also -- you know, he says, "I will not tolerate such tactics," talking about allegations of bullying of State Department officials, and, "I'll use any means at my disposal to present" --

MR. GOLDMAN: Mr. Castor, if you're going to read, could we provide the witness with a copy?

MR. MCKINLEY: No, I'm happy to listen.

MR. CASTOR: We can make it an exhibit. That's cool.

MR. MCKINLEY: No, but I'm happy to listen.

MR. CASTOR: We'll make this -- is this the first exhibit?

MR. GOLDMAN: It is, yes.

MR. CASTOR: Oh, wow.

[Minority Exhibit No. 1
Was marked for identification.]

MR. GOLDMAN: Where are you reading from?

MR. CASTOR: Does anybody else need a copy of the letter, or are we good?

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  And take as much time --

A  No, I'm fine.

Q  -- or as little time --

A  I'm fine.

Q  -- to read it.

A  No. Please.

Q  The Secretary writes, you know, "I am concerned with aspects of your request," the speed and the fact that you're reaching out to --

MR. GOLDMAN: Where are you reading from?

MR. CASTOR: I'm reading from the second paragraph here. "I am concerned with aspects of your request, described more fully below, that can be understood only as an attempt to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly the distinguished professionals of the Department of State, including several career Foreign Service Officers, whom the Committee is now targeting."

BY MS. CASTOR:

Q  And so I think a fair reading of that is that the Secretary is trying to write to Congress and say, please, I'm concerned with how you, Congress, are approaching this investigation. Is that a fair reading of it?

A  That's a fair reading of it. But I can tell you that the two persons I knew were coming up to give depositions did not feel threatened or intimidated by Congress.

Q  Okay. And did anyone try to prevent you from appearing?

A  No.

Q  Okay. And does anybody that -- are you aware of officials that they believed they were being barred from appearing?

A  Not at this time, no.

Q  Okay. So you're not aware of any officials that haven't been able to -- officials that wanted to testify -- I mean, you know, there might have to be a subpoena and--

A  Yeah, well, a subpoena is--

Q  Well, a friendly subpoena is very different from a subpoena --

A  Yeah. I'm afraid, for those of us who aren't lawyers, a subpoena is like "Nightmare on Elm Street," okay?

Q  Okay.

A  It's, you know, "What have I done wrong? Why am I being subpoenaed?" So I don't make the distinction between friendly or unfriendly subpoenas.

Q  Okay.

Did Kent evince to you that he wanted to come testify and somebody was preventing him from doing that?

A  To the best of my recollection, he mentioned it, but we didn't get into a discussion.

Q  Okay.

A  He said that he would not -- that, you know, the subpoena was going to be the deciding factor.

Q  Okay.

A  I'm afraid I simply don't remember --

Q  Okay.

A  -- that. Again, I apologize, because I should have a better recollection for the purposes of answering your question properly, but a lot of things were happening at the time, and I was just rushing in one direction.

But what alarmed me about what Kent said to me and then what was in the memo were the allegations of intimidation, were the question marks over this letter. I wasn't going to sit there and ask him --

Q  Of course not.

A  -- what part of the letter don't you agree with?

Q  Right. No, I understand. And I'm not --

A  And -- and -- and I think the third part of -- yeah, that he didn't feel intimidated by the congressional outreach to him. And then -- and I repeat: I was quite impacted by, you know, the legal fees plight of him.

Q  Did he identify other State Department officials that had wanted to cooperate and were perhaps urged not to?

A  No, we didn't really get into that. No.

Q  Okay.

A  No.

Q  So was he advocating for others, I guess is my question.

A  No, he wasn't. No --

Q  It was about his own situation?

A  This is a personal conversation with him, absolutely.

Q  Okay. And so his experience with the official from "L" caused him to --

A  Write the memo.

Q  -- write this memo and reach out to you.

A  That’s correct.

Q  Was that the first --

A  Write the memo and send it to me.

Q  Okay.

A  Yeah.

Q  And was that the first time you had interacted with him?

A  Yes.

Q  So you had never met him before?

A  No. No. I don't remember whether I shook his hand in passing during the week and, "Let's try to find a way to get together." I'm sorry, but I don't remember that. But this was the substantive conversation I had with him.

Q  Okay.

And other than Kent, did any other officials at the Department involved in this communicate articulable concerns to you?

A  No.

Q  Okay.

A  And I'm just -- sorry, I was just lost in space, trying to remember, you know, my conversations with Kent. But, I mean, because, you know, like I say, that was the week I met him. I'd had a phone call with him the weekend before. But the conversation that's really relevant to what we're talking about was that Thursday.

Q  Okay.

A  But if I had another conversation with him, it really wasn't about what was in the memo. It would've been an earlier one, you know, a "how are you coping, what are you doing" kind of conversation. That's it.

Q  You had a conversation with Yovanovitch during this time period too, or was that earlier?

A  That was on the weekend. And I may have talked to her one more time. I think I may have talked to her once or twice, but one of them was definitely to call her to tell her I was stepping down. And it wasn't a long conversation. It was just to let her know.

Q  Okay. And did she express any concerns to you about the way the Department was handling her situation?

A  No details, no.

Q  Okay.

And you haven't had any conversations with Volker or Sondland --

A  None.

Q  -- since this?

A  No.

Q  And so you don't have any firsthand information --

A  No.

Q  -- about the facts of messages and so forth?

A  No.

And, you know, I know you're lawyers and I'm not, so I'll try to couch what I said earlier properly. The Volker-Sondland emails, reading them, suggest that they were engaged in discussions with the Ukrainian Government on something related to domestic politics.

I don't know what else there is. I don't know whether there's Sondland emails. I don't know if there's documents. I don't know what other conversations took place. And, like everybody else, waiting to see what comes out in the public domain to try and connect the dots.

Q  Okay.

A  So I gave you my personal view of the reading of those emails, but they did suggest there was an engagement with the Ukrainian Government for something related to domestic purposes.

Q  And you said you're skeptical, but if you did have the opportunity to hear everyone's full account --

A  Well, I have my own personal views, but they don't matter. What matters is what the facts are.

Q  Right. But we're in the process of finding the facts and we're --

A  Yeah.

Q  -- talking to these witnesses.

A  But -- so any reading of those emails would suggest something was going on. Now, what was it? I don't know.

Q  Did you follow at all the discussion about the aid being held up?

A  I followed it, but --

Q  The foreign assistance that was --

A  And, you know, sometime in the summer, I may have been aware, you know, a passing remark about, oh, assistance for the new Government of Ukraine. I think people were excited there was a new President there.

But, you know, it was in passing. I wasn't working it. It wasn't -- you know, there weren't conversations that I had on it. And so where the assistance question began to crystalize was when all the revelations began --

Q  Okay.

A  -- after the 18th of September.

Q  So between the July 18th and September 11th, there was a hold on the assistance.

A  Yeah.

Q  And there were --

A  But I didn't know.

And if I can explain something about the way the work happened on -- or happens on the seventh floor, there are a tremendous number of issues that are worked on every single day in all parts of the world. And individuals, whether they're assistant secretaries or special envoys or under secretaries, are tasked with working different issues. And if you're going to be effective, you need to focus on the issues where you're going to have an impact.

Second, the Secretary is extremely effective at streamlining his interactions. He deals with the people he needs to get X done in different areas. So, because I wasn't working on Ukraine, there was no reason for me to be part even of a general conversation about what do we do now on Ukraine.

So, like I say, I began to learn a lot more once the whistleblower account came out.

Q  Right.

Sometimes there's issues with aid and it gets held up for a week, a month, longer than that. Isn't that true?

A  That is correct.

Q  And that the period of time, the middle of July to the beginning of September, is a number of weeks, but ultimately the aid was released, and that is representative of what happens sometimes. Isn't that fair to say?

A  I'd say that release of assistance is -- has a very irregular pattern around the world.

Q  Okay. And people have different -- you know, there's different power centers. The --

A  That's correct.

Q  -- Hill weighs in.

A  That's correct.

Q  OMB weighs in. DOD. And there's always a prospect of a hiccup with the release of aid. Isn't that fair to say?

A  There is. But I think I've been very -- I haven't been careful. It's just a fact. I never even focused on the assistance. So that isn't even something that comes into what I have tried to present as my concerns.

My concerns aren't put in the context of our policy towards Ukraine -- whether we should give aid, who we should work with, and so on. It's the way the system was used in the context of Ukraine.

Q  And the U.S.'s policy towards Ukraine in the administration is relatively unanimous in that we ought to be giving foreign assistance and we ought to be providing, you know, lethal defensive weaponry.

And so, from all the back-and-forth over the Volker and Sondland issues, at the end of the day, the State Department, the National Security Council, the White House was unanimous in that we wanted to support Ukraine. Is that your understanding?

A  I don't know about the White House. I know in the State Department there seemed to be the support for the Ukraine, absolutely.

Q  Okay.

MR. CASTOR: I yield back.

BY MR. GOLDMAN: I just have two small things to touch upon. You indicated -- right.

I'll ask a couple questions. And then Members are voting, and I think that some may have wanted to ask some questions. So perhaps we'll take a short break and then be able to come back. I don't think it will be long, regardless.

MR. MCKINLEY: Okay.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  But you indicated, as you've said already, that there were, sort of, two primary reasons why you resigned when you did. One was the handling of Ambassador Yovanovitch and the recall and the lack of support for her and for Mr. Kent. And then the other one was the -- I think you called the politicization of some of the State Department employees, which -- am I correct that you are referring primarily to the text messages that you've seen between Ambassador Sondland and Volker, when you say that?

A  Yeah. But I'd like to just correct the record. I don't say politicization, because I don't know the entire story behind what they were doing. What is clear is that both Volker and Sondland were engaging the Ukrainian Government in conjunction with Rudy Giuliani on domestic political issues.

I want to be careful on this for a reason. I saw nothing inside the building. And I also believe that the politicization which was alleged in the Tillerson period, which led to the investigation into the I0 Bureau, it stopped. And so that's my experience over the past year.

Q  Understood. But it was one of two motivating factors for your resignation.

A  Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. The use of persons with State Department titles, which conveys to the outside world that the State Department is being drawn into -- even if it's just the two individuals working on a tangent separately. But it certainly conveys the impression of politics being injected -- domestic politics being injected into the work of foreign affairs.

Q  You've testified a lot today about your efforts to encourage the Department to issue a statement in support of the Foreign Service officers -- in particular, Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Did you ever raise any concerns about the text messages that you're referring to --

A  No.

Q  -- up to the seventh floor?

A  I did not.

Q  And why not?

A  To be frank, I didn't want to get into a discussion about domestic American politics. I've said earlier that throughout my tenure as senior advisor, I was -- and forget about senior advisor. Throughout my career, I've never engaged my political leadership on political developments inside our country. It's not the right thing to do.

And so, in this case, I felt if I started going down that line of inquiry, I'd be, first, talking about something I knew nothing about, but, second, since I believed it already had a political component, it was something that was not incumbent on me to deal with.

Q  Did you have any discussions with anyone in the State Department about what you read in those text messages?

A  Not to my recollection. And if I did, "Oh, did you see the Volker-Sondland emails?" But I don't think I even did that.

The period that we're reviewing is so concentrated, and I've tried to convey why it wasn't difficult for me to reach certain conclusions quickly. But the other sensitivity I had as I was working through my decisions, I really only started to -- outside of the constellation of names I've given you, the building didn't know I was leaving until the Thursday -- I started telling people on Thursday,

October 10th. That's when I started going around to front offices to say goodbye to assistant secretaries, to under secretaries, and so on, because I thought I wouldn't have time on Friday as I finished processing paperwork.

But I was so sensitive to the implications of me going and talking to people about my concerns -- other than the statement. That was an easy one to, you know -- but if you start raising other questions, you know, it's the wrong thing to do, especially if what you're trying to do is buttress both leadership support for the Department but also the confidence of State Department officials in that leadership.

So, no, I did not. I was very careful on this stuff.

Q  You testified earlier today that Ambassador Volker had left the Department 10 years ago, and I think you said something about him being --

A  Well, he became director -- I think it's no secret, he became one of the directors of the McCain Institute, et cetera.

Q  Right.

A  So, you know, my assumption is there's -- he's -- every one of us is entitled to go out and create a new identity when we leave the State Department. I'm just stating that, to place him and consider him a career official, no, he wasn't.

Q  And you also said that -- I believe you said he was political.

A  "Political" meaning he was a political appointee. I know he came in under -- was it -- he came in under -- was he named under the Obama administration for the position of envoy, special envoy?

Q  I think it was President Trump.

A  You think it was -- okay. I'm just saying he's a political appointee. That's all I'm saying.

Q  Okay.

A  I don't mean anything else by that.

Q  All right.

MR. GOLDMAN: One second.

All right, if we could just take a 5-minute break, and we'll just check on the members.

MR. MCKINLEY: Sure.

[Recess.]

MR. GOLDMAN: We're back on the record.

Mr. Castor?

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Just one question that was related to me by a member that he wanted to ask, but, due to floor votes, he hasn't been able to get back.

I just wanted to acknowledge and just have you agree with the statement that the folks that you were emailing, you know, the Under Secretary of Management, all those key people, they're all really quite busy, and a lot of them were involved with the U.N. General Assembly activities in New York that week.

And so he just wanted me to ask you, you know, is it fair to say that they may have just not been able to get to your emails?

A  No, it's not.

Q  Okay.

A  I do acknowledge the point that there are many other issues on the agenda. What started as a simple suggestion which would've taken 15 minutes to clear off the table turned into something more. That said, because I didn't have substantive conversations, I'm not in a position to speculate about --

Q  Okay.

A  -- what their reasons were for not responding to me on a substantive basis, and I have to acknowledge that.

Q  Okay. Thank you.

MR. GOLDMAN: All right. Thank you, Mr. Castor.

Ambassador McKinley, we really appreciate you coming in here again today on such short notice and for your decades of service. It is clear to us today why you are so revered within the Department, and we greatly appreciate it.

And we are adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 2:35 p.m., the interview was concluded.]

Sondland Transcript Full

PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE,
joint with the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
and the
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
WASHINGTON, D.C.

INTERVIEW OF: GORDON SONDLAND

Thursday, October 17, 2019
Washington, D.C.

The interview in the above matter was held in Room HVC-304, Capitol Visitor Center, commencing at 9:30 a.m.

Present: Representatives Schiff, Himes, Sewell, Speier, Quigley, Swalwell, Heck, Welch, Maloney, Demings, Krishnamoorthi, Nunes, Turner, Conaway, Stewart, Stefanik, and Hurd.

Also Present: Representatives Malinowski, Raskin, Bera, Cicillini, Connolly, Bass, Espaillat, Lieu, Hill, Deutch, Rouda, Deutch, Gibbs, Wasserman Shultz, Wagner, Welch, Mast, Tlaib, Ocasio Cortez, Jordan, McCaul, Meadows, and Roy.

Appearances:

For the PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE:

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For the COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM

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For the COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS:

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For GORDON SONDLAND:

ROBERT D. LUSKIN
KWAME J. MANLEY
DANIEL ALAN HOLMAN
PAUL HASTINGS LLP
875 15th Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20005
and
JAMES T. MCDERMOTT
BALL JANIK LLP
101 SW Main Street
Suite 1100
Portland, Oregon 97204

THE CHAIRMAN: All right. Let's come to order. At the outset, I want to express -- I know what many of are of feeling this morning over the loss of our colleague, Elijah Cummings. There are few members, I think, that have ever served in this body who enjoyed wider respect and love among their colleagues as Elijah Cummings.

He was a dear friend to many of us. He was an inspiration to all of us. I spoke with him repeatedly while he was convalescing, and he was always offering his support and guidance and his superb example. We lost a giant among us. And I wanted to relay something that he -- a poem that he cited in his, as I understand, his first 1-minute as a new member of the House of Representatives more than 20 years ago by Dr. Benjamin E. Mays.

I have only just a minute. Only 60 seconds in it. Forced upon me, can't refuse it, didn't seek it, didn't choose it, but it's up to me to use it. I must suffer if I lose it. Give account if I abuse it. Just a tiny little minute, but eternity is in it.

That so typifies Elijah Cummings, who I think viewed every minute as a blessing and not to be squandered. And truly lived every minute as if it might be his last, and gave us just an incredible legacy.

So with your indulgence, if we could pause for a moment of silence in memory of our colleague, Elijah Cummings.

[Pause.]

THE CHAIRMAN: I don't know if one of my colleagues in the minority might like to make a statement about Elijah.

MR. JORDAN: Thank you, Chairman. And let me just echo what you said. I think the folks in Baltimore, the whole State of Maryland, this town, and frankly the whole country are saddened by the loss of our friend. And he truly was a friend to both sides of the aisle.

And I will say, personally, I am, like all of of you, I'm going to miss him, I'm going to miss just debating with him, arguing with him, he was special. And it was funny, because we would debate and go at it in committee and then I'd see him in the gym and we'd be talking about the normal things that folks talk about. He was a good man. He was a good chairman. And, like I said, I think this whole town and the whole country is saddened by the loss of Chairman Cummings. So thank for the moment of silence and your words.

THE CHAIRMAN: I thank you, Mr. Jordan, and we did some soul searching about whether we should, or could, go forward today, but I think we felt that he was so dedicated to his work that he would want the work to continue, and so we plow forward.

Good morning, Ambassador Sondland, and welcome to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which, along with the Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees, is conducting this investigation as part of the official impeachment inquiry of the House of Representatives. Today's deposition is being conducted as part of the inquiry.

In light of attempts by the State Department to direct you not to cooperate with the inquiry, the committee had no choice but to compel your appearance today. We thank you for complying with the duly authorized congressional subpoena. After creating and operating a successful hotel business, the Senate confirmed Ambassador Sondland on June 28, 2019, to serve as Ambassador -- oh, sorry, 2018. If it had been 2019 it would be a completely different circumstance -- to serve as the Ambassador to the European Union in Brussels.

Ambassador Sondland's appearance today under subpoena, as a result of the State Department's decision, in coordination with the White House to obstruct the impeachment inquiry by directing the Ambassador at the 11th hour not to appear on October 8th for his scheduled deposition. The committee was therefore forced to issue a subpoena for Ambassador Sondland's appearance today.

In the intervening week, the committee has collected important evidence and learned a great deal of new information, including through powerful and detailed testimony of Ambassador Yovanovitch, Dr. Fiona Hill, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, and Ambassador McKinley. The committee will also hear from Ambassador Bill Taylor, our Charge d'Affaires in Kyiv next week, among others.

And, Ambassador Sondland, we look forward to hearing your testimony today about your involvement in Ukraine policy and efforts to secure a White House meeting with President Zelensky, as well as the July 25 call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky, and the documentary record that has come to light about efforts to get the Ukrainians to announce publicly investigations into two areas President Trump asked President Zelensky to pursue: the Bidens and the conspiracy about Ukraine's purported interference in the 2016 U.S. elections.

Before I turn to committee counsel to begin the deposition, and I know your counsel has some things to put on the record, I invite the ranking member to make any opening remarks.

MR. NUNES: Ambassador, welcome. Thank you for being here today. Before we begin, I'm going to yield to Mr. Jordan for our opening statement, but I just want to raise to the majority that both Foreign Affairs and Oversight were informed of these new meetings next week. I would just state that if we're going to continue this circus, I, at least, would like to know what time the circus begins. I don't know if that was done on purpose to the Intelligence Committee Republicans, but my colleagues from both Foreign Affairs and Oversight were notified. So I hope in the future, that we learn at the same time that other colleagues know about the start times. And with that, I will yield to Mr. Jordan.

MR. JORDAN: Thank you. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Ambassador, thank you for being here today. Thank you for your service to our country. On September 24th, Speaker Pelosi unilaterally announced that the House was beginning a so-called impeachment inquiry. On October 2, Speaker Pelosi promised that this so-called inquiry -- impeachment inquiry, would treat the President with fairness.

However, Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Schiff, and the Democrats are not living up to that basic promise. Instead, Democrats are conducting a rushed, closed-door, and unprecedented inquiry.

Democrats are ignoring 45 years of bipartisan procedures, procedures that were designed to provide elements of fundamental fairness and due process in past impeachment inquiries, and the majority and minority had coequal subpoena authority and the right to require a committee vote on subpoenas. The President's counsel had a right to attend all depositions and hearings, including those held in executive session. The President's counsel had the right to cross-examine witnesses, the right to propose witnesses. The President's counsel also had the right to present evidence, object to the admission of evidence, and to review all evidence presented both favorable and unfavorable.

Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Schiff's so-company impeachment inquiry has none of these guarantees of fundamental fairness and fundamental due process. Most disappointing. Democrats are conducting this so-called impeachment inquiry behind closed doors. This seems to be nothing more than hiding this work from the American people. The 330 million people who are represented by Members of Congress don't get to see any of it.

If Democrats intend to undue the will of the American people, just a year before the next election, they should at least do so as transparently, and be willing to be accountable for their actions. With that, I yield back.

THE CHAIRMAN: I thank you, and I will yield to my counsel. I do want to point out that we are following all the deposition notice requirements, and indeed, the same requirements that the now minority observed when they were in the majority. Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is the deposition of Ambassador Gordon Sondland, conducted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, pursuant to the impeachment inquiry announced by the Speaker of the House on September 24th.

Ambassador Sondland, could you please state your full name and spell your last name for the record.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Gordon David Sondland, S-O-N-D-L-A-N-D.

MR. GOLDMAN: Along with other proceedings in furtherance of this inquiry, this deposition is part of a joint investigation led by the Intelligence Committee in coordination with the Committees on Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform. In the room today are minority staff from the Oversight Committee. The majority staff are mourning together the loss of Chairman Cummings and will not be here today. In addition, there is majority staff and minority staff from both the Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Intelligence Committee.

This is a staff-led deposition, but members, of course, as has been the case all along, may ask questions during their allotted time. My name is Daniel Goldman, I'm the director of investigation for the HPSCI majority staff, and I want to thank you for coming in today for this deposition.

Let me briefly do some introductions. To my right is Daniel Noble, senior investigative counsel for the Intelligence Committee. Mr. Noble and I will be conducting most of the interview for the majority. Now I will let my counterparts from the minority introduce themselves.

MR. CASTOR: Good morning, Steve Castor with the Republican staff of the Oversight Committee.

MS. CASULLI: Good morning, Laura Casulli, deputy general counsel, minority, HPSCI.

MR. KOREN: Good morning, sir. Michael Koren, House Oversight Republican staff.

MR. GOLDMAN: This deposition will be conducted entirely at the unclassified level. However, the deposition is being conducted in HPSCI’s secure spaces and in the presence of staff with appropriate security clearances. It is the committee's expectation that neither the questions asked of the witness nor the answers by the witness or witness' counsel, which does not have security clearance, will require discussion of any information that is currently, or at any point, could be properly classified under Executive Order 13526.

Moreover, EO 13526 states that, quote: In no case shall information be classified and continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified, unquote, for the purpose of concealing any violations of law or preventing embarrassment of any person or entity. If any of our questions can only be answered with classified information, Ambassador Sondland, we'd ask that you inform us of that before you answer the question and we can adjust accordingly.

Today's deposition is not being taken in executive session, but because of the sensitive and confidential nature of some of the topics and materials that will be discussed, as well as the House rules, access to the transcript of the deposition will be limited to the three committees in attendance. And under those House deposition rules, no Member of Congress nor any staff member can discuss the substance of the testimony that you provide today. You and your attorney will also have an opportunity to review the transcript.

Before we begin, I'd like to go over some of the ground rules for this deposition. We will be following the House regulations for depositions, and we have previously provided those regulations to your counsel. The deposition will proceed as follows: The majority will be given 1 hour to ask questions, and then the minority will be given 1 hour to ask questions. Thereafter, we will alternate back and forth between majority and minority in 45-minute rounds until questioning is complete. We will take periodic breaks, but if you need a break at any time, please let us know.

Under the House deposition rules, counsel for other persons or other government agencies may not attend. You are allowed to have an attorney present during this deposition, and I see that you have brought some. At this time, if counsel could please make their appearances for the record.

MR. LUSKIN: Good morning. I'm Robert Luskin from the law firm of Paul Hastings, with me is my partner Kwame Manley, and we are joined by Jim McDermott from the law firm of Ball Janik, and we're here as counsel for Ambassador Sondland.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you. Ambassador Sondland, there is a stenographer taking down everything that is said here today in order to make a written record of the deposition. For that record to be complete, please wait until I finish or we finish all the questions that are asked of you, and we will do our very best to wait until you finish your answers before moving on to the next question.

It's important that you and staff and members not speak over each other. So please do wait until the question is finished. The stenographer cannot record nonverbal answers, such as shaking your head, or an uh-huh, so it's important that you answer each question with an audible verbal answer, particularly if it's a yes or no question.

We ask that you give complete replies to questions based on your best recollection. If a question is unclear or you are uncertain in your response, please let us know. And if you do not know the answer to a question or cannot remember, simply say so.

You may only refuse to answer a question to preserve a privilege recognized by the Committee. If you refuse to answer a question on the basis of privilege, staff may either proceed with the deposition or seek a ruling from the chairman on any objection, in person or otherwise, during the deposition at a time of the majority staff's choosing. If the chair overrules any such objection, you are required to answer the question.

And, finally, you are reminded that it is unlawful to deliberately provide false information to Members of Congress or staff. It is imperative that you not only answer our questions truthfully, but that you give full and complete answers to all questions asked of you. Omissions may also be considered as false statements. As this deposition is under oath, Ambassador Sondland, would you please stand right now and raise your right hand to be sworn.

Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I do.

MR. GORDON: Let the record reflect that the witness has been sworn. And now, Ambassador Sondland, if you have any opening remarks, this is the time.

MR. LUSKIN: And, Mr. Goldman, with your permission, a couple of housekeeping matters. Last night, I received a letter from the Department of State, which I guess I would characterize as an admonitory letter directed towards Ambassador Sondland. I'd like to share a copy with the Committee and have it placed in the record.

But we'd also want to make clear that we do not understand that letter as asserting or directing that Ambassador Sondland assert any privilege, and therefore, he intends to answer all of your questions today without reservation and without the assertion of any privilege.

The second point is that Ambassador Sondland is pleased to be here in response to your subpoena for his testimony, but the Committee also served a subpoena duces tecum on Ambassador Sondland directing him to produce documents. As we have discussed with staff, Ambassador Sondland believes that he is precluded by law from producing official records that are in his possession, all of which have been turned over to the Department of State, and therefore, he respectfully declines to produce those documents this morning.

But we also wish to emphasize that it's his belief, and ours, that the Committee should have access to all relevant documents, and he regrets that they have not been provided in advance of his testimony. Having those documents would lead to a more fulsome and accurate inquiry into the matters at hand. Indeed, Ambassador Sondland has not had access to all of the State Department records that would help him refresh his recollection in anticipation of this testimony.

And we are also aware of other documents that we think would corroborate his testimony in material respects. So it is with regret, and not out of any disrespect for the committee or any challenge to its legitimacy, that we must decline to produce documents in response to that subpoena. And let me share the letter, which is addressed to the three chairmen this morning, if I may.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Luskin. We also regret that we do not have the documents. And one thing that I would just say to Mr. Sondland, before your opening statement. Because we don't have the documents that may be relevant to your testimony, you may find that some of our questions seem basic. But because we are in a factfinding effort here, we don't know what we don't know, so we may ask questions that seem basic. We'd still ask that you provide full answers to them.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Understood.

THE CHAIRMAN: You're recognized for your opening statement.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for the opportunity to provide this testimony today. I was truly disappointed that the State Department prevented me at the last minute from testifying earlier on October 8th, 2019. But your issuance of a subpoena has supported my appearance here today, and I'm pleased to provide the following testimony.

First, let me say that it is an honor to serve the people of the United States as their Ambassador to the European Union. The U.S. Mission to the EU is the direct link between the United States and the 28-member EU countries, America's longest standing allies and one of the largest economic blocks in the world. A strong united and peaceful Europe helps to uphold the norms that maintain political stability, and promote economic prosperity around the world.

Second, I would like to thank my staff and the many dedicated public servants with whom I have the privilege to work every day. I have benefited immeasurably from their collective wisdom, experience, and hard work, and their patriotism serves as an example to us all.

Third, let me note that my goal today is to answer your questions directly and clearly to the best of my knowledge. I have not shared this opening statement in advance with either the White House or the State Department. These are my own words. It is important to emphasize at the outset that I have had limited time to review the relevant facts in order to prepare for my testimony. I will do my utmost to answer the committee's questions fully and truthfully, but the shortness of time is challenging.

And let me also say that I have good friends from both sides of the aisle, many of whom have reached out to me to provide support. As we go through this process, I understand that some people may have their own specific agendas. Some want me to say things to protect the President at all costs. Some may want me to provide damning facts to support the other side. But none of that matters to me. I have no interest in pursuing higher office or taking political shots. Simply put, I am not here to push an agenda, I'm here to tell the truth.

I am a lifelong Republican. Like all of my political ambassadorial colleagues, I am an appointee of the President, and I serve at the pleasure of the President. I know that party affiliations are set aside when representing the United States. Having served on nonpartisan commissions by the appointment of three Democratic governors, and on the transition team for Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski, another Democrat, I am well-accustomed to working across the aisle. For example, I worked briefly with former Vice President Biden's office in connection with the Vice President's nationwide Anti-Cancer Initiative, and I admire his long record of public service. I had bipartisan support for my ambassadorial nomination. And my successful business background and my results-oriented focus made me, in my view, well-suited to bring the fresh perspective to U.S. foreign policy that the President had sought.

As you know, I was confirmed by the Senate in a bipartisan voice vote as Ambassador to the EU on June 28th, 2018, and I assumed that role in Brussels on July 9th, 2018. From my very first days as Ambassador, Ukraine has been a part of my broader work pursuing U.S. national interests. Ukraine's political and economic development are critical to the long lasting stability of Europe. Moreover, the conflict in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which began nearly 5 years ago, continues as one of the most significant security crises for Europe and the United States. As the U.S. Ambassador to the EU, I have always viewed my Ukraine work as central to advancing U.S.-EU foreign policy. Indeed, for decades, under both Republican and Democrat administrations, the United States has viewed Ukraine with strategic importance, in part to counter Russian aggression in Europe and to support Ukraine energy independence.

My involvement in issues concerning Ukraine, while a small part of my portfolio, was nevertheless central to my ambassadorial responsibilities. In this sense, Ukraine is similar to other non-EU countries, such as Venezuela, Iran, and Georgia, with respect to which my mission and I coordinate closely with our EU partners to promote policies that reflect our common values and interests.

I have always endeavored to keep my State Department and National Security Council colleagues informed of my actions and to seek their input. I understand that all of my actions involving Ukraine had the blessing of Secretary Pompeo, as my work was consistent with longstanding U.S. foreign policy objectives. Indeed, very recently, Secretary Pompeo sent me a congratulatory note that I was doing great work, and he encouraged me to, quote, "keep banging away."

While I continue my work in Europe, here in Washington there continues to be inaccurate and unsourced speculation regarding my work in Ukraine. To be helpful as you frame your questions, let me share an outline of the facts.

First, as Ambassador to the EU, my Ukraine portfolio began on day one, from the very first briefing materials I received in the summer of 2018. Although it did not consistently occupy a great deal of my time, involvement in Ukraine matters was considered by the career professionals who prepared my briefing materials to be an important part of my portfolio.

On July 13th, 2018, just 4 days after assuming my post, I received a delegation from the Government of Ukraine at the U.S. Mission in Brussels. This meeting was sought by then-Ukraine Government, and like most meetings, was proposed and arranged by career EU Mission staff. Following those initial contacts, I attended numerous meetings in Brussels and other locations in Europe during the fall of 2018, to advance U.S. interests in Ukraine. These interests reflect a whole-of-government engagement, not just a narrow focus. We discussed economic development, energy independence, and security concerns regarding Russian aggression in Ukraine. From my position in Brussels, my goal has always been to facilitate and expedite the integration of Ukraine into the broader western norms of Europe and the United States.

To be clear, my role has been to support my colleagues in the State Department for whom Ukraine issues are a full-time job and to lend my voice when helpful. These professionals included, first and foremost, the Head of Mission, which at the start of my service was Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, and more recently, Charge d'Affaires William Taylor and their embassy staff.

I worked with Ambassador Yovanovitch personally during my first official visit to Ukraine in February of 2019, and I found her to be an excellent diplomat with a deep command of Ukrainian internal dynamics, the U.S.-Ukraine relationship and associated regional issues. She was a delight to work with during our visit to Odessa, Ukraine. I was never a part of any campaign to disparage or dislodge her, and I regretted her departure.

Similarly, in my time working with Ambassador Taylor, I have found him to be an insightful, strategic, and effective representative of U.S. interests. He cares deeply about the future of Ukraine and is a dedicated public servant. The Ukraine Mission worked hand-in-hand with Special Envoy Kurt Volker, another experienced diplomat, with a special remit to address the ongoing conflict in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Mr. Volker was an exemplary professional.

I viewed my role as adding value to the broader efforts of the Ukraine team through my engagements with high level leadership in Brussels and Washington. During my first official trip to Ukraine on February 26th, 2019, I traveled to Odessa with Special Envoy Kurt Volker, former EU Deputy Secretary General Jean Christophe-Belliard, a representative of the Romanian EU presidency, and many other officials. Joined by Ambassador Yovanovitch, U.S. Navy Commander Matthew Powell, and many others, we met with then-Ukraine President Poroshenko on the U.S. Navy ship Donald J. Cook. This visit demonstrated the U.S. military's commitment to Ukraine, and furthered our broader agenda of aligning with our EU partners to counterbalance Russian influence in the region. This visit followed on the heels of a congressional delegation to Brussels led by Speaker Pelosi. This delegation met with me and senior EU leadership.

In these meetings in Brussels and Odessa, as in nearly every meeting in which Ukraine issues were discussed, corruption and rule of law were central topics of conversation. Corruption poses challenges to the legitimacy and stability of government. Corruption is also an economic issue. Successive Ukrainian governments have sought to attract Western investors as a counterbalance to Russian interference and oligarch control of key Ukrainian companies. Western investment is fully in the strategic interest of the United States and our EU partners. However, efforts to access private markets have been made extremely difficult by the longstanding corruption.

As one example, we frequently had conversations with Ukrainian leaders about transparency and corporate governance issues involving Naftogaz. In my experience, those issues have been the constant context in which both my team and our Ukraine counterparts have raised corruption problems for many years. We have received very positive feedback from the NSC regarding our joint efforts to address these challenges in Ukraine.

On April 24th, 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was elected President of Ukraine, beating incumbent President Petro Poroshenko with nearly 73 percent of the vote. This was a momentous event in Ukraine, political history, and for the overall U.S. -Ukraine relationship.

On May 20th, 2019, given the significance of this election, I attended the inauguration of President Zelensky as part of the U.S. delegation led by U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, along with Senator Ron Johnson, Special Envoy Volker, and Mr. Alex Vindman from the NSC. During this visit, we developed positive views of the new Ukraine President and his desire to promote a stronger relationship between Kyiv and Washington, to make reforms necessary to attract Western economic investment, and to address Ukraine's well-known and longstanding corruption issues.

On May 23rd, 2019, 3 days after the Zelensky inauguration, we were in the -- we, in the U.S. delegation, briefed President Trump and key aides at the White House. We emphasized the strategic importance of Ukraine and the strengthening relationship with President Zelensky, a reformer who received a strong mandate from the Ukrainian people to fight corruption and pursue greater economic prosperity. We asked the White House to arrange a working phone call from President Trump and a working Oval Office visit.

However, President Trump was skeptical that Ukraine was serious about reforms and anti-corruption, and he directed those of us present at the meeting to talk to Mr. Giuliani, his personal attorney about his concerns.

It was apparent to all of us that the key to changing the President's mind on Ukraine was Mr. Giuliani. It is my understanding that Energy Secretary Perry and Special Envoy Volker took the lead on reaching out to Mr. Giuliani as the President had directed.

Indeed, Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker, and I were disappointed by our May 23rd, 2019, White House debriefings. We strongly believe that a call and a White House meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelensky was important, and that these should be scheduled promptly and without preconditions.

We were also disappointed by the President's direction that we involve Mr. Giuliani. Our view was that the men and women of the State Department, not the President's personal lawyer, should take responsibility for all aspects of U.S. foreign policy towards Ukraine. However, based on the President's direction we were faced with a choice. We could abandon the goal of a White House meeting for President Zelensky, which we all believed was crucial to strengthening U.S.-Ukrainian ties and furthering long-held U.S. foreign policy goals in the region, or we could do as President Trump directed and talk to Mr. Giuliani to address the President's concerns. We chose the later path -- excuse me, we chose the latter path, which seemed to all of us, Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker, and myself, to be the better alternative. But I did not understand until much later that Mr. Giuliani's agenda might have also included an effort to prompt the Ukrainians to investigate Vice President Biden or his son, or to involve Ukrainians directly or indirectly in the President's 2020 reelection campaign.

Following my return to Brussels, and continuing my focus on stronger U.S. - EU ties, my Mission hosted a U.S. Independence Day event on June 4th, 2019, 1 month early. Despite press reports, this event was planned months in advance, and involved approximately 700 guests from government, the diplomatic corps, the media, business, and civil society. The night featured remarks by the Ambassador and High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs. Following the main event, we hosted a smaller separate dinner party for about 30 people. President Zelensky and several other leaders of EU and non-EU member states attended the dinner, along with Secretary Perry, U.S. State Department Counselor Brechbuhl on behalf of Secretary Pompeo, and numerous other key U.S. and EU officials. Though long-planned in advance with the focus on improving Trans-Atlantic relations, we also viewed this event as an opportunity to present President Zelensky to various EU and U.S. officials and to build upon the enhanced government ties. The event was very well received, and contrary to some reporting, Bono did not attend or perform.

During a trip to Washington on July 10th, 2019, with the express, advance invitation of Ambassador Bolton, I joined White House meetings between representatives of Ukraine National Security and Defense, with U.S. NSC officials, including Ambassador Bolton, along with Secretary Perry, and Ambassador Volker. I understood following the meeting, as reflected in the summary of a phone call the next day between Secretary Perry and Ambassador Bolton, that there was a difference of opinion between Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker, and myself, on the one hand, and the NSC on the other. We three favored promptly scheduling a call and meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelensky; the NSC did not.

But if Ambassador Bolton, Dr. Hill, or others harbored any misgivings about the propriety of what we were doing, they never shared those misgivings with me, then or later. We had regular communications with the NSC about Ukraine, both before and after the July meeting. And neither Ambassador Bolton, Dr. Hill, or anyone else on the NSC staff ever expressed any concerns to me about our efforts, any complaints about coordination between State and the NSC, or most importantly, any concerns that we were acting improperly.

Furthermore, my boss, Secretary Pompeo, was very supportive of our Ukraine strategy. After a series of delays, on July 25, 2019, President Trump called President Zelensky to congratulate him on recently concluded Ukraine parliamentary elections, which, in Ukraine, are separate from the presidential elections. This was an important call, and I was pleased to hear that it occurred. But let me emphasize, I was not on that July 25th, 2019, call, and I did not see a transcript of that call until September 25th, 2019, when the White House publicly released it. None of the brief and general call summaries I received contained any mention of Burisma or former Vice President Biden, nor even suggested that President Trump had made any kind of request of President Zelensky. I heard afterwards that the July 25th, 2019, call went well in solidifying a relationship between the two leaders.

On July 26th, Special Envoy Volker and I, along with others, met with President Zelensky in Kyiv, Ukraine. This was a significant bilateral meeting involving large teams from the United States and Ukraine that had been planned by Special Envoy Volker's team weeks in advance. It was planned weeks in advance, and was not, in any way, tied to the July 25th, 2019, White House call.

I was invited to this meeting in early July. Indeed, as we planned the Kyiv meeting, we did not know when or even if the White House call would occur. During this July 26th meeting in Kyiv, we were able to promote further engagement, including discussions about a future Zelensky visit to the White House. I do recall a brief discussion with President Trump before my visit to Kyiv. The call was very short, nonsubstantive, and did not encompass any of the substance of the July 25, 2019 White House call with President Zelensky.

Finally, the White House and the NSC invited me to the United Nations for the first face-to-face meetings between Presidents Trump and Zelensky in New York City, which I attended on September 25, 2019. This was a positive meeting, and I'm pleased that the leaders were able to meet for the first time face-to-face.

Given the various misstatements in the press, I want to take this time to clarify several issues, including questions involving the Ukraine public statement, the involvement of former Mayor Giuliani, and other alleged issues. First, I knew that a public embrace of anti-corruption reforms by Ukraine was one of the preconditions for securing a White House meeting with President Zelensky. My view was, and has always been, that such Western reforms are consistent with U.S. support for rule of law in Ukraine, going back decades under both Republican and Democrat administrations. Nothing about that request raised any red flags for me, Ambassador Volker, or Ambassador Taylor.

Consequently, I supported the efforts of Ambassador Volker to encourage the Ukrainian Government to adopt the public statement setting out its reform priorities. My recollection is that the statement was written primarily by the Ukrainians, with Ambassador Volker's guidance, and I offered my assistance when asked. This was the, quote, "deliverable," closed quote, referenced in some of my messages. A deliverable public statement that President Trump wanted to see or hear before a White House meeting could occur. The fact that we were working on this public statement was no secret.

More broadly, such public statements are a common and necessary part of U.S. diplomacy. Requesting that parties align their public messaging in advance of any important leadership meeting is a routine way to leverage the power of a face-to-face exchange.

Second, there has been much press speculation about my own interactions with former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. And this is important. To the best of my recollection, I met Mr. Giuliani in person only once, at a reception at which I briefly shook his hand in 2016, almost 2 years before I became an Ambassador. This was before I became Ambassador to the EU.

In contrast, during my time as Ambassador, I do not recall ever having met with Mr. Giuliani in person. And I only spoke with him a few times. Ambassador Volker introduced me to Mr. Giuliani electronically. My best recollection is that I spoke with Mr. Giuliani for the first time in early August of 2019, which was after the congratulatory phone call from President Trump on July 25th and after the bilateral meeting with President Zelensky on July 26th. My recollection is that Mr. Giuliani and I spoke no more than 2 or 3 times by phone for about a few minutes each time.

As I stated earlier, I understood from President Trump, at the May 23rd White House debriefing, that he wanted the inaugural delegation to talk with Mr. Giuliani concerning our efforts to arrange a White House meeting for President Zelensky. Taking directions from the President, as I must, I spoke with Mr. Giuliani for that limited purpose. In these short conversations, Mr. Giuliani emphasized that the President wanted a public statement from President Zelensky committing Ukraine to look into anti-corruption issues.

Mr. Giuliani specifically mentioned the 2016 election, including the DNC server, and Burisma as two anticorruption investigatory topics of importance for the President. Let me be clear. Let me be clear: Mr. Giuliani does not work for me or for my Mission, and I do not know what official or unofficial role, if any, he has with the State Department. To my knowledge, he is one of the President's personal lawyers.

However, my understanding was that the President directed Mr. Giuliani's participation, and that Mr. Giuliani was expressing the concerns of the President, and that Mr. Giuliani had already spoken with Secretary Perry and Ambassador Volker. Ten weeks after the President, on May 23rd, directed the inaugural delegation to talk with Mr. Giuliani, I had my first phone conversations with him in early August of 2019. I listened to Mr. Giuliani's concerns. My goal was to keep the focus on Ukraine and the strengthened relationship with the United States.

As an aside, please know that I would have not recommended that Mr. Giuliani, or any private citizen for that matter, be involved in these foreign policy matters. However, given the President's explicit direction, as well as the importance we attached to arranging a White House meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, we agreed to do as President Trump directed.

Third, given many inaccurate press reports, let me be clear about the following: I do not recall that Mr. Giuliani discussed former Vice President Biden or his son, Hunter Biden, with me. Like many of you, I read the transcript of the Trump-Zelensky call for the first time when it was released publicly by the White House on September 25th, 2019.

Although Mr. Giuliani did mention the name Burisma in August of 2019, I understood that Burisma was one of many examples of Ukrainian companies run by oligarchs and lacking the type of corporate governance structures found in Western companies. I did not know until more recent press reports that Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma. Again, I recall no discussions with any State Department or White House official about former Vice President Biden or his son. Nor do I recall taking part in any effort to encourage an investigation into the Bidens.

I worked hard to keep the National Security Council, including Ambassador Bolton and Dr. Hill, apprised of our Ukrainian efforts. In fact, sometime in June of 2019, Secretary Perry organized a conference call with Ambassador Bolton, Ambassador Volker, myself, and others. We went over the entire Ukraine strategy with Ambassador Bolton, who agreed with the strategy and signed off on it. Indeed, over the spring and summer of 2019, I received nothing but cordial responses from Ambassador Bolton and Dr. Hill. Nothing was ever raised to me about any concerns regarding our Ukrainian policy.

While I have not seen Dr. Hill's testimony, I am surprised and disappointed by the media reports of her critical comments. To put it clearly, neither she nor Ambassador Bolton shared any critical comments with me, even after our July 10th, 2019 White House meeting. So I have to view her testimony, if the media reports are accurate, as the product of hindsight and in the context of the widely known tensions between the National Security Council on one hand, and the State Department on the other hand, which had ultimate responsibility for executing U.S. policy overseas.

Again, I took my direction from Secretary Pompeo and have had his consistent support in dealing with our Nation's most sensitive secrets, even to this very day.

Fifth, certainly media outlets have misinterpreted my text messages where I say, stop texting or call me. Any implications that I was trying to avoid making a record of our conversation is completely false. In my view, diplomacy is handled best through back-and-forth conversation. The complexity of international relations cannot be adequately expressed in cryptic text messages. I simply prefer to talk rather than text. I do this all the time with family, friends, and former business associates, that is how I most effectively get things done. My text messages comments were an invitation to talk more, not to conceal the substance of our communications.

Sixth, to the best of my recollection. I do not recall any discussions with the White House on withholding U.S. security assistance from Ukraine in return for assistance with the President's 2020 reelection campaign. I recall that in late July 2019, Ambassadors Volker, Taylor, and I exchanged emails in which we all agreed that President Zelensky should have no involvement in 2020 U.S. presidential election politics.

At the same time, we believed strongly that U.S. security assistance should not be withheld. Acting Charge William Taylor raised concerns about the possibility that the Ukrainians could perceive a linkage between U.S. security assistance and the President's 2020 reelection campaign. Taking the issue seriously and given the many versions of speculation that have circulated about the security aid, I called President Trump directly. I asked the President, what do you want from Ukraine? The President responded, nothing. There is no quid pro. The President repeated, no quid pro. No quid pro quo multiple times. This was a very short call. And I recall that the President was really in a bad mood.

I tried hard to address Ambassador Taylor's concerns because he is valuable and effective diplomat, and I took very seriously the issues he raised. I did not want Ambassador Taylor to leave his post and generate even more turnover in the Ukraine Mission. I further encouraged Ambassador Taylor to contact Secretary Pompeo, as I followed up as far as I could go. As you have seen in the press, my contemporaneous messages support this recollection.

Let me state clearly, inviting a foreign government to undertake investigations for the purpose of influencing an upcoming U.S. election would be wrong. Withholding foreign aid in order to pressure a foreign government to take such steps would be wrong. I did not and would not ever participate in such undertakings. In my opinion, security aid to Ukraine was in our vital national interest and should not have been delayed for any reason.

Simply put, my goal has always been to advance U.S. interest in securing a strong relationship with Ukraine. I continue to see our relationship with President Zelensky as having great importance to national security, and I continue to work to strengthen our ties, advance our mutual interests, and secure a stable prosperous Ukraine for future generations.

I will end my remarks the way I began. Ukraine is not a dirty word. Ukraine is a fragile democracy fighting against a brutal and unscrupulous Russian neighbor. A strong Ukraine helps us to uphold the norms that maintain stability and promote prosperity around the world. It remains an honor to serve to people of the United States as their Ambassador to the European Union. I look forward to going back to work tomorrow to advance the interests of the United States of America. Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you for your opening statement. Mr. Goldman, you're recognized to begin an hour of questioning.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

EXAMINATION

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Ambassador Sondland, you mentioned, throughout your opening statement, false or misleading press reports. Now, no one would say that Congress is a steel trap when it comes to information that may or may not be leaked, but it's very hard to leak testimony that has not yet been given.

So I'm curious as to where you think the numerous press reports about your upcoming testimony came from over the past week?

A  I don't know.

Q  You did not speak with the press at all?

A  I personally did not speak to the press.

Q  Did you speak to anyone else who you knew would be speaking to the press?

A  I spoke with my lawyers.

Q  I understand that, but how about anybody else?

A  No.

Q  How about from the date that you received the notice to come and testify before Congress. I want to ask you a few questions in terms of your preparation. Did you speak with President Trump at all about your testimony prior to coming here today?

A  I saw President Trump at a reception for Finnish President Niinisto. I ran into him in the cross hallway at the White House. I said, I've been asked to come in and testify. And there were a lot of people around. He said, good, go tell the truth. That was the extent of our conversation.

Q  How about Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney?

A  No.

Q  Anyone else in the White House counsel's office?

A  I had a brief conversation with the White House counsel's office when the whistleblower's report came out mentioning my name, and the White House counsel's office reached me, I was in New York at the United Nation Trans-Atlantic dinner. I stepped out of the meeting to take the call, and I believe we had a short, fairly nonsubstantive, 3-, 4-, 5-minute conversation. They wanted me to come in for an interview, and I declined until I spoke to my counsel, and I never did give that interview.

Q  Do you know what date that dinner was?

A  No, but I can --

Q  It was in New York during the General Assembly?

A  Yes.

Q  Do you know if it was before the transcript of the call record had been released?

A  I don't.

Q  And how about before the whistleblower complaint was publicly released?

A  I think the White House counsel, one of the White House counsel said it was about to be released, or it was imminent, and my name was in it.

Q  Who --

A  The real purpose of the call was they wanted me to come in and do an interview with them.

Q  What was the purpose of the interview?

A  I don't know. They asked for an interview, and I did not agree to an interview until I had spoken with counsel, my own counsel.

Q  Who did you speak to at the White House counsel's office?

A  I believe it was Michael Purpura (ph).

Q  And did he tell you what the purpose of the interview was?

A  To go over my recollections and testimony.

Q  Okay. Did you discuss your testimony here today with Secretary Pompeo?

A  I did not.

Q  Ulrich Brechbuhl?

A  No.

Q  Anyone at the State Department's legal advisor's office?

A  No.

Q  How about Ambassador Volker?

A  I spoke with Ambassador Volker shortly after he resigned and wished him well, and I asked him one question. Have I ever met Rudy Giuliani? And he said, not with me present you haven't. And I said, thank you. That was the only conversation I had with him.

Q  Why did you ask him if he knew whether you had met someone?

A  Because that would have been the only context in which I would have met Mr. Giuliani would have been with him.

Q  It would have been with him?

A  Correct.

Q  You never would have tried to organize a meeting on your own with Rudy Giuliani?

A  No, we never had a meeting.

Q  I understand that. But you would have never tried to organize a meeting with Rudy Giuliani without Kurt Volker?

A  Let me see if I understand your question. Would I have had a meeting with Rudy Giuliani one-on-one?

Q  Yes.

A  It would have probably served no purpose, since Ambassador Volker and I were working together on this project, although he did have meetings with Rudy Giuliani without me.

Q  And your testimony is that you never tried to organize a meeting with Rudy Giuliani directly with Mr. Giuliani?

A  I think I may have texted Mr. Giuliani, and said, can we get together? And we missed, we never were able to organize anything. We never met.

Q  Okay. Did you speak with Ambassador Taylor about your testimony?

A  No.

Q  How about Secretary Perry?

A  I have spoken with Secretary Perry on several occasions relating to non-Ukraine business, and I did ask Secretary Perry to refresh my memory about a couple of meetings. Yes.

Q  And can you describe what meetings you asked him to refresh your memory about?

A  The meeting that was apparently described in the media by Dr. Hill where she said there was a bad meeting at the White House, or something to the effect that the meeting was abruptly terminated, and he said, I don't remember anything of the kind. I thought it was a great meeting and we all left happy.

Q  So in response media reports about Dr. Hill's testimony, you reached out to Secretary Perry to have a discussion?

A  I did.

Q  So when was that, yesterday?

A  I spoke with him yesterday, and I spoke with him about 3 or 4 days ago.

Q  What else did you discuss with him yesterday?

A  We have an upcoming conference. My real reason for talking to him was really about the conference on Sunday in Brussels.

Q  How about related to your testimony or potential testimony, what else did you discuss with him?

A  No, I only asked him if he recalled anything about that meeting being abruptly terminated or bad or any bad words, and he said nothing of the kind.

Q  Are you referring to the July 10th meeting in the White House?

A  Correct.

Q  And did you think it was appropriate to call Secretary Perry, who's obviously another potential witness, the day before your testimony to, quote, "refresh your recollection," unquote?

A  I didn't think it was inappropriate.

Q  Do you understand that that may have the appearance of trying to line up your testimony with Secretary Perry?

A  I wanted to refresh my memory.

Q  Did you consult your lawyer before you called Secretary Perry?

A  I did.

Q  And without -- okay. And you told your lawyer before you called Secretary Perry that you were going to call him to refresh your recollection?

A  I did.

Q  And I won't ask you about those conversations since I understand that they are protected. Did you ask about any other media reports about Dr. Hill's testimony or Ambassador Volker's testimony to Secretary Perry?

A  Not that I can recall.

Q  So it was just that July 10th meeting that you were concerned about?

A  I believe so, yeah.

Q  Did you read The Wall Street Journal article yesterday about an extensive interview with Secretary Perry?

A  I did.

Q  Did that help refresh your recollection as to what occurred around May 23rd?

A  It was consistent with my statement that I gave. It really was quite harmonized with my statement, and not because they were harmonized, but because that's what happened.

Q  So you didn't need to refresh your recollection about the May 23rd meeting, just the July 10th meeting?

A  Correct. Because Dr. Hill’s testimony was so -- at least as it was reported, was so contrary to any recollection I had, I thought I must have slept through something and missed something. If someone said that a meeting was abruptly terminated and that angry words were used, when, in fact, we had a great meeting, we all tweeted about it afterwards, and that was that.

Q  Was it a perfect meeting?

A  wouldn't call it a perfect meeting.

Q  Are you aware --

A  I got the joke. It took me a minute.

Q  Are you aware of any efforts by Secretary Pompeo or others at the State Department to try to stop you from testifying here today?

A  I think they wanted to discourage my testimony, and I said, first of all, I wanted to testify when it was noncompulsory, and I wanted to get my story out and get it on the record. And they directed me not to appear, which is why I did not appear on the 8th. And once you issued the subpoena, again, they discouraged me from complying with the subpoena, but I decided to come in anyway.

Q  Did you develop an understanding as to why they were discouraging you from complying with the subpoena?

A  No clue because I didn't communicate with them, my counsel did.

Q  And how did -- did you have any conversations where anyone discouraged you from testifying?

A  All through counsel.

Q  All through counsel?

A  Correct.

Q  Did you have any conversations with anyone else prior to your testimony here today in order to refresh your recollection?

A  I don't recall any. I don't, other than just press reports and my own recollections.

Q  No one at the White House -- no one else at the White House?

A  Counsel has had conversations with the White House, I've had none.

Q  Were you relayed information from the White House through counsel, not saying what that is?

A  No. No. No. And I have not met with White House counsel either.

Q  Did you read an article published yesterday in The Washington Examiner which included extensive excerpts from Ambassador Volker's testimony?

A  I did not.

Q  One moment, please. You said you had another conversation with Secretary Perry 3 or 4 days ago. Was that before or after Dr. Hill's testimony?

A  I think it was before.

Q  And did you discuss anything with him related to the topics of your testimony here today?

A  I don't recall, because we talk a lot. We talk a lot about the lot of things. We're friends.

[10:31 a.m.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Okay. But -- so you don't recall whether you discussed your testimony here today?

A  I don't recall, no, because I've had multiple conversations with him.

Q  When I asked you whether you had discussed your testimony here today with Secretary Perry, you said 3 or 4 days ago. So --

A  Well, the Dr. Hill testimony is what I'm testifying to, the Dr. Hill piece. I don't recall when I talked to him before.

Q  Okay. What else did you discuss with Secretary Perry about that July 10th meeting?

A  It was very cursory. I basically repeated -- I asked him if he had seen the report. He said he hadn't. I said, there’s a report out there that Dr. Hill said the meeting blew up and was abruptly terminated and that I had threatened the Ukrainians. And he said: Not any meeting I was in did that occur. And he was there, obviously, along with Ambassador Volker.

Q  So, just so we understand, there have been a lot of media reports. What specific -- can you recount with as much specificity as possible, since he had not seen the media reports, what you relayed to him about what you had read in the press?

A  I related to him in a macro sense, bad meeting, blowup, quick termination, threatened Ukrainians. And, again, I had no recollection of that. That was what, 3, 4 months ago. And I said, I recalled us all going out in the garden afterwards and all having our picture taken, along with Ambassador Bolton, and then everyone put out a friendly tweet about the meeting.

And they were so inconsistent, I said: What did I miss? And Ambassador -- Secretary Perry said: You missed nothing. That's what happened.

Q  Now, you have said in the past that at some point the President, I think, gave you a special assignment related to Ukraine. What did you mean by that?

A  I was spinning a little, to be candid.

THE CHAIRMAN: If I could, before we get into that. Before we move on from the conversation with Secretary Perry, in your conversation with Secretary Perry, did you or Secretary Perry bring up Burisma, as that was the subject of some of the press accounts of Dr. Hill's testimony?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't believe we did. I don't recall talking about Burisma.

THE CHAIRMAN: Did you bring up any of the press coverage concerning the follow-on meeting in the Ward Room?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yes, I believe we did, because there were two meetings.

THE CHAIRMAN: And what did you raise with Secretary Perry about the discussion of the follow-on meeting in the Ward Room on July 10th?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I think we discussed the fact that it was a very short meeting. We agreed to disagree on whether a phone call should be made or not, and we all left. And that was the end of the conversation.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, I want to make sure we're talking about the same conversation. So in your call, was it yesterday with Secretary Perry?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: In preparation for your testimony today, you discussed not only the meeting, the first meeting on July 10th, but also the subsequent meeting in the Ward Room?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: They were really -- they were really one meeting that adjourned to another, because some people had to go and some people continued the discussion. I think that's what happened.

THE CHAIRMAN: As best you can tell us, what did you say to Secretary Perry, what did he say in response vis-à-vis that second meeting in the Ward Room?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I think we both recalled that there were two meetings or one meeting that moved location, and I don't remember the rest of the conversation. I mean again, my goal in calling Secretary Perry was to find out if any of the things that I'd read in the media were -- if I had completely forgotten about bad meeting, bad words. And he said, no, he didn't remember.

THE CHAIRMAN: And you don't recall anything else, any of the particulars of your discussion with Secretary Perry about the Ward Room, only that you did discuss it?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That we did discuss it and that it was also a good meeting. That's all I can recall, Congressman.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Going back to the special assignment, you said you were spinning. What do you mean by that?

A  The Ukrainians were very concerned that they weren't getting full support. And one of the reasons that the three of us, Ambassador Volker, Secretary Perry, and myself, sort of took it upon ourselves, along with the blessing of Secretary Pompeo, to help support Ukraine during the ambassadorial transition and so on was in order to keep the Ukrainians happy and engaged with the U.S. They were getting very nervous.

So when I said that the President gave me the assignment, it was really the Secretary through the President, said that I could continue to work on the Ukraine matter. And Ambassador Bolton signed off on that sometime in June of 2019.

Q  When did you understand that you were supposed to take on a leadership role with Ukraine policy?

A  I was not taking on a leadership role.

Q  So what role --

A  I was taking on a support role.

Q  And who was to take on a leadership role?

A  The Charge. He's the bilateral Ambassador. It's his full-time job. And then also Ambassador Volker, who's a Special Envoy to Ukraine.

Q  There was a transition between Ambassador Yovanovitch and Charge Taylor, right?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay. So Ambassador Yovanovitch was ultimately recalled at the end of April. Do you recall that?

A  Yes.

Q  And left toward the middle of May. And when did Charge Taylor start?

A  I think he started shortly thereafter. I don't recall the exact date. I wouldn't have been involved in that personnel issue.

Q  Right. But there was no leadership in the embassy at the time of the May 20th Presidential inauguration in Ukraine, correct?

A  I believe that is correct. I believe there was a Charge there then.

Q  So I guess I'm just trying to understand how you, along with Ambassador Volker and Secretary Perry, took on a prominent role in Ukraine policy?

A  Well, I started with my trip in February to Odessa. The trip was pretty successful. The EU really liked it. The Ukrainians liked it. This was under President Poroshenko. And I kept that file active. I wanted to stay engaged with the Ukrainians through the election.

President Zelensky won. We were invited to the inauguration. I was asked to go in the delegation. So I kept engaged with Ukraine as part of a broader team. And we had people from the NSC involved. We had Volker, Taylor, Perry. A lot of people were involved.

Q  So when you said on Ukrainian television that the President gave you a special assignment, that was not true.

A  It wasn't untrue. Did the President call me specifically and say, "You are assigned to Ukraine"? No. Secretary Pompeo and Ambassador Bolton did. But I assumed that authority derives from the President.

Q  What did Secretary Pompeo say to you?

A  Secretary Pompeo said continue to work on Ukraine.

Q  When?

A  I don't remember the date.

Q  Before or after the inauguration?

A  Continually. Keep working on Ukraine.

THE CHAIRMAN: If I could just follow up on that.

Did you ever have a conversation with another U.S. official, either in the National Security Council or the State Department, in which you were challenged on under what authority were you acting as in the special responsibility vis-à-vis Ukraine, in which you responded that on the President's authority?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't recall a conversation like that, but I think that when we had our conference call with Ambassador Bolton in early June of 2019, we sort of laid out all of the things we were talking about doing vis-à-vis Ukraine until there was a permanent political-appointed Ambassador there. And Ambassador Bolton told the group on the phone he thought that was a good idea.

THE CHAIRMAN: So I just want to make sure I understand. Is it your testimony then that, separate and apart from the public statement you made that my colleague referenced about your responsibility for Ukraine, you never told a State Department official, national security official, or other government official that the President had given you a leadership role on Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't recall. I may have; I may not have. Again, I don't recall.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, if you had said that, were you telling the truth when you said that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't understand your question.

THE CHAIRMAN: Did you ever represent to someone that the President of the United States directly had put you in charge in any respect of Ukraine policy?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: The President of the United States can put people in charge directly or through his duly authorized subordinates, which in this case is Secretary Pompeo or Ambassador Bolton.

THE CHAIRMAN: But my question is, did you ever represent to another government official that the President, not the Secretary but the President, had directed that you play a leadership role in Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't remember that.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  You said that Ambassador Bolton in June signed off on it.

A  Correct.

Q  What occurred? What do you recall about that?

A  Well, this was Secretary Perry's call. He organized it. I participated, along with several others. And Secretary Perry, this was after the May White House meeting with President Trump where President Trump had directed that we speak with Mayor Giuliani, I think Secretary Perry just wanted to take stock of where we were and made a call to Bolton, invited us all to join, and sort of reviewed and laid out what we were planning to do in terms of doing energy work, staying close to the administration in Ukraine, and various and sundry things.

And Ambassador Bolton essentially said: That sounds good to me, that sounds great. And I remember, you know, thinking this was a good call, everyone's on the same page.

Q  But that sounds like what the policy issues were with Ukraine, a policy discussion, a substantive discussion about how to deal with Ukraine.

A  Well, no, we were talking about who's on first, which persons are on first. And he agreed that the three of us should continue to be engaged.

Q  And prior to that, had you had any discussions, either with Ambassador Bolton, anyone else on the National Security Council, about your role in Ukraine policy, given the fact that you were the EU Ambassador and Ukraine is not a part of the EU?

A  Well, as I said in my statement, Ukraine is an important part of my portfolio, as determined by those who put all of my briefing materials together from the NSC, the desk, as well as the State Department.

In February, when I went to Odessa, Dr. Hill congratulated and praised me for my effort in helping support Ukraine. So I took that to mean the NSC was supportive along the way.

Q  Did you ever have any conversations with Chief of Staff Mick -- Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney about your involvement and engagement in Ukraine?

A  No, other than there was a phone call that was originally scheduled, I believe, for earlier than when the actual call was placed. And there was a lot of back-and-forth about would the call go on, would the call not go on. And Mulvaney was on that stream of emails about whether the call would be placed or not.

But I don't believe I’ve ever even had a formal meeting with Chief Mulvaney. I've seen him in the White House. We say hello, we walk by and wave. But I've never -- I don't believe I've sat down with him for a formal meeting on any subject.

Q  Did you ever speak to him on the phone?

A  I may have once or twice. I don't believe it was about Ukraine.

Q  Just generally, while we're talking about phone conversations, how frequently do you speak with President Trump?

A  I think I've spoken with President Trump -- and this is a guess -- maybe five or six times since I've been an Ambassador. And one of those I recall was a Christmas, merry Christmas call, and it had zero substance. And I always called him. He never called me.

Q  Did you ever discuss your -- the nature of your role in Ukraine with Ambassador Taylor?

A  Ambassador Taylor knew that we were involved, because when he came on board and we were introduced, someone had briefed him to tell him that Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker, and myself were helping to support the Ukraine effort.

In two or three conversations, he was thrilled about that. He was really happy that he had such high-level support. I'm not saying myself, because he and I are essentially peers, but I'm saying a Cabinet member and the Special Envoy. And he mentioned that on those calls.

Q  We discussed a minute ago Ambassador Yovanovitch's recall at the end of April. Did you have any knowledge or awareness of the possibility, likelihood, or fact of her recall before she was called back to Washington?

A  I heard a lot of rumors that people were unhappy about her or with her, but beyond that, no.

Q  What rumors did you hear?

A  Just that stuff I read in the press and stuff that I heard around my mission and so on.

Q  Did you speak to anybody at the State Department about her status prior to her recall?

A  I don't recall ever having a conversation like that.

Q  Did you speak to her at all about the situation?

A  I don't think so. No, I think -- I think the only conversations we had were when I was in Odessa and maybe a couple of phone conversations after that. I didn't work with her that much, but I found her to be very delightful to work with.

Q  Did you -- do you recall that at the end of March there were some articles that came out that included some accusations related to her?

A  That may have been the press I was referring to.

Q  Do you know what press you might have read it in?

A  I have no idea.

Q  And you don't remember having a conversation with her after those allegations came out?

A  I don’t remember.

Q  Do you remember giving her any advice on how to handle the situation?

A  I don't. I don't.

Q  You don't?

A  No.

Q  You don’t remember suggesting that she issue a tweet in support of the President?

A  No, I don't remember that.

Q  So you said in your opening statement that at that May 23rd meeting in the White House that the President directed you to speak to Rudy Giuliani about his concerns related to Ukraine.

A  He directed the delegation to speak.

Q  Prior to that, were you aware of Rudy Giuliani's interest in Ukraine matters?

A  Just what I had read for several years in the media. I don't know Mr. Giuliani, so whatever -- whatever I read in the media is what would have been my impressions.

Q  Okay, let's focus on that. You said several years. When -- dating back to when?

A  I don't know. I mean, things about Rudy Giuliani have been swirling around in the media forever. I don't know when it began or ended or --

Q  Okay. Well, just --

THE CHAIRMAN: If I could just interject. I'm sorry, Mr. Goldman. I just want to get further clarification.

Is it your recollection, Ambassador, that you never advised Ambassador Yovanovitch to go big, make a public statement of full-throated support of the President?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I honestly don't recall. I honestly don't.

MR. GOLDMAN: Would it surprise you if someone else said that you did do that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Probably, yeah.

MR. GOLDMAN: Would it surprise you --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't know that we had -- I'm trying to remember that we ever had a career conversation, because I wasn't really involved in her career. I’ve had career conversations with others. I don't recall having one with her.

THE CHAIRMAN: Do you think it would have been appropriate for an ambassador to voice personal political support for the President rather than advocate for the issues important to Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No, no, I think it's always more appropriate to advocate support for the country that you're assigned to, not for -- your political hat is off.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Did you ever have a discussion with the former Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko, about Ambassador Yovanovitch?

A  I think we had a discussion in general with others there, and he wasn't high on her and he wasn't low on her. He was just sort of "eh."

Q  And what did you say to him about her?

A  I don’t remember. I mean, it wasn't a remarkable conversation, as I recall.

Q  Did you find it appropriate to have a discussion about a fellow State Department diplomat with a foreign leader?

A  Foreign leaders complain about their ambassadors all the time. That is nothing unusual. Whenever they don't get something that they want from the United States, they always blame the ambassador. I'm sure I've been blamed for many things as well.

Q  Going back to Rudy Giuliani, and understanding that you had not had any conversations with him prior to May 23rd, and I believe it's your -- was your testimony today in your opening statement that you didn't reach out to him until August, what did you know about his public statements related to Ukraine in the earlier part of this year?

A  I really didn't pay too much attention to his public statements about Ukraine. I was focused really on getting President Zelensky a phone call and a meeting. That's what I was focused on. That was the sum total of my effort, because I thought that would be beneficial to the United States.

Q  When President Trump told you to -- you and the others, I understand, everyone at that meeting, and we'll get to that meeting in more detail -- but when he told you to discuss with Rudy Giuliani concerns about Ukraine, did you know at that point what he was referring to?

A  He didn't even -- he wasn't even specific about what he wanted us to talk to Giuliani about. He just kept saying: Talk to Rudy, talk to Rudy.

Q  Right, I understand that, and I understand he wasn’t specific. But when he said that, did you know what he was talking about?

A  I didn't, other than he said: Ukraine is a problem.

[Majority Exhibit No. 3 Was marked for identification.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  I'm going to introduce to you now what's marked as exhibit 3, which is a New York Times article from May 9th, 2019. Why don't you take a close look at this and let me know if it looks familiar to you.

A  [Reviewing.]

Q  Is this article familiar to you?

A  No.

Q  You don't recall reading it around this time?

A  No.

Q  It says that -- just to quote a couple of passages, it says that: "Mr. Giuliani said he plans to travel to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital" -- and by the way, this is dated May 9th.

A  Right.

Q  -- "in the coming days and wants to meet with the nation's president-elect to urge him to pursue inquiries that allies of the White House contend could yield new information about two matters of intense interest to Mr. Trump. One is the origin of the special counsel's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The other is the involvement of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.'s son in a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch."

Then below there's a quote from Mr. Giuliani which says: "We're not meddling in an election, we're meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do."

He then continues and says: "And this isn't foreign policy -- I'm asking them to do an investigation that they're doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I'm going to give them reasons why they shouldn't stop it because the information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government."

Do you know who he's referring to when he says "my client"?

A  No idea.

Q  You have no idea?

A  I mean, I assume it's the President if he’s the President's lawyer, but I have no idea.

Q  You knew he was the President's lawyer?

A  I haven't seen this article until you --

Q  That's not what I asked. You knew he was the President's lawyer?

A  I knew he was the President's lawyer.

Q  On the next page, it says that: "He said his efforts in Ukraine have the full support of Mr. Trump. He declined to say specifically whether he had briefed him on the planned meeting with Mr. Zelensky, but added, quote, 'He basically knows what I'm doing, sure, as his lawyer,'" unquote.

So you were aware, of course, that Mr. Giuliani was Mr. Trump's personal lawyer, right?

A  Based on press reports, yes. The President has never told me: Mr. Giuliani is my lawyer.

Q  Okay.

A  Okay?

Q  Have you ever --

A  And Mr. Giuliani has never told me he was the President's lawyer directly.

Q  Right. But Mr. Giuliani has a habit of speaking a lot in the media --

A  Right.

Q  -- and saying repeatedly that he's the President's lawyer. You've seen -- even if you haven't had a direct conversation, you're aware that --

A  I'm generally aware that that's what he's been saying, correct.

Q  Okay. And so you didn't read this article, you said. Is that right?

A  Correct.

Q  After Mr. Trump -- and were you aware of any other public statements that Mr. Giuliani had been saying about Ukraine --

A  No.

Q  -- in connection to any of these investigations?

A  No.

Q  So just so we're clear, Ukraine took on a significant part of your portfolio. Is that right?

A  No. As I said, I have 28 countries that I'm dealing with in the EU. I'm dealing with Venezuela. I'm dealing with Iran. I'm dealing with Georgia. Ukraine was a small piece of it. But I wanted to stay engaged with Ukraine because I thought it was important.

Q  All right. I won't characterize it. How would you characterize your role in Ukraine policy for the State Department?

A  As helpful support to those who are charged with dealing with it on a full-time basis.

Q  Okay. And as someone who's trying to be helpfully supportive, would you say that it's part of your role to understand what is going on with U.S. policy and the public -- in the public media about Ukraine?

A  Probably, but I can’t read everything. I can't read everything. I've got, as I said, I have 28 countries.

Q  I think in your opening statement you said that Ukraine was central to your ambassadorial responsibilities, right?

A  No, I think I said -- let me refer to my statement.

Q  You can go to page 3. It's the fifth line from the bottom.

A  "While a small part of my overall portfolio, it was nevertheless central to my ambassadorial responsibilities." Yeah.

Q  And so, given that it's a central role for your ambassador responsibilities, you didn't think it was important to understand what the United States media was saying about Ukraine?

A  As I said, my objective was to get President Zelensky a meeting at the White House. That was my objective.

Q  That wasn't my question. My question was, did you think it was part of your central responsibilities over Ukraine to be aware of what press reports in the United States media were saying about Ukraine policy?

A  I think it was more the job of the Charge or the Ambassador to Ukraine and the Special Envoy. You had two full-time people on Ukraine.

Q  Okay. So what was -- so your only objective was to get meeting. You didn't care about what other people were saying?

A  My objective was to get a meeting, because I thought that that would begin to solidify the relationship between Ukraine and the United States, which would then help me bring the EU to the table, because my number one responsibility is our relationship with the European Union.

Q  All right. So let's assume that you didn't know anything about what Rudy Giuliani was saying before May 23rd, when you had the meeting at the White House. After President Trump suggested that you and Ambassador Volker and Secretary Perry speak to Rudy Giuliani about his concerns in Ukraine, did you do anything to figure out what those concerns were?

A  No. I let the others work on it and I went back and worked on other things, because Volker and Perry were the ones who reached out to Giuliani.

Q  Okay. That wasn't my question. My question is not whether you reached out to Mr. Giuliani. My question is whether you took it upon yourself in any way to figure out what Rudy Giuliani's concerns about Ukraine were.

A  I got the information through Ambassador Volker, and he said that Mr. Giuliani was concerned about corruption, which we were also concerned about. So it didn't particularly raise any interesting flags with me. It was consistent with what our concern was.

Q  So you didn't do a Google search for Rudy Giuliani Ukraine?

A  No.

Q  You didn't look at Rudy Giuliani's Twitter feed?

A  No. I never followed Rudy Giuliani.

Q  What's that?

A  I never followed Rudy Giuliani.

Q  Whether you followed him or not, you never looked to see what he was saying on Twitter?

A  No.

Q  You never looked at one of his numerous television appearances where he addressed Ukraine?

A  I don't recall. I honestly don't recall. I wasn't -- we had our meeting. They went off to deal with Giuliani. I went back to doing my thing.

Q  Okay. I understand you went back to doing your thing and I understand that you may not have been the point person with Mr. Giuliani, but it seems pretty incredible that given that the President directed you guys, the three of you, to address Mr. Giuliani’s concerns, that you did nothing to figure out what those concerns are. Is that your testimony?

MR. LUSKIN: No, it's not his testimony.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Well, I'm asking the question. Is that accurate?

A  Repeat your statement again.

Q  You testified that President Trump -- you testified in your opening statement that President Trump directed you and Secretary Perry and Ambassador Volker at the meeting in the White House on May 23rd to consult with -- I don't remember the exact language, we can find it -- but to consult with Mr. Rudy Giuliani about his concerns related to Ukraine.

A  That wasn't my testimony. My testimony was he said: Talk to Rudy.

Q  Let's find it.

THE CHAIRMAN: If I could follow up while counsel is looking for that reference, I just want to make sure that I understand the testimony. You've said that Secretary Pompeo gave you this responsibility for Ukraine, not the President but Secretary Pompeo, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct. And Ambassador Bolton.

THE CHAIRMAN: And you said that the President asked you to make sure that you satisfied Mr. Giuliani's concerns about Ukraine, or to reach out to Giuliani in the context of your work with Ukraine, or a call or meeting between the two Presidents.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No. What the President said was the President was railing about Ukraine in the meeting at the White House, and he was going on and on and on about his dissatisfaction with Ukraine. He didn't even want to deal with it anymore. And he basically waved and said: Go talk to Rudy, he knows all about Ukraine.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. So the President directs you to talk to Rudy Giuliani. And you have this responsibility of Ukraine. The President directs you to talk to Rudy Giuliani. And it's your testimony here today that you never looked at any of his TV appearances, you never read any of the articles, you never saw any of the media that Rudy Giuliani did in which Rudy Giuliani talked about his interest and the President's interest in an investigation into the Bidens and this energy company that Joe Biden's son worked for. You never saw any of that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Not then. Very much later, but not then.

THE CHAIRMAN: So it's your testimony, I think, from your opening statement and what you said just now, that up until the moment you read the call record in September you were completely oblivious to Rudy Giuliani's interest in Burisma because it involved the Bidens?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I became aware of his interest in Burisma sometime in the intervening period, but I never made the connection between Burisma and the Bidens until the very end. That is my testimony. I heard the word "Burisma," but I didn't understand that Biden and Burisma were connected.

THE CHAIRMAN: You just thought that Mr. Giuliani or the President were interested in Burisma because they were interested in a particular energy company having nothing to do with the Bidens?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, Naftogaz was also mentioned, and that was another company that was mentioned.

MR. GOLDMAN: Sorry, who mentioned Naftogaz?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I think that Naftogaz has been on the table since I started working on Ukraine. People are always talking about the problems with Naftogaz.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, but Mr. Giuliani was talking about Burisma and the Bidens. And it's your testimony today you had no idea of any Biden connection to Burisma, it came as a complete revelation when you read the call record in September?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't recall when I finally -- when the light finally went on that Burisma and the Bidens were connected, but certainly not early on at all. I can’t tell you the day that finally I said, oh, Burisma equals Biden. I have no idea when that was.

THE CHAIRMAN: But I think you suggested in your opening statement that you didn't know until you read the call record, and it was an epiphany that the President wasn't simply interested in this energy company -- which, by the way, he doesn't mention in the call record -- but he was really interested in an investigation involving the Bidens.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No, I think I said that I didn't know what was in the call until I saw the call record. I had no idea that he had brought up the Bidens in the call until I saw the call report.

THE CHAIRMAN: But I think you were also suggesting that until you read that call record -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- until you read that call record, you never put two and two together that actually Burisma involved the Bidens, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't recall when I finally put it together. I don't recall what the date was or the place was or the time was. I don't recall.

THE CHAIRMAN: But when you were interacting with the Ukrainians and seeking an investigation involving Burisma, did you know then that the real interest was the Bidens?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I was seeking a press statement so that we could get the meeting for Zelensky to the White House. That's all I was seeking. I wasn't seeking any investigation.

THE CHAIRMAN: And my question is, at the time you were seeking that, did you know of the connection between the Bidens and Burisma?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No. Because I would not -- I would not endorse investigating the Bidens. I would not endorse investigating --

THE CHAIRMAN: So you completely missed all the Giuliani media appearances and all the public debate about the President's interest and Giuliani's interest in the Bidens, you missed all of that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah. It wasn't of concern to me.

MR. GOLDMAN: At some point you did make the connection, though, right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah.

MR. GOLDMAN: And now, in retrospect, you understand that that's what Rudy Giuliani was advocating for?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah, I do.

THE CHAIRMAN: Can I ask you this then. Had you known at the time that the interest in an investigation involving Burisma was really an interest in investigating the Bidens, would you have pressed the Ukrainians to do that investigation?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No.

THE CHAIRMAN: Your answer was no?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No.

[Majority Exhibit No. 4 Was marked for identification.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  I just want to enter for the record exhibit 4, which is some tweets. These are some tweets from Rudy Giuliani. There's one on March 22nd where Rudy Giuliani says that should pay attention to somebody for an analysis of some real collusion between Hillary, Kerry, and Biden people colluding with Ukrainian operatives to make money and affect 2016 election.

April 23rd, quote: "Now Ukraine is investigating

Hillary campaign and DNC conspiracy with foreign operatives including Ukrainian and others to affect 2016 election."

May 2nd, quote: "Biden conflicts are too apparent to be ignored and should be investigated quickly and expeditiously."

May 10th, quote: "Explain to me why Biden shouldn't be investigated if his son got millions from a Russian loving crook Ukrainian oligarch while he was VP and point man in Ukraine." It goes on.

Are you aware of any evidence that Ukraine was involved in any way in the 2016 election?

A  I have no independent basis to know that, no.

Q  What did President Trump, other than directing you three to speak to Mr. Giuliani about his, Mr. Giuliani's, concerns related to Ukraine, what else did President Trump say at that May 23rd Oval Office meeting about Ukraine?

A  He sort of went on and on and on about how Ukraine is a disaster and they're bad people. And we were actually quite discouraged with the meeting, because we were quite excited about the new President, the new administration, the new team, and we were excited to share our findings with him, and he didn't want to hear about it. And he sort of cut the meeting short.

Q  Did he mention anything about Ukraine's involvement in the 2016 election?

A  I think he said: They tried to take me down. He kept saying that over and over.

Q  In connection to the 2016 election?

A  Probably, yeah.

Q  That was what your understanding was?

A  That was my understanding, yeah.

Q  What was the upshot from that meeting other than him telling you to go speak to Giuliani?

A  I think, as my statement said, it was sort of a bad meeting, inconclusive. We didn't get a clear signal from him that he would invite Zelensky to the White House, that he would call Zelensky. It was just talk to Rudy and I'm busy. And, you know, we had come all the way to brief him about it and it was sort of disappointing.

Q  So I think you said in your opening statement that you understood that in order to arrange this meeting with the White House you had to somehow satisfy Mr. Giuliani's concerns.

Was that your takeaway?

A  That was the take away, yeah.

Q  And so did -- you said you weren't the point person with Mr. Giuliani, but did Secretary Perry or Ambassador Volker reach out to Mr. Giuliani after that meeting?

A  I believe they did. I believe Secretary Perry was the first one, because he knew him well.

Q  How long after that meeting, do you know?

A  I don't know.

Q  Did you get a summary of what they discussed?

A  I just knew in general that they were talking, but, again, I was preoccupied with other matters. I sort of flitted in and flitted out of the Ukraine file as the need, you know, arose.

Q  Did you read Secretary Perry's summary in The Wall Street Journal yesterday?

A  Yeah, I did, I think. Yeah.

Q  And was he -- in that article, he said that Mr. Giuliani specifically mentioned three concerns, that he blames Ukraine for something related to the -- I think he meant the Steele dossier; he said Ukraine had Hillary Clinton's email server; and made up evidence -- and Ukraine made up evidence to use against Paul Manafort.

A  I saw that in the article.

Q  You saw that in the article. Did that refresh your recollection as to what Secretary Perry relayed to you about his conversation with Rudy Giuliani?

A  I believe that the best of my recollection is that, through Ambassador Volker or through Perry -- I don't remember where I got the information -- was that Rudy had some bad issues with Ukraine, and until Rudy was satisfied the President wasn't going to change his mind.

Q  Did he explain to you what those concerns were related to Ukraine?

A  Probably the things in the article. I don't recall exactly. There were so many conversations going on by so many people at the time, it was unbelievable.

Q  Okay. But, Ambassador Sondland, this is not a trivial matter. You said that you were directed -- you said you wanted a White House meeting with President Zelensky, correct?

A  Correct.

Q  Because you supported President Zelensky?

A  Correct.

Q  And when you broached that topic with the President, he said that, effectively, in order to get that, you need to assuage Rudy Giuliani's concerns.

So Secretary Perry spoke to Rudy Giuliani?

A  Yes.

Q  Is that a yes?

A  Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Thank you.

Q  So Secretary Perry spoke to Rudy Giuliani about his concerns, right?

A  Yes.

Q  And you then had a conversation with Secretary Perry about his conversation with Rudy Giuliani about Rudy Giuliani's concerns, correct?

A  Well, when I say there were a lot of conversations, there were conversations going on between Secretary Perry and Ambassador Volker, between Ambassador Volker and me, between me and Secretary Perry, and sometimes the three of us. And they were handling the initial outreach and issues with Giuliani.

Q  I totally understand that. What I'm trying to understand is what information came back to you from either Ambassador Volker or Secretary Perry about Mr. Giuliani's concerns?

A  That he was concerned about corruption.

Q  That he was concerned broadly about corruption?

A  Broadly about corruption. Never heard anything but the word "corruption" initially.

Q  From Secretary Perry?

A  From one of them. I don't recall who.

Q  Okay.

A  Because, again, I haven't spoken to Giuliani until August of sometime.

Q  So you're then --

A  So I’m getting it second- or thirdhand.

Q  I understand that.

A  Yeah.

Q  We're just trying to figure out what and when you understood about Rudy Giuliani's concerns which the President directed you to address.

So it would seem to me -- and correct me if I'm wrong -that if the President of the United States directs you to do something in order to get something that you want to get done for policy reasons, that you might want to figure out what those concerns are. And so I'm trying to understand to what extent you learned what those concerns are?

A  The "you" is the collective you. It's the three of us.

Q  I understand that. You're the one testifying here today, so we are asking what your understanding is.

A  I wasn't on first in that conversation.

Q  That's not the question. I'm not saying that you got it directly from Rudy Giuliani. I'm asking you whether you understood from either Secretary Perry or Ambassador Volker what the concerns that the President directed you to address of Mr. Giuliani were, what those concerns were.

A  I told you, corruption. That's all I heard.

Q  That's all you heard?

A  That's all I heard.

Q  So when Secretary Perry describes these --

MR. LUSKIN: Excuse me.

[Discussion off the record.]

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I'm sorry, go ahead.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  So when Secretary Perry describes these three things to The Wall Street Journal, you're saying that he did not relay with any specificity to you, one of the three people that the President asked to look into this?

A  My counsel has clarified. I didn't understand your question.

It started with corruption. Then it was Burisma and 2016 election. And then at some point in the continuum, late in the game, I connected Burisma with Biden.

Q  Okay. So when did you connect -- when did you learn about Burisma and 2016?

A  I believe that was somewhere in the middle. In other words, well after the May 23rd meeting, but sometime probably in July-August, where it start -- they kept putting more conditions on this meeting, and that's when I began to learn it.

Q  All right. Right. I guess the question is, who is "they" that put these conditions on --

A  It must have been Giuliani, because I wasn't talking to the President about it. So I was hearing this all from Volker and Perry and Perry's chief of staff, who was heavily involved in this whole --

Q  And who's Perry's chief of staff?

A  Brian McCormack.

Q  And did you ever have conversations with Mick Mulvaney about this meeting?

A  I don't believe I did.

Q  All right. After that May 23rd meeting, did the President ultimately send a letter to President Zelensky?

A  Yeah. That was the funny part, is that he was railing about the problems with Ukraine in our meeting, but I think shortly after that he sent essentially an unconditional invitation to President Zelensky to come visit him at the White House, subject only to scheduling.

Q  Did you have any role in drafting that letter?

A  None. I got a copy of it after it was sent. I was pleased to see it, though.

Q  And you didn't have any discussions with anyone about pushing for that letter?

A  I wanted the letter to be sent, but I didn't negotiate it. I just said, let's get a letter out.

Q  Who did you say that to?

A  I don’t remember.

Q  Someone at the White House?

A  Probably Volker or Perry.

Q  Do you know someone named Kash Patel?

A  Who?

Q  Kash Patel.

A  I don't recall the name.

THE CHAIRMAN: Can I just for clarification. So you had no hand in drafting, editing the invitation to the Ukraine President for a visit?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Not to the best of my recollection, no.

THE CHAIRMAN: Made no proposed changes to that in any way?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No, I don't recall that. I recall seeing it after it had already gone out for the first time.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Was a draft of that letter presented to the President at the May 23rd meeting?

A  I didn't present it. I don't know if anyone else did.

Q  I didn’t ask --

A  I don't know.

Q  You don't remember --

A  I don't remember.

Q  -- a letter being discussed?

A  I don't remember, no. I do remember, once the letter came out, then it was -- everyone was fervently trying to negotiate a date, which we never were able to nail down. I don't know if it was sent by mail or how it was delivered.

Q  Do you recall having a conference call around June 28th with Ambassador Volker, Ambassador Taylor, and Secretary Perry, and after you spoke to them you may have patched in President Zelensky?

A  I'm not saying it didn't occur. I don't remember the call, though.

Q  You wouldn't remember having a conversation with President Zelensky?

A  I've had several conversations with him, and I speak with a lot of foreign leaders from a lot of countries. It wasn't something that I can remember.

Q  So you don't remember that you -- whether you encouraged President Zelensky to initiate any investigations in order to get the White House meeting on that conference call?

A  I think the only discussion that I had in negotiating a public statement was to get a Burisma, 2016 -- this was the language that was being proposed by Giuliani.

Q  This is in August, right?

A  I think so. Again, I don't remember, because there were so many things flying around, but when they kept adding -- the initial draft of a press release had no conditions. It just said corruption, per se.

Q  But we're not talking about August, right? And at that point, you were discussing some sort of statement that President Zelensky would issue?

A  That he would issue, and then it got shelved. It never happened.

Q  Okay. And Mr. Giuliani was involved in the drafting of that statement?

A  I think Mr. Giuliani was the one giving the input as to what the President wanted in the statement.

Q  And what did Mr. Giuliani add that the President wanted?

A  He wanted Burisma and 2016 election mentioned in the statement. And I don't believe the Ukrainians were prepared to do that.

MR. GOLDMAN: I believe our time is up, so we’ll yield to the minority.

MR. CASTOR: I'm going to make an exhibit of the May 29th letter.

THE CHAIRMAN: Would you like a short break before? Yes, why don't we take a 5- or 10-minute break.

[Recess.]

THE CHAIRMAN: All right. Let's go back on the record. One hour to the minority.

[Minority Exhibit No. 5
Was marked for identification.]

MR. CASTOR: I'm going to mark exhibit 5. It's the letter May 29th from the President.

Do you guys need a copy?

MR. GOLDMAN: No, we have copies.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Before I get into this letter, there was some frustration about whether you had seen that New York Times article. I mean, there's a lot of media nowadays. You know, have you seen every article, every story that references Rudy Giuliani since you began your post?

A  No. I mean, I have so many cables and other things to read, I just don't have time.

Q  And you're not watching TV, U.S. TV at night when you're in Brussels?

A  Sometimes.

Q  Okay. So have you seen Rudy Giuliani on -- you know, discuss these issues on TV?

A  I watch HBO.

Q  Okay.

Did you see the John Solomon Hill article at the end of March where Giuliani was -- where Lutsenko and so forth was discussed?

A  I think someone forwarded it to me, but I don't remember the contents.

Q  This May 29th letter, could you walk us through what happened between the May 23rd meeting with the President and then how we got to this letter, to the extent you've got personal knowledge?

A  The letter was a little confounding to me, because it was completely inconsistent with the President's attitude at the May 23rd meeting, and then all of a sudden this letter comes out.

Q  So you didn't have a role in drafting or editing it?

A  I don’t remember having any role other than wanting the letter to happen. But, actually, I remember getting the letter as it was forwarded to me on the White -- on the State Department email.

Q  Was there a draft at the May 23rd meeting that was shown to the President?

A  We never had any paperwork that I remember at the May 23rd meeting. It was just an oral meeting. Yeah.

Q  So you don't remember the President looking at a draft letter?

A  Not in front of me.

Q  Or giving feedback about a draft letter?

A  No, no. He didn't seem to want to do anything with Ukraine at the May 23rd meeting.

Q  Okay. The penultimate paragraph, the last sentence talks about a White House meeting.

A  Right.

Q  So when you saw this letter, you were --

A  I was happy. We have a meeting.

Q  Did you have any conversations with any of the relevant players on the staff level about how this letter came to be?

A  No. All I did was I think tried to get my team at the mission -- and I don't remember who I would have tasked -- to start working on getting the meeting scheduled.

Q  And stepping back to the May 23rd meeting, how did that come to get scheduled?

A  I think that either Rick Perry or I reached out to someone at the NSC saying: Doesn't the President want a briefing about the inauguration? And I think -- I think it was Perry, if I recall correctly, that got it nailed down.

Q  Through NSC?

A  Probably. They do most of the scheduling. Yeah.

Q  And you were invited to participate?

A  I was -- yeah, the whole delegation was, although I don't think Mr. Vindman joined us in the meeting.

Q  Why not?

A  I don't know. He wasn't in the room.

Q  Okay. Who was in the room, to the best of your recollection?

A  Volker, Perry, myself, Ron Johnson. And then I don't recall if it was Bolton, Mulvaney. There were several people coming and going. The delegation was seated in front of the President's desk, and people were sitting behind us on the couch and people kept coming in and out. So I don't remember who all was --

Q  It might be good if you just walk us through from beginning to end what you do remember from that meeting, what time of the day it was, how long it lasted, just whatever you can remember.

A  I mean, all I remember was we were all really excited about how optimistic we were about the future of Ukraine after having met with Zelensky and some of his team in Kyiv. And we wanted to share that excitement with the President, and he didn't want to hear about it. So I was pretty frustrated. I was kind of pissed, actually.

Q  What time of the day was the meeting?

A  I don't remember. I don't know.

Q  And how long did it last?

A  Pretty short. Fifteen minutes, 20 minutes maybe.

Q  Who from the NSC was there?

A  Bolton might have been there. I just don't remember. I know Vindman wasn't there, because I asked where's Vindman, because I had seen him in the White House. But somebody said he's not coming to the meeting. I don't know why.

Q  Was Vindman cut out of Ukraine policy at any point in time or do you think he may have just had a conflict?

A  I have no idea. I have no idea.

Q  Your total communications with the President involving these issues have been limited, correct?

A  Very.

Q  So we had the May 23rd meeting. We had the September 9th telephone call. Have there been other --

A  I think I talked to him just before I left for Kyiv on the 20 -- when was the Kyiv meeting, on the 25th or 6th --

Q  26th.

A  -- of May? I mean of --

Q  July.

A  -- July.

Q  Right.

A  I think I called him and said: I'm headed to Kyiv to meet with President Zelensky and Ambassador Volker. Is there anything you want me to share? And he just -- he didn't want to discuss it. No, go. I don't why you're going.

You know, he was -- he'd just been down on Ukraine. It was like a nonsubstantive call.

Q  Okay. So on the July 25th call, he didn't ask you to talk about Burisma --

A  No.

Q  -- 2016 --

A  No.

Q  -- the Bidens, anything?

A  No. Really a short call.

Q  Okay. So we have the -- that's three meetings or calls you can remember directly with the President on these issues?

A  I think that's right. I think that's right.

Q  At the May 23rd meeting, when the President said go talk to -- what did he say, go talk to Rudy or --

A  He didn't even say go talk. He just said: Talk to Rudy. It was sort of like I don't want to talk about this.

Q  So did you take that as -- I mean, it's been described variously as an order or an instruction. Was he giving an order or an instruction or was he just trying to --

A  My impression was that if we never called Rudy and just left it alone that nothing would happen with Ukraine, in terms of all of the things we wanted to have happen. So I didn't take it as an order as much as an indication that if he was going to have his mind changed, that was the path. That's how I interpreted talk to Rudy.

Q  Okay. And during that meeting, the President never mentioned any of these controversial topics, such as opening investigations?

A  He mentioned that they tried to take me down, and he mentioned the 2016 election. That's the only thing he mentioned, yeah.

Q  Okay. And he didn't mention that he had an interest, a personal interest in Ukraine opening investigations?

A  At the meeting, no, I don't believe he did. I don't recall him mentioning that he wanted something done. He didn't want to talk about it at all.

Q  And at that point in time did you have any knowledge that that's what Rudy Giuliani was pushing for?

A  No, because -- you mean during the meeting?

Q  During the meeting. Well, you know, subsequent, when the President said go talk to Rudy Giuliani, did you know at that point in time, from Ambassador Volker or some other people, that Rudy Giuliani was pushing investigations, allegedly?

A  Not -- as of the time of the meeting, no, I didn't. I don't remember. I don't remember that. All I remember was being incredibly frustrated that we couldn't have a dialogue with the President about our findings.

Q  Did you know if Mr. Giuliani had an agenda at that point?

A  I didn’t.

Q  So go talk to Rudy, you didn't know what you were going to hear at that point?

A  Correct.

Q  When did you first get an inkling of what Mr. Giuliani was interested in?

A  You know, this whole thing was sort of a continuum, starting at the May 23rd meeting, ending up at the end of the line when the transcript of the call came out. And as I said to counsel, it started as talk to Rudy, then others talk to Rudy. Corruption was mentioned.

Then, as time went on -- and, again, I can't nail down the dates -- then let's get the Ukrainians to give a statement about corruption. And then, no, corruption isn't enough, we need to talk about the 2016 election and the Burisma investigations.

And it was always described to me as ongoing investigations that had been stopped by the previous administration and they wanted them started up again. That's how it was always described.

And then finally at some point I made the Biden-Burisma connection, and then the transcript was released. So I can't tell you on that continuum when, what dates, but that's kind of what happened.

Q  Okay. Do you know if anybody on the U.S. side of things had communications with the Ukrainians about opening a meritless investigation for political purposes?

A  I don't recall ever hearing that, no.

[11:46 a.m.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Okay. So to the extent U.S. officials were communicating with Ukrainian officials, like who would that have been?

A  It would have been the Charge. It would have been Ambassador Volker. It would have been Mr. Giuliani, I think had some direct communication.

Q  Well, he wasn't a U.S. official.

A  Okay. So you're not -- okay. And then I was involved during the negotiations of the press statement.

Q  Okay. So you never had communications with Ukrainian officials about opening any investigations?

A  No. My communications with Ukrainian officials had to do with the press statement.

Q  Okay.

A  Had to do with the language of the press statement.

Q  Okay. And to your knowledge, did Ambassador Volker have any communications about opening actual investigations?

A  I don't -- I don't recall ever hearing about him say that.

Q  So he never related that to you?

A  No, not to me that, I remember.

Q  So what Mr. Volker's involvement in this similar to yours in that it was zeroed in on a statement?

A  Well, first of all, his involvement was -- this is with 100 percent of his portfolio. He was responsible for Ukraine along with the Ambassador to Ukraine. So he was working on Ukraine, I assume, 5 days a week, 8, 10 hours a day. So I don't know what he was doing day in and day out on Ukraine. I was again popping in and out trying to help when I could.

Q  Okay. In your discussions with Mr. Volker, did you know if he had a belief that Mr. Giuliani was amplifying a negative narrative, that he believed Mr. Giuliani's views were inaccurate?

A  Yeah, I don't understand that question. What do you mean by that?

Q  In your communications with Mr. Volker

A  Right.

Q  -- did he communicate to you --

A  Yes.

Q  -- that he did not believe Giuliani's views of these issues was legitimate?

A  I think -- I can speculate here.

Q  Okay.

A  I think he was frustrated by any impediment to getting the meeting for Zelensky, particularly since the President had essentially unconditionally invited Zelensky to come to the White House in that -- in this invitation, subject only to scheduling, so why are we talking about other -- putting more ornaments on the tree. That's my speculation.

Q  Was Ambassador Volker enthusiastic about communicating with Mr. Giuliani?

A  I don't think so.

Q  Okay. So Mr. Giuliani's involvement here was a negative. Is that fair to say?

A  Well, I think I've said in my statement that we would have all preferred to have the State Department handle this whole matter and not involve people outside of the State Department, because you don't know what they're doing.

Q  But did you ever commiserate with Ambassador Volker, we've got to talk to Rudy?

A  I may have.

Q  And do you know if he related something similar to, we have to talk to Rudy?

A  I think that was the -- I think that was the general impression of anyone who had to deal with Mayor Giuliani on this matter because it's not consistent with the way business is normally done.

Q  Okay. So nobody was enthusiastic about partnering with Rudy Giuliani on this issue?

A  Not that I can recall.

Q  Okay. And to the extent Mr. Giuliani was pushing some sort of investigation into Ukraine, yourself, Ambassador Volker, and other U.S. officials were not party to that?

A  Sounds right.

Q  You were looking towards a statement?

A  We just wanted a statement to get the meeting.

Q  And the statement was something along the lines to demonstrate that the Ukrainians were trying to turn the corner on corruption.

A  Correct.

Q  And that wasn't good enough at first and apparently it had to involve the Burisma and the further detail of Burisma in 2016.

A  Correct.

Q  In your discussions with the Ukrainians did you get a sense that they felt -- in your own personal knowledge -- did you get a sense that they felt that they would actually going to be opening up any investigations or were they simply just trying to get you a statement?

A  I would be speculating. They didn't seem offended by the ask, but I think they wanted their meeting at the White House.

Q  Okay. And the idea that Ukraine has some struggles with corruption is not a novel concept, right?

A  No. As I said in my statement, that was raised by the Ukrainians to me 4 days after I became an ambassador in mid-'18, that they have a -- they said: We have a corruption problem.

Q  And President Zelensky was elected overwhelmingly and he campaigned on cleaning things up, right?

A  That was one of his, as I understand it, one of his campaign platforms.

Q  And U.S. officials were encouraged by that. Is that correct?

A  I certainly was.

Q  And Ambassador Volker was?

A  Yes.

Q  And Secretary Perry was?

A  I believe he was.

Q  And Ambassador Taylor?

A  I don't think I ever discussed it with Ambassador Taylor.

Q  Okay.

A  But I would imagine he would have been. I'm speculating.

Q  But in your communications with Ambassador Taylor, did he seem to you that he was pro-Zelensky, that he was encouraged by his election and --

A  Yeah, he seemed to like Zelensky, and he sent me a photo of he and Zelensky together standing on a balcony at a meeting together and they seemed to be having a nice conversation.

Q  And is Zelensky's interest in cleaning things up genuine, to your knowledge?

A  That was our impression when we met with him right after the inauguration.

Q  And one of the problems in the Ukraine of course is the oligarchs have a lot of power, they have a lot of government perks that were provided to them either -- under suspicious circumstances. Is that not correct?

A  That's my understanding.

Q  And the owner of Burisma is a former, you know, ecology minister. And are you familiar with the allegations that he gave himself some licenses?

A  I just am generally aware that Burisma's considered a potentially corrupt company. I don't know the specifics.

Q  And you're aware that it has been under investigation at various points for corruption?

A  That's what I understood.

Q  And the president -- the president of Burisma, this Zlochevsky fellow, is -- has been under investigation?

A  I don't know that person, but I'll take your word for it.

Q  Okay. And so when the discussion turned to Burisma as an example of corruption, that didn't surprise you or that didn't catch you off guard?

A  No. It was a new element added. It was another obstacle to getting the meeting I wanted. But it didn't surprise me.

Q  Did you know of any other companies that were considered corrupt or needed to be part of the --

A  As I mentioned in my earlier testimony, Naftogaz comes up at every conversation.

Q  Okay. So Burisma and Naftogaz, they were two representative samples of corruption in Ukraine?

A  Corruption and lack of transparency.

Q  Okay.

A  Yeah.

Q  When the Biden element was introduced, what was your understanding of -- what exactly did people want Ukraine to investigate the Bidens for?

A  I don't know.

Q  Okay.

A  I honestly don’t know.

Q  And I say the Bidens, but were they referring mostly to Hunter Biden or don't you know?

A  I didn't even know who Hunter Biden was until I started reading about him in the media. I knew of Beau Biden because of his, you know, untimely passing. But I didn't -I really -- you know, I'm not a follower of the Biden family other than I had worked with the Vice President at one point, his office, on a project.

THE CHAIRMAN: If I could just for clarification, are you asking what the Ukrainians wanted the Bidens investigated for or what the President and Giuliani wanted the Bidens investigated for?

MR. CASTOR: I'm just asking the witness.

THE CHAIRMAN: I know, but what's your question? Are you asking --

MR. CASTOR: If the witness doesn't understand a question he can ask me or the witness' counsel can ask me.

THE CHAIRMAN: Could we have the question read back?

[The reporter read back the record as requested.]

THE CHAIRMAN: I just want to make sure the witness understood who was referred to by the people.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I did not understand that. Can you clarify the question?

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  The Giuliani element?

A  Can you restate the whole question, please?

Q  When you first learned that there was a component involving the Bidens --

A  Yes.

Q  -- and that some element led by or simply Rudy Giuliani, did you have an understanding of what exactly Giuliani was pushing in relation to the Bidens?

A  No, I did not.

Q  And did you ever come to understand what that was?

A  Only very recently.

Q  And even recently, what is your understanding of exactly what Rudy Giuliani was advocating for?

A  Not coming from Giuliani, but coming from media reports, now that it's all out, something about Hunter Biden being paid exorbitant board fees for service on a board.

Q  Okay.

A  That was my understanding.

Q  And that's the sum total of the allegations, as you understand them, regarding the Bidens?

A  Based on what I've read in the press, yeah.

Q  Did you know whether the Vice President Biden during his tenure had involvement with Ukraine policy?

A  Again, I learned recently that he apparently was asked to or had asked that a special prosecutor be dismissed. Again, that revelation came out --

Q  Okay.

A  -- literally in the last --

Q  So during his tenure as Vice President he took a number of trips to Ukraine. Did you know that?

A  I did.

Q  Okay. And he took an interest in Ukraine policy.

And you learned that just recently?

A  I just learned that recently and I learned that Hunter Biden had traveled with him on Air Force Two.

Q  Okay. Closing out the May 23rd meeting, you don't really know how it was scheduled. You said that you thought that the National Security Council staff likely put it together.

A  [Nonverbal response.]

MR. GOLDMAN: Sorry, you have to say yes or no.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Oh, I'm sorry. Correct, I don’t know how exactly how it was scheduled.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  How did you get invited to the meeting?

A  Well, the purpose of the meeting was to have the delegation brief the President about their trip. And I was on the delegation.

Q  Okay.

A  Yeah.

Q  So, like, who invited you? Was it somebody in the --

A  I probably just got an email saying the meeting is scheduled -- they don't issue engraved invitations, they just send an email.

Q  And have you told us, to the best of your memory, everything about that meeting?

A  To the best of my memory. It was a disappointing meeting.

Q  And then the May 29th letter comes and you can't -- you have no idea what happened in the intervening days?

A  No, because it was inconsistent with the meeting.

Q  Okay. And you never learned what happened in those intervening days?

A  Well, we had been pushing for a letter and the letter came out. And I don't know if it was our pushing, if it was the meeting, if the President reconsidered, I have no idea.

Q  But you never had any -- you didn't call Dr. Hill or Lieutenant Colonel Vindman or --

A  I don't recall any communication before the letter came out.

Q  Okay. You were just happy to see it.

A  I was happy to see it.

Q  Your September 9th telephone call with the President --

A  Yes.

Q  -- there were some text exchanges that have been produced. And you reference in your statement that you decided to telephone the President. Is that correct?

A  I did.

Q  Okay. Could you tell us everything you can remember about that?

A  I remember getting a fairly shocking text from Ambassador Taylor where he had alleged in his text that aid was being withheld from Ukraine in return for a political -- I'm trying to remember how he phrased it -- for political purposes. And --

Q  Let me stop you right there.

MR. LUSKIN: Let him finish his answer.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I'm finished with my answer.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Okay. Because there's been a discussion about this White House meeting and whether there had to be a statement. But to your knowledge was there any discussion that aid would be withheld?

A  I never heard about aid being withheld until it had actually been withheld and someone notified me: By the way, the aid has been withheld.

Q  Okay. But, to the best of your knowledge, do you know about any preconditions on the aid?

A  No.

Q  Okay.

A  I don’t.

Q  So it was U.S. policy to provide financial assistance to Ukraine and also lethal defensive weaponry, right?

A  Correct.

Q  And that was a stepped up commitment by the United States --

A  Correct.

Q  -- to help Ukraine?

A  Correct.

Q  And you're not aware of any -- any allegation -I'm sorry you're not aware of any fact that that aid was held up for any reason, such as investigations?

A  I was aware that the aid was held up once it had been held up, that someone -- I either received an email or --

Q  But you don't know --

A  You don't know why.

MR. MANLEY: Let him finish his answer.

MR. LUSKIN: Let him answer, please.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't know why.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Okay. So when you telephoned the President, tell us what happened.

A  Well, from the time that the aid was held up until I telephoned the President there were a lot of rumors swirling around as to why the aid had been held up, including they wanted a review, they wanted Europe to do more. There were all kinds of rumors.

And I know in my few previous conversations with the President he's not big on small talk so I would have one shot to ask him. And rather than asking him, "Are you doing X because of X or because of Y or because of Z?" I asked him one open-ended question: What do you want from Ukraine?

And as I recall, he was in a very bad mood. It was a very quick conversation. He said: I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. I want Zelensky to do the right thing.

And I said: What does that mean?

And he said: I want him to do what he ran on.

And that was the end of the conversation. I wouldn't say he hung up me, but it was almost like he hung up on me.

Q  Okay. And then you resumed your communication with Ambassador Taylor?

A  Yeah. I had gotten as far as I could. I had asked the boss what he wanted. He wouldn't tell me, other than: I want nothing. And I sent the note back to Ambassador Taylor once I reached him and suggested that he call Secretary Pompeo.

Q  So the President didn't tell you what to write in a text?

A  The President didn't know I was sending a text, because he didn't know that the question came from Ambassador Taylor.

Q  Okay. When you sent the text back to Ambassador Taylor, how did he -- did he respond?

A  When I said, you should call Secretary Pompeo or his assistant, he said: I agree. And then I didn't follow up --

Q  Did you ever close the loop with Ambassador Taylor?

A  I don't recall.

Q  Okay. Did --

A  I believe the aid was released shortly thereafter. I'm not sure it was necessary.

When was the text sent, what date?

Q  September 9th.

MR. LUSKIN: September.

MR. CASTOR: September.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: September 9th.

And I think the aid was released a day or two after.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  The 11th.

A  Yeah.

Q  Let me be clear, you've never closed the loop with Ambassador Taylor, like, "I called the President and this is what he said"?

A  We've had conversations, but I think my text spoke for itself.

Q  Okay.

A  And I don't know that he ever followed up with the Secretary or not. I have no idea.

Q  Your text speaks for itself, but your recounting of the conversation is pretty definitive.

A  That's what I remember.

Q  Right. And so -- but you didn't relate the conversation with the President to Ambassador Taylor at any point?

A  I don't believe I did, no.

Q  Okay. I want to step back to the July 10th meeting with Ambassador Bolton.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  How was that scheduled?

A  I think the Ukrainians through the mission in -- or through the embassy in Kyiv, set up the meeting through the Ambassador, through Taylor, would have been the normal -- you know, that they're coming to the U.S. and they want a White House meeting. I'm speculating. And it would have been set up that way.

And then once we would have been notified, somehow I would have been notified by my staff that there was a meeting going on, and I think the -- I think the idea was Secretary Perry again took the lead and said: It might be a good idea for all of us to sit in for continuity since we've been talking to them. And we were all included. We got a -- I think we got a note from Ambassador Bolton's assistant saying you're all included in the meeting and we met.

Q  Do you remember who was in the meeting?

A  Myself, Perry, Volker, I think Yermak. I think Prystaiko was there, the Foreign Minister, and I think Danylyuk was there, the National Security Adviser.

Q  Any other U.S. folks?

A  There may have been others taking notes. I don't -- I don't recall.

Q  Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, was he there?

A  Was he there? He wasn't in the delegation meeting. He might have been there. I don't know. I don't remember.

Q  How about Dr. Hill?

A  I believe she was there.

Q  And what do you remember from that meeting?

A  You know, it wasn't really my meeting to run. I sat and listened. And I had a -- some kind of a briefing prior to it and there were a number of subjects being covered, energy, potential White House meeting, all kinds of things. And Ambassador Bolton pretty much ran the meeting.

Q  Do you remember how long the meeting lasted?

A  I want to say 30 minutes, my guess.

Q  And do you remember saying anything during the meeting?

A  I may have chimed in on a point or two, but I remember it being a very friendly meeting.

Q  Okay. Did you bring up the prospect of investigations that Ukrainians need to conduct?

A  Not to the best of my knowledge.

Q  Do you remember how the meeting ended?

A  I think his time was up, Ambassador Bolton's time was up. And then I think we moved to -- we moved the meeting downstairs without Ambassador Bolton.

Q  Where did you move the meeting to?

A  I believe it was in the Ward Room at the White House.

Q  Do you know who reserved that room?

A  No.

Q  Not you?

A  No. I have no ability to reserve the Ward Room.

Q  Okay. And who was in the followup meeting?

A  I think Dr. Hill, Perry, Volker, myself, Vindman. I don't recall who else.

Q  So you leave the Ambassador’s office --

A  I think we went out and took a big picture and then went down to the Ward Room.

Q  Okay. And was Dr. Hill with you the entire time?

A  I don't know if she was -- she wasn't in the picture, so maybe she left and came back. I don’t remember.

Q  Okay. Did Dr. Hill say anything at the Ward Room component of this meeting?

A  I think we were talking back and forth about, you know, should there be a call prior to the parliamentary elections or not. And there was a difference of opinion between Brian McCormack, Secretary Perry, Volker, myself, Vindman, and Fiona. Everyone sort of had a different take on it. And it was sort of a, you know, typical discussion where not everyone is in 100 percent agreement. We were sort of going back and forth.

Q  Okay. What were the two positions, to either do the call before or after the parliamentary --

A  Well, I think were three positions. One was do it before, one was do it after, and the third was don't do it at all, there's no reason for one. And I don't remember whose position that was. It might have been Vindman's.

Q  Don't do the call?

A  Don't do the call, there's nothing to talk about.

Q  Do you remember Dr. Hill's position?

A  I don't. She might have been the -- she might have been on the don't do the call, but I don't remember.

Q  Okay. Do you remember if Dr. Hill was in favor of the 7/10 meeting?

A  The 7/10 meeting, I believe, had already been scheduled. I don't know if she was in favor of it or not.

Q  Okay.

A  The only action I think our group took was to make sure that we were included.

Q  Did you ever have any heated discussions with Dr. Hill?

A  No, not that I remember. Never had -- I don't ever remember having a heated discussion with Dr. Hill.

Q  Okay. And how often did you talk to her?

A  You know, maybe once or twice a month. I remember we were in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and I had texted her, and she coincidentally happened to be there. We met for coffee. I think her family was there and my wife and I, had a nice drink or coffee or something. And she sent me a nice note about Ukraine in February when we went to the Odessa thing, that that was great and it worked really well and thanks for helping. Our relationship has always been very cordial.

Q  So she never expressed dismay about the scheduling of the 7/10 meeting?

A  Not to me, that I recall.

Q  And she never expressed to you dismay about how the meeting -- what occurred in the meeting in Ambassador Bolton's office?

A  Not to -- not to my recollection.

Q  And when you decamped to the Ward Room she didn't express any dismay about what was discussed?

A  No. It was a typical policy discussion where people disagree on policy.

Q  Was she in the Ward Room meeting the whole time or did she leave early?

A  I don't -- I don't remember.

Q  Okay.

A  It wasn't even -- it wasn't even like a sit-down meeting. We were all standing up. We were just looking for a place to talk.

Q  Okay. And do you remember how long that lasted?

A  A few minutes.

Q  Okay. So much shorter than --

A  10, 10 minutes maybe, 15 minutes. It wasn't a -it wasn't a long meeting.

Q  Okay. So you never even sat down?

A  I don’t think so.

Q  So the folks that were in the Ward Room was the same bunch that was in Ambassador Bolton's office minus Ambassador --

A  I don't believe the Ukrainians were there.

Q  Oh, they were not? Okay.

A  I don't think so. I'm trying to remember.

Q  Okay.

A  I don't recall --

Q  Okay.

A  -- if the Ukrainians were there --

Q  Okay.

A  -- or if a couple of them came. You know, we were -- we were sort of on the move. It wasn't a formally set meeting that I remember. It was sort of like let's find a place to talk --

Q  Okay.

A  -- once Bolton had had to leave.

Q  Okay. And Dr. Hill never, even after that meeting, never expressed any discomfort or dismay?

A  No. I communicated with her on another subject a week or 2 later and it was just great. I mean, again, I've never had an unpleasant conversation with her that I can remember, of any kind.

Q  How frequently did you speak with Lieutenant Colonel Vindman?

A  Really only about the Odessa -- I'm sorry, about the inaugural trip, because he was on the delegation. And then I think a few times thereafter. And then he sort of dropped away.

Q  Okay. So he never expressed any dismay about any of these?

A  No, not that I remember. Again, I don't remember anybody being upset, dismayed, alarmed, concerned at any point in this whole -- in this whole process about -- about the July 10th meeting.

Q  Okay. The next key event is the telephone call on July 25th.

A  Correct.

Q  Do you remember anything about how that call was scheduled?

A  No. I remember it was the NSC -- and this was what was so funny about it, the NSC had originally scheduled, after I read all of this stuff in the press about how they were alarmed and didn't want to call -- didn't want to have a call, they had actually scheduled a call for July 20th.

And there was a whole -- there was a whole string from the scheduling office at the NSC that the call was set and they were going to do a test call. And then somehow at the last minute someone on that stream said no call on the 20th, it's too close to the election.

And we were disappointed because I think Volker or someone had communicated to the Ukrainians that there would be a call on the 20th, and I think they were getting Zelensky ready for it, and he was having to drive in to a phone. I don't remember all the details, but our credibility was sinking quickly because the call got pulled down at the last minute, and then the call never really occurred, I believe, until the 25th, so 5 days later.

Q  So first the call was scheduled before the election?

A  Yes.

Q  Then the call was scheduled after the election?

A  Correct.

Q  But you had no role in scheduling the call or advocating to --

A  I had a role in -- I was constantly pushing folks at the White House, probably Vindman, probably Hill, probably others, let's get a call.

Q  But did they respond to you, like, okay we'll do it --

A  We're working on it. It was always the same, we're working on it.

Q  Okay. Did you get a readout from the call?

A  No. What I got was I got a summary from one of my staff I think a day or two later, and the summary was very sort of innocuous. It was, you know, had a good call, talked about closer relations. That was it. I never got a transcript until it was released.

Q  Did you hear Ambassador Volker or Ambassador Taylor or anybody else talk about the call?

A  No.

Q  They didn't give you any --

A  No one said the call was anything but, quote, "a good call." That was it.

Q  Okay. So you didn't know anything else other than that?

A  No. I was happy to hear they had a good call.

Q  Did you hear from the Ukrainians, because you meet the very next day? Did you hear from them about the call?

A  I think they were -- everyone was happy about the call.

Q  Okay. And that was the extent of your information --

A  Correct.

Q  -- even after the end of the very next day, your meetings with the Ukrainians?

A  Correct. Everyone said it was a good call.

Q  Did you have any discussions with Ambassador Volker during your trip about the call? Did he give you any additional information?

A  I don't know that Ambassador Volker was on the call.

Q  Okay. Okay. But did he get a readout from anybody?

A  I think he got the same -- I'm speculating -- he got the same summary that I did.

Q  Okay. When did you first realize that there might me some controversy with regard to the call?

A  When the transcript was released.

Q  Okay. And you were surprised?

A  Quite.

Q  And could you tell us how you learned that the transcript was coming? Did you get an advanced copy?

A  I don't think I did get an advanced copy. I think I saw it when everyone saw it for the first time.

Q  Prior to the transcript release, I think the news of the complaint had surfaced. Do you remember when you first heard that somebody had raised a complaint?

A  I believe that was when, as I testified earlier, when someone from the White House called and said: Your name is mentioned in the complaint.

Q  Okay.

A  Along with Ambassador Volker.

Q  Okay.

A  So that would have been just before the complaint was made public.

Q  Okay. When did you first read the transcript?

A  Of the call?

Q  Of the call. Yeah.

A  Probably when it became public.

Q  Okay. So you just read it on the internet like everybody else?

A  I think so. I think -- or maybe someone on my staff stuck it on my desk. I don't know.

Q  Okay. But you were in New York at the time, right?

A  Yeah. So my control officer might have put it in my folder. I don't remember. I remember reading it pretty much contemporaneously with everyone else.

Q  Okay. And what was your reaction to the transcript?

A  Well, it wasn't consistent with what, you know, I had understood the ask was.

Q  Were you surprised that 2016 was mentioned or --

A  Not 2016, because, as I said, during this continuum 2016 and Burisma had been mentioned. As I recall the transcript, it specifically mentioned the Bidens, and I had never heard the Bidens mentioned specifically until, you know -- and obviously it had occurred long before because that call was made on July 25th.

Q  And did you realize there was going to be a lot of questions about that part of the transcript?

A  Yeah, because before the transcript was even out, you know, all of the press was making a big hullabaloo about it

Q  Okay. And did you speak with anybody such as Ambassador Volker or any other people?

A  I don't -- I don't remember. I mean it -- no, I don't remember if I did or didn't.

Q  Okay. So you hear the news reports, and then you get a copy of it, and then the White House calls you, and that's pretty much the sum total of the --

A  I think so, yeah.

Q  Okay.

A  They wanted me to come in and I said: I need to talk to my counsel.

Q  Okay.

A  And I never came in.

Q  The President's deep-rooted view, skeptical view of Ukraine and their anti-corruption system, what do you, to the extent you know, what was the basis for his -- basis for his views?

A  You mean aside from his, you know, comment about they tried to take me down?

Q  Yes.

A  Just a general?

Q  Yes.

A  I think generally he was frustrated that they would always promise things and never deliver. That's one of the reasons he was so adamant about seeing something put out by President Zelensky either in the form of a press release or an interview on network television or something where President Zelensky would publicly commit to whatever he was going to commit to. I think that was my understanding from Volker as dictated by Giuliani. He wanted somebody to go on the record.

Q  The President was an advocate for the U.S. military aid and additional aid. Is that correct?

A  I don't know.

Q  Okay. Did you ever have any discussions with National Security Council staff about the 7/18 hold? On July 18th, that's when the aid was held up.

A  I don't believe I talked to the NSC staff. I believe I was told by Ambassador Taylor through a text that there was a hold. He had participated in a SVTC and he had found out about a hold. And that was frustrating to me because it just put another obstacle in the way of getting a meeting.

Q  What facts or what firsthand accounts can you provide about the aid holdup?

A  None.

Q  Okay.

A  Other than I was aware of it, I didn't know why I kept getting different answers from different people.

Q  Okay.

A  There was never any clear -- any clear articulation by anyone of, is there even a hold, is it a review, is it an audit, is it the Europeans? I could never get a straight answer out of anyone.

Q  So you never tried to contact OMB or National Security Council to find out more?

A  I think I -- I think I made a couple of calls. I may have asked a couple of my folks in the mission. And I just -- it just kept getting to be a dead end. I just could not get a straight answer.

Q So you didn't lobby anybody to lift the aid, you were just trying to find out had what was going on?

A  Yeah, I was trying to find out what was going on. And I think there was an email that went around saying we can't, you know, cut off aid under any circumstances. And I think I had added to it, I agree, you know, because I thought it was -- it was not a good idea for any reason to cut that aid off.

Q  So you were not an actor in that set of facts?

A  If I was, it was unwitting. I don’t remember having any role whatsoever in that.

MR. CASTOR: Mr. Jordan, we've got about 15 minutes left. Does it make sense to?

Mr. Nunes.

MR. NUNES: Thank you, Ambassador.

I just want to go back to something Mr. Castor referred to about the skepticism the President has with Ukraine. I don't know how closely you followed what this committee went through in the last 3 years, but also the Mueller investigation, special counsel. A lot of it was centered on a product called the Steele dossier. You've heard of that, I assume.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I have.

MR. NUNES: Were you aware that the origins of the Steele dossier were from Ukraine, many of the origins in the original Steele dossier were from Ukraine, the politicians within Ukraine?

THE CHAIRMAN: I would just posit that this the ranking member's view. We cannot accept that as an actual or factual representation. So if you're asking --

MR. NUNES: I don't want to get into a tit for tat with you, but what's factual? The Steele dossier didn't origin -- parts of it didn't originate in Ukraine?

THE CHAIRMAN: You can certainly ask the witness whether he's aware of any allegations.

MR. NUNES: I'll ask the witness whatever I'd like to ask the witness.

THE CHAIRMAN: Yes. And the witness will not assume that the predicate of my colleague's question is an accurate recitation of the fact.

MR. MEADOWS: But, Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, you lead the witness all the time, all the time, Mr. Chairman. Come on. It is our hour, let him ask the questions.

THE CHAIRMAN: I understand that. I want to make sure the witness understands, though, that --

MR. MEADOWS: Would you mind if we clarified your questions when it's your hour?

THE CHAIRMAN: When you're chairing a committee, should that day ever come, you're more than welcome to do so.

MR. MEADOWS: To my knowledge, this is an equal 1 hour versus 1 hour.

THE CHAIRMAN: Yes, it is.

MR. MEADOWS: And to my knowledge, you may be a chairman, but this is not a committee hearing. It's a deposition.

THE CHAIRMAN: I thank you for your input, Representative Meadows.

And you may continue, you may respond, Mr. Sondland, if you wish, to the question.

MR. NUNES: So let me just restate the question for you. The Democrats disagree that the Steele dossier, I'm assuming, has anything to do with Ukraine or originations in Ukraine. However, in the Steele dossier itself it does source information from Ukraine. Were you aware of that, Ambassador?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Only recently, based on media reports.

MR. NUNES: Okay. So you can under -- let me ask you another thing. Are you aware of who paid for the dossier?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I'm not.

MR. NUNES: Would it surprise you to learn that the Clinton campaign and the Democrat National Committee paid for the dossier?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't know anything about it.

MR. NUNES: And the dossier was -- was gleaned from foreign sources. It was from a former MI6 spy that was paid by -- through a contractor to get information, dirt, opposition research, what have you, from Ukrainians and Russians and others.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't -- I don't know anything about that, Congressman. I'm sorry.

MR. NUNES: So this -- the dossier, you do remember it was fed, I think you would recall this, it was fed to the FBI?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Again, I haven't been following the Steele dossier, I mean other than just generally knowing about its existence.

MR. NUNES: Sure. But you know that it led to Special Counsel Bob Mueller and it went on for --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I assume that was one of the --

MR. NUNES: -- for a year and a half.

So the point of this is, is that when the President says take -- they tried to take me down, there were politicians that were quoted as spreading this dirt onto the Trump campaign. Could that be what the President was referring to when he said they tried to take me down?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't know what he meant. He kept repeating it, though, they tried to take me down, they tried to take me down. He was not a fan of Ukraine, per se.

MR. NUNES: And you can understand why, from his perspective, if --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I understand what you're saying.

MR. NUNES: I’m sure he read the Steele dossier many, many times.

That's all I have, Mr. Castor.

MR. JORDAN: Ambassador, tell me what you thought of President Zelensky.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, one of the --

MR. JORDAN: And now as the leader of Ukraine.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: One of the reasons I was pushing so hard for the meeting after the inauguration, I thought that he and President Trump would get along very well. He's very articulate, he's funny, he's charming, and he's pretty smart, and he's got a lot of energy. And I thought the two gentlemen would have good chemistry together and that good things would happen between the U.S. and Ukraine.

MR. JORDAN: You thought they'd hit it off.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I did.

MR. JORDAN: And your focus -- and you weren't the only one. We’ve heard testimony. It's in her opening statement, Ambassador -- former Ambassador to Ukraine, she thought the same thing. Ambassador Volker thought that. It seemed like everyone thought you get these two guys together, they're going to hit it off. And that was your focus. Is that accurate? Is that fair?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yes, it is.

MR. JORDAN: And the Ukrainian people thought this guy was the real deal.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah, I think he won by a fairly healthy margin.

MR. JORDAN: 73 percent. I don't know if anyone in the room's won with that margin.

So your whole goal was to get these two together and that was your focus. And you thought, if you could, that was good for the country, good for our country and good for theirs.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

The gentleman from New York.

MR. ZELDIN: Mr. Ambassador, earlier referenced Ambassador Taylor, and later you were answering questions with regards to your effort to find out why there was a hold on aid. Did Ambassador Taylor ever mention to you a -- anything about a quid pro quo prior to that text that you responded to?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: To which text do you refer?

MR. ZELDIN: Do you recall receiving a text from Ambassador Taylor suggesting that there was a linkage between U.S. aid to Ukraine and opening an investigation into the Bidens?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don’t know that that's what the text said. I recall --

MR. ZELDIN: What do you recall?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I recall there was some kind of a text that aid was connected to some political agenda of the President's. That's what Ambassador Taylor articulated and that's what prompted my phone call to President Trump to ask him what he wanted.

MR. ZELDIN: And in your conversation with President Trump he was -- he was clear to you that there was no quid pro quo, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Again, I didn't -- I didn't frame the question about the aid and the link. I did not frame the question that way. I asked the question open ended: What do you want?

MR. ZELDIN: But the President was clear about in his response to you, what was he clear --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: He said: I want nothing. I don’t want to give them anything and I don't want anything from them. I want Zelensky to do the right thing. That's what he -- and he kept repeating no quid pro quo over and over again.

MR. ZELDIN: And then you told Ambassador Taylor that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Then I sent him the text that said: No quid pro quo. Please call the Secretary if you have any further concerns.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you know what source of information prompted Ambassador Taylor to send you that text?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't. I was quite shocked when I got it, though.

MR. ZELDIN: You're not -- are you aware at all of any firsthand knowledge Ambassador Taylor had to inform him of what led him to send that text?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't know where he got it and I don’t recall him telling me how he heard it. I just got the text.

MR. ZELDIN: Is it possible that he -- are you familiar with a Politico story that came out around that time?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No.

MR. ZELDIN: Then you had a conversation with Ambassador Taylor?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: After I sent my text back to him? I don't believe I did. I think I testified earlier that I sent the text, I suggested he call the Secretary. He said he agreed. I don't know if he ever called the Secretary because, as I said, the hold was lifted within a day or two after that text.

MR. ZELDIN: At no time -- at no time you received any information that there was a linkage between a hold on aid and opening an investigation into the Bidens?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: You mean prior to his text?

MR. ZELDIN: At any time, I'm asking you.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't recall.

MR. ZELDIN: You don't have -- at no time did you receive any information that there was a linkage between a hold on aid to Ukraine and opening an investigation into the Bidens?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I recall hearing multiple reasons why the aid was being held from various people. I never heard that it was being held specifically to investigate the Bidens. I never heard the word "Biden" mentioned with aid.

MR. ZELDIN: And you're not aware of Ambassador Taylor ever receiving any firsthand information that would back up that allegation either?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I can't testify to what Ambassador Taylor received. I don't know.

MR. ZELDIN: You're just -- you're not aware.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I'm not aware.

MR. ZELDIN: And if I understand correctly, President Trump did in fact meet with President Zelensky at the U.N. General Assembly, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That's correct.

MR. ZELDIN: And you were present at that meeting?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I was, along with many others.

MR. ZELDIN: And has President Trump and President Zelensky hit it off in their engagements where you have been present?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I think that was the only engagement where they were together that I was present.

MR. ZELDIN: So the meeting -- a meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky did in fact take place in September?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. MCCAUL: Thank you.

Thank you, Ambassador, for being here today. I'm ranking member on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

I just had a couple of questions about the freeze on the foreign assistance. You stated you learned about that through Bill Taylor. Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. MCCAUL: What about Ambassador Volker?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I'm sure we discussed it as well once I -- I think I first learned it from Taylor where he had participated in some SVTC video conference and he was told that there was a hold put on. He didn't know why. And then we probably talked about it. But again, I'm speculating. I don't remember exactly.

MR. MCCAUL: And then what was your response to that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I didn't think much of it when it was initially put on other than I was just frustrated because it was one more obstacle to my meeting that I was trying to get scheduled.

MR. MCCAUL: Right. Did you have any conversations with President Zelensky about that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't remember discussing that with President Zelensky.

MR. MCCAUL: Do you know if President Zelensky had any knowledge about that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't. I don't know if he did or didn't.

MR. MCCAUL: Would it surprise you that Ambassador Volker testified that he had no knowledge about that freeze on the foreign assistance?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't know if he got the same text from Ambassador Taylor that I did, which was the text after the SVTC. I can't remember if that was a group text or just directly to me.

MR. MCCAUL: Right. And so from all testimony we've heard, including yours today, President Zelensky had no idea about the hold on this foreign --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't know when he became aware of the hold.

MR. MCCAUL: Right.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't know when he --

MR. MCCAUL: And that's probably why you said there was no quid pro quo. How could there be if he didn't -- if the other -- the person who had received that for which, translated from Latin, would be -- had no knowledge --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Right.

MR. MCCAUL: -- about the foreign assistance, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Can you restate your question?

I'm sorry.

MR. MCCAUL: In other words, that's probably why you said there was no quid pro quo, because if the person that would be receiving something had no knowledge that the foreign assistance is being held up.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I would assume that by September, just before the hold was lifted, when I was getting this alarming text from Ambassador Taylor, that at that point I would assume that Zelensky would have known that there was a hold. I don't know that he knew about the hold when the hold was put on.

MR. MCCAUL: Right. But he -- to your knowledge, you had no conversation with him about this.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't recall any conversation about this.

MR. MCCAUL: And your speculation is he may have learned later, correct? But that's speculation.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah, it's totally speculation.

MR. MCCAUL: And that would have been certainly after the July 25th phone call.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I'm speculating.

MR. MCCAUL: And that's all speculation.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: All speculation.

MR. MCCAUL: Okay. I yield back.

Let me ask you one more thing. So you're an ambassador. Just real quickly. Don't you have a legal obligation to certify anti-corruption before foreign assistance is given to a foreign country?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: But I'm not the ambassador to Ukraine.

MR. MCCAUL: Correct. But isn't that the practice of the State Department?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I am not aware. I'm not a bilateral ambassador. I wouldn't make those certifications with respect to the European Union.

MR. MCCAUL: Well, I guess it wouldn’t surprise you that that is the policy and obligation under the appropriation that was --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't have any -- I don't have any knowledge of that.

MR. MCCAUL: There is a legal requirement.

Yes, thank you.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't have any knowledge.

THE CHAIRMAN: The time of the minority has expired. Why don’t we take a 30 minutes break for lunch, and we’ll resume, let's say, at 1:10 p.m.

Counsel has asked for 45 minutes, so let’s resume then -- what would that be? Let's resume at 1:20.

[Recess.]

[1:25 p.m.]

THE CHAIRMAN: All right. Should we go back on the record? Okay. Back on the record. Ambassador Sondland, during our lunch break Chief of Staff Mulvaney gave a rather remarkable press conference. Did you have an opportunity to watch it?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No, I did not see it. I haven't been receiving any news.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, we’re getting a transcript of it and we may make reference to it later when we do. But I want to go back to something you said in your opening statement. You said withholding foreign aid in order to pressure a foreign government to take such steps -- well, let me begin the paragraph on page 17.

Let me state clearly, you said, "inviting a foreign government to undertake investigations for the purpose of influencing an upcoming U.S. election would be wrong. Withholding foreign aid in order to pressure foreign government to take such steps would be wrong. I did not and would not ever participate in such undertakings. In my opinion, security aid to Ukraine was in our vital national interest and should not have been delayed for any reason." You stand by that testimony?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I do.

THE CHAIRMAN: During Mr. Mulvaney's press conference, he acknowledged, for the first time, that the military aid was being withheld, at least in part, over a desire to get Ukraine to investigate the DNC. I take it you were not aware of that?

MR. CASTOR: Do you have a copy of the transcript, Mr. Chairman, to pass around?

THE CHAIRMAN: We don't have the transcript, but we hope to have one soon. So we'll have exact language, but it was words to that effect. I take it that --

MR. JORDAN: We'd like to see that before you proceed.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, I would like to see that as well. But my question, Ambassador Sondland, is if the Chief of Staff Mulvaney acknowledged that military aid was being withheld in any part to secure Ukraine's investigation of the DNC, I take it that's not something that you were aware of until now?

MR. ZELDIN: Mr. Chair, what exactly did Mick Mulvaney say?

THE CHAIRMAN: Counsel, I'm not going to entertain any other interruptions.

MR. ZELDIN: You're asking the question, Mr. Ambassador.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I heard the question.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Please respond to the question.

MR. ZELDIN: I don't know if the witness would like to read the transcript.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Zeldin, no further interruptions, please. The witness is instructed to answer the question.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I'm sorry, Chairman, would you repeat the question one more time?

THE CHAIRMAN: If the Chief of Staff acknowledged today that the military aid was being withheld in part over desire to get Ukraine to investigate the DNC, do I understand your testimony that this would be the first you would be learning of that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, that's speculative. You're saying if he said that, would it be the first time I have learned about it?

THE CHAIRMAN: Yes.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yes, it is.

THE CHAIRMAN: And would you ever have countenance, the withholding of aid, to secure Ukraine's commitment to investigate the DNC?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I believe I testified, or my statement indicates, I would not have withheld aid for any reason.

THE CHAIRMAN: And you, in particular, wouldn't withhold aid to secure help in a U.S. election, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: For any reason.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, I'm asking about this particular reason. Would you ever countenance withholding aid from Ukraine to secure an investigation of the DNC that might be in the President's interest in the 2016 election -- in the 2020 election?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I would not.

MR. ZELDIN: Mr. Chair, this entire line of questioning, why don't you just wait for the transcript?

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Zeldin -- Mr. Zeldin, you're not recognized.

MR. MEADOWS: But, Mr. Chairman, you clarified on the other, and let's make sure we clarify it. You said 2020 election. That's not necessarily accurate.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. --

MR. MEADOWS: You've characterized it in a way that is not necessarily consistent with what I just heard.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Meadows, I think the witness understood my question.

MR. MEADOWS: Well, he didn't understand the 2020 part that you added in at the last part. He made a comment that he wasn't aware of it.

THE CHAIRMAN: I appreciate your representing what the witness understood or not, but the witness can speak for himself. Let me move on to another question, Ambassador.

I think you said in answer to my colleague's questions that you really wanted the President of the United States to meet with the President of Ukraine and thought it was the interest of both countries. Is that right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: But it became clear to you in your conversation with the President that that meeting wasn't going to take place unless the President's lawyer's interests or concerns were met. Is that right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: When the President suggested that we speak to Mayor Giuliani, that was, I believe, on May 23rd, and only a few days later, he did, in fact, issue an unconditional invitation. So at that point, we thought whatever the logjam was, it had been broken.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, I think you testified earlier, didn't you, Mr. Sondland, that when the President told you to talk to Mr. Giuliani, you understood that unless the President's lawyer's interests were satisfied, there was going to be no meeting?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: But then the invitation was issued.

THE CHAIRMAN: We'll get to one thing at a time. Before the invitation was extended, you understood from the President that unless Mr. Giuliani's interests or concerns were met there was going to be no meeting. Isn't that correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I understood that walking out of the door on the 23rd.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, one of the other things that -- and we should have a transcript, I hope soon, Mr. Mulvaney expressed during the conference just now, was that letter invitation was a courtesy, and that scheduling may or may not allow it, but they extend that courtesy of a kind of an open generic invitation to many world leaders. Do you disagree with that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I wasn't aware of that.

THE CHAIRMAN: You weren't aware that the Chief of Staff of the President took a different view of how committed the President was in that letter to an actual meeting?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I'm sorry. Repeat the question again, please.

THE CHAIRMAN: The question is, Mr. Mulvaney just expressed that the letter invitation was essentially a courtesy, and the same courtesy that is extended to other world leaders, it wasn't a binding commitment to a meeting.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, when I saw the letter I took it seriously. But then we never got a meeting scheduled and we kept working on trying to get a meeting scheduled and could never get it nailed down.

THE CHAIRMAN: You testified also that the President expressed a concern to you that the Ukrainians would promise but not deliver, and that the President wanted Ukrainians on the record. Is that right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I did. Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And in this context, the "promise but not deliver," and on the record, that involved getting a commitment from Ukraine to conduct these investigations that the President and his lawyer wanted? Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I believe that what Mayor Giuliani passed on, or I believe what I heard from Ambassador Volker, likely coming from Mayor Giuliani, because the President never made that statement directly to me or to anyone, to the best of my knowledge, was that whatever the Ukrainians were going to promise in any context, he wanted it public.

THE CHAIRMAN: You also mentioned that in going through the chronology with the minority counsel, that over time, you learned more and more about what the President and his lawyer truly wanted from Ukraine. And there was an evolution from generic interest in fighting corruption to an interest in Burisma, to finally the realization that what they were interested in was investigation of the Bidens. Is that a fair summary?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And I think you suggested that you learned about the connection to the Bidens, that the interest in Burisma wasn't generic. In fact, it was because of the Bidens, at some point before the telephone call transcript was released. Is that accurate?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't recall exactly when I learned that. I don't know the date.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, let me ask you this: Do you recall how you learned that the President and his lawyer's interest in Burisma was not a generic interest in the company or in corruption, but was, in fact, an interest in the Bidens. Do you remember how you learned that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't recall what made the light go on during that continuum, no.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, when the light did go on, because you've said that you didn't think that meetings or other government action should be conditioned on helping a political campaign, when the light did go on, did you take any steps to say, Hey, we have to stop this conditioning of this meeting because this is not appropriate?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I believe when the light went on, the phone call had already occurred, and meetings were being discussed, but, again, never scheduled. So it became irrelevant.

THE CHAIRMAN: And you can't tell us how the light came on? That is, how you came to learn that Burisma was really the Bidens?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I can't. I don't recall.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  You understood that -- you said you were happy to see that May 29th letter of invitation, right?

A  Yes.

Q  And how many countries are in the EU?

A  28, soon to be 27.

Q  And you've seen these types of invitations to the

White House without specific dates related to other countries, too, right?

A  No, those letters would go to the bilateral ambassadors of those countries, not to me.

Q  So you don't even see them?

A  No.

Q  But you did see them for Ukraine?

A  Yes, because someone sent it to me because they knew I was helping on the file.

Q  Okay. Because it was a central part of your ambassadorship, right?

A  Because I was helping on the file.

Q  Those are your words, central part of your ambassadorship, not mine. That's what you said in your opening statement. Are you staying that's not the case now?

MR. LUSKIN: We've gone over this ground. We read that portion --

MR. GOLDMAN: Mr. Luskin, I didn't expect a dispute about this, it was in his opening statement. I just want to understand if it's now not a part of his -- the central part of his ambassadorship.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I stand by my previous testimony.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Okay. You hosted an Independence Day celebration in Brussels on June 4th of this year. Is that right?

A  I did.

Q  And Secretary Perry came?

A  Yes.

Q  Ulrich Brechbuhl came?

A  Correct.

Q  Was Secretary Pompeo there?

A  He was not.

Q  But President Zelensky came as well, right?

A  President Zelensky came.

Q  Did you personally invite President Zelensky?

A  I invited a number of leaders.

Q  Including President Zelensky?

A  Including President Zelensky.

Q  And did you have any substantive conversations with President Zelensky at that gathering?

A  I think it was all social. There were several people at the dinner. It was a very casual social evening. It wasn't designed to do business, it was designed for people to get to know one another.

Q  Did he mention the White House meeting to you?

A  I don't recall him mentioning that. I don't -- I didn't even sit next to him, he sat across the table from he and it was a big table.

Q  So you didn't speak to him one-on-one at all?

A  I spoke to him, but I don't recall talking about the White House meeting there.

Q  By that point you knew that President Zelensky desperately wanted a White House meeting, right?

A  Oh, I think President Zelensky wanted a White House meeting from the day he was inaugurated.

Q  Right. Because that's a very important sign for legitimacy in Ukraine. Is that right?

A  Every country that I encounter wants a White House meeting.

Q  Particularly, if you're sort of a new leader, it helps to cement your legitimacy to have a White House meeting, right?

A  Among other things, yes.

Q  And you know from your engagement in Ukraine that Ukraine is very dependent on the United States, right?

A  They are.

Q  And we discussed a little bit the security assistance that the United States provides, that's part of it. Is that right?

A  I think they're dependent on us for a number of things.

Q  Such as what?

A  Well, first of all, moral support. That's the most important. Clearly, some defense issues, some security issues, Western capital. All kind of things.

Q  Now, we're going to sort of try to move through the summer months to the best of your recollection. And, you know, just to be very clear, Ambassador Sondland, you have made it very clear today that your -- at least to us as we perceive it -- that your objective was to promote Ukraine -- democracy in Ukraine, and the Zelensky presidency, which you thought was a very positive step for the country. And I think we all recognize and appreciate that. And, obviously, you've been caught up in some events that are the subject of this investigation, but I don’t think anyone doubts your good faith desire to help Ukraine.

What we're trying to understand is the factual development, the evolution of what happened really from that May 23rd meeting, you know, up until today. So, you know, to the best of your ability, we appreciate anything that you can remember.

Did you have any conversations with Secretary Perry in Brussels around that Independence Day celebration related to Ukraine?

A  I don't recall any. And, counsel, the dinner was really a social dinner. The subject of the dinner was not Ukraine and was not President Zelensky. The Prime Minister of Romania was there. The President of Poland was there. Jay Leno was there. Mr. Kushner was there. There were a lot of celebrities, guests, and it was a very sort of light-hearted evening. It was not a business dinner.

Q  Did President Zelensky, as a comedian, get along well with Jay Leno?

A  He was honored to meet him. Apparently, Jay Leno was his hero.

Q  So fully understanding that this was not the purpose of the meeting, I'm just wondering if you had any conversations with Secretary Perry what would have been, I guess, 2 weeks after the White House meeting where you were -- you and Secretary Perry and Ambassador Volker, were given more responsibility over Ukraine. Do you recall?

A  I don't, because again, I probably -- I don't believe I sat next to Secretary Perry at the dinner. I may have said hello, chatted. Everyone was making small talk. The biggest thing, frankly, that came out of the meeting from a business standpoint was that the President of Poland and President Zelensky seemed to really hit it off, and they began working on some Poland-Ukraine issues together, which I was very pleased that that happened.

Q  And just to be clear, you know, we're trying to stay on message here, or on focus. We understand there’s a lot of other things that go into Ukraine policy. So when we try to narrow down the focus, the point is not at all to say that this is the only thing you were talking about, and we understand you had a wide-ranging portfolio.

So without necessarily putting a date on it, do you remember whether you had a conversation -- the conversation that you referenced with Secretary Perry about his conversation with Rudy Giuliani after that May 23rd meeting. Do you remember if that was before or after that May 29th letter?

A  All I can recall, Counsel, is that when the three of us agreed that we needed to somehow contact Mr. Giuliani in order to move the process forward, that Secretary Perry volunteered to make the first outreach, because he was the most familiar with Rudy. I think when he ran for -- when Rudy ran for President --

Q  Sorry to interrupt you. Do you remember when that was?

A  I don't. I know that I think we all agreed that he would make the outreach. And then he and Volker, as I testified before lunch, kind of took it from there.

[Majority Exhibit No. 6 was marked for identification.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Okay. Now, I'm going to give you what's marked as exhibit 6, which is a number of text messages, and I'll point you to the specific pages. Can we give the minority a copy? So let's go to Bates number 26, if we could. I don't think we have it here. Okay. We must be missing this one.

There's a text message, perhaps you're not on it, between Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Taylor, that refers to a call that you had with Secretary Perry and Ambassador Bolton on June 10th. Is that the call that you reference where you spoke with Ambassador Bolton and Secretary Perry about Ukraine matters?

A  I believe so, but where is this?

MR. LUSKIN: Can you refer us to --

MR. GOLDMAN: You know, I apologize, we don't have it in here.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  But it doesn't necessarily matter because you already did testify that in June you had a call.

A  We had a conference call. Yeah.

Q  A conference call. Describe what was discussed on that conference call?

A  To the best of my recollection, I believe Secretary Perry laid out for Ambassador Bolton the notion that the three of us would assist Ambassador Taylor on Ukraine and be there to support as the, you know, relationship was moving forward, I think Giuliani was mentioned. I can't remember exactly that, you know, the President had wanted us to somehow involve Giuliani in the discussions.

Again, I'm speculating Bolton might have said, you know, whatever, he wasn't a fan of involving other people. As I testified, I wasn't either. And the end result of the call was, we all felt, and I assume this includes Ambassador Bolton as well, we all felt very comfortable with the strategy moving forward, that we would all help on Ukraine, to be defined.

Q  Did you and Ambassador Volker and Secretary Perry ever develop a nickname for the three of you?

A  I think you're referring to the three amigos.

Q  Yeah, who coined that?

A  I think we were all in Kyiv together, and someone walked up to us, and said, you look like the three amigos, we were all standing together, and I think that's where it came from.

Q  You kind of liked that nickname, right?

A  I don't --

MR. LUSKIN: We've all heard worse.

THE CHAIRMAN: I can attest to that.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  So on -- was there any discussion of a White House meeting on that conference call that you recall with Ambassador Bolton?

A  That would have been on July -- June 10th. I think the notion of a White House meeting was probably raised every time we had a conversation with anybody about Ukraine, because we were, you know, this was after this supposed boilerplate invitation was issued, as you kind of described it. And, again, I took it as a serious invitation, you described it as sort of a boilerplate invitation. We were trying to get a meeting scheduled, back to my original testimony, which I thought was important, for the two Presidents to meet.

Q  And I didn't characterize it, and I think -- but you would agree that there was no date on that invitation?

A  No, but that's, I would assume, typical when, you know, you don't -- you have to coordinate a date.

Q  Right.

A  Two busy people.

Q  And you had said you were surprised to see that letter coming out of that May 23rd meeting?

A  I was surprised given the conversation on May 23rd. Yes.

Q  Right. Understood. Now, did you, in the middle of June, have a Ukraine coordination meeting in Secretary Perry's office in Washington?

A  We might have. I've been to Secretary Perry's office on a number of occasions for a number of matters related to Ukraine and unrelated to Ukraine because we work very closely on European energy together.

Q  Uh-huh. And you don't remember anything about that meeting?

A  I don't. I would have to see some stuff to refresh my memory.

Q  Now, at this point had you -- so let's say we're now in mid-June. Are you aware of what Rudy Giuliani's views on Ukraine are at this point?

A  I'm only aware of what I hear through Volker, primarily, because I'm not talking to Giuliani.

Q  Did you, after the May 23rd meeting, did you pay a little bit more attention to any public statements that Rudy Giuliani might have made?

A  No, I have not been following Mr. Giuliani in the press. I know you were excoriating me about that earlier, but I'm not.

Q  If you go to page 5 of Exhibit 3, the tweets.

MR. LUSKIN: We don't have those exhibits up here.

MR. GOLDMAN: The tweets? If you don't have it, we can get it. Oh, here. All right.

MR. LUSKIN: Which page?

MR. GOLDMAN: Page 5. It's a tweet on June 21st of this year by Rudy Giuliani where -- I'll just read it for the record. He says: New Pres of Ukraine still silent on investigation of Ukrainian interference in 2016 election, and alleged Biden bribery of President -- Pres Poroshenko. Time for leadership and investigate both if you want to purge how Ukraine was abused by Hillary and Obama people.

So this is one example of Rudy Giuliani speaking out. Were you aware of these views by this time?

A  No.

Q  So, again, not to belabor the point, but this is now after you were directed by President Trump to assume some leadership with Volker and Perry for Ukraine policy, and to consult with Rudy Giuliani. Is that right?

A  That's not right. If it were up to President Trump, we would have all walked out of there and done nothing on Ukraine. He wasn't interested in Ukraine. He said, talk to Rudy. And as I testified earlier, first, Secretary Perry I believe, reached out to Giuliani, and secondly, Volker then took it from there.

Q  In your opening statement, you said, on the bottom of page 7, that "President Trump directed those of us present at the meeting to talk to Mr. Giuliani, his personal attorney, about his concerns. It was apparent to all of us that the key to changing the President's mind on Ukraine was Mr. Giuliani." Is that -- that was your testimony earlier today. Do you stand by that?

A  Hold on just a second. I stand by that statement.

Q  Okay. And you did -- given what you testified earlier today, you did want to change the President's mind about Ukraine, right?

A  We wanted the President to meet with President Zelensky.

Q  Right. And so, well, you just said the key to changing the President's mind on Ukraine. So when you say "changing the President's mind on Ukraine," I take it what you're saying is you wanted him to be open to President Zelensky, and to agree to meet with him. Is that right?

A  That's right.

Q  Okay. And the key to that meeting, as you testified, is Mr. Giuliani?

A  That's correct.

Q  But you didn't make any extra efforts to figure out what Mr. Giuliani's concerns, as referenced by the President in the May 23rd meeting, might have been?

MR. LUSKIN: That's not his testimony.

MR. GOLDMAN: I'm asking a question.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: My testimony was that Ambassador Volker and Secretary Perry took the lead with Mr. Giuliani.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Understood. But did you make any efforts to ascertain what Mr. Giuliani's concerns were after this May 23rd meeting?

A  I don't recall making any efforts. I can't say for 100 percent certain, but I don't recall that I did anything other than wait for Perry and Volker to get back.

Q  How frequently in the weeks after that meeting did you speak with -- let's just do it one at a time, Ambassador Volker about Mr. Giuliani?

A  I don't remember.

Q  Did you speak to him at all about Mr. Giuliani in the month of June?

A  I think he generally kept me informed that he was trying to get to the bottom of what Mr. Giuliani wanted, and I never heard anything definitive until later.

Q  When later?

A  I don't remember the day. I told you it was sort of a continuum.

Q  We'll try to pin a time on it as we refresh your recollection. And is that similar to the conversations you had with Secretary Perry?

A  I think I was spending more of my time with Secretary Perry on unrelated -- matters unrelated to Ukraine.

Q  Secretary Perry was focused on some of the energy considerations in Ukraine, right?

A  He was focused on energy considerations all over Europe, yeah.

Q  And that's a very significant issue in Ukraine, energy --

A  It is.

Q  -- right?

A  Yes.

Q  And so Naftogaz, for example, is the state-run energy company, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  So that was a focus of Secretary Perry's, right?

A  One of many.

Q  But you never heard Rudy Giuliani express any concerns about Naftogaz, did you?

MR. LUSKIN: Are you talking about in the period of June?

MR. GOLDMAN: I'm talking about at all.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't recall.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  So if you can turn to page 36 -- if we have that one, yes, we do -- of the text messages. So if you look at 6/26/19 at 3:48 p.m., Ambassador Taylor writes -- and this is a group that, at the top, you see that you created a group, Gordon and Bill.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  But this is Kurt Volker's text messages. So it's you, Volker and Bill Taylor. Is that right?

A  Must be, yeah.

Q  Okay. So Bill Taylor writes: Gordon, you might not have seen the message from George Kent on the high side that tells us that senior levels at the White House said that that the visit is not happening any time soon. Very discouraging. Any chance you can turn this around? If not, I don't think a senior call with the Ukrainians on Friday, as your staff is suggesting, makes sense. Your thoughts.

And then two lines on down, you write back: This is Vindman, and is being fixed. Do you recall -- this is June 26th, what you meant by or what you did after receiving this in order to fix it?

A  I don't recall exactly, but I do recall that Lieutenant Colonel Vindman was against a call per se. He was never specific about why. And I'm speculating, I might have called Dr. Hill, I might have called the State Department and asked for someone to look into the matter, but I don't remember exactly.

Q  Okay. And if you go to 42 at the top, you just say: "Please call. Urgent. Thanks." This is a text exchange with Kurt Volker. This is around a possible conference call that you had with Ambassador Volker, Ambassador Taylor, and Secretary Perry, that I asked you about earlier. Do you recall that conference call, again, where you --

MR. LUSKIN: Around the --

MR. GOLDMAN: Around the time, yeah. Sorry.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Oh, you mean the one with Ambassador Bolton?

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  No, this is later in the month.

A  This is -- oh, I'm sorry, that's July 10th. Okay.

Q  No, it's at the top. It's June 28.

A  Oh, June 28th.

Q  I'm trying to refresh your recollection as to whether or not you remember anything more about a conference call that you might have had with the Ambassador Volker, Ambassador Taylor, and Secretary Perry on June 28th?

A  I don't. I do not recall.

Q  And whether you would have patched in President

Zelensky?

A  I might have, but I don't -- again, I don't remember the contents of that call.

Q  Are you aware of a Ukraine-related conference in Toronto at the beginning of July?

A  Is that the one that Ambassador Volker attended? I think he attended something in Toronto.

Q  Do you know if George Kent attended?

A  I don't. I don't know.

A  I don’t. I don’t know.

Q  Did you have any conversations -- do you know whether Ambassador Volker met with President Zelensky there?

A  I believe he reported back that they had a meeting, yes.

Q  What did he report back to you?

A  I think he reported that it was a good meeting.

Q  Did you speak to him before that?

A  Well, I spoke to him before he went to Toronto at some point, I don’t know when.

Q  Did you know when he intended to speak to President Zelensky about?

A  I think they were just going to get together and keep the relationship going.

Q  Well, you said at every meeting you discussed the White House visit?

A  Always.

Q  Right.

A  I’m sure they talked about that, too, because the Ukrainians would bring it up.

Q  And did you know by this point whether or not there was any discussion with the Ukrainians, whether it’s President Zelensky or his senior officials, about any conditions for a White House meeting by the early July?

A  Early July. So let’s see -- so I’m looking here at the texts.

Q  So they are a little out of order because --

A  This is now when Giuliani and Yermak met in Madrid.

Q  No, no. Don’t look at the texts because it’s not related -- I didn’t ask you to look at the text. I’m just asking about this July 2nd or 3rd meeting in Toronto between Volker and Zelensky, and whether you, by that point, whether you recall having any conversations with Ambassador Volker, or others, but specifically Ambassador Volker, about any conditions for the White House meeting?

A  Well, at some point, and again, I don’t remember the timeframe. At some point this press statement was a condition of the White House meeting.

Q  Right. That was in August, and we’ll get to that. But I’m just trying to understand the time line, because you have said that you remember, at some point, the investigations became linked to the White House meeting. Is that correct?

A  The press statement, yeah, the press statement was linked to the White House meeting. And the press statement included -- the most laden press statement was the one that mentioned the 2016 and the Burisma investigations continuum.

Q  Okay.

A  You know, but there were many versions of it.

Q  And other than the press statement, you don’t remember whether -- is it your testimony here today that prior to the press statement, and I want to be very clear about this.

A  Okay.

Q  That prior to the press statement you had no awareness that the White House visit was conditioned at all on whether or not Ukraine pursued any investigations?

A  I don’t recall that at all. Again, I viewed an unconditional invitation, so I thought we were done. We couldn’t get a meeting scheduled. Then the press statement, which was an innocuous press statement that said, pursuing corruption. Then the press statement began to have ornaments hung on it. That was the continuum as I recall it.

Q  All right. Let’s keep going through the texts. Go back to page 36.

A  Which page? I’m sorry.

Q  Page 36. If you look near the bottom, starting with 7/7 at 2:15.

A  7/7. Okay.

Q  Sorry, the 2:34.

A  Yeah.

Q  Ambassador Volker writes: "Gordon, maybe we can talk E. Mulvaney on Monday by phone, Kurt." Do you know what that was in relation to?

A  I’m speculating it might have been trying to get Mulvaney to help with the meeting.

Q  Which meeting?

A  The Zelensky White House meeting.

Q  Okay. And what did you recall speaking?

A  Or a call. I mean, again, I don’t remember exactly what -- I think we were, you know, we were trying to push at every possible place we could push to get this done, because we were losing credibility with the Ukrainians.

Q  I understand, and it’s clear --

A  After the invitation came out, because they took it seriously.

Q  Right. And now we’re 6 weeks later --

A  Yes.

Q  And there’s been no date set.

A  No. There hadn’t even been a phone call. The phone call never occurred until July 25th.

Q  And explain the importance of the phone call at this point?

A  With every country that I deal with, every country with which I deal, direct calls from the President of the United States to the leader of the country and Oval visits are always valued, especially with, as you described it, a new fledgling President, who just got elected, wants to establish legitimacy. So having President Trump call him, even if it was for no purpose other than to say hello, was valued. But then they go to the press, they say, I just spoke to the President of the United States, and it gives them legitimacy. And the Oval is the sine qua non.

Q  Right. And so whether it was on this date or otherwise, obviously, you reference a conversation with Mulvaney. Did you have a conversation with Mr. Mulvaney about a White House visit for President Zelensky?

A  I don’t recall. All I can tell you is Mulvaney was almost impossible to get a hold of. He rarely responded to emails and almost never returned phone calls.

Q  So why would Ambassador Volker be asking you to talk about Mulvaney?

A  Because he figured I’d have a better chance of getting him than he would.

Q  You don’t have a recollection of --

A  We may have connected. I don’t recall.

Q  You don’t recall?

A  I don’t recall.

Q  And you don’t recall the substance of any conversation with Mr. Mulvaney that you may have had about a White House visit?

A  I don’t know the date, but I’m sure at some point, I had a phone conversation, or I may have run into Mr. Mulvaney in the White House, having been there for another reason, and asking, you know, why don’t we have the meeting yet? Why don’t we have the phone call? And I don’t think I got a definitive answer, other than, we’re working on it.

Q  He didn’t tell you at any point that the President needs these investigations in order to have a White House visit?

A  That was never linked. That was only specifically brought into the press statement for a brief period of time through Mr. Giuliani when we were negotiating a press statement.

Q  So if another witness were to testify that you relayed the substance of a conversation that you had with Mr. Mulvaney, where you indicated that you had an agreement on a White House visit as long as you got an investigation in early July, are you saying that that witness would not be telling the truth?

A  That I do not recall at all.

Q  And if there was a memorialization of that witness’ perspective and corroborates their testimony, are you saying that that testimony would be inaccurate?

A  I’m saying I don’t have any recollection about an investigation. The only thing that I have testified to is that the two items were to be mentioned in the press statement at one point during the press statement negotiations, which were conducted between Volker, Giuliani, and, as I said, I gave input.

Q  Can you go to page 37, please. Let me go to July 21st at 1:45 a.m. And I’ll read it, Bill Taylor writes: "Gordon, one thing Kurt and I talked about yesterday was Sasha Danylyuk’s point that President Zelensky is sensitive about Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington domestic reelection politics." And you respond. "Absolutely, but we need to get to conversation started and the relationship built irrespective of the pretext. I am worried about the alternative."

Now, let me ask you something. What do you think President Zelensky’s sensitivity about being an instrument in Washington domestic reelection politics, as relayed to you on July 21st, references?

A  Well, I think President Zelensky, as a general prospect, did not want to get involved in U.S. election politics, which makes sense.

Q  Of course. What do you think he’s referencing?

A  I don’t know what he’s referencing.

Q  You have no idea, as you sit here, what he might be referencing?

A  When I said irrespective of the pretext, I wanted to keep the conversation going because at this point, we had already almost lost all credibility with the Ukrainians.

Q  Right. And isn’t the pretext the investigations that the President wanted?

A  I think the pretext was the -- it was never the investigations, I heard it was the press statement. I’ve always said this was about a press statement.

Q  I understand what you’ve said, Ambassador Sondland. And I don’t know whether you reviewed these text messages before or not, but your testimony today that the press statement was the first that you heard about the investigation is entirely inconsistent with the text messages that you were on. So why I’m showing you these text messages is that it may refresh your recollection that you actually did have conversations about this before the press statement. And I will ask you once again, what could President Zelensky possibly mean when he references Washington domestic reelection politics?

A  I can’t speculate what Bill Taylor was doing. I wanted to keep the conversation going.

MR. LUSKIN: Can we have a minute?

MR. GOLDMAN: Yeah.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: So repeat your question again, please.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Let me take a step back. You said you’ve been focused on the press statement, and ultimately, what Mr. Giuliani wanted in that press statement was a specific mention of the investigations into Burisma and the 2016 elections. Is that right?

A  That’s what I understood through Volker because, remember, I hadn’t met Giuliani at this point.

Q  Right, and we’ll get to that. But you understand that the press statement was something tangible, but what -- the substance that they wanted were these investigations?

A  What I understood was that breaking the logjam with getting the President to finally approve a White House visit was a public utterance by Zelensky, either through the press statement or through an interview or some other public means, that he was going to pursue transparency, corruption, and so on. It was later that the Burisma and the 2016 were added, by, apparently, Mr. Giuliani.

Q  To the press statement itself?

A  To the press statement itself.

Q  Okay. So we can agree, you will agree, I think, that Mr. Giuliani -- the condition -- by the time of the press statement discussion, the condition for a White House meeting was a press statement that included the initiation of these investigations?

A  That was, I believe, the most -- if I may use the world "egregious," version of the press statement, which was then never delivered.

Q  I understand it wasn’t delivered. But that addition was provided by Mr. Giuliani?

A  It must have been because that’s the only source it could have come from.

MR. LUSKIN: Just for clarification, I think what he’s trying to say is the press statement was iterative, and that he doesn’t recall at what point during that interview process the specific references to investigations, including Burisma and 2016, were added to the --

MR. GOLDMAN: We’ll get to that. Well get to that.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  But my last question, because our time is up, is did you or did you not know before the discussion about this press statement whether Mr. Giuliani, as the representative of the President, per the President’s instructions, conditioned a White House meeting on investigations related to domestic reelection politics?

A  That was Mr. Taylor’s characterization. My only recollection is that the White House visit was conditioned on the press statement involving the 2016 and Burisma. That was the only condition.

MR. GOLDMAN: I think our time is up. We’ll yield to the minority.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  And there’s a difference between a press statement and actual investigations, correct?

A  Thank you. That’s what I’m -- the point I’m trying to make, not very eloquently.

Q  So if anybody was trying to get the Ukrainians to make this statement, that’s different from getting the Ukrainians to make this statement and initiate an investigation. Is that correct?

A  That would be my assumption, yes. They are two different things.

Q  Were any other vehicles for this anti-corruption, you know, the priority they had on anti-corruption discussed, other than a statement? Excuse me.

A  Explain your question.

Q  Like was there another way to do this? Could they have maybe given an interview?

A  Yes, exactly. One of the other alternatives, I believe suggested by Mr. Giuliani through either Ambassador Volker or Secretary Perry, was just go on TV and say what you’re going to do.

Q  Okay. And from Giuliani or Volker, did you hear at any point in time that they really wanted an investigations or they just wanted the statement so they could move forward with the White House meeting?

A  I really don’t know.

Q  Okay.

A  I was told shortly after the inauguration by someone in Zelensky’s team is that he was going to open up all of the things that were shut down under Poroshenko, and as the person put it, let the light shine in or something to that effect.

Q  He had issues with Lutsenko, who is the prosecutor general, correct?

A  Who had issues with Lutsenko?

Q  The new President, Zelensky.

A  I believe he considered him part of Poroshenko’s team. Right. Yes.

Q  And so opening up many of the matters that Lutsenko had been looking into, that was far broader than just these two narrow issues, correct?

A  I’m speculating, but I think that’s true.

Q  In July 26th, when you were meeting with President Zelensky, did the topic of aid come up and the delay or the hold on the aid?

A  I don’t believe it did. I don’t recall that. That would have been a pretty touchy subject, and I don’t remember that being brought up.

Q  And to the best of your knowledge, when did Ukrainians realize that the aid was being held up?

A  I don’t know. But as I understood it from Ambassador Volker, or Ambassador Taylor, it was quite a while between when the aid was instructed to be held up, and when the Ukrainians actually discovered it had been held up.

Q  Okay. And at some point, it became a news story, do you remember that?

A  At some point.

Q  Okay. So I’m going to make as exhibit -- are we up to 6? Seven. Lucky number 7. Do you guys have it? Do you want it?

A  Okay.

[Minority Exhibit No. 7
was marked for identification.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  I should probably put a sticker on it.

A  This was on August 29th?

Q  This is on August 28th, a Politico story with the headline: Trump holds up Ukraine military aid meant to confront Russia. Do you know if the holdup in the aid was reported prior to this?

A  I don’t know when I learned about it. I didn’t see this article until just now.

Q  Do you know if -- did Volker communicate to you at some point that the Ukrainians learned about --

A  I think the first time I heard that the aid was being held up was when Taylor, I believe, sent a text saying he had heard that aid was going to be held up. And I don’t recall the date of that text.

Q  I think it’s in a text pack, a text package, which is exhibit 6. I think it’s the last page, if I’m correct.

A  Okay.

Q  So on September 8th at 12:37 p.m. Taylor -- do you need more time to read it or are you with me?

A  I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Q  Are you with me on --

A  What is it that you want me to read?

Q  I’m referring you to these texts.

A  What page are they on?

Q  Fifty-three. The last page of the pack, I think I said.

A  Okay. These are September.

Q  Right.

A  Okay. Got it. Okay.

Q  Okay. So at 12:37 p.m. Bill Taylor texted: The nightmare is they give the interview and don’t get the security assistance. The Russians love it. And then, you know, you request that they initiate, you know, a call. And then Bill Taylor says at 12:31, the message to the Ukrainians, and of course, the Russians, we send with the decision on security assistance is key, with the hold we already shaken their faith in us.

MR. LUSKIN: Where is the already shaken the faith --

MR. CASTOR: 12:31.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Got it. Got it. Okay.

MR. GOLDMAN: Sorry, what page are you on?

MR. CASTOR: The last page of the pack, 53.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Okay. Got it.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Okay. And then Bill Taylor says, counting on you to be right about this.

A  Got it. Right.

Q  Is this the time when Ambassador Taylor becomes zeroed in on the question?

A  I mean, I believe what this --

MR. LUSKIN: Wait, can you clarify what question you’re talking about here.

MR. CASTOR: The hold in the aid.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: The hold in the aid. Yeah, I mean, I think we knew that the aid was held up earlier than that, sometime in July.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  You knew the aid was held up?

A  Right.

Q  The Ambassador knew the aid was held up, but at some point the Ukrainians became aware that the aid was held up?

A  Right.

Q  And then Ambassador Taylor became aware, and I think he communicated that, as I understand. At some point the Ambassador communicated --

A  I think the Ambassador communicated that the aid was held up in July, but he didn’t know why.

Q  Correct. But at some point, the Ambassador learned the Ukrainians learned.

A  I see. Okay.

MR. GOLDMAN: Is that a question? Sorry.

MR. CASTOR: What’s that?

MR. GOLDMAN: Is that a question?

MR. CASTOR: This is the backdrop of what we’re discussing here.

MR. GOLDMAN: Well, do you know that? You just made a statement and he said okay.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Well, we started this out by saying, when you met on July 26th with President Zelensky, the aid had been on hold for a couple week by that point in time. You testified, correct me if I’m wrong, that it didn’t appear that the Ukrainians knew the aid was being held at that point, correct?

A  I wasn’t aware that they knew.

Q  Okay. And then I asked you, when did they become aware to the best of your knowledge, and I think you said that Ambassador Taylor notified you?

A  Ambassador Taylor notified me. I don’t know if the Ukrainians were aware of it at that point.

Q  Oh, okay. My question is, when did you learn that the Ukrainians learned? Is that fair? I mean, is that --

A  No, that’s --

Q  Sorry.

A  I understand the question. The question is when did I learn that the Ukrainians learned?

Q  Yes.

A  I don’t recall exactly when I learned that the Ukrainians learned.

Q  I think we can all agree by the time there was a Politico report --

A  Everyone --

Q  -- everyone would have known?

A  Yeah.

Q  Getting back to Taylor’s concerns on the 9th, which you know, he references in the interview. Do you know what interview he was referencing?

A  I think this was the press statement had now morphed into some kind of an interview that President Zelensky would give to a TV station.

Q  Okay.

A  And that that would replace the press statement.

Q  Okay. And do you know where that interview would have occurred?

A  I don’t.

Q  Or on what network?

A  I don’t know, but something President Trump would obviously see.

Q  Okay.

A  FOX. On Tucker.

MR. BITAR: I want to make sure the reporters got all that.

MR. MCDERMOTT: Let the record reflect there’s lots of laughing in the room.

MR. CASTOR: But not by Mr. Castor.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  The 12:34 a.m. text.

A  Yes.

Q  Where Taylor says: Counting on you to be right about this interview, Gordon?

A  Yes.

Q  Do you remember, had you been -- had you been advocating to the Ambassador like, look, we’ll go from the statement to the interview and we’ll be all good?

A  I think what that refers to, and I’m trying to recall as best I can, that someone had to move first before the other moved. So the question was, would the White House invitation be forthcoming before the interview or after the interview? And I think what I was saying there was, give the interview, and I’m sure the White House will then respond with an invitation. And I think what Ambassador Taylor was saying was, are you sure? And I’m saying, no, I’m not sure. I just assume.

Q  Okay.

A  I don’t know if I’m right.

[2:25 p.m.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  And then Taylor at 12:47 --

A  12:47.

Q  -- says: "I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign."

So just a couple texts ago it was a discussion of the interview.

A  That was the alarming text.

Q  Okay. And so is that why you -- did you feel that maybe there was a disconnect?

A  No. That is -- that is the first time that I speculated that now this aid was actually being held up in order to do this political thing, and that’s when I called President Trump and got the answer I got.

Q  And you got the definitive answer from him that he didn’t want anything?

A  I got what he told me, yes.

Q  He wanted nothing, I think is --

A  I want nothing.

Q  Okay. And then it seems to me, and maybe I missed this, but it seems to me then there isn’t a clear next communication with you and the Ambassador. You send this relatively long text and it sort of sounds like it’s well-thought-out. Did that end it?

A  Well -- no. What ended it was I said: I suggest you call the Secretary --

Q  Right.

A  -- because this is your portfolio. Call the Secretary. And he said: I agree. And I never heard anything further.

Q  Do you know if he called the Secretary?

A  I don't.

Q  And then it became moot, because the aid was lifted?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay. Subsequent to that difficult period, did you ever have any communications with the Ambassador about what happened there?

A  I -- my best recollection is that once the aid hold was lifted we were out of the woods and we were back to what's it going to take to get the White House meeting.

Q  Okay. Between the 9th and all this news breaking, which happened around the 22nd or 23rd of September, did you have any further discussions with the Ambassador about a statement or a news interview?

A  I think -- I believe -- and, again, best of my recollection, was that was when the meeting morphed into the United Nations meeting.

Q  Okay.

A  So I was disappointed, because I thought the White House meeting would have been far more impactful and important for President Zelensky, but the decision was made above my pay grade to do this at the United Nations sometime in late September.

Q  Okay. And that took the place of the White House meeting?

A  Well, there still has -- as you recall, the two Presidents joked at that meeting: You invited me to the White House, I still don't have a date. This was President Zelensky saying to President Trump.

Q  Right.

A  Which was in the media. The press was in the room at the time. President Trump said, I'm working on it, and smiled, was the end of that. There still hasn't been an Oval meeting, to the best of my knowledge.

Q  Right. I think we would know. Have you had, since this story broke, have you had any communications with Ambassador Taylor about this topic?

A  I don't recall talking to Ambassador Taylor after the -- I got the phone call from the White House about the whistleblower complaint. I'm not -- I won't swear to it, but I don't believe I've had any communications with him.

Q  I want to turn to the text pack again, the Bates number 37, and refer you to July 21st at 1:45 a.m.

Bill Taylor writes: "Gordon, one thing Kurt and I talked about yesterday was Danylyuk's point Zelensky is sensitive about Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington politics."

And then your response is what I want to ask you about, 7/21 at 4:45 a.m.: "Absolutely. But we need to get the conversation started and the relationship built, irrespective of pretext."

A  Uh-huh.

Q  "I'm worried about the alternative."

Could you just tell us what you meant by pretext?

A  Well, the pretext being the agreed-upon interview or the agreed-upon press statement. We just need to get by it so that the two can meet, because, again, it was back to once they meet, all of this will be fixed.

Q  Okay.

A  So let’s not argue over the form of what the condition is as long as it's -- you know, the press statement or the interview, let's just get it done so they can meet. That was my point.

Q  Okay. And then you said: "I'm worried about the alternative."

A  The alternative is no engagement and lack of credibility with the Ukrainians, because now it's 2 months past when the invitation. Again, they took that invitation very seriously. Even though we may throw those around like candy, they didn't read it as that. They read a personal letter from the President of the United States saying: I'm inviting you to the White House, let's set a date. And the call hadn't even occurred yet. So --

Q  Then Taylor says: "So the call tomorrow can be a positive step."

A  That, I believe, was when the call was set for the 20th, which was then taken down.

Q  Okay. I see. Okay.

Among the U.S. officials communicating with the Ukraine on a regular basis, whether that be yourself or Ambassador Volker or Secretary Perry, Ambassador Taylor, who on these issues was doing most of the talking for the United States?

A  Taylor, number one, and then Volker, number two.

Q  On these issues, about the statement and the White House meeting?

A  I assume that all of the -- and I think this was Ambassador Volker's habit, that whenever he communicated with the Ukrainians he did it in coordination with Ambassador Taylor, since he's the ambassador on the ground.

Q  Do you think the Ukrainians trusted Ambassador Volker?

A  I believe they did.

Q  And he had developed a rapport with some of them, such as Yermak?

A  Yes, I think they liked him.

Q  And he was doing an effective job?

A  From my perspective, he was.

Q  And he's someone that's acted with integrity, as far as you know?

A  Yes.

Q  Both personal and professional?

A  Yes.

Q  And you have acted with integrity, both personal and professional, with these matters?

A  I have.

Q  And in the best interests of the United States?

A  I have.

Q  And to the extent that non-U.S. Government actors such as Mr. Giuliani inserted themselves into this, you've tried to do your best to push for the best outcome for the United States?

A  Correct, which I thought was a meeting between the Presidents.

Q  And Mr. Volker was doing the same thing?

A  Correct.

Q  And Ambassador Taylor was doing the same thing?

A  Yes.

Q  Do you know if Ambassador Taylor ever tried to talk to the Secretary about getting Giuliani out of this mix?

A  I don't know.

Q  Okay. Did you ever ask the Ambassador or did Ambassador --

A  I didn't. The only time I suggested that Mr. Taylor talk to the Secretary was in my text to him.

Q  Because Rudy Giuliani has a good rapport with the President, but so does the Secretary.

A  Correct.

Q  And so going to the Secretary about this, was that ever considered an alternative? Maybe the Secretary should talk to the President and say, "Let us handle this"?

A  It would have been an alternative. I don't know if it ever occurred.

Q  Okay. It never --

A  I don't know if it ever occurred.

Q  How frequently did you talk with -- or do you talk with the Secretary?

A  I communicate with him fairly regularly, either through Lisa Kenna or directly.

Q  Okay. And by fairly regularly, is that weekly or monthly?

A  Probably weekly.

Q  Okay. And he's usually responsive to your --

A  Either directly or through Lisa, yeah.

Q  Okay. And Ambassador Taylor has a pretty good ability --

A  I don't know. He certainly could get through to the Secretary if he needed to, but I don't know what their --

Q  In the wake of Ambassador Yovanovitch being called home, were you a part of the discussion about having Ambassador Taylor go out to be the Charge?

A  I didn't know Ambassador Taylor until he was there.

Q  Okay. So you were not part of the discussion of --

A  Not that I remember.

Q  What can you tell us about the -- when you first learned that there was an effort afoot to remove Ambassador Yovanovitch or recall her early?

A  What’s the question? When did I learn it?

Q  Yeah, when did you learn that there was a movement to oust her?

A  I don't remember. I just remember that there were a lot of rumors swirling around in my mission that she was being given a hard time and --

Q  Okay.

A  Yeah.

Q  Was that after March of 2019 or before?

A  Well, it was probably -- the first time I really met Ambassador Yovanovitch was when I went to Odessa, which would have been in February of '19. So it probably was after that.

Q  Okay. And before the removal of or the recall of the Ambassador, did anyone consult you, given your role with Ukraine?

A  No.

Q  Do you know if anyone consulted Ambassador Volker?

A  I don't know.

Q  Did you have any communication with Ambassador Volker about Ambassador Yovanovitch's situation?

A  I think Ambassador Volker anecdotally said he's very supportive of Ambassador Yovanovitch and, you know, liked her.

Q  Okay. So he was disappointed, too, as far as you know, that she was recalled?

A  I mean, if -- he never expressed disappointment to me, but if he said he liked her and was supportive of her, I assume he would have been disappointed.

Q  Okay. I think you testified this morning about a conversation -- did you have any conversations with Ambassador Yovanovitch while she was going through this, the period between March and her recall, which was about --

A  You know, counsel mentioned that I did. I don't recall it. I could have, but I don't remember it. I seem to be the one people call when they have career problems. I don't know why.

Q  Did Ambassador --

A  I do a lot of counseling with a lot of people, both in the public and private sector, about their careers.

Q  Okay. Did Ambassador Yovanovitch lean on you for career counseling?

A  We may have -- I don't remember. I honestly don't remember the conversation. I'm not denying it occurred. I just don't remember.

Q  Okay. So to the best of your recollection, you never --

A  It wasn't, you know, a momentous enough conversation that I would have remembered it.

Q  Okay. You never encouraged her, to the best of your recollection, to tweet or something to that effect, support of the President?

A  Again, I don't -- would I swear 100 percent I didn't, no, but I don't -- I just don't remember it.

Q  That's all we're asking you, is your best recollection as you sit here today.

A  Yeah, I don't -- I don't -- I don't remember it. I think I was writing reviews for all my employees at the time, so I was a little preoccupied.

Q  Turning back to the question of whether any Ukrainian official ever told you about the suggestion that they need to investigate Biden, did that ever occur?

A  No. I believe, again, to the best of my recollection, I go back to the only thing that I recall was the press statement or a live interview of some kind. And, as you described it earlier, if the implication was an investigation, that that would actually happen, I wasn't aware of that. I was aware that Giuliani apparently wanted Burisma and 2016 mentioned in one of those formats. That's what I remember.

Q  I'd like to go through what you can remember of your communications with Giuliani.

A  Okay.

Q  You said the first one occurred in August?

A  Yeah. I believe I was introduced to him electronically by Ambassador Volker around the very beginning of August, August 1st or 2nd or something like that.

Q  And you raised the prospect of potentially getting together, but that never occurred?

A  Yeah. I think Ambassador Volker, you know, introduced us like, this is Gordon Sondland, our Ambassador to the EU, he's helping me on Ukraine, something to that effect. And Giuliani texted back: Great, would love to meet some time. And I think I threw out a couple of dates that I was in Washington or -- we just never connected. I think we tried once or twice to meet personally, and it never happened.

Q  Did you ever talk on the phone?

A  Yes. I think I participated in one or two conference calls with Volker and Giuliani, and then I think I may have had one or two direct calls with him, and that was it

Q  And do you remember the dates of those calls?

A  Well, they would have been likely in August.

Q  Okay. So potential of five?

A  Something like that.

Q  Five calls?

A  Something like that.

Q  Okay. And do you recall the specifics of any of the calls?

A  All I can recall is the gist of every call was what was going to go in the press statement.

Q  Okay.

A  It was solely relating to negotiating the press statement, where, you know, Volker had taken the lead on it, and then I poked my nose into it to see if I could broker some kind of a compromise so we could get moving on the White House visit.

Q  And do you recall what words Rudy Giuliani used on those calls?

A  Again, he kept repeating Burisma and 2016 election.

He never mentioned Biden to me on any call that I was on.

Q  Okay. If at all possible, I'd like to break down each of the calls to the extent you can remember them. Is that something you can do, or do they all mush together?

A  They all mush together, because they were like Groundhog Day. They were the same subject matter in each call.

Q  Okay. And did these calls last a long time or were they short?

A  A couple of minutes.

Q  All of them?

A  Yeah. Well, maybe -- I don't know about the conference calls, but the individual calls were a couple of minutes at the most.

Q  Okay. And who was leading the discussion?

A  Volker.

Q  Okay. And maybe just describe what you can of any parts of these calls that you can remember.

A  I think Volker was trying to get to the bottom of what was it that the President wanted to see from the Ukrainians in order to get the White House visit scheduled. And I think Giuliani kept saying it needs to be some kind of a public utterance.

I do recall that after he met with Yermak, apparently, in Madrid, he was far more sanguine about Ukraine than prior to that meeting. Volker reported back to me that Giuliani was happy with that meeting. But I don't know what they talked about.

Q  When was the meeting with Yermak in Madrid? Was it the beginning of August?

A  I don't know. I'd have to look it up.

MR. NOBLE: Steve, I believe that was August 2nd.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Beginning of August, 2nd of August?

A  In Madrid?

Q  Yes.

A  Yeah.

Q  Okay. And did you get a readout from that meeting? Was anybody with Giuliani?

A  I don't know. All I do know is that Volker reported back that Rudy and Yermak had a great meeting and it looks like things are turning around.

Q  Okay.

A  That's what I heard.

Q  Okay. So then these calls that you describe, the four or five, happened subsequent to that meeting?

A  Yeah, because I don't -- I didn't meet Giuliani until at least August 1, maybe August 2 or 3, by text. By text.

Q  By text and then telephone?

A  Right.

Q  And I know I asked you this before and I'll ask it again. Do you remember any words that Rudy Giuliani said other than Burisma and 2016? Did he use the name Bidens?

A  I never heard Biden.

Q  Okay. You never heard Rudy Giuliani mention the word "Biden"?

A  I never heard him mention Biden. I'm not saying he didn't use it. I never heard him say it.

Q  Okay. So in the -- you used the word "evolution," I think, of this story.

A  Continuum, yeah.

Q  Continuum. In the early part of August, the Bidens hadn't entered the timeline yet, in your mind?

A  I don't think so. I don't think the Bidens had entered the timeline while we were negotiating the press statement.

Q  Okay.

A  Which was in the middle of August, I believe.

Q  Okay. Did Volker ever tell you about meetings he had with Giuliani?

A  He might have, again, in a very sort of good meeting, Rudy's happy, Rudy's unhappy. Nothing definitive. Again, I was focused on the White House meeting. That's all I cared about at that point.

Q  Right.

A  I had one mission, and that was my mission.

Q  Okay. Did you ever hear Volker talk about investigating the Bidens?

A  Never, that I can recall.

Q  In these four or five conversations with Giuliani was there ever a resolution or was it sort of always touching base, Burisma, 2016, and then --

A  We just could never get a press statement agreed to, and then the whole idea got dropped.

Q  Okay. And do you remember when in the month of August?

A  Probably mid- to late August would be my guess.

Q  And was that the last time you spoke with Mr. Giuliani?

A  I believe so.

Q  Senator Johnson attended the Zelensky inauguration.

A  I’m sorry?

Q  Senator Ron Johnson --

A  Yes.

Q  -- attended the Zelensky inauguration. Was that the first time you had met the Senator?

A  No, I think I met him during my confirmation.

Q  Okay. After your confirmation but before the inauguration, did you have any particular relationship with him or --

A  We might have gotten together. I can't remember if he was on one of the codels in Brussels or I may have seen him on the Hill. He was very friendly and helpful during my confirmation, so I stayed in touch.

Q  Did you ever have a discussion with Senator Johnson about any of these issues, such as investigating --

A  Well, I --

Q  -- Burisma or 2016?

A  Yeah, I noticed in the media he had come out and said that he and I had a conversation on the phone about it. And he had said that I told him -- this is the media report, and I haven't discussed this with him since that media report -- that I had said there was a quid pro quo.

And I don't remember telling him that, because I'm not sure I knew that at that point. I think what I might have done is I might have been speculating -- I hope there's no, I hope this isn't being held up for nefarious reasons.

I think we were having sort of a freeform discussion about what was going on, because he was very frustrated that Zelensky still hadn't been to the White House. I was referring to my conversation with Senator Johnson on the phone. I believe it was the end of August sometime.

Q  Okay.

[Discussion off the record.]

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Oh, yes, thank you.

The quid pro quo referring to the aid, not a press statement.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  And you had never thought there was a precondition to the aid. Is that correct?

A  Never, no. I mean, I was dismayed when it was held up, but I didn't know why.

Q  So to the extent there were any preconditions to anything, it was perhaps with the White House meeting, but not the aid?

A  I wasn't aware of it or I wasn't -- I don't recall being aware of it.

Q  So your conversation with Senator Johnson was at the end of August, you think?

A  I believe it was the end of August. And then I believe he told me he was going to be calling the President to find out why things weren't moving forward.

Q  And did you talk to him as a followup after he did that?

A  I don't think I did, no.

Q  Are you familiar with the Wall Street Journal story that came out Friday, October 4th, where Senator Johnson raised this issue?

A  Yeah. I think that's what flagged it for me. Someone brought it to my attention.

Q  And did you ever do anything about that article, such as call the reporter or --

A  No.

Q  -- call Senator Johnson, or did you just --

A  There's so many stories out there about what I allegedly did or didn't do. I can't chase every newspaper. I mean, this has been a very bad experience for me.

Q  Fair enough.

Did you put out a statement yourself?

A  No. I -- you know, there were implications that I was cooking all of this up with Rudy Giuliani throughout the year when I only met him for the first time in August. I don't know how I could cook something up with someone I had never met.

Q  Have you talked to Senator Johnson since?

A  I have not. But our relationship was always very cordial and friendly.

Q  Okay. So you think Senator Johnson just misspoke?

A  I don’t know. I'm not accusing him of misspeaking. I'm saying I don't know what basis I would have had to assert on that date that there was aid being held up in return for a White House meeting. I don't know why I would know that at that point. I don't recall having been told that by then.

Q  So you hadn't -- did you ever, in the course of this, ever make a statement to the effect of, you know, we're cutting a big check to the Ukraine, you know, what should we get for this?

A  That's not something I would have said. I don't remember that at all.

Q  Okay. So you've never made a statement relating the aid to conditions that the Ukraine ought to comply with?

A  I don't remember that, no.

Q  But if someone suggested that you made that statement, that would be out of your own character, you're saying?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. Have you had any communications with President Zelensky since September 25th?

A  The last time I spoke to him was in person.

Q  In New York?

A  In New York, when he was with the President of the United States.

Q  How about any other Ukrainian official?

A  I think I may have chatted with Mr. Yermak right after that meeting, at the meeting after Zelensky left, and I think that was about the end of it.

Q  Okay. So you haven't had any further communications with Ukrainians?

A  I think Mr. Yermak reached out to me by text, and I don't think I responded.

Q  Okay. Do you remember what he said to you?

A  Hello, how are you? Something like that.

Q  Okay. And why didn't you respond?

A  I just didn’t want to respond once the matter had become contentious.

Q  Okay. Contentious with Yermak or contentious here?

A  No, no, contentious with the White House. Because remember, I got the call from the White House about the whistleblower report at the United Nations. So it was all within a day or two of that meeting with Zelensky. So then I got the call from the White House saying: Your name is in a whistleblower -- and I just said, I'm not going to engage any further.

Q  Do you still have a role in Ukraine policy?

A  At this very second, no, but I would like to continue it, because I think it's critical.

Q  Okay. So is it fair to say since the September 25th and subsequent events, you've pushed the pause button for yourself on your involvement?

A  For myself, because, first of all, I've been consumed with preparing for these depositions and dealing with all of this other stuff.

Q  Zelensky is reportedly close with an oligarch with the name of --

A  Kolomoisky.

Q  Kolomoisky. What do you know about his relationship with him?

A  I only know of Mr. Kolomoisky anecdotally, and the rap on him is that he's a bad guy and that I think I heard he had helped Zelensky at some point during his business career or with his campaign, but Zelensky was trying to distance himself from Kolomoisky because he knew that that was the best pathway forward for the country. That's what I had heard anecdotally.

Q  Okay. In your discussion with State Department officials, National Security Council officials, did anyone raise concerns that we have to evaluate whether Zelensky will be himself caught up with some of these oligarchs that are -- you know, have corrupt reputations?

A  Yeah. I mean, to stay in an unclassified answer, I think there's always concern about any leader of any country where there are oligarchs.

Q  Okay. We are certainly in an unclassified setting and we don't want you to go into a classified setting.

MR. LUSKIN: I just was a little concerned that --

MR. CASTOR: Absolutely.

MR. LUSKIN: -- the way you framed the question might implicate his sharing information that shouldn't be shared in this setting.

MR. CASTOR: Thank you.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  With the draft statement that Yermak and Ambassador Volker were kicking around, do you know if Giuliani ever inserted himself into that communication where he was talking directly to Yermak about it?

A  I don't know if he was talking to Yermak about it, but I assume that Volker was getting his guidance from Giuliani, because Giuliani was the one that had to be satisfied.

Q  Did Volker ever tell you his feelings on the statement before he drafted that one-liner at the end?

A  I mean, the only conversation I have had with Volker -- I can't tell you when or where -- was that there shouldn't be any preconditions, that, you know, we were having to negotiate this statement or interview to get a meeting that should have occurred without any preconditions.

Q  That was your view?

A  I think that was Volker's view, Taylor's. I think it was everyone's view.

Q  So that was your view, too?

A  My view.

Q  And Ambassador Taylor's and Volker's?

A  Correct.

Q  And so we're going through this exercise with Yermak and kicking around a possible statement or a TV interview solely because of the Giuliani involvement?

A  Apparently so.

Q  Other than the May 23rd meeting with the President where he said talk to Giuliani, have you ever heard the President refer to go talk to Giuliani?

A  Not to me.

Q  Okay. So that's the only time in your firsthand knowledge that the President referred people to Giuliani on this issue?

A  That's, the best of my recollection, was the only time.

Q  And do you know if the President referred Volker outside of your presence --

A  I don't know.

Q  -- to Giuliani? Was he speaking with the President, do you know?

A  I don't believe he's ever met alone with the President.

Q  Okay. Did any State Department officials ever express their concern to you about Ambassador Yovanovitch’s recall?

A  I think there are a couple of people in my mission in Brussels who knew her well, had served with her in some capacity, and had heard that she was in jeopardy or something to that effect, and were very disappointed and expressed, you know, she's a great person and she doesn't deserve this, something to that effect. I don’t remember who it was. It could have been my DCM, but I don’t remember.

Q  Anybody back in Washington?

A  Not that I can recall.

Q  Were you aware that after the call transcript came out September 25th that there was an effort inside the State Department to put out a statement of support for Yovanovitch?

A  Let me see if I get that straight. You said after the transcript of the President's call with Zelensky was released there was an effort to do what?

Q  Inside the State Department there were some career Foreign Service folks --

A  Oh.

Q  -- that were advocating the Secretary put a statement of support out.

A  I didn't know. I think I read that in the newspaper, but I wouldn't have gotten that, because I'm not a career --

Q  Okay.

A  -- I'm not a career Foreign Service officer.

Q  Okay. So you weren't aware of any initiative inside the State Department to do something to signal that --

A  I vaguely recall reading it in the paper or seeing it somewhere, but no one sent me anything internally.

Q  Okay. Did the State Department do anything to signal support of Ambassador Yovanovitch?

A  Not to the best of my knowledge.

Q  So they didn't have an internal email or they didn't have a --

A  They may have. Again, I wasn't privy to it.

Q  Okay.

A  I didn't see it. If you're telling me it's on my email, I didn't read it. I don't remember that.

MR. CASTOR: I'm sorry, my time is expired.

Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Let's take a 5-minute break.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Thank you.

[Recess.]

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay, let's go back on the record. The time is with the majority.

Mr. Noble, you are recognized.

MR. NOBLE: Thank you, Chairman.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Ambassador Sondland, I want to direct your attention to the end of August. And my colleague Mr. Castor was asking you about the Politico article that came out around August 28th which made public the freeze that the administration had put in place on the Ukrainian security assistance. Do you recall that?

A  Yes, I recall him describing it.

Q  Around that time, I believe you testified that you and Ambassador Volker and the Ukrainians had dropped the idea of doing a statement announcing the investigations that Rudy Giuliani wanted, specifically Burisma and 2016. Is that right?

A  Yeah, I believe the Ukrainians didn't want to go forward.

Q  But you were still discussing the possibility of President Zelensky doing a public interview, possibly with a news outlet, in which he would announce those investigations?

A  I think the Ukrainians mentioned to Volker that they were planning to do one and that they might incorporate some of those things in that interview.

Q  Okay. So at the time when the freeze became public on August 28th and Ukraine presumably learned about that freeze, they knew that the Americans were still pushing for an announcement of these investigations. Is that right?

A  I don’t know when the Ukrainians found out. I mean, I don’t know when they would have made the connection. They might have learned before. They might have learned after the Politico article. I have no idea.

Q  Well, on August 28th it became public in the Politico article, correct?

A  Yeah. I see this Politico article, yeah.

Q  Okay. And then I believe in Mr. Volker's text messages, on August 29th Andrey Yermak actually sends the Politico article to Mr. Volker and asks to speak with him.

A  Was that a text I was on?

Q  I don't know if that was a text that you were on.

A  Okay.

Q  But did you have any conversations with the Ukrainians or with Mr. Volker, Ambassador Volker, about the fact that this freeze had been put in place around this time?

A  I don't recall having any. I'm not saying it didn't occur, but I don't recall having any. I think Volker was handling those conversations.

Q  So I'll direct your attention to -- let's go to page 20 of the text messages, and it's near the bottom on August 29th, 2019, at 3:06 a.m.

A  3:06?

Q  Yeah. In the line above it, Andrey Yermak says, "need to talk to you," and then he sends a link to the Politico article from August 28th --

A  Yeah.

Q  -- to Ambassador Volker. So presumably at that point the Ukrainians knew about the freeze, correct?

A  Apparently.

Q  Did you have any conversations with Ambassador Volker about that at that time?

A  I don't remember when I was brought in on the conversations relating to the freeze, you know, until close to, I believe, the Johnson conversation, the conversation with Senator Johnson. I don't know exactly what day.

Q  That was August 30th, correct?

A  Yeah, I think so.

Q  So -- but you learned about the freeze on July 18th, when Bill Taylor texted you about the SVTC announcing the freeze?

A  Right.

Q  Okay. So between July 18th and August 28th, did you have any -- you never had any conversations with the Ukrainians about the fact that the aid was frozen?

A  I don't recall having conversations with the Ukrainians. What I recall was trying to chase down the reason for the freeze, and I could never get a straight answer and I sort of gave up.

Q  But you don't recall any conversations with the Ukrainians about the freeze?

A  I won't swear to it, but I don't recall, I honestly don't.

Q  So let's go to page 39 of the text messages. And I want to use the text messages, because I think they might be useful in helping refresh your recollection --

A  Okay.

Q  -- and kind of locking down certain dates.

Do you see up here at the top. This is a conversation between Bill Taylor and Kurt Volker. On August 30th, 2019, at 12:14, Bill Taylor says: "Trip canceled."

And then Volker says: "Hope VPOTUS keeps the bilat" --

A  Right.

Q  -- "and tees up White House visit."

And then Volker says: "And hope Gordon and Perry still going."

And you respond: "I am going. Pompeo is speaking to POTUS today to see if he can go."

Is that the meeting in Warsaw for the World War II commemoration?

A  Yeah. This is refreshing my memory. Yes, correct, it is.

Q  Okay. Do you know why President Trump did not attend the Warsaw commemoration?

A  The reason that I had heard was the hurricane. He wanted to stay behind to oversee the hurricane issues.

Q  President Trump was scheduled to meet with President Zelensky at that Warsaw meeting, right?

A  I believe so, yes.

Q  And did you attend?

A  I did.

Q  And who else was there?

A  A lot of people.

Q  I mean, for -- with any meetings with President Zelensky during that --

A  Huge bilat with Vice President Pence and a whole cast of people.

Q  Were you present for any conversations between President Pence and President -- Vice President Pence and President Zelensky?

A  Only the one in the big bilat. I don't believe there was any pull-aside or any private conversation other than the big bilateral meeting.

Q  Okay. Do you recall any discussions around that time about the link between the White House visit and the push for a public announcement by the Ukrainians of the investigations Giuliani wanted?

A  I don't. I was focused more during that trip on a meeting that Pompeo and I had scheduled with the big four leaders of -- the new leaders of the EU. And when Pompeo couldn't go to Warsaw, I was worried that I had already set those meetings up for him and I to meet with the four new leaders.

So I wound up going with Vice President Pence. I sat in on the bilat. And then I came back to Brussels, I believe, and Pompeo came just for the meetings with the big four from Washington to Brussels.

Q  And Senator Johnson, was he part of the U.S. delegation to Warsaw?

A  I don’t think so, no.

Q  So it was around this time, though, it was reported that you had the conversation with Senator Johnson in which he, at least, claimed that you told him there was a quid pro quo.

A  Well, that was his recollection, that wasn't mine, because I don't know that I would have known that then.

Q  Do you recall the circumstances under which you spoke with Senator Johnson around this time, though?

A  I think he reached out to me and said: Can we talk? And I called him, and he told me he was talking to the President the next day. And I think we were just having sort of a freeform conversation as to what was going on with Ukraine. He seemed to have a continuing interest in the same issues that I did. After we left Ukraine, you know, the Ukraine inauguration, he'd stayed in touch.

Q  Do you recall whether you and Senator Johnson discussed the freeze on Ukrainian assistance?

A  On that August 30th call?

Q  Yes.

A  We probably did.

Q  Do you recall what he said to you and you said to him about it?

A  No, other than I do remember he said that he was going to call the President to see if he could get to the bottom of it.

Q  So it's been reported that he said that when, at least, you allegedly linked the assistance with the announcement by the Ukrainians of these investigations that the President and Rudy Giuliani wanted, Senator Johnson said he winced and his reaction was: Oh, God, I don’t want to see those two things combined.

Do you have any reason to doubt that that was Senator Johnson's reaction to your phone call?

A  I don't recall -- I don't recall the call going that way, because, again, I was trying to think of why would I have the basis to know that they were linked at that point. I'm not sure I did have the basis to know that.

I think we were both pipe dreaming or speculating as to why the aid still hadn't been released, because I think Senator Johnson was a strong advocate of having the aid released immediately, without any further ado.

Q  Okay. So that conversation with Senator Johnson was August 30th. I want to direct your attention to page 39 again of your text messages.

A  Okay.

Q  And let's go to September 1st. And the very -- September 1st at 12:08 p.m., Bill Taylor writes: "Are we now saying that security assistance and White House meeting are conditioned on investigations?"

You're on this chain, aren't you?

A  Yes.

Q  Does that refresh your recollection, that around this time you're aware of a possible linkage between the security assistance and the White House meeting being conditioned on the investigations that Rudy Giuliani and the President wanted the Ukrainians to announce?

A  I think that was the beginning of when that allegation began to be made, because, again, I said, call me. I didn't want to do this by text. I wanted to have a conversation.

Q  Did you not want to do it by text because there would then be a written record of your discussion about the quid pro quo?

A  No. I already said that in my opening statement. I do that all the time.

Q  Does this refresh your recollection, though, that at least around this time, you and Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Taylor were discussing at least the possibility of a linkage between the White House meeting and the assistance and the investigations that the Ukrainians were supposed to announce?

A  I don't know that we were discussing it. I think that it really came to the fore when I got the text from Ambassador Taylor a few days later.

Q  Well, it was over a week later, correct?

A  Or a week later.

Q  So you said earlier in your testimony that you were shocked when you got the later text messages from Ambassador Taylor where he linked the security assistance and the investigations, but you were aware at least for over a week that, at least from Ambassador Taylor's perspective, this is exactly what was going on.

A  Well, as I testified earlier, every time I would ask various people, whether it was at the State Department or elsewhere, what's going on, no one could give me a straight answer. I mean, I heard it has to do with the fact that Europe isn't putting up their share, it has to do with the fact that they think there's an audit that needs to be done. I heard all kinds of reasons why.

I never got -- until Taylor sent me that text saying, I hope this isn't what's going on, when I made the phone call to the President, that's when the red light really went on for me.

Q  Okay. Well, back here on September 1st, though, when Bill Taylor said: "Are we now saying security assistance and White House meeting are conditioned on investigations?"

You said: "Call me."

Did you guys have a phone call?

A  We probably did.

Q  Do you recall what was discussed during that phone call?

A  I mean, if I had had a conversation the previous day -- I'm speculating now -- if I had had a conversation the previous day with Senator Johnson and we discussed the same issue, I might have continued that conversation: I hope this isn't going on.

Again, I'm speculating, because I don't really recall exactly.

And then, like you said, a week went by, and then all of a sudden I get this panicked text from Ambassador Taylor, and that's when I did my thing.

Should I have done something earlier? Maybe. I didn't.

Q  I'm not asking you that. But around that time, though, this week, September 1st to September 9th, did you have your own concerns that there might be a linkage between the security assistance and the White House meeting? Which I believe you said there already, in your mind, was a linkage between getting a White House meeting in exchange for a Ukrainian announcement on the investigation.

A  No, in exchange for the press statement.

Q  For the press statement?

A  For the press statement.

Q  But the press statement was about the investigations, correct?

A  Well, all I can do is repeat to you what I heard through Ambassador Volker from Giuliani. That's the only source this would have come from, because the President never discussed it with any of us.

Q  And we're going to go through some of those text messages about the drafting of the statement and the evolution later on.

But right now my question is, did you personally have concerns that there were these -- that the aid was being held up, the White House meeting was being withheld, until the Ukrainians did something that Giuliani and the President wanted, specifically to announce these investigations?

A  As I said earlier, the continuum --

Q  Grew?

A  -- grew and culminated in the text from Ambassador Taylor on I think it was the 9th of September.

Q  Okay. And then in response to that, there was like a 5-hour gap between when you wrote back to Ambassador Taylor. We can turn to the last page. It's page 53.

And so Ambassador Taylor sends you this text message at, at least marked here, 12:47 a.m.: "As I said on the phone, I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign."

That suggests that either you and he had had a telephone conversation about the linkage. Do you recall that telephone conversation?

A  Either he and I had one or he and Volker had one. He had one with somebody, because he was, you know, clearly coming to that conclusion.

Q  Do you recall if you had a telephone conversation --

A  I don't recall.

Q  -- with him?

A  I don't recall.

Q  Okay. So -- and then you said in response to that, you telephoned President Trump. Is that right?

A  That is correct.

Q  Okay. During that telephone conversation with President Trump, you didn't ask the President directly if there was a quid pro quo, correct?

A  No. As I testified, I asked the question open ended, what do you want from Ukraine?

Q  President Trump was the first person to use the word "quid pro quo," correct?

A  That is correct.

Q  And I believe you testified that President Trump said he didn't want anything from Ukraine. Is that correct?

A  That's what he said.

Q  Okay. But that wasn't true, correct?

A  I'm just telling you what he said.

Q  But you knew that wasn't true?

A  What I had heard were multiple rumors about what he did or didn't want. That's why I wanted to ask the question the way I did.

Q  Well, you heard that from Rudy Giuliani, that the President wanted Ukraine to announce investigations into 2016 and Burisma, right? We've been over this a number of times.

A  I heard that from Rudy Giuliani. I never heard it from the President. I am assuming Rudy Giuliani heard it from the President, but I don't know that. So I asked the President: What do you want?

Q  And you assumed that, because Rudy Giuliani has been going around saying, I'm working for the President, I'm his personal lawyer, I'm doing this on behalf of the President of the United States, correct?

A  That's why I went to the principal.

Q  Okay. Fair enough. But I believe -- so President Trump said during that call: I don't want anything from Ukraine. But you also know that isn't true, because you've now read the July 25th call readout, correct, where President Trump specifically asks President Zelensky for, quote, "a favor." Is that right?

A  Yes, but President Trump changes his mind on what he wants on a daily basis. I have no idea what he wanted on the day I called him. That's why I asked him the question.

Q  Okay. But on July 25th, at least, President Trump said: I want a favor, and specifically I want you to look into the Bidens and I want you to look into 2016 election interference, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Hold on just a second.

[Discussion off the record.]

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah. Counsel, I didn't know what the President had discussed with President Zelensky, because I never saw the transcript of the call. I testified to that.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Right. But you learned it, I believe, September 25th, when the call record was released by the White House at that point?

A  In September, right.

Q  As you sit here today, you know what President Trump --

A  Today I --

Q  -- said to President Zelensky.

A  Today I know.

Q  Right.

A  Today I know. I didn't know then.

Q  And today you know that President Trump asked President Zelensky for a favor.

A  Correct.

Q  Specifically, to look into the Bidens and to look into 2016 election interference.

A  That is correct. I do know that today.

Q  And that's what Rudy Giuliani had essentially been pushing the Ukrainians to include in either a public statement or a media appearance by President Zelensky?

A  He may or may not have, but not to me.

Q  He used the word "Burisma" instead of --

A  He always used the word "Burisma" and he always used the word "2016 election." Those are the only two things I heard from him.

THE CHAIRMAN: Ambassador, I want to ask a further question about the conversation you had with the President, where I think you've testified you asked him what he wanted and on his own he repeatedly brought up no quid pro quo, no quid pro quo. Is that right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: You have been not quoted in the paper in the last 24 to 48 hours, but it has been represented by multiple press outlets that you have told people that when the President told you no quid pro quo, you didn't know whether he was telling you the truth. Is that accurate?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: My goal in asking the question, Congressman, was to respond to Ambassador Taylor.

THE CHAIRMAN: No, I understand that. But my question is, it has been represented in the newspaper by someone who purportedly has information from you that when the President told you, no quid pro quo, no quid pro quo, that you couldn't verify that what he was telling you was the truth. Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: All I could verify is that's what he said. I don't know if it was the truth or it wasn't the truth. That's what he told me.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  So, Ambassador Sondland, we're skipping around a little bit, but I want to go back to the July 10th White House meeting, and I just want to make sure we understand your testimony.

Is it your recollection that you didn't say anything during the first part of the meeting to the effect that you had an agreement with Mick Mulvaney that if the Ukrainians committed to the investigations that Trump and Giuliani wanted then Zelensky would get a White House meeting?

A  I don't recall ever having a conversation with Mr. Mulvaney about that. I honestly don't. I've had very, very few conversations with Mr. Mulvaney. I wanted to have more, but he was never available.

Q  But it's your testimony that you didn't say anything close to that --

A  I don't remember --

Q  -- during the meeting?

A  I don't remember saying that. I don't remember saying a lot in the main meeting in Ambassador Bolton's office. There were a lot of people there, and it wasn't my meeting to preside over.

Q  Did you ever have any conversations with Rick Blair -- I'm sorry, Rob Blair, Mr. Mulvaney's deputy?

A  Yes, a couple, very innocuous, I believe.

Q  Anything relating to Ukraine or a White House meeting for President Zelensky?

A  I may have said when I saw him: We're working on a White House meeting with President Zelensky, do you have any updates? Because he was involved in scheduling, and I don't recall getting any definitive, again, it was we're working on it sort of answer. I'm trying to remember. I don't remember I had a meeting with him or anything like that.

Q  In those conversations with Mr. Blair, did the subject matter of these investigations ever come up?

A  Not that I recall.

THE CHAIRMAN: Just to follow up, in the July 10th meeting -- and there were two meetings, one main meeting and then a followup meeting in the Ward Room.

In the first meeting, is it your testimony you have no recollection of saying words to the effect that: No, we have an agreement for a White House meeting as long as Ukraine does the investigations, we already have a meeting, we already have an agreement on the meeting. You have no recollection of saying any words to that effect?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't recall it.

THE CHAIRMAN: And do you have any recollection of making a similar point in the follow-on meeting in the Ward Room?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No. Again, I don't recall that. In the Ward Room, we were talking about a phone call, I think, that still hadn't been made.

THE CHAIRMAN: So you don't have any recollection of in either meeting raising the issue of the desire for Ukraine to commit to these investigations?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: In that timeframe, and I think that was even before the press statement, because I don't think the investigation issue began to arise until after the press statement was shelved, as I recall.

THE CHAIRMAN: So you don't have any recollection in either of those meetings on July 10th raising the issue of Ukraine conducting an investigation or ever mentioning the word "Burisma"?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't remember that, no. I don't remember that.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Ambassador Sondland, in the Ward meeting do you remember ever mentioning the word "Burisma"?

A  I can't say that the word "Burisma" wasn't mentioned. I don't know if I mentioned it or if Ambassador Volker did or if Mr. Vindman -- I have no idea.

Q  So the word "Burisma" may have come up in the Ward Room?

A  It may have.

Q  And can you walk us through who was present during the Ward Room meeting?

A  All I can remember is Mr. McCormack, Dr. Hill, myself, Vindman, Perry. I think Volker was there, too. I don't recall if the Ukrainians were there. I can't remember. And we asked them to wait or if we brought them in, I honestly can't remember.

Q  Was Ambassador Volker's assistant Katherine Croft present? Do you recall that?

A  I don't recall. I don't recall.

Q  You don't recall.

What about any assistant of Secretary Perry?

A  That would have been Brian McCormack --

Q  Brian McCormack.

A  -- who was his chief of staff.

Q  Okay. And he would be the only aide to Secretary Perry that was present in the Ward Room?

A  Well, there were other aides, but I don't know if they were in the Ward Room or standing outside the door. As I said, it wasn't a formal meeting. It was sort of a stand in the room and talk kind of thing.

Q  Okay. So I'd like to turn to page 37 of the text messages. And to set the scene, this is around July 19th.

Were you aware around that date that Ambassador Volker had introduced Rudy Giuliani to Andrey Yermak?

A  I believe I was. Is that the meeting in Madrid?

Q  No, I believe that came later. But were you aware that -- did you have any conversations with Ambassador Volker about his plans to introduce Andrey Yermak to Rudy Giuliani around mid-July?

A  I thought that the first introduction was when Giuliani and Yermak met in Madrid. That was my recollection, unless you have something to refresh my memory.

Q  Okay. So on page 37, I want to direct your attention to July 19th.

A  Yes.

Q  And do you see, it's at 11:31 a.m., you say: "Talked to White House. This is moving but post election." And then Ambassador Taylor says: "If we can get a congratulatory call postelection, that could begin to establish the relationship."

A  Yeah. I mean, this call for the 20th, I believe, was scheduled like a week before that. I thought we had finally won and gotten this call done. And then, as I recall, the call got pulled down at the last minute, because someone didn't want the call to occur before the parliamentary elections.

Q  And this ended up being the July 25th call, correct?

A  Ultimately, yes.

Q  Ultimately?

A  Yeah.

Q  Do you recall who you spoke to at the White House about scheduling the call, here where you say "talked to White House”?

A  Let’s see. It could have been Emma Doyle, the deputy chief of staff. It could have been -- I don't know. It could have been Morgan. I don’t know. Someone.

And I think the -- I think the NSC was involved in the scheduling. We had gotten an email, I think, because when they do these calls they put it through an NSC scheduling protocol and then there's 50 people on the email.

And it was all set for the 20th. And I think they had gotten Zelensky ready for the 20th. And then somebody blew it up at the last minute.

Q  Okay. And then later on, on July 19th, at 6:50 p.m., you write: "It looks like POTUS call tomorrow. I spike" -- I think you met spoke -- "directly to Zelensky and gave him a full briefing. He's got it."

A  Yeah.

Q  Do you recall that conversation with President Zelensky?

A  Vaguely.

Q  Okay. Tell us what you remember about it.

A  It was a short call. I think I said: It looks like your call is finally on, and I think it's important that you, you know, give President Trump -- he wanted this -- some kind of a statement about corruption.

I think this was when we were at the general statement about corruption. I don't know that the Burisma/2016 issue had entered the conversation. I can't recall. But I think I said, you know: You guys will get along great.

And, you know, it was just sort of a "I’m handing it off to you now, we finally got this done." And he was very happy and said: Great, we'll have a good call tomorrow. And then, as I said, it got pulled down and never happened. And I never -- I don't think I spoke to him since after, you know, he had the 25th call.

Q  At 7:01 p.m. here Kurt Volker writes: "Good. Had breakfast with Rudy this morning."

A  Right.

Q  "Teeing up call with Yermak Monday."

Does that refresh your recollection about when Ambassador Volker introduced Giuliani to Andrey Yermak?

A  "Had breakfast" -- he said he had breakfast with Giuliani without -- it doesn't say he had breakfast with Yermak, right?

Q  But then it says: "Teeing up call with Yermak Monday."

A  Yeah. I think this was the call that he mentioned where he was going to introduce Yermak and Giuliani so that they could meet independently.

Q  Okay. And then he writes: "Must have helped. Most important is for Zelensky to say that he will help investigation and address any specific personnel issues if there are any."

So here Ambassador Volker is not just talking about general corruption, but he's talking about some particular investigation. Do you know what he was referring to here?

A  I don't.

[3:38 p.m.]

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Do you know what specific personnel issues he was referring to?

A  Yeah, this had to do with someone in Zelensky's cabinet who was apparently close to Kolomoisky that Volker was concerned about and others were concerned about. They knew this person and didn't think that it would be easy for Zelensky to distance himself from Kolomoisky with this person as a senior role in the Zelensky administration, so I think they were talking about that. I remember that conversation.

Q  Do you recall whether the investigation that Volker was referring to was either Burisma or 2016?

A  I -- I don’t.

Q  But then down on July 21st, 2019 -- and Mr. Goldman asked you about this earlier -- you see at 1:45 a.m. Bill Taylor writes, "Gordon, one thing talked about yesterday was Sasha Danylyuk’s point" --

A  Danylyuk.

Q  "Danylyuk's point that Zelensky is sensitive about Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington domestic reelection politics."

A  Right.

Q  Does this refresh your recollection that at least around mid-July you and Ambassador Volker were talking with the Ukrainians about particular investigations that Giuliani and President Trump wanted Ukraine to pursue?

A  I don't recall that I had any conversations. I mean Taylor may have. And I think that when this went from corruption to other things, I think the Ukrainians just didn't won't to get involved in our election politics under any circumstances at that point.

Q  And by making a statement about pursuing particular investigations that would be of political help to President Trump, they would be interfering with our domestic politics?

A  I think they wanted to stay as far away from our domestic politics as they could. That was my impression.

Q  And Ambassador Taylor seems to relaying that concern to you and Ambassador Volker?

A  I mean he's on the front lines and he's talking to them multiple times a day. I mean, his level of contact with the Ukrainians and mine -- mine is a fraction of his.

Q  So if we wanted to know what the Ukrainians were thinking and feeling and their concerns about what was being asked of them, Ambassador Taylor would be a good source for them?

A  I would imagine.

Q  Let's turn to page 42. At 4:27, July 22nd, near the top?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  Volker writes "orchestrated a great phone call with Rudy and Yermak they are going to get together when Rudy goes to Madrid in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, Rudy is now advocating for phone calls. I have called in Fiona's replacement and will call Bolton, if needed. But I can tell Bolton and you can tell Mick that Rudy agrees on a call, if that helps." You replied, "I talked to Tim Morrison, Fiona's replacement, he is pushing but feel free as well."

So during this time, did you or Ambassador Volker to your knowledge speak with Andrey Yermak in order to give him and idea of what it was that Giuliani wanted the Ukrainians to do?

A  I don't remember having any conversations with Yermak about it, but I do remember that when I talked to Morrison, there seemed to be a sea change in the NSC's position on the call. Dr. Hill was, I think, less excited about doing the call, and Mr. Morrison, I think, was more supportive of doing the call. That's what I remember from this exchange.

Q  And you see where Volker wrote "Rudy is now advocating for the phone call?

A  Yeah. That was after he met with Yermak?

Q  I believe so, but you tell us.

A  Yeah.

Q  Or after he spoke to him on the phone?

A  All I remember is once he and Yermak made contact, whether it was the meeting or the phone call, whatever they discussed, Rudy was happier about Ukraine than he was prior to having spoken with Yermak. And I have no idea what they talked about.

Q  So -- and then, I'm sorry to skip around, but in order to do this chronologically, the text is out a little out of order. If we go back to page 37, and on July 24th, it's going to be near the bottom. Do you see at the very end you wrote, "Call me, just spoke to Danylyuk, I have clarity."

A  Let's see --

Q  It's the last line.

A  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Q  Do you recall that conversation with Danylyuk and whey you -- what you had clarity about?

A  Hang on just a second.

MR. LUSKIN: It will take him a minute to read through the thread.

MR. NOBLE: Sure.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: The only thing I can remember is maybe it was the logistics of the call. We thought we had the call nailed down after it was taken down. And then I might have spoken to Danylyuk about how that was going to happen. I don't -- I don't remember exactly.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Okay. So around this time you were involved in trying to help arrange what turned out to be the July 25th call?

A  I was trying to do whatever I could to use whatever influence I had at NSC and the White House to keep people focused on making the call and getting the meeting. That's what I was trying to do.

Q  Okay. Let's go back to page 42. Now we're going to be July 25th, the day of the phone call.

A  Yep.

Q  You see the first entry July 25th at 7:54, it looks like you tried to called Ambassador Volker and then you wrote him, "call as soon as possible."

A  Yep.

Q  Do you recall what you were trying to reach Ambassador Volker about?

A  I don't know was that -- was this on the 25th? Yeah, I don't know if that might have been the day I made the call to President Trump when I was on my way to Kyiv and again, it was a -- kind of a nothing call. He didn't really -- he wasn't really interested in -- and then I found out he had made the call later that day. I don't even think he told me he was making the call. Maybe he didn't know that it had been scheduled.

Q  In advance of the call between President Trump and President Zelensky were you and Ambassador Volker trying to, so to speak, prime the Ukrainians and President Zelensky as to what to expect and how to respond to the President's request during the phone call?

A  Well, again, the only request I think we had heard at that point that I recall was that they wanted a strong public statement about anticorruption. That's what I had recalled knowing. And if we would have primed him, it would have been to that -- to that degree.

Q  So if you turn to page 19, and we're still on July 25th, this is at 8:36, I believe.

A  Yep.

Q  Do see that? Ambassador Volker, and this is east coast time, and I believe the phone call with President Trump was at 9:00 a.m.?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  Is that right? So a little before, less than a half hour before President Trump and President Zelensky speak, Volker writes "good lunch, thanks. Heard from White House. Assuming President Z convinces Trump he will investigate slash 'get to the bottom of what happened' in 2016. We will nail down date for a visit to Washington. Good luck, see you tomorrow, Kurt." So he's writing that to Andrey Yermak, Correct?

A  Uh-huh.

THE CHAIRMAN: Is that a yes or no?

MR. NOBLE: Is that a yes?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yes. I'm sorry. Yes.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Is Kurt Volker telling Andrey Yermak that President Zelensky just needs to talk about corruption, or is he telling him that President Zelensky needs to commit to investigating the things that President Trump wanted him to investigate?

A  I don't know. Am I -- is this one of my texts? I'm not on this text, am I?

Q  No. I'm just asking -- well, let me ask it like this. Does this refresh your recollection that around the time right before the July 25th call you and Ambassador Volker were priming President Zelensky and Andrey Yermak that President Trump was going to be asking President Zelensky to investigate the two things that he and Rudy Giuliani had been pushing, 2016 and Burisma?

A  I don't know that the Burisma in 2016 came up then. And the call I think by President Trump was made when I was in the air. I think I was on my way to Kyiv.

Q  But doesn't this suggest that at least Ambassador Volker was aware that President Trump was going to ask President Zelensky to commit to investigating 2016? I mean, this text message is in advance of the July 25th call. Correct?

A  It appears to say that, but again, I wasn't -- I don't recall that.

Q  So is it your testimony you had no knowledge that Kurt Volker was priming President Zelensky and Andrey Yermak to expect President Trump to make these requests and that in order to get the White House meeting, President Zelensky would have to, quote, convince Trump he will investigate/get to the bottom of what happened in 2016?

A  I don't recall it happening that early. I thought it happened in August when we were negotiating the press statement.

Q  But now that you see this, it seems pretty obvious that Volker, at least, was telling Andrey Yermak what President Zelensky was going to have it do to get a White House meeting, correct?

A  Well, he says get to the bottom of what happened. I don't know whether that means an investigation, or -- I don't know what it means.

Q  Well, get to the bottom, isn't that another way of saying look into, which are the words that President Trump used?

A  Where did President Trump use the words look into?

Q  In the July 25th call, at least according to the call readout.

A  Oh, you mean the transcript of the call?

Q  Yes.

A  Yeah, I -- if that's what he said, that's what he said.

Q  And in this text message itself is says Trump wants Zelensky to investigate. Doesn't it?

A  It appears to, it says what it says. Yeah.

Q  So is it your testimony that this wasn't a message that you'd relayed to Ambassador Volker to tell Andrey Yermak?

A  No.

Q  You never told Ambassador Volker that he needed to tell Andrey Yermak that to relay this message to President Zelensky?

A  I don't believe so. I think -- I think Volker was talking to Mr. Giuliani. I don't remember telling Volker anything like that. Not -- again, not that soon. I don't think that happened.

MR. MEADOWS: What page are you on? What page are you on?

MR. NOBLE: Page 19.

MR. MEADOWS: So he's on these text messages, is that what you are you are what saying, because I can't find that.

MR NOBLE: No. These there text messages between Andrey Yermak and Kurt Volker. I'm just asking about his conversations with Kurt Volker around at that time.

MR. MEADOWS: Okay. But he wasn't party to the text message. Okay.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah, I wasn't on -- this wasn't a group, this was just Volker and Yermak, right?

Yeah, maybe they started talking about the 2016 issue back then, I don't know. I don't recall it coming up that early, as I said.

THE CHAIRMAN: If I can clarify. The text messages indicate that Volker was in communication with Yermak, and that he needed to be prepared for a conversation with the President about investigating, or looking into 2016, correct? Is that what the text message indicates?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: What it appears to indicate.

THE CHAIRMAN: Is it your testimony that you were out of the loop when it came to Volker communicating that with Andrey Yermak?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't recall whether I was in or out. I just don't remember this. As I said, I spoke with President Trump before I got on the plane, I believe, to Kyiv and it was a nothing call. I said we're headed to Kyiv to go see Zelensky and he was like, no, great, whatever. That was sort of the end of the call. We never discussed anything substantive.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  So is it your testimony that you never asked Kurt Volker to pass a message to Andrey Yermak around this time?

A  I don't remember that.

Q  Okay. Let's turn to page 42, this is the same day, a half an hour after the call.

A  Okay.

Q  So if you go to page 42, we're looking at July 25, 2019?

A  Okay.

Q  At 9:35 a.m.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  After you had tried to call Ambassador Volker, and then after the call between President Trump and President Zelensky, he writes you back, "Hi Gordon, got your message, had a great lunch with Yermak and then passed your message to him. He will see you tomorrow, think everything in place." Does that refresh your recollection that you'd asked Ambassador Volker to pass a message to Andrey Yermak in advance of the call with President Trump?

A  No, because I don't know where I would have gotten that message. I never got that from President Trump. That's the only place I could have gotten it from, because I wasn't talking to Giuliani.

Q  Were you talking to other people in the White House?

A  No, not that I recall. And I think Yermak and I were getting together for lunch or something that next day for a drink because we were -- I think we were going to meet the President, President Zelensky the next day as well.

Q  On July 26th you gave an interview to --

MR. LUSKIN: Just a moment, please.

THE CHAIRMAN: Please go ahead.

[Discussion off the record.]

MR. NOBLE: Is there something you want to clarify?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, only that I'm not denying these texts occurred between Yermak and Volker. I don't recall passing that message along. That would have been out of -- out of context, or out of order. Because the first time I recall hearing about 2016 and Burisma was during the negotiations of the press statement. Again, unless there's some text that I've completely have forgotten about, that's when I first remember getting into those issues. It was always just about corruption prior to that. It kept -- it kept getting more insidious as timeline went on, and back in July, it was all about just corruption.

MR. NOBLE: Okay. I think my time is up.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Any idea what the message was there that Volker conveyed to Yermak?

A  I have no idea. No, I don’t. I know that I was planning to see Yermak at the Zelensky bilateral the next day.

Q  Right.

A  So, I don't know.

Q  Do you remember --

A  Does it indicate that Volker was talking to the White House?

Q  Just flipping back to the --

A  Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Everyone was talking to everyone. That was the problem.

Q  So seeing these messages between you and Volker, the second half of the message doesn't refresh your recollection about what?

A  Yeah, my only recollection is that the only thing that we were coaching Zelensky on, or someone was coaching Zelensky on was to tell President Trump he would be vigorously working on corruption issues at that point. That's the only thing I can recall.

Q  Before you came in today, you said you collect all your text messages and you produced them to the State Department?

A  Correct.

Q  Did you review them?

A  Some of them, yeah.

Q  Okay. So when these texts are ready, are these texts that you had recently reexamined?

A  I looked at -- there were a lot of texts. I looked at some of them.

Q  Okay. But not all of them?

A  No. As I said, one of the problems with my involvement in this is I kept dropping in, dropping out. I was just trying to help get these meetings set up, and I was doing a lot of other thing unrelated to Ukraine at the same time.

Yeah, again, I'm not denying that the issue was raised. I just don't remember it. I honestly don't.

Q  Okay.

A  The 2016 issue.

Q  Okay.

A  I mean if everyone is saying it was raised in all these multiple texts then it probably was raised. I just don't remember the conversation because none of it seemed remarkable to me.

Q  Okay. Did you ever have a conversation with Yermak about 2016?

A  I don't remember. I honestly don't. There were so many conversations with Yermak, and Danylyuk, and Prystaiko and the others, I don't remember.

Q  You were talking to them separate from Volker?

A  No, no. We were all talk together when we were in Kyiv.

Q  Okay. But were you testing or having telephone calls?

A  I think I was having some directly and some with Volker and some group, everything. But again, that may have occurred, there may have been a conversation about 2016, I don't -- I honestly don't remember.

Q  Flipping back to page 19, 7/25, 8:36 a.m. text?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  This Volker to Yermak again.

A  Okay.

Q  I want to be clear, you're not on this. He says, just heard from White House. Do you have any idea where Ambassador Volker was getting that?

A  I don’t.

Q  Who he was talking to?

A  I don't.

Q  You were in constant communication with him during that time, is it possible to -- who were the possibilities that he's talking to?

VOICE: I'm sorry, I don't understand who he is at this point.

MR. CASTOR: Volker, Ambassador Volker. We're trying to decipher --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: It could have been the NSC, I don't -- I don't know.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Was he talking to anybody else at the White House?

A  I don't know.

Q  I don't know that in these discussions we've --

A  I don't know who --

Q  Established that Volker was --

A  The problem was no one owned this file. Everyone had a little hand in it. You know, the NSC, the White House staff, everybody was involved in, you know, everyone was pushing for these meetings and the phone calls.

Q  Okay.

A  And I don't know who was talking to whom. All I can tell is what I was doing or what I can remember I was doing, which was trying to get the meeting. In this case, I think I was trying to get the phone call.

Q  We're going to make sure our members get a chance to ask you some questions and so I want to --

MR. MEADOWS: So Ambassador, this is Mark Meadows. I want thank you for your service. Thank you, obviously, for your candor. My colleagues opposite have been consistently trying to lead you down a path to suggest that you knew that President Trump was asking to investigate the Bidens based on knowledge that you have now. But based on knowledge that you had when you met on the 26th with President Zelensky, did investigating the Bidens come up at all during that meeting?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Not to the best of my recollection.

MR. MEADOWS: Not to the best of your recollection. Did investigating the Bidens come up in your conversations on the 26th with Ambassador Volker?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Again, not to the best of my recollection.

MR. MEADOWS: So as we look at this, this whole context of where we are, and I'm just trying to make sure that somewhere between the questions that get added to a little bit on the end of it that they are going to try to use to say something that I have not heard you say today. I want to make sure we're just getting this very clear. When you met with President Zelensky, did he indicate that the phone call that he had with the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, was a positive phone call and he presented in positive terms to you?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That's all I heard was we had a great call.

MR. MEADOWS: And you and Ambassador Volker were not sent over there as a condition of a bad phone call. You were already planning to be there and this meeting you had with President Zelensky on July 26th of this year was -- was already in the works, and you were already on your way there, or you were there when the phone call happened. Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, first of all, I was invited to join Ambassador Volker in his bilateral meeting in early July. So the meeting was schedule for the week of, I believe, the 22nd of July. There wasn't even a date nailed out yet and I was invited sometime around the 8th, 9th, 10th, 12th of July.

MR. MEADOWS: So the early part of July you were invited to participate in a meeting that was going to be held with then president I guess the inauguration had happened so it would have been President Zelensky at that point.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct, sometime during the week of July 27th.

MR. MEADOWS: And that happened long before the phone call actually of July 25th, that was already in the planning stages and you had been invited. Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That's correct.

MR. MEADOWS: And so when you start to look at this chronological step of a phone call and what happened, all the asking you about aid and everything else in hindsight, at that particular time, the aid being held up was certainly, it did not cross your mind -- is this correct, that it did not cross your mind, that the aid was being held up because of an investigation into the Bidens?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Not at that time.

MR. MEADOWS: Okay. And so I -- I also -- there's a whole lot of back and forth between text messages and what was included. Some of these text messages that you've been asked to opine on just, in the previous hour, were actually text messages that you were hot a part of. Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That's correct.

MR. MEADOWS: And so it was actually text messages between Ambassador Volker, who’s already testified here for over 10 hours and given very clear indication of what he thought. So they are asking you to opine on what Ambassador Volker might have meant on text messages that you were not a party to. Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Appears to be correct.

MR. MEADOWS: So I guess where I'm going with all of this is that there continues to be this leading question-and-answer process to suggest that you somehow knew that there was this quid pro quo that had happened in the early parts of May and June of 2019. Were you aware of any quid pro quo for aid or anything else that early in May or June?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I -- the only thing I was aware of that was that there was to be some kind of acknowledgment of corruption investigation at that point, I believe.

MR. MEADOWS: And does the Ukraine have a history of corruption?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yes, they do.

MR. MEADOWS: Have there been prosecutors, multiple prosecutors who were going to clear up corruption in the Ukraine who never cleared up the corruption in Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That's what I understand.

MR. MEADOWS: All right. Is that a concern, not just to the United States, is that a concern to the European Union as well?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah it is a huge concern to them. That's one of reasons they are not all in.

MR. MEADOWS: And so, that's one of the reasons why, I guess, they send money for pillows and we send money for military defense systems. Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't know why they send their money.

MR. MEADOWS: All right. Do you know if they contribute to a large part to the defense of Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Apparently not enough to suit President Trump.

MR. MEADOWS: All right. How about enough to actually appease Ambassador Sondland. Do you think that they are doing their fair share, the EU?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, in my discussions with the EU, they would like to do more. They would like to see some things cleaned up before they contribute more has been my impression.

MR. MEADOWS: So, you mean the EU has an quid pro quo in terms of their foreign aid to the Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't know if it is a quid pro quo. I think it is one of their conditions.

MR. MEADOWS: So they have a condition to giving additional foreign aid. So you're saying -- this is groundbreaking -- so you're saying that someone other than --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I walked right into that one.

MR. MEADOWS: -- other than Donald J. Trump is concerned with corruption, and they might withhold foreign aid based on that. Is that correct, Ambassador? I can tell by your smile it's a yes, is that correct. Are we correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: This is like My Cousin Vinny.

MR. MEADOWS: Yeah. There are two positive track tire marks here it looks like.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: To answer your question, Representative, the Ukrainians -- the Europeans are always very careful about when they contribute money to anything and they always have a list of requirements, some of which are a mile long.

MR. MEADOWS: So in your diplomatic speak, is that a yes?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yes.

MR. MEADOWS: Thank you. I yield back.

MR. ZELDIN: And President Zelensky, Ambassador, won his election based on an anticorruption campaign primarily, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Among other things, yes.

MR. ZELDIN: What was the anticorruption aspect of President Zelensky's campaign?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I think a general commitment to transparency to having less influence by the oligarchs, potentially buying the oligarchs out, or kicking the oligarchs out of some of the key industries in Ukraine, getting boards of directors that had wel1-recognized international figures on them that would be appealing to the Wall Street and London investment banks, and a whole host of things like that.

MR. ZELDIN: And what were some of the corruption problems plaguing President Poroshenko?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: The opposite of what I just said. Cronies on the boards, too many oligarchs involved in taking bribes and kickbacks and all kinds of bad stuff.

MR. ZELDIN: And this corruption within Ukraine government was something that you were concerned about?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, I was concerned about it from the standpoint that, again, my goal was two things: was to get the Europeans aligned with us, because it was one of the few things where we had very little daylight between us on -- we have a lot of issues with the EU, but Ukraine wasn't one of them. And the second was to get President Zelensky and President Trump together because I figured that they would hit it off, and that the United States and all the interagency, once they saw the two presidents meet, all the interagency nerve endings would start to grow together and we'd have a real solid partnership. The whole idea here is to counter Russia. Russia is the problem. Russia is what needs it be countered. And the more we bear-hug Ukraine, the less influence Russia has. So that was my strategic objective and part of my portfolio?

MR. ZELDIN: And Ambassador Volker was very concerned about corruption in Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Ambassador Volker? Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: Did you get any readouts of the July 25th call at all from the Ukrainian Government?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I think the only readouts I remember seeing were the ones from my team, which were very innocuous, and did not represent what was actually said on the call that I found out once the transcript was a released.

MR. ZELDIN: Was there any reference to a hold on aid or a quid pro quo in those readouts?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Not in the readouts I saw.

MR. ZELDIN: You met with President Zelensky on July 26th?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. ZELDIN: Did President Zelensky make any reference in the July 26th meeting to hold on aid or a quid pro quo?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Not that I remember.

MR. ZELDIN: Tell us about Ambassador Volker. You worked closely with him? Was it a positive experience working --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah, I had a great relationship with him he's a very smart guy, he's clearly very well-liked by all the Ukrainians, the old administration, the new administration. He really understands the country and he was a tremendous assets I think to the United States.

MR. ZELDIN: And he was professional at all times as far as you know from your interactions with him?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: All times when I was with him.

MR. ZELDIN: And candid and honest, is that part of your assessment, too?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah, he's one of those people I would hand my wallet to. That's how I describe him.

MR. ROY: I want to clarify one thing you referenced a couple of times today. You repeatedly testified that at the outset, going back to May, going back to conversations that you've been referencing, that your perspective on the -- the only thing that you were aware of, I should say, regarding any asks, right, out of Ukrainians, or any connection to foreign aid or anything else is you specifically said corruption, that that was the early outset. And you've referenced a continuum. And I'm trying to understand your perspective of continuum.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't believe I ever referenced in May that he there was any tie to aid. I wasn't even aware of the aid I don't think back then.

MR. ROY: Right. But from the very beginning, right, you talked about this very specifically, you've referenced only -- you've only referenced corruption, right? And you haven't referenced anything beyond that. What I'm trying to understand is your perspective of the continuum.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: The continuum was, first of all, an unconditional phone call and an unconditional invitation to the White House, and then I believe the next part of the continuum was some kind of a commitment to investigate corruption generally. And then the next part of the continuum was talking about the Burisma and the 2016 election, which as I recall, was heavily discussed during the negotiation of the short-lived press statement, which only lasted a few days, and then it died. And then at the end of that continuum I became aware that there might be a link between the White House visit and aid to the Ukraine that was being held up when I couldn't get a straight answer as to why the aid was being held up, both Senator Johnson and Ambassador Taylor raised the possibility that there might be a link. And then the aid was released, and then this whole thing blew up. That's the best I can recall the sort of progression.

MR. ROY: Going back to my colleague from North Carolina's questions, to be clear you have said that with respect to conditions that a public embrace by the Ukraines of their anticorruption activities, was a fine precondition from the standpoint of your perspective?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Absolutely.

MR. ROY: And so to his point about conditions often being placed on aid, that's not troubling to you at all?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Not at all.

MR. ROY: And at any point in any of these --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Did you say aid or did you say the White House meeting?

MR. ROY: I said aid.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I'm sorry. I missed that. I didn't think there should by any preconditions on aid. And the reason I didn't think there should be any preconditions on aid was I thought it would send the absolute wrong message to the Russians if we held up aid for any reason.

MR. ROY: But that's a policy choice.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. ROY: Right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. ROY: But from the standpoint of putting preconditions on a White House meeting or putting preconditions on aid, that might be a policy choice. But in respect to terms of attaching any kinds of conditions to aid that's not an unusual thing to occur, right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That's correct. And so you're correct, my distinction was I didn't agree with the policy of holding up the aid for any reason whereas others may have said yes, we should condition the aid on corruption.

MR. ROY: And you testified there were debates about --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Exactly.

MR. ROY: -- what the policy choices should be?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Exactly.

MR. ROY: Thanks. That's all.

MR. ZELDIN: Ambassador, it is U.S. law to, when providing aid to Ukraine to be assessing the anticorruption efforts that are correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don’t know what the law is relating to aid. I'm not an expert on preconditions for aid?

MR. ZELDIN: But I think that's an important point before declaring that there should be no conditionality on aid related to corruption; it's important to know what the United States law is as it relates to aid to Ukraine and as it relates to corruption.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: My -- my response, Congressman, was strategic, not legal.

MR. ZELDIN: We are concerned about the legal as well. Now you're the U.S. Ambassador to the EU, So you have interaction with a number of countries all across the European continent. I imagine you're engaging with countries on a whole host of issues all day, right, your portfolio's enormous.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That's correct.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. And as far as conducting U.S. diplomacy, whether it is aid or other discussions, you probably have asks into countries all across the entire continent, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: True.

MR. ZELDIN: Can you give us an idea of your portfolio as it relates to your priorities of getting other countries to do things that are important to the United States?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, my portfolio as I said encompasses 28, currently 28 EU countries, unless something happened in the last few hours with the U.K. And it involves trade, it involves security, it involves energy independence. It involves their actions in various other parts of the world, Iran, Venezuela, et cetera, et cetera. I'm not sure what your question --

MR. ZELDIN: As far as you doing your job interacting and the United States State Department interacting with foreign countries, we identify priorities that are important to the United States and try to get other countries to make decisions to adopt their policies and behaviors to our asks to the extent possible, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That is correct and I have a long list of those asks.

MR. ZELDIN: And you have seen foreign aid get leveraged in countries all around the world for different reasons, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That is correct.

MR. ZELDIN: For example, Congress recently passed, and the President signed into law legislation called the Taylor Force Act. I don't know, have you heard of that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I have not.

MR. ZELDIN: So where there is a policy -- would it be appropriate where the American taxpayer would not want their tax dollars to go to the Palestinian authority if they are financially rewarding terror, that would be an appropriate prioritization of how to leverage our tax dollars, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Appears to be, yes.

MR. ZELDIN: Now, as far as Fiona Hill, did you and the NSC -- did you sense that they felt threatened at all, that you were, say, stepping on their turf by having a passion for Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, they testified earlier, my first sort of extracurricular trip to Ukraine I met regularly with the Ukrainians in Brussels, and I don't even know that the NSC was involved in those meetings, they normally wouldn't be. But my first trip to Ukraine, which was to Odessa in February, I believe, of 2019, I mentioned to Dr. Hill that I was going with Ambassador Volker and Secretary Reeker, and she sent back a very laudatory note saying, I'm glad you're supporting Ukraine and this is great, or something to go that effect.

MR. ZELDIN: At any point did Dr. Hill ever push back on it your interest in Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Not to me. Not to anyone that contacted me and said the NSC is not happy with your involvement in Ukraine. I've never heard that.

MR. CASTOR: I will mark as exhibit 8 the whistleblower complaint.

[Minority Exhibit No. 8
Was marked for identification.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  The whistleblower complaint was released publicly I think on the day after the call transcript was released?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  Did anyone talk to you about the whistleblower complaint before it was released?

A  I believe I testified that I heard from the White House counsel's office that my name -- they were giving me a heads-up a few hours before it was released. Yes.

Q  Anybody else? Anybody at the National Security Counci1?

A  I don't recall that, no.

Q  In that time period?

A  I don't recall.

Q  Did anyone give you an advanced copy of the complaint?

A  I don't think so.

Q  When you saw your name was mentioned, I think it's on page 4, and then again on page 7, what was your reaction?

A  I was pretty upset.

Q  And why?

A  Because it almost implies I was doing something wrong when I was doing my job.

Q  On page 4 of the complaint under the ongoing concerns Roman III, the last sentence of that first paragraph there beginning with the word based on multiple readouts of these meetings recounted to me by various U.S. officials, Ambassadors Volker and Sondland reportedly provided advice to Ukrainian leadership about how to navigate the demands that President Trump had made of Mr. Zelensky. Does that have any basis in fact?

A  I didn't know that the President had made any demands.

Q  Okay.

A  I wasn't aware of any demands that he had made of Mr. Zelensky until I saw the --

Q  Okay. So this statement as it relates to you is just not true. Is that true?

A  Well, I think to be fair to the whistleblower, I was involved in the file. I'm not sure what he's really trying to say here. This sentence confounds me because I'm not quite sure what he's trying to say.

Q  So you're not sure about what the demands were

A  No.

Q  And you're also not sure about how you were helping the navigate -- helping the Ukrainians navigate the demands?

A  Well, other than as I testified we tried to negotiate a press statement, the whole group?

Q  Right.

A  If that's navigating the demands, then I guess that's navigating the demands. And I think I also testified that I was trying to -- we're all trying to prep President Zelensky for the request that corruption be investigated.

Q  On the July 26th meeting in Kyiv with Ambassador Volker, did this come up, the press statement and so forth?

A  I don't think so. I don't remember that.

Q  Okay. So at least at that meeting the day after the call there was no discussion that you can recall --

A  No, not that I remember, and again, I saw a readout of the call, and the call was benign until I saw the transcript.

Q  Okay. So it at that point, you didn't know about demands, and so it is not fair to say you were helping the Ukrainians navigate the demands?

A  I don't know. I was involved in the file, and if being involved in the file means my name in the whistleblower complaint then I guess I have to accept that.

Q  Flipping back to page 7. The first bullet the State Department officials, including Ambassadors Volker and Sondland had spoken to Mr. Giuliani in attempt to contain the damage.

A  Is there a question?

Q  I just wanted to make sure you read?

A  Yes, I'm following.

Q  I'm ready to ask my question now. The last hour, you walked me through all four or five conversations you had with Mr. Giuliani. Any of those conversations possibly -- could they possibly be characterized as you and Ambassador Volker trying to contain the damage to U.S. national security?

A  Not the direct conversations I had with Mr. Giuliani, because, again, they just -- they were really applying to the press statement.

Q  Right.

A  I didn't think this the press statement constituted damage to national security.

Q  Okay. So nothing that you did on a call to Rudy Giuliani could fairly be characterized as containing the damage?

A  I think it's an exaggeration.

Q  The second bullet, Ambassadors Volker and Sondland during this time period, meet with members of the Ukrainian administration, and in addition to discussing policy matters helped Ukrainian leaders understand and respond to the differing messages they were receiving from official U.S. channels on the one hand, and Mr. Giuliani on the other.

A  Well, the problem is, I don't know what official -- I don't know what they were receiving from Mr. Giuliani --

Q  Okay.

A  -- because I don't know what direct conversations he was having.

Q  So that also is a statement that can't be true, because you didn't know what Giuliani was doing at that point in time?

A  All I know, with respect to Mr. Giuliani, is what he told me and what I heard directly through hearsay and from Ambassador Volker.

Q  But during this time period, the statement that Ambassadors Volker and Sondland sought the help of Ukrainian leaders understand and respond to the differing messages they were receiving from official U.S. channels on the one hand and Mr. Giuliani on the other can't be true if you don't know what Giuliani was telling them?

A  I think a fairer thing was we were trying to assuage the Ukrainians, and as time kept going on and there were no meetings or phone calls after they had been promised. I that's probably -- we were stroking the Ukrainians a little bit in order to keep them from sort of bailing on us. I didn't want them going in the Russia direction. That was my big concern.

Q  But you couldn't possibly be doing what is alleged right here because you didn't know what message Giuliani was sending to them?

A  Yeah, I mean, if anything, we probably more played the role of a mediator just to try and keep things cool, while the time was going on and, you know, the meetings weren't happening. So I don't know if I would have written it exactly this way, but we’re trying to help.

Q  Okay. The next sentence during the same timeframe multiple U.S. officials told me that Ukraine leadership was led to believe that a meeting or phone call between the President and President Zelensky would depend on whether Zelensky showed a willingness to play ball on the issues that had been publicly aired by Mr. Lutsenko and Mr. Giuliani. Does that strike you as something you're familiar with?

A  That -- are you saying that the call that Mr. -- or President Trump and President Zelensky ultimately had on the 25th?

Q  Well, during the same timeframe, multiple U.S. officials told me Ukrainian leadership is led to believe that a meeting or phone call between President Trump and President Zelensky would depend on whether Zelensky showed a willingness to play ball on the issues that had been publicly aired by Lutsenko and Mr. Giuliani.

A  Well, that appears not to be true because the phone call happened without any precondition. The phone call happened on the 25th and I don’t believe anything was agreed upon by the Ukrainians by the time the phone call happened.

Q  Did you ever hear a U.S. official use the term "play ball"?

A  I've never heard that expression from anyone.

Q  Because it is in quotes?

A  I don’t recall ever hearing that.

Q  Okay. I want to go back to the recall of Ambassador Yovanovitch. Can you tell me when you first learned that her post was in jeopardy?

A  I can't, I don't recall. As I said, I met with her when I was in Odessa, she joined us on the meetings with Poroshenko and others, and we may have had some calls after that, but I don't remember.

Q  Did anyone consult with you prior it her removal?

A  I don't -- I don't believe so.

Q  So nobody at the White House asked for your opinion?

A  I don't think so.

Q  Nobody?

A  I probably would have remembered that, but I don't remember that.

Q  Anyone on the 7th floor of the State Department?

A  No, I don't think so.

Q  So nobody asked for your views on whether she was doing an effective job at that time?

A  I mean I don't recall giving my views to anyone. As I said, I had a perfectly good experience with her. My limited experience that I had with her.

Q  So had someone asked you, you would have --

A  I can't imagine I would have said anything, but she seems great.

Q  Were you surprised when she was recalled?

A  A little bit. Especially after I heard from a lot of people in the Mission that she was going good ambassador they had, as I said earlier, they had served with her.

Q  Did anybody seek your input on the next ambassador?

A  I don't think so, no. I don't think I ever heard of Taylor until he was in place.

Q  Okay. There is an allegation, simply an allegation, I'm not endorsing it. Perhaps the Ambassador at one time or another was disparaging the President, and I think one Member of Congress wrote a letter about that, and State Department officials have been disappointed about that allegation. Did you ever hear the Ambassador disparage the President?

A  Not in my presence.

Q  Did you ever hear anybody in the National Security Council disparage the President?

A  Yeah, Dr. Hill.

Q  Okay. Could you help me understand that?

A  Well, when Dr. Hill, left her post to leave the government, I happened to drop by her office to say good-bye to her. I knew she was leaving, I think, in a few days or a week. I was at the White House for some other unrelated reason and I dropped up and we sat and had coffee. And she was pretty upset about her role in the administration, about her superiors, about the President. She was sort of shaking. She was pretty mad.

Q  She was mad?

A  Yeah.

Q  Is that the first time you saw her mad?

A  First time I've seen her like that, yeah.

Q  Did how long did you speak with her?

A  15, 20 minutes.

Q  She wasn't mad at you?

A  No, no, she gave me a big hug and said stay in touch, she was going, I think, to Brookings or something after.

Q  And what did she relate to you?

A  She was just upset about everything having to do the Trump administration. She was upset at the President, she was upset with Ambassador Bolton, she was upset at a lot of things.

Q  What specifically did she say about the President?

A  Just that the whole, you know, operation was just not well run, or something to that effect. I mean, she was kind of -- it was very unusual. I mean I've never seen her like that. She's usually pretty calm, collected, straightforward, but she was pretty emotional.

Q  Was this a coffee you had with her, just you and her?

A  Yeah.

MR. JORDAN: Excuse, Ambassador. When was this meeting with Dr. Hill?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I it was a few days -- I don't know what her departure date was, but I think she mentioned she was on her way out in next few days.

MR. JORDAN: What month?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: You have tell me her departure date, and then I can tell you.

MR. CASTOR: Her last day was he 19th, July 19th.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: So it probably was sometime between, I don't know, 15, 14, 13, something like that.

MR. JORDAN: After the July 10th meeting.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah, I think it would have been after the July 10th meeting, because that's 9 days before she left. It would have been before the July 10th meeting and her departure.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  And what were her issues with Ambassador Bolton?

A  I think she was just generally upset at the way the NSC was being run, and communication, and disorder, and just she was sort of railing.

Q  She was railing against President Trump?

A  Yes.

Q  Railing against Ambassador Bolton?

A  Yes.

Q  Dissatisfied with her role?

A  I don't know that she said that.

Q  What else did she say? What can you tell us?

A  I was -- I sat and listened. I was trying to be a little bit of a shoulder, and we had coffee. And I wished her well. As I said, gave her a hug, and I don't believe I've spoken to her since.

Q  Did she mention why he was leaving specifically?

A  She just said she'd had enough. She wanted to go back to academia.

Q  Were you surprised by this?

A  A little bit, yeah, because as I said, I've never seen her that emotional.

Q  Did she tell you who would be taking over for her?

A  I think she did tell me that Mr. Morrison was taking her place.

Q  How has your relationship being with Mr. Morrison?

A  Type, very straightforward.

Q  Is he your primary contact it is NSC right now?

A  Yeah. Although I got to meet Director -- or Ambassador O'Brien, I chatted with him a little bit, but generally, Bolton was not as accessible as O'Brien appears to be. So it would be Morrison and O'Brien.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  My two primary.

Q  Do you still talk with Lieutenant Colonel Vindman?

A  I don't think I have spoken with him in quite some time.

Q  Okay. But not because of any falling out, it is just haven't --

A  Haven’t had any reason to.

Q  An occasion to?

A  Yeah.

Q  You traveled where Lieutenant Colonel Vindman to President Zelensky's inauguration. Is that correct?

A  I don't know that we traveled together, but he was there, he was part of the delegation.

Q  And anything notable about that travel, did you have dinner with him or share any meals?

A  I think we included him in every part of the event, or most of the parts of the event. It was really Secretary Perry was the leader of the delegation, it was up to him to decide who was doing what.

Q  Did you ever heard Lieutenant Colonel Vindman criticize the President?

A  Not to me.

Q  Have you ever heard anyone relate to you that Lieutenant Colonel Vindman has criticized the President?

A  I don't -- I don't recall that, no.

MR. CASTOR: We're almost -- our time is almost up, I want to make sure if there are any members on our side that have a couple of questions?

MR. ZELDIN: Ambassador, was there any one else at the

NSC who was critical of the President?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No, not that I recall. This was as I said it wasn't an exit interview because she didn't work for me, it was a drop-by to say good-bye, and that was the only time I heard someone being critical.

MR. ZELDIN: How was relationship with Bill Taylor?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I haven't spoken to him with whistleblower. But prior to that, it was great. In other words, he -- several times was happy that Secretary Perry, myself, and Ambassador Volker were helping support him because as he, to put in his words, he liked the high visibility support which helped his mission.

MR. ZELDIN: Why haven't you spoken to Bill Taylor after the whistleblower complaint?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I haven't really spoken to anyone on the Ukraine file at the advice of counsel.

MR. JORDAN: In your meeting with Dr. Hill shortly before she left the White House, did you discuss -- did Lieutenant Colonel Vindman come up in any of that discussion with Dr. Hill?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't think so.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

MR. ROY: Just a quick question, is it in the national security interest of the United States that we instill confidence with respect to our relationship with other countries, right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Exactly.

MR. ROY: And with respect to Secretary Perry, at any point in any of her engagement with him and the various trip; and conversations repeatedly, you said you talked to him a lot, friends, was there anything that -- was his primary focus our status with Ukraine, improving that status vis-à-vis Russia, and making sure that our national security interests were being promoted with respect to natural gas, coal, economic interests, as well as pushing back on Russia, was that had the primary motivating factor behind your observation of what Secretary Perry was doing?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yes. My impression of the Ukrainians they were very impressed to have a cabinet level member to take such a strong interest in the country.

[4:38 p.m.]

MR. ROY: And would you characterize our current relationship with Ukraine as improved based on these engagements in trying to move the ball forward with respect to coal and natural gas, our presence vis-à-vis Russia because of those engagements?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, again, with 20/20 hindsight, now that I am privy to all of the different things that were going on that I wasn't at the time, I thought that with respect to my activities, first, my engagement with the Poroshenko team in Brussels, then ultimating culminating in a joint U.S.-EU visit to Odessa in February, attending the inauguration, inviting President Zelensky to Brussels to meet with other European leaders, which, as I mentioned, resulted in him getting to know the President of Poland and a couple of other leaders, that they've now had some productive -- I thought we were on a roll with Ukraine until all of this blew up. I was very pleased with where we were going.

MR. ROY: So all of those engagements all along in that process that you are part of with Governor Perry -- sorry -Secretary Perry -- you can take the guy out of Texas, but you know -- with Governor Perry was moving the ball forward with respect to our policy objectives and what we were trying to do to strengthen our position vis-à-vis Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Again, at the time, yes.

MR. ROY: Thanks.

THE CHAIRMAN: The time of the minority has expired. Would you like to take a 5- or 10-minute break?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That would be nice.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Let's shoot for resuming at 4:50, if we could.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That'd be great.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay.

[Recess.]

THE CHAIRMAN: All right. Shall we get started again? Let's go back on the record.

And I want to recognize Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ambassador, it's good to see you again.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Nice to see you.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: I am both a member of the Oversight Committee as well as the Appropriations Committee, and so my questions are appropriations-focused.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Okay.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: You testified today -- I've been here most of the day -- that you don't believe that preconditions for aid were appropriate, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: As a policy matter, I agree with that, with respect to Ukraine --

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Right.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: -- at this point, at this moment.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Yes. Yes, with respect to Ukraine at this moment.

And, generally, you know, given that you have a budget, you and your staff are aware that the Appropriations Committee does, as Mr. Zeldin referenced, the Appropriations Committee, other committees, attach conditions to aid that we provide, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: And you're in the habit of following those instructions, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Okay. And you testified today that you were initially unaware of the conditions that were put on Ukraine by the President and the directions from Mr. Giuliani?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Okay. What about the congressional conditions?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I wasn't aware of the congressional conditions, because that aid would've gone directly from the respective agencies to Ukraine. It would not have passed through my hand or I don't even think the bilateral hand.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Right. And you were unaware even though you did testify today that Ukraine was a central component of your portfolio.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: The meaning of my testimony, Congresswoman, was that the situation between Russia and Ukraine was very fragile at the time. We had the ambassadorial change. We had the election in Ukraine. It was very touchy. And in the scheme of the U.S. budget, a quarter of a billion dollars, while that's a lot of money, is not a lot of money.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Sure. I'm on the Appropriation Committee.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: And you know that better than anyone.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Yeah.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I thought that, at that very moment in time, having any delay whatsoever, once I found out that there was a hold -- and I didn't know what the purpose of the hold was -- that any delay would send the wrong signal to Russia. That was my concern.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: But the delay that was occurring was not as prescribed by law. It was occurring because the President, through Mr. Giuliani, appears to have indicated that unless there were investigations against the Bidens or the company --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I didn't know why.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Right.

However, you were or you were not aware of the Appropriations Act requiring that the Pentagon certify that when Ukraine -- when they deemed Ukraine meeting the requirements of reducing corruption, that those funds would be released? Were you aware during any of this period of time of those requirements?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Not aware.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Okay. So, at no time, even though this was a central component of your portfolio, did it come up in any conversations that the law actually required that the Pentagon certify that Ukraine had taken steps to reduce corruption.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: As I indicated, my objective was to simply secure a meeting for President Zelensky. I was not involved

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: But that was not my question. My question is, during any of these conversations during this period of time, did it ever come up that Congress actually had required that the Pentagon certify that Ukraine had reduced corruption and then that aid could be released?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't recall that ever coming up.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Okay.

So, as you said, you didn't believe that non-lawful preconditions would be required. Would it be your testimony today that complying with the law and then the funds being released is important?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I think complying with the law is always important.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Okay. Well, are you aware that on May 23rd, the same day as the meeting that you talked about with the President after you attended the inauguration, the Pentagon did certify that Ukraine had taken steps, the steps necessary as required by the Appropriations Act, to reduce corruption and that the funds should be released?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I wasn't aware.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Okay. So, then, wouldn't you agree that, given that that occurred and that the Pentagon indicated that they had complied and corruption had been appropriately reduced, that those funds should've been released?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I’m not familiar, Congresswoman, with all of the conditions, whether it was simply that certification or there were other conditions necessary. I don't know enough about --

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: No, but --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: -- the vagaries of funds released --

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Well, the Pentagon did. Because the Pentagon wrote a letter that I have here in my hand that specifically said, Ukraine is in compliance with this public law, and the funds, as a result, you know, should be released. And they had certified that their release was appropriate.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Let me answer your question this way. If all lawful conditions had been met for funds release, then the funds should've been released.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Right. Okay. So then it would not have been appropriate for conditions unrelated to the law to be attached further.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: If the law required the funds to be released, they should've been released.

MS. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Okay. Thank you.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah.

THE CHAIRMAN: I just have a couple followup questions before I hand it back to Mr. Goldman.

My colleagues on the minority asked you questions along the lines of, don't other countries, doesn't Europe attach conditions and sometimes those conditions involve fighting corruption, and I think you said that, yes, those kinds of conditions are imposed. Is that right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That's right.

THE CHAIRMAN: But you would distinguish between conditions to fight corruption and a condition imposed to get Ukraine to investigate a political rival for help in a reelection campaign. You can distinguish between those two things, right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I can.

THE CHAIRMAN: The one is appropriate: the one, very much not appropriate. Am I right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That’s correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And you never heard Europe, for example, express its desire to have a condition on its aid to Ukraine that Ukraine investigate the Bidens or the 2016 election in a way that would help Donald Trump. I assume Europe never expressed that view to you.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Never heard that from Europe.

THE CHAIRMAN: I want to ask you a couple followups on the questions about the whistleblower complaint. You were asked whether it was fair for the whistleblower to suggest that you or others had to navigate the demands that were imposed for a call or a meeting with President Trump.

There were demands, weren't there, that an investigation take place of 2016 or Burisma? Ultimately those were demands, were they not?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Ultimately, yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And it's fair to say that you had to navigate those demands, you had to accommodate what the President and his lawyer wanted, if you were going to set up this meeting you thought very important?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I think that's fair.

THE CHAIRMAN: My colleague also took issue with the whistleblower characterization of differing messages.

You would agree that Rudy Giuliani was meeting and talking to Ukrainians, would you not?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And you did not have full visibility into what he was telling the Ukrainians, did you?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I did not.

THE CHAIRMAN: Did you have a concern that what we might be telling the Ukrainians was not perfectly consistent with what you and Ambassador Volker or others might be telling the Ukrainians?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yes, and that's why in my statement I said we would've preferred to let the State Department handle the relationship.

THE CHAIRMAN: And, indeed, having a back channel or a second channel through the President's lawyer could cause damage if that message was inconsistent with State Department policy.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: It could.

THE CHAIRMAN: And so part of your role was to try to contain whatever damage that second channel might cause? Is that fair to say?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, "containing the damage" implies that we would let the damage occur and then somehow try to fix it. I mean, our goal was never to have damage in the first place.

THE CHAIRMAN: But I think you said, Ambassador, that over time things got more and more insidious. I think those were your words. It started out with no condition, and then there was a condition for investigation into the corruption, and then there was a condition of an investigation into 2016 and Burisma, and then on the call itself it became clear the condition was investigation of 2016 and the Bidens. I think you described that as becoming more and more insidious, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And isn't it also fair to say that because there were added conditions to this meeting that Ukraine desperately wanted and that you wanted to make happen, that that meeting wasn't going to happen unless Ukraine played ball in meeting the demands of the President and Mr. Giuliani? Isn't that a fair use of that colloquial expression?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, that expression came up in previous testimony, and I'd never heard the term "play ball."

THE CHAIRMAN: But you understand what that means, right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: If you mean that those conditions would have to be complied with prior to getting a meeting, that was my understanding.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  You testified in the last round that, since the whistleblower complaint was released, or the transcript of the call record was released, you haven't spoken to anyone on the Ukraine file at the advice of counsel. Is that right?

A  Except, I believe, with, as I recall, just Secretary Perry. I think I testified to that earlier.

Q  Okay. But Secretary Perry was one of the three amigos, no?

A  Correct.

Q  So he was on the Ukrainian file?

A  And then I did -- I also testified I think I called Ambassador Volker to thank him for his service when he resigned.

Q  Right.

You also -- I believe you said that you got a general read-out from someone on your staff of the July 25th call?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay. Did you get any read-out from the Ukrainian side of that call?

A  I don't remember seeing a Ukrainian read-out. If someone sent me one, I didn't internalize it.

Q  How about a verbal read-out?

A  The only verbal read-out, Mr. Goldman, was, "It was a great call." I mean, no one thought the call was remarkable other than the fact that, A, it had finally happened after multiple attempts, and, B, that the President's -- whatever their conversation was seemed to be a pleasant conversation.

Q  And you had an hour-long meeting with Mr. Zelensky the day after the call, right?

A  Right.

Q  And this was a significant achievement, to get the call at this point, correct?

A  Correct.

Q  And as part of your duties and responsibilities, you generally memorialized what occurred at meetings with high-level leaders, right?

A  I always have note-takers. And, as I said, this was Ambassador Volker's meeting that he invited me to.

Q  Right. So you had a note-taker there for this meeting?

A  I didn't have one. I assume Ambassador Volker had one.

Q  So you did not have a note-taker.

A  I did not have a note-taker.

Q  Do you know whether anyone from the United States delegation there for this meeting was taking notes?

A  I assume someone was taking notes. There were quite a few people at the meeting.

Q  And someone from the State Department?

A  Probably.

Q  Okay. And those notes would be transmitted back to Washington in some way?

A  If they were taken by the Kyiv Embassy, they would've been put into some cable form and sent back, yeah.

Q  Okay. So, presumably, there is some memorialization of that meeting within the State Department records, right?

A  I believe that's correct.

Q  Okay.

You also said in your opening statement that there are documents that the committee doesn't have that you think would corroborate your testimony here today. Is that right?

A  I believe so.

Q  Can you describe, generally speaking, what those documents would include?

A  Texts, emails, et cetera.

Q  Any memos that --

A  No. I think they were all electronic.

Q  All electronic?

A  Yeah.

Q  On your personal phone?

A  I use a dual-SIM phone for both personal and business.

Q  Okay.

Do you recall that you gave an interview on Ukrainian television the day after the call on July 25th?

A  Uh-huh, I do.

Q  Do you recall that you said that there were, quote, "certain things that the Ukrainians have to do, there are preconditions to anything," when describing the potential White House meeting?

A  If I said that in the interview, yeah, I'm sure that's true.

Q  What did you mean by that?

A  At the time, I probably meant, you know, getting the schedule straight, getting the commitment. I think that was when we were still, on the corruption continuum, on the plain -- on the vanilla corruption part of the continuum.

I didn't want to imply, I believe, to the interviewer that the meeting was going to occur, you know, the next day. I didn't want to not have credibility with the Ukrainian media. So I wanted to, sort of, thread the needle of looking like we were being very supportive of Ukraine, things were moving forward, but there still had to be some things to be done before the meeting could occur.

Q  Right.

And just to be clear, the text message between Kurt Volker and Andrey Yermak where Volker specifically identifies the message that President Zelensky needs to give to Donald Trump, that does not refresh your recollection on -- which was the day before this interview -- that does not refresh your recollection as to what the state of play was as to what the conditions were for the White House --

A  No. As I said, I think that part of the time we were still in the corruption -- vanilla corruption part of the continuum, as I recall.

Q  Okay.

We talked a lot about the statement, so let's get to that. I want to turn your attention to page 4 of the text messages, which is exhibit 3.

A  Okay.

Q  And at the very bottom of that page, on August 9th at 11:27, you write to Rudy Giuliani: "Hi Mr Mayor! Had a good chat with Yermak last night" -- oh, I'm sorry. This is Kurt Volker writing this.

A  Okay.

Q  So you are -- but you are on the -- you were on this -- well, let me ask you this. Do you see the number there?

A  That's my number.

Q  Okay, that's your number. So you're on this chain, right?

A  Yes.

Q  And Kurt Volker writes, "Hi Mr Mayor! Had a good chat with Yermak last night. He was pleased with your phone call. Mentioned Z making a statement. Can we all get on the phone to make sure I advise Z correctly as to what he should be saying? Want to make sure we get this done right. Thanks!"

And then you respond, "Good idea Kurt. I am on Pacific time." Do you see that?

A  I do.

Q  And then a little bit below it, you organize for State Ops to organize the phone call.

Do you remember having this conference call on August 9th with Kurt Volker and Rudy Giuliani?

A  Vaguely. This is one of the calls I think I described in my previous testimony with Rudy. I think this was one of the conference calls.

Q  Right. And this is specifically referencing a statement, correct?

A  Right.

Q  And, clearly, Yermak was aware, Yermak being a senior advisor to President Zelensky, was aware of the desire for a statement based on this text. Do you agree with that?

A  I do.

Q  Okay. So what do you recall about that conversation?

A  Again, without knowing exactly where we were on the, as I want to call it, the continuum, this might have been beginning to morph into the press statement where the Burisma/2016 election may have been introduced by Rudy.

I don't remember which call that was on, but, at some point, as I testified earlier, it went from a generic corruption requirement to a more specific requirement. And it could've been on this call; it could've been on a subsequent recall. I don't recall.

Q  Okay.

If you can go to page 42, on August 9th, 5:35 p.m. -and this is a text chain between you and Kurt Volker -- you say, "Morrison ready to get dates as soon as Yermak confirms."

Is that Tim Morrison, the NSC senior director?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay.

And then Kurt Volker responds, "Excellent!! How did you sway him? :)" You respond, "Not sure I did. I think potus really wants the deliverable." Volker responds, "But does he know that?" And you respond, "Yep."

What is the deliverable?

A  The deliverable, I believe, was the press statement.

Q  And here you're specifically referencing the President, who wants the press statement.

A  That was my surmise, again, based on what I had heard through Volker from Giuliani.

Q  Right. So you still were under the impression, in part based on the May 23rd meeting, that what Rudy Giuliani wanted related to Ukraine is what the President wanted related to Ukraine.

A  That's the only logical connection I could make.

Q  And then when Volker says, "But does he know that," and you say, "Yep," who's "he"?

A  I think he was referring to Morrison.

Q  Okay.

Now, later -- and then a little bit lower, at 5:51, you say, "To avoid misunderstandings, might be helpful to ask Andrey for a draft statement (embargoed) so that we can see exactly what they propose to cover. Even though Ze" -that's Zelensky, right?

A  Right.

Q  -- "does a live presser they can still summarize in a brief statement. Thoughts?" And Kurt Volker says, "Agree!"

So do you know what happened? Did Volker recommend that the Ukrainians send a draft statement to you?

A  As I recall -- this is refreshing my memory, and, as I recall, this is when I believe there was talk about having a live interview or a live broadcast. And what I was concerned about was that Zelensky would say whatever he would say on live television and it still wouldn't be good enough for Rudy, slash, the President, and then we would be having to go back and tell Zelensky, sorry, not good enough, and that would be extremely embarrassing.

So I had suggested, why don't you give us a summary of what you're planning to say so that it can be run by Mayor Giuliani first to nail down what it is exactly that the President was asking or Giuliani was asking versus what Zelensky was intending to say? I didn't want there to be a false press statement made live that was inadequate in some way. And I was, again, just trying to protect our reputation with the Ukrainians.

Q  Okay.

And then on August 10th at 1:23 p.m., you write, "I briefed Ulrich. All good."

Who's Ulrich?

A  That's Ulrich Brechbuhl, who is the counselor to the Secretary.

Q  And do you recall briefing him on this?

A  I may have walked him through where we were.

Q  About the statement?

A  Probably.

Q  And what was his response?

A  Based on my text, his response was probably,

"Fine." If he had had an adverse reaction to what was going on, he would've said something to me and I probably would've communicated it back. So, again, I'm speculating that I briefed him and everything was copacetic.

Q  Okay. Do you know if he consulted with Secretary Pompeo on this?

A  His habit is to, you know, consult with Secretary Pompeo frequently. I mean, that's why he's the counselor.

Q  Do you recall receiving specific authorization from Secretary Pompeo to go forward with arranging the statement with Rudy Giuliani?

A  Well, we never got the final statement. There was nothing --

Q  I know, but --

A  There was nothing to ask Secretary Pompeo until we were ready to go.

Q  Well, you felt the need to brief Ulrich Brechbuhl.

A  I talk to Ulrich all the time, just to keep him in the loop.

Q  Okay. And so you don't know whether or not --

A  No.

Q  -- Secretary Pompeo was aware of this or not?

A  I wasn't going to take anything back to the higher-ups until we had a tentative commitment from the Ukrainians, again, so I wasn't wasting anyone's time.

Q  And you knew you needed a commitment that satisfied Rudy Giuliani's desires, right?

A  I knew I needed a commitment that, yes, that Rudy Giuliani would represent that then there would be a meeting.

Q  Okay.

But the next text is a little bit later on August 10th, where Volker writes, "This came in from Andrey." Is that Andrey Yermak?

A  Presumably.

Q  And then he says, quote, "Hi Kurt. Please let me know when you can talk. I think it's possible to make this declaration and mention all these things. Which we discussed yesterday. But it will be logic to do after we receive a confirmation of date. We inform about date of visit and about our expectations and our guarantees for future visit. Let's discuss it."

What's going on here?

A  I think this was the back-and-forth between the Ukrainians and Volker. What comes first, the chicken or the egg?

Q  Uh-huh. Meaning, they wanted to get a date for the White House before they made an announcement about these investigations? Is that correct?

A  Presumably that's what was going on.

Q  Did you subsequently have another conversation with Andrey Yermak?

A  Well, I had many conversations, but I don't know if we had any about this.

Q  Well, I mean, you see that it says -- oh, I guess this might be with Kurt Volker.

A  Yeah. No, but if your question was, after whatever the date was, did I have any other conversations with Yermak, I think the answer would be yes.

Q  Okay.

So, at the very bottom, on the 11th, Volker says, "Hi Gordon -- ready in 10 min?" You say, "Yes." Volker says,

"He needs another 15 min. So 10:15."

Do you think that's a reference to Yermak?

A  I don't know.

Q  You don't remember speaking to Yermak directly at this time?

A  I don't. I think, again, Kurt was handling the back-and-forth on the press statement, and I kept the State Department informed through Ulrich Brechbuhl as to what was going on so that everyone was on the same page.

Q  And then if I can go back to page 5 with you -- A Yeah, I was trying to navigate. Where are you, I'm sorry?

Q  Page 5.

A  Page 5? Oh.

Q  Yeah, the group text with Mr. Giuliani and Kurt Volker. On August 11th at 10:28, Ambassador Volker writes, "Hi Rudy -- we have heard bCk" -- I assume that's "back" -"from Andrey again -- they are writing the statement now and will send to us. Can you talk for 5 min before noon today?"

So do you know if you ever had another conversation with Mr. Giuliani about this?

A  I think we had at least two conference calls, and this may have been the second one or the first one. But, again, this was when we were in the process of going back and forth on the wording of the statement.

Q  And describe in those conference calls what Rudy Giuliani -- what requirements he had for the press statement.

A  This was when, in mid-August? Yeah, mid-August. This was when we were in the Burisma/2016 election part of the continuum.

Q  Uh-huh. So he didn't say, we need to have a statement that says that Ukraine must continue their anti-corruption efforts, right?

A  I believe it then morphed -- when we started to work on the statement, it morphed from the vanilla corruption into the Burisma/2016 portion.

Q  Okay.

Now, if we go to page 43 -- wait 1 second. Sorry, 23.

A  Twenty-three?

Q  Yeah.

So, at the bottom, the very last text -- this is a group text with you and Andrey Yermak and Kurt Volker -- Volker writes, "Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States, especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians. I want to declare that this is unacceptable. We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, including those involving Burisma and the 2016 U.S. elections, which in turn will prevent the recurrence of this problem in the future."

Is this the revised proposed statement with Rudy Giuliani's input?

A  It might've been. I don't know if that language came from Giuliani or it came from Volker or if it came from the Ukrainians. I really don’t know.

Q  Was this approved language by Giuliani?

A  I don't know.

Q  You don't know?

A  I don't know if it was approved or it was draft or what.

Q  But -- and so you don't know if this was sufficient -- if the Ukrainians released this statement --

A  I don’t know if it was sufficient.

Q  You don’t know if it was sufficient.

A  No, I don’t.

Q  But is this consistent with what Rudy Giuliani had indicated he wanted in the statement?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay.

And so, to the extent that you were involved, in your role, in advocating for a White House meeting and whether and to whatever extent that a condition of that White House meeting was some sort of investigation, is it accurate that whatever that investigation was that the President needed was described or proscribed by Rudy Giuliani?

A  All the communication flowed through Rudy Giuliani, and I can only speculate that the President was instructing his personal lawyer accordingly. I don't know. I don’t know if this was coming out of Rudy Giuliani irrespective of the President, because I wasn't involved in those conversations.

Q  But when you describe this continuum --

A  Yes.

Q  -- as to, you know, whatever the condition is for the White House meeting and it evolves over time, whatever the evolution of it was was dictated by Rudy Giuliani.

A  Correct. Either directly or through Volker or Perry or others.

Q  Okay.

Now, you said the statement was never issued by the Ukrainians, correct?

A  I believe the idea was shelved.

Q  Do you know why?

A  I don't.

Q  Do you know who determined that it was shelved?

A  I don't know that we ever got to a point where everyone was in agreement.

Q  Okay.

Now, around this time period, in mid-August, do you recall an unofficial meeting with a Member of the House of Representatives at the Brussels airport?

A  Refresh my memory.

Q  Did you meet with anyone, any members of the Intelligence Committee, without staff at the Brussels airport on or about August 16th?

A  I may have. I don't know. You mean in the lounge?

Q  Yeah, in the lounge.

A  Yeah. Who I did meet with?

Q  I mean, you tell me. Do you remember?

A  I don't remember. I meet with a lot of people as I'm coming and going.

Q  Do you remember meeting with Representative Nunes at that time?

A  I saw Representative Nunes in Brussels when he had a meeting there. I think we -- I think I saw him and we had coffee or something. But that wasn't at the airport; I think that was in the city.

Q  Okay. Just the two of you?

A  Yeah, I think it was just the two of us.

Q  Did you discuss Ukraine at all in any way?

A  No, I think it was just a, you know, shoot-the-breeze sort of conversation, as I recall it. Just sort of a friendly, he's in town kind of thing.

Q  You don't recall Ukraine coming up at all?

A  I don't remember Ukraine coming up.

Q  Okay.

You've obviously discussed and described some of the conversations you had with Senator Johnson about Ukraine. Are there any other Congressmen or Senators that you remember discussing Ukraine issues with?

A  Not that I recall. Senator Johnson, because he was on the delegation.

Q  And no one else?

A  Not that I can remember.

Q  How about staff members from any committees in the House of Representatives?

A  I mean, one of the problems with my memory is that if I wasn't in Washington I'm most often in Brussels. Unless they were in Brussels and they were coming through in a codel and asked me about it specifically, I don't know that I sought anyone out to speak to them about Ukraine.

Q  Uh-huh. And did you have any conversations with any of the minority staff before your testimony here today?

A  Not to the best of my knowledge, no.

Q  No?

A  No.

Q  Did your attorney?

MR. LUSKIN: I spoke with Mr. Castor. We did not share Ambassador Sondland's statement --

MR. GOLDMAN: You want to repeat that?

MR. LUSKIN: We did not discuss the substance of his testimony, and we did not share Ambassador Sondland's statement with him in advance.

MR. GOLDMAN: All right.

THE CHAIRMAN: At this point, let me recognize the members for questions.

Mr. Himes, do you have some questions?

Mr. Heck?

MR. HECK: Thank you very much.

Mr. Ambassador, just to nail down a couple foundational facts, you were confirmed by the Senate on June 28th of last year in a presumably unanimous voice vote?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. HECK: And a short 12 days later, you were packed up and had moved to Brussels?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah. I was confirmed quickly because that was the NATO summit and I had to be Europe for the NATO summit.

MR. HECK: Where were you living prior to that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Seattle, Washington.

MR. HECK: Is that your legal residence?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: It is.

MR. HECK: Do you have a driver's license?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I do.

MR. HECK: What State issued it?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Washington.

MR. HECK: Are you registered to vote?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I am.

MR. HECK: In which State?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Washington.

MR. HECK: Thank you, sir. That's all I have.

THE CHAIRMAN: Representative Rouda.

MR. ROUDA: Thank you, Chairman.

Thank you, Ambassador, for being here.

I know it's tough to remember all these conversations and texts and the essence of it over many, many months. And, you know, I can't even remember what I had for lunch yesterday, and I know you had a tough time remembering your conversation with Secretary Perry yesterday.

So I really want to focus on the continuum. And when President Zelensky came into office and won the election, he won based on a platform of fighting back against corruption, right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. ROUDA: And I think the diplomatic consensus, your consensus with your fellow leaders, Volker, Dr. Hill, Yovanovitch, Bolton, everyone felt this was a good change to address corruption in Ukraine.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That's right.

MR. ROUDA: And that this was better than the previous President, the previous President who many believed was very corrupt, including the people who voted in Ukraine.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. ROUDA: So, in that continuum, as you talked about, where it moved from corruption to Burisma, what was so special about Burisma? I mean, when that name came up, what was your reaction? Why Burisma?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't know. In hindsight, I should've asked more questions about Burisma. But it was something that was important, apparently, to Mr. Giuliani and to the President. And, again, my focus was on getting the meeting and getting the phone call.

MR. ROUDA: But corruption has been rampant in Ukraine for decades. And if a new President is coming in who's, we hope, better positioned to address corruption, why is it moved to a single company and not multiple companies with a long history of corruption?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: First of all, I agree with you, I think there should not have been any preconditions to the meeting. I think the meeting should've just taken place shortly after the inauguration.

MR. ROUDA: But were you curious as to why this name of one company came up?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, as I said, also Naftogaz came up, and there was a general consensus or list of apparently a bunch of investigations relating to corruption that had been suspended under the previous President that President Zelensky, I believe, in his platform had said, I'm going to restart all of these investigations. And I don't even know what they related to.

MR. ROUDA: But I guess the part I'm struggling with is, you're a really smart guy. You've been incredibly successful, so successful, you're able to give a million dollars to the inauguration for Trump. And you're in this diplomatic position where it's really important that you understand all of the information so that you can put the best foot forward for our country in the relations with not just Ukraine but all the countries in your portfolio. You want to make sure that you don't step into anything accidentally that would reflect poorly on the country.

So, again, I'm just kind of curious, why aren't you curious to know more about Burisma?

A  Yeah, I mean, this was -- without sounding like I'm passing the buck, this was primarily Ambassador Taylor and Ambassador Volker's file. And in terms of this issue, I was there to lend support. I'm not, you know, shirking my responsibility, but it did not rise to the point, until the meeting never occurred, that I began to get more and more suspicious about what was going on.

MR. ROUDA: So you didn't ask anybody, hey, why Burisma?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I did not.

MR. ROUDA: Okay. Did you ask anybody about, why the 2016 election, what about the server, what's that all about?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, that -- President Trump, when he brought it up, you know, "They tried to take me down," I assumed it had something to do with that.

MR. ROUDA: So with Zelensky coming into the Presidency and his administration, the hope is that corruption is going to go down. How long did President Trump freeze the aid to Ukraine in 2018?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I'm not aware.

MR. ROUDA: You're not aware?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Are you saying in 2019 or 2018?

MR. ROUDA: I'm saying 2018.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I'm not aware.

MR. ROUDA: Did he freeze the aid?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't know.

MR. ROUDA: You don't know.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't know.

MR. ROUDA: But you were --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I only became Ambassador in middle of 2018. I wasn't --

MR. ROUDA: Right.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah.

MR. ROUDA: So you think if he did freeze the aid you would've known about it?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No.

MR. ROUDA: You represent 29 countries in your portfolio. How many of those countries receive aid from the United States?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Again, the aid flows through the bilateral ambassador, not through the EU. So I wouldn't know whether a country is getting aid or not getting aid.

MR. ROUDA: But you knew Ukraine was getting aid.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I did not know Ukraine was getting aid until this all came up in 2019 and I heard that there was a freeze on the aid and it was in the context of another obstacle to getting the meeting.

MR. ROUDA: So, to the best of your knowledge, President Trump, in 2018, when, arguably, Ukraine is under a more corrupt administration, no aid was withheld from Ukraine under President Trump's administration?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: If you say so, Congressman. I don't --

MR. ROUDA: Okay. And you're not aware of any aid being withheld to the other 28 countries in your portfolio under President Trump in 2018 or 2019. You're not aware of it.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I haven't received any complaints.

MR. ROUDA: Okay.

And I know it's really tough to recall all this stuff, you know, these conversations. Some of them have taken place in the past. But I am kind of curious, because when you recalled your conversation with Ambassador Yovanovitch, you were very specific. A lot of detail there about how emotional she was, how mad she was, how she was railing on Trump and Bolton.

Why do you think you had such greater recollection on your conversation with her? I'm sorry. Hill. Sorry. Hill.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That was Dr. Hill.

MR. ROUDA: Dr. Hill. My apologies.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Only because it stuck out to me because it was so unusual. That was not her usual deportment.

MR. ROUDA: Even thought many of the things we've talked about today are highly unusual, that one seemed to really resonate?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: It resonated with me because I've never seen anyone so upset.

MR. ROUDA: Okay.

The last thing I want to ask you: My understanding is Secretary Perry resigned.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I didn't know that. I haven't had any -- I haven't had any phone access.

MR. ROUDA: Don't hold me to it. The reports may not be correct, but -- so you weren't aware of that? That's a -AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No.

MR. ROUDA: -- surprise to you?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Absolutely.

MR. ROUDA: Okay. Thank you.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: In fact, we are scheduled to meet on Sunday in Brussels for an energy conference. So, all news to me.

MR. ROUDA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Krishnamoorthi.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: Mr. Sondland, on April 21st, President Zelensky was elected President of Ukraine, and around that time Donald Trump made a phone call to him, congratulating him, right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I believe that's true.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: And were you a part of that phone call?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I was not.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: Were you briefed before or after that phone call about the contents of the call?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I was not.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: I wanted to ask you about Ukraine.

Do you have any interests in Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: None.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: No business interests?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: None whatsoever.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: When you said in your statement, on page 8 of your statement, you did not understand until much later that Mr. Giuliani's agenda might have also included an effort to prompt the Ukrainians to investigate Vice President Biden or his son or to involve Ukrainians directly or indirectly in the President's 2020 reelection campaign, why did you -- why do you think that either of those activities are problematic?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Because I believe I testified that it would be improper to do that.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: And illegal, right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I'm not a lawyer, but I assume so.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: Sir, one last question, which is: Do you believe that, with regard to Burisma, that the effort by Giuliani to investigate Burisma, now that we know that it was actually intended to go after Mr. Biden's son Hunter, was ever a proper inquiry?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I mean, I think I testified to that at the beginning, that it would not be proper.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: And illegal, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Again, I’m not a lawyer. I don't know the law exactly. It doesn't sound good.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: Thank you.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: You're welcome.

THE CHAIRMAN: I don't remember the order in which people came in. Who would like to be recognized next? I'll leave it to either one of you.

MR. ESPAILLAT: Ambassador, I want to go along the same line of questioning. I mean, obviously, the acknowledgement of corruption seems to be a prominent issue.

First, in your testimony, for example on page 6, you say, "Corruption poses challenges to the legitimacy and stability of government. Corruption is also an economic issue."

Then on page 7, you again state that "to make reforms necessary to attract Western economic investment and to address the Ukraine's well-known longstanding corruption issues."

Again on page 7, you refer to President Zelensky as "a reformer who received a strong mandate from the Ukrainian people to fight corruption and pursue greater economic prosperity."

So corruption seems to be an important issue, as you've highlighted in your testimony today, in your statement. And, furthermore, it seems to be of greater importance when the names of Burisma and the 2016 election continuously pop up, as you've stated in your statement and in your testimony today.

How many folks do you have working for you? What's your team like? How many people do you have working for you?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: About 150.

MR. ESPAILLAT: You have 150 people working for you. At any time when you heard the word "Burisma," as it was connected to corruption, did you ever instruct any of your 150 staffers to research the company?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No, I did not. Again, Ambassador Taylor and Ambassador Volker were, sort of, on the front 1ines of this.

MR. ESPAILLAT: Did anybody google the word "Burisma," yourself or a staffer?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I didn't do it. I don't know about anyone else.

MR. ESPAILLAT: So none of your 150 staffers, nor yourself, after being deliberately concerned about corruption in the Ukraine and hearing consistently the name "Burisma" come up, not one of your staffers, 150 of them, nor yourself, ever researched the company or googled the company or find out who was on its board of directors? Is that accurate?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That's correct.

MR. ESPAILLAT: Okay. Now --

THE CHAIRMAN: I'm sorry. Our time has expired, but we'll be happy to come back to you in the next round.

Mr. Castor.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Going back to exhibit No. 8, the whistleblower complaint, exhibit 8 --

A  Exhibit 8?

Q  Exhibit 8.

A  Okay.

Q  Page 4. I just want to clarify that the last sentence of the first paragraph under Roman III -- this is the sentence we reviewed before with "navigate" and "demands." "Based on multiple readouts of these meetings" -- and "these meetings" refer to the meetings on July 26th?

A  Yes.

Q  -- "Ambassadors Volker and Sondland reportedly provided advice to the Ukrainian leadership about how to 'navigate' the demands that the President had made."

But on July 26th, you were not aware the President had any demands. Is that correct?

A  Well, I think we were aware at that point that the President wanted -- I think this was still in the vanilla corruption part of the continuum. Because, again, we didn't get a transcript of the actual call until, I think, September.

Q  Right.

A  So this whole notion of investigating the Bidens I don't believe would've come up in that meeting because we weren’t aware of it.

Q  Okay. So, during that meeting, I mean, if I understand your testimony, the statement didn't come up and --

A  I don't remember it coming up.

Q  Okay.

A  Didn't flag it for me.

Q  And then just flipping back to page 7, the first bullet point: "that State Department officials, including [yourself and] Ambassador Volker, had spoken with Mr. Giuliani in an attempt to 'contain the damage.'"

I mean, none of your communications with Mr. Giuliani were trying to contain any damage, because you didn't know any damage had occurred. Is that correct?

A  Well, as I said, my conversations -- because they're lumping Volker and me together -- my conversations with Giuliani really centered around negotiating this press statement.

Q  Okay.

A  If you want to call that containing the damage, I guess you could, but I don't see it as that.

Q  Yeah. I don't understand how that could be containing the damage.

The next sentence: "During this same timeframe, multiple U.S. officials told me that the Ukrainian leadership was led to believe that a meeting or phone call between the President and President Zelensky would depend on whether Zelensky showed willingness to 'play ball.'"

Now, as far as you know, the July call was scheduled without any preconditions, right?

A  Ultimately, yes.

Q  The company Burisma has been the subject of a number of investigations in Ukraine over the years. You're aware of that, right?

A  I am now.

Q  And to the extent Ukrainians are investigating other Ukrainians for wrongdoing in the company of Burisma, that would be perfectly acceptable, correct?

A  Presumably.

Q  Okay. Now, you're aware that Hunter Biden was asked to serve on the board of Burisma, correct?

A  Based on press accounts, yes.

Q  Yeah. Do you know whether Mr. Biden has any corporate governance experience?

A  I don't.

Q  Okay. And, you know, is it conceivable that Ukrainians could have decided to place Mr. Biden on the board because they wanted to curry favor with the U.S.?

A  Conceivable.

Q  Okay. And if they did and if the decision to place him on the board was improper and the Ukrainians found evidence of that, wouldn't it be fair that they would investigate that?

A  Are you asking for my opinion?

Q  Well, it's just, if there was wrongdoing associated with placing Hunter Biden on the board, wouldn't that be something worth investigating?

A  Seems to be.

Q  Okay.

I'm going to ask you a very odd fact that came up in another interview. I just want to get your reaction to it. Have you ever encouraged Romanians to show up at the White House without an appointment?

A  No.

Q  Okay. If someone were to suggest that, would you have any idea what the basis for that was?

A  Well, one of the things that I wound up doing was helping bilateral ambassadors -- what do you call it? -- advocate for meetings of their country's leaders. So, occasionally, I would get a phone call from a bilateral ambassador and say, "Our President would like to meet with President Trump. I've had a request in for months. Could you help? Could you help push?

Q  Now, when you --

A  So that's the context in which I would join with my bilateral colleague and call someone at the White House and say, I think this is very important that we get the President of fi11-in-the-blank EU country in to see President Trump.

But have I ever said, you just show up at the White House without an appointment?

Q  Yes.

A  No. No.

Q  And by bilateral ambassador, you mean the U.S. ambassador?

A  The U.S. ambassador to the particular country.

Q  Like another State Department employee.

A  Correct.

Q  Okay.

And you can't just show up to the White House and get in, right?

A  Correct.

Q  You've got to have a meeting. And before the meeting, you've got to do certain things, correct?

A  That's right.

Q  Okay.

Did anyone in the National Security Council ever express concern to you that you were using an unsecure mobile device in your discussions with other international leaders?

A  Never.

Q  President Zelensky's inauguration was scheduled relatively quickly. Is that fair to say?

A  I think that's right.

Q  A matter of days, even?

A  Yeah, I think the date was sort of floating, and they nailed it down somehow.

Q  And the U.S. delegation, in advance of the trip, was in flux?

A  Correct.

Q  And at one point, it's been related to us, that Vice President Pence was considering going? Is that something you --

A  I had heard that, yes.

Q  Okay. And then, as it turned out, he was unable to go. Do you know why?

A  I don't.

Q  Do you know if his decision not to attend was related to any of the things we've been discussing today, such as the Burisma matter, the 2016 --

A  I don't know why he didn't go.

Q  Okay. So there's no reason -- you have no evidence to suggest that Vice President Pence's participation in the inaugural was withheld from Ukraine as an admonishment for not playing ball or something of that sort?

A  I don't remember anything to that effect.

Q  Okay.

MR. CASTOR: Mr. Zeldin.

MR. ZELDIN: I'm picking up where my colleague was just asking you some additional questions about Burisma. Do you know why Burisma and -- do you know whose Zlochevsky is?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Who?

MR. ZELDIN: Zlochevsky.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you know why -- so Zlochevsky was an oligarch with ownership stake in Burisma. Do you know why Burisma and Zlochevsky were under investigation for corruption in the Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I do not.

MR. ZELDIN: But you are aware that Hunter Biden was hired for a paid position on the board of directors?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Again, based on press accounts, recent press accounts, yes.

MR. ZELDIN: Those press accounts, did they indicate that Hunter Biden was getting paid at least $50,000 per month?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I recall a figure close to that, yeah.

MR. ZELDIN: Did any of those press accounts indicate that he had no energy experience or Ukraine experience?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware that Vice President Joe Biden went to Ukraine in 2016 and successfully got the prosecutor general, the state prosecutor, fired?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Again, based on press accounts.

MR. ZELDIN: The name of that state prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.

Are you aware, based on those press accounts, that the Vice President threatened Ukraine with the loss of $1 billion if they didn't immediately fire that state prosecutor?

[5:50 p.m.]

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Again, based on recent press accounts, yes.

MR. ZELDIN: Is it fair that there's a lot about Burisma, Zlochevsky, Hunter Biden and Joe Biden that you don’t know about?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you have a problem with the Vice President's son being paid $50,000 a month in Ukraine?

THE CHAIRMAN: We're getting very far afield if we're asking the Ambassador's opinion on what someone should be paid to serve on a board.

MR. ZELDIN: But you have asked for his opinion on a lot of things related to this, and I'm going to --

THE CHAIRMAN: You know, I don't think I have. The Ambassador can venture an opinion on this, but --

MR. ZELDIN: Well, he has been asked many questions about his assessment of whether it was right or wrong. So we are going to get into just what basis of information he has --

THE CHAIRMAN: We're talking about diplomatic efforts and shadow foreign policy, but I'll let the witness answer. It just seems an odd opinion question to be asking of this witness.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I have no opinion.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you believe that it would be appropriate for the son of the Vice President to be paid $50,000 a month from an entity in one of the countries in your portfolio, run by an oligarch under corruption, and that person is -- has no energy experience or no Ukraine experience? You don't have any opinion? You have no problem with that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Congressman, I can't speculate as to why they hired him or what they paid him. That wouldn't be right on my part to speculate.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you believe that there would be any conflict of interest for the Vice President to be having the -- let me backtrack a moment.

Are you aware that Viktor Shokin, that state prosecutor, had an open investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky at the time that he made that threat?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Only through recent press accounts.

MR. ZELDIN: And do you have any -- do you see any issue with the Vice President issuing that threat if his son is being paid $50,000 a month from that entity?

THE CHAIRMAN: If I could just state for the record, I think the evidence we've received thus far indicated there was no open investigation. You can posit an allegation, but that's not been the --

MR. MEADOWS: Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, I don't mind you opining on your 45 minutes. And this is a deposition, and unless you want us opining on your 45 minutes, let's leave it to the questions and answers. He's got three capable counselors there that I'm sure are paid far more than you and I are paid to advise him on what he should and should not answer.

THE CHAIRMAN: The objection, if we were in court, would be facts not in evidence. And --

MR. MEADOWS: But the objections if we were in court would be on you leading the witness over and over and over again.

THE CHAIRMAN: I don't think it's fair --

MR. NOBLE: That's admissible in court.

THE CHAIRMAN: I don't think it's fair --

MR. ZELDIN: By the way, the question was, are you aware that there was an open case?

THE CHAIRMAN: I don't think it's fair to this witness to ask him if he is aware of facts which are not, in fact, facts. If you want to say, are you aware that there is an allegation, that's fine.

MR. MEADOWS: Well, Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, you have indicated facts regarding a 2020 campaign investigation that are not facts, they're merely your opinion. So if we want to get in this back-and-forth, I'm more than willing to get into a colloquy with you with the facts, because the facts are on my side.

THE CHAIRMAN: I would just caution the witness facts represented by members may not actually be facts, but you are free to answer their questions.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I can't express an opinion on Mr. Biden's employment.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware -- do you know if Viktor Shokin had an open investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky at the time that Vice President Biden threatened Ukraine with the loss of $1 billion?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I'm not aware. Again, all of my awareness comes from recent press reports.

MR. MEADOWS: So, Mr. Ambassador, let me jump in. I don't want you answering to facts that are not facts. I want to make that clear for the record. I also don't want you to give opinion on things that you're not an expert on.

And I can tell that some of your reluctance with my colleague is that you don't want to weigh in. And so, as much as we might want you to weigh in, and as much as the other side might want you to weigh in on facts that are not necessarily facts, I want you to stick to that. Can I interject?

Here is one area that I do believe that there -- we are conflating two different things. We're conflating foreign aid and javelins at times. Would you agree with that? That foreign aid, the foreign aid that was withheld was not actually withholding javelin defense items. Are you aware of any conversation where javelins were being withheld?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: My knowledge of the aid package is very limited. Again, my focus -- it sounds very narrow, but you have a full-time bilateral Ambassador who would deal with those issues. That was Ambassador Taylor and prior to that, Ambassador Yovanovitch. That is right in the center lane of their portfolio. Then on top of that, which is unusual, you have layered over that a Special Envoy, whose sole focus is to oversee the Ukraine portfolio.

My role in this was to use whatever influence I had at the NSC and the White House to help advocate for a meeting. I did not get into the peculiarities --

MR. MEADOWS: And that advocation for the meeting, your advocating for that meeting was in the sole interest, best interest of the United States and our national security. Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That is correct.

MR. MEADOWS: 100 percent?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: 100 percent.

MR. MEADOWS: Not 99, 100 percent in the best interest of our country. Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: In my view, yes.

MR. MEADOWS: Okay. And so, in advocating for this meeting, in advocating to make sure that the new President Zelensky was, indeed, set on a new path, you were very encouraged that he was serious about addressing corruption. Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That is correct.

MR. MEADOWS: Because my colleague was talking about Mr. Shokin, and I guess his reputation was one that he was not serious about really rooting out corruption. Had you heard that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Again, based on recent press reports.

MR. MEADOWS: Had you heard about the special prosecutor that replaced him, that he was not serious about rooting out corruption?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Contemporarily, yes.

MR. MEADOWS: So both of those individuals were not serious. So we were taking a leap of faith, a leap of faith that this new government was going to get rid of corruption, which was contrary to all history that we know about with Ukraine. Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: You can always dream.

MR. MEADOWS: All right, we can always dream. Would you agree that the European Union, prior to May of 2019, shared a similar view with President Donald Trump that corruption was a way of life in the Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: They were concerned about corruption, I think it's fair to say.

MR. MEADOWS: All right. And had any of the European Union raised corruption issues about the Ukraine with you in your role, in your official role as Ambassador for the EU?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yes. In fact, the official that traveled with me to Odessa, who was the Secretary General of the EU, raised it himself with President Poroshenko at our bilateral meeting.

MR. MEADOWS: All right. So you're saying that people outside of this administration raised with the previous President their concern about corruption. Whether or not it had anything to do with any individual, they were just generally concerned about corruption. Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Corruption per se, yes.

MR. MEADOWS: All right. I can yield back.

MR. ZELDIN: If the President of the United States has a problem with the former Vice President of the United States' son being paid $50,000 a month with no energy experience and no Ukraine experience, if the President of the United States has a problem with the Vice President running point for the Obama administration and threatening to withhold $1 billion of U.S. aid if the State prosecutor isn't fired, and if the President of the United States is aware that there was an investigation into the entity that was paying Hunter Biden $50,000 a month, and Zlochevsky who runs that, and if the President of the United States believes that there was an open investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky at the time of Vice President Biden's threat, if the President of the United States has a problem with all of this, is that a reasonable position, is that an acceptable position for the President of the United States to want to look into that further?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I can't express an opinion on that. I don’t know legally if the President has the right to do that. Again, I’m not a lawyer. I think that's really between the President and his -- you know, the electorate, as to whether the voters think that that's proper or not. I don’t know.

MR. ZELDIN: But earlier on, you were testifying to a question worded differently, where you were saying that it would be inappropriate to ask the Ukrainian Government to conduct an investigation into a 2020 political rival, correct? Did you say something to that effect earlier?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I believe I did, yes.

MR. ZELDIN: But you're not willing to explain that any further beyond that, given all of -- of what the President may believe when making that -- when making that request. Does it matter what the facts are to you?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah, the facts are critical, and I don't know all the underlying facts. And I'm really not in the business of providing an opinion on this hypothetical as to whether it was proper or improper. I do think it was improper on the future election.

MR. ZELDIN: Did you feel pressured earlier in today's deposition to answer that it was improper to ask, based on the fact that you don't have all the facts?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't think I felt unduly pressured at this deposition at all.

MR. ZELDIN: You didn't feel unduly pressured to answer that question without your facts, but you feel like you shouldn't answer my question because you don't have your facts? It's the same exact issue.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Tell me again your question.

MR. ZELDIN: So the President of the United States, if the President of the United States believes that Hunter Biden, Vice President Joe Biden's son, is getting paid $50,000 a month from this foreign company run by a foreign oligarch, that there is a corruption investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky; if the President of the United States believes that Vice President Joe Biden threatened Ukraine with the loss of $1 billion, if they didn't immediately fire the state prosecutor who was the state prosecutor who had an investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky; if the President believes all of these different things, if the President believes that Burisma, Zlochevsky, Hunter Biden and Joe Biden shouldn't be immune from scrutiny just because Joe Biden is running for President; if the President was to believe that if it's not illegal then it should be; if the President believes that U.S. aid to Ukraine should be spent as effectively as possible; if the President has longstanding issues with corruption in Ukraine, if the President believes all of these things, would it be okay for the President to want to look into this further?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: As I said, I'm not a lawyer. If it's legal for him to do so, then I assume it would be okay. If it's illegal for him to do so, then I assume it would be wrong. That's the best answer I can give you. It's really a question of law.

MR. ZELDIN: So we're talking about an earlier question you were asked and you answered one way, and another question I just asked that you're answering the opposite way. One question was worded the way that I just worded the question I just asked you, and you gave what seemed to be a candid answer. One of my colleagues earlier asked you if it would be appropriate to ask Ukraine to conduct an investigation into a political rival, and you answered a different way.

So I'm trying to understand two completely different answers to what is the same exact situation, a request by the President of the United States to Ukraine to look into a case involving an entity that was under investigation for corruption owned by an oligarch under investigation for corruption, and the President of the United States has an issue with the entire setup and he makes the request.

So you've been asked the question on what is the same exact issue two different ways, but you're giving two totally different answers. And we need to -- I believe it would be helpful if we can better understand why it's two totally different answers to what is the same exact request.

MR. LUSKIN: With all respect, Congressman, we've now been here for eight and a half hours and Ambassador Sondland has not declined to answer a single question posed by any member or any counsel member. You’ve asked this question now three different times. I know you're unhappy with his answer, but if we stay until 7:30 he's not going to change his answer.

MR. ZELDIN: So you might have misunderstood my answer, Counselor, but I had no issue at all with what Ambassador Sondland just said. My issue is with his answer earlier today that was a different answer to what was a different version of the same exact question, and I’m giving the Ambassador an opportunity, if he would like to, if he would like to, help us better understand why there were two different answers to those two questions.

MR. LUSKIN: And I think, as he's made clear, he stands by his testimony today, by his answers to your questions and by his answers to the questions by the majority earlier And I think it's obviously the task of this committee if you perceive there to be any differences between those answers to reconcile those differences. But more questions I don't think are going to assist you any further. I think you've asked it about as many times as you can, and he's given you his best shot at an answer.

MR. ROY: Do you have something to add? No?

Ambassador, in your statement you provided, you said: "First, I knew that a public embrace of anticorruption reforms by Ukraine was one of the preconditions for securing a White House meeting with President Zelensky."

Do you stand by that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I do.

MR. ROY: My view was and has always been that such Western reforms are consistent with U.S. support for rule of law in Ukraine, going back decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, right, you agree?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yes, I do.

MR. ROY: Nothing about that request raised any red flags for me, Ambassador Volker, or Ambassador Taylor.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. ROY: A few moments ago, though, you made a statement and I just want to make sure -- I might have misheard, but you made a statement along the lines of you thought that there should be no preconditions for a meeting, and that there should have been a meeting immediately after the inauguration?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, as a policy matter, obviously, if my goal was to get the two Presidents together as quickly as possible following the inauguration, a meeting with no preconditions would have been a lot easier to handle.

MR. ROY: Right. But do you see my -- I mean, my question here is just -- I mean, you can have a policy debate about that, right? And I get -- and we had an exchange earlier about your goals and trying to, you know, get the things we want to get accomplished in Ukraine. We talked about Secretary Perry.

My question here, though, is just you have stated fairly affirmatively nothing about that request raised any red flags for you. So, just to be clear, you don't see a problem with having preconditions. Just to exercise your goal of getting a meeting as soon as humanly possible, that would have been your preference.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct. In other words, from a policy matter, there was nothing wrong with --

MR. ROY: Right.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: -- clear and straightforward preconditions that were lawful preconditions. Nothing wrong with that. My preference would have been no preconditions.

MR. ROY: Right, and that's fine. But, in other words, to carry out your objective, which is to have a meeting.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. ROY: But preconditions might be perfectly acceptable?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Totally.

MR. ROY: Okay. The other question I have is, if the United States Government believes, if we have reason to believe, the President down through law enforcement or otherwise and our intelligence agencies, we have reason to believe that any country in the world had any interference with our system of elections or otherwise, would that not be a basis for our government to choose to withhold funds, or to otherwise make decisions about how we handle aid and so forth, any country, hypothetically speaking, speaking as an Ambassador, would that not be a reason for a country to kind of think about how they handle aid?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I think it would create concern on our part, yes.

MR. ROY: Okay.

MR. MEADOWS: Ambassador, I'm going to go back to one thing just to make sure that we're clear. We talked about the letter earlier today, the letter that surprised you I think was your words. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but the letter from the President that said, we can have this meeting, and you were surprised by it, based on the initial meeting in the Oval Office. Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That is correct.

MR. MEADOWS: And so once you had this letter that was unconditioned in terms of meeting with President Zelensky, would you characterize that as a letter that had no conditions to it, in terms of a meeting with President Zelensky?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Other than scheduling.

MR. MEADOWS: Other than scheduling. Did you ever hear from Secretary Pompeo that the President really didn't mean that letter and that you shouldn't take the letter at face value, that the only problem was a scheduling problem?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No.

MR. MEADOWS: Did you ever hear from President Trump that he really didn't mean what he said in the letter, that it was -- the only precondition was a scheduling problem?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No.

MR. MEADOWS: Did you hear from anyone in authority that the President really didn't mean what he said in that letter and that he was -- that there was any problem other than scheduling and that you shouldn't believe what that letter said?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I did not hear that, to the best of my recollection.

MR. MEADOWS: All right. And I appreciate you clarifying that and helping me understand that better, and I will yield back to my colleagues.

MR. CASTOR: We yield back.

THE CHAIRMAN: I would suggest, rather than breaking, because we're nearing the end that we just motor on through. Is that okay, Ambassador?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: How much longer?

THE CHAIRMAN: I'm going to go to our members and then our staff has a few cleanup questions, and then we're done if they're done. So, hopefully, very soon.

MR. LUSKIN: Good. Let's motor through, Chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Malinowski.

MR. CASTOR: We might have a followup question or two.

THE CHAIRMAN: Sure.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ambassador, for your patience and diligence in answering these questions. And let me just say I personally very much appreciate what you were trying to accomplish throughout this difficult period in getting the two Presidents together to get our relationship with Ukraine back on track, something we are all committed to in a bipartisan way.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Thank you, Congressman.

MR. MALINOWSKI: I wanted to -- my first question relates to your phone call to the President on, I believe, September 9th, when you asked him, you said, what do you want from the Ukrainians, and you said that the President said that he wanted nothing. He repeated that there was no quid pro quo.

But then you told us at a later point that the President then added, I want Zelensky -- I just want Zelensky to do what he ran on. Is that essentially correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: In so many words, yes.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Okay. So even in that conversation in which he said there was no -- that he wanted nothing, no quid pro quo, he did actually want something. He wanted Zelensky to do something consistent with what he ran on. That's correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: If you consider that a quid pro quo, then --

MR. MALINOWSKI: Well, how did you -- what did you understand he meant by "I want Zelensky to do what he ran on"?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Again, I didn't have the time or opportunity to question him. He -- as I stated in my opening statement, he was in a very bad mood and it was a very short call. I don't want to characterize him as hanging up on me, but it was close to that.

MR. MALINOWSKI: But then in the text message that you sent reporting on that conversation, you said: "The President is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised."

So I think it suggests that you thought he was referring, again, to the corruption issue.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I thought it was -- based, again, on the short call, it was my interpretation of what the President was trying to tell me. I didn't have the opportunity to ask followup questions. He didn't want to talk.

MR. MALINOWSKI: So your assumption was that this was basically the same thing that had been communicated again and again. And, of course, corruption by September 9th, you know, you realize that that entails those two specific asks related to 2016 and Burisma?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, no. I had realized that it entailed those two specific asks, based on anecdotal evidence from a lot of other people. I had never heard it from the President. That's why I called the President.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Well, you did hear from the President at one point his interest in 2016, though, you said.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I heard on the 23rd that he wanted -- that Ukraine was trying to take him down. That was what I heard --

MR. MALINOWSKI: Got it.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: -- on the 23rd.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Second issue: You told us that you were trying to figure out why the aid was cut off when you learned that that was, in fact, true, and that nobody involved in the Ukraine file seemed to know why the aid was cut off.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: They all seemed to have different reasons. No one could give me a clear answer saying, this is our current policy.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Isn't that a bit odd that nobody involved in making and implementing policy towards this important country knew why aid had been cut off to that country?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: It's extremely odd.

MR. MALINOWSKI: One of the theories, one of the potential reasons that was stated was that the Europeans were not doing enough to help Ukraine, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That was one reason.

MR. MALINOWSKI: You're our Ambassador to the EU. After the aid was cut, did anyone ever ask you, in your formal role as our representative to the EU, to go to the Europeans and to ask them to do more to help Ukraine as a way of getting that aid unfrozen?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: They did not.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Are you aware that any other State Department official was asked to deliver this message to the Europeans?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I'm not aware.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Thank you.

The third issue, it's been -- we've gone back and forth on the general practice of conditioning U.S. assistance around the world, and certainly, I think we would all acknowledge it's very commonly done. We condition all kinds of things on what we want from other countries. My colleagues may know I used to be the Assistant Secretary for DRL, for the Democracy Human Rights Bureau, and I would have been on your case to condition aid in many cases on human rights and corruption issues.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: You wouldn't have needed to.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Well, thank you. But, in that context, are you aware that the State Department, through all this time, has had a comprehensive set of asks to the Ukrainian Government with regard to what it should do to improve its record on corruption?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Anecdotally, yes. I've never seen a formal list, though.

MR. MALINOWSKI: So you haven't familiarized yourself with what we have been asking the Ukrainians to do?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No. That is exactly in the bilateral Ambassador's center lane.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Got it.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: They would not be happy if I interfered in that.

MR. MALINOWSKI: But you've heard conversations -- so would it be -- would it sound right to you to hear that we were asking them to strengthen the prosecutor's office, to clean up corruption in the defense sector, you know, defense procurement, there was corruption there, that we wanted them to do more prosecutions of oligarchs and, you know, high-level corrupt individuals, such things as that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: None of that would surprise me.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And were any of those things in, in your experience, ever linked to the aid or the desire of the Ukrainians to have a meeting with the President?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Only in the sense of the rubric of general corruption, when we were at that part of the continuum.

MR. MALINOWSKI: But those things weren't specifically presented to the Ukrainians as needing to be addressed?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Not by me.

MR. MALINOWSKI: By anybody, to your knowledge?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Not to my knowledge, but I don't know.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And presumably, if we wanted a country to do something on corruption to get a benefit from us, we would want to tell them what to do specifically, right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Presumably.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Presumably, okay. So ultimately, again, it just came down to Burisma and 2016. And with regard to that, it all came to a head, you testified, with the negotiation, attempted negotiation of a press statement in which they were asked, you know, through Rudy Giuliani, to reference those specific things.

With regard to the reference to 2016 that was desired from the Ukrainians, was that ever framed -- in terms of Ukraine specifically, was that ever framed in terms of Ukraine cooperating with an ongoing Department of Justice investigation?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't recall that. It may have been, but I don't recall that wording.

MR. MALINOWSKI: So the draft press statement -- and I think we heard a draft -- as I recall it, it had the Ukrainians say that they would investigate these issues. It didn't refer to cooperating with the Attorney General or working through an MLAT to help DOJ conduct its own investigation into those issues.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah. All of the anecdotal information through Ambassador Volker from presumably Mr. Giuliani had to do with the Ukrainians conducting their own investigations.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Understood. Well, thank you.

And I yield back.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Representative Hill.

MS. HILL: Thank you. Good to see you. I met you at the Speaker's delegation.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Right. Nice to see you again.

MS. HILL: Thank you for this. This is a lot of patience and I know this is a marathon.

So my questions are really just kind of -- I want to center on what the -- when you're talking about your continuum, you sort of -- you clarified four phases. The third is when you know that we're discussing Burisma and the 2016 supposed intervention, right, or interference in the election, right? Is that what you would consider kind of three of four phases?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That's right.

MS. HILL: Okay. So during August, really around August 9th on is when it seems to escalate, based on the text messages that I've seen. And on August 9th, I just, again, wanted to clarify a few things. It looks like you had the initial conversation with where Kurt Volker wanted to -- he had a chat with Yermak and he wanted to get on the phone to talk about what we needed to advise him on with Giuliani, right?

So you said you don't remember a lot of the details of the call with Giuliani, but then later in the day, you said specifically that to avoid misunderstandings, it might be helpful to ask Andrey for a draft statement.

So it seems like -- and then when you were talking about that earlier, you said that you were concerned that whatever Ukraine produced wouldn't be good enough for what apparently earlier in the day, I would assume, Giuliani had said. Does that sound right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I think what I said was that this was the point where we went from a draft statement that was just going to be a press statement, a written statement, to some type of television interview or television broadcast.

And I was asking that whatever he was proposing to say would be put down on paper ahead of time so that we wouldn't put Zelensky in a position of where he does this on television and it's not good enough.

MS. HILL: Got it, okay. So then on the next day, you were forwarded something from Volker that was conversation from Yermak saying: Hi, Kurt, please let me know when you can talk. I think it's possible to make this declaration and mention all of these things which we discussed yesterday, but it would be logic to do after we receive confirmation of date.

So it sounds like they are getting -- Ukraine might be getting frustrated and wanting to nail down a date before they put anything out publicly. Does that sound right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That sounds right.

MS. HILL: And what is -- given kind of what I saw when we went on the trip, the importance of Ukraine and Russia and our relationship with the EU, did that escalate the sense of urgency for you to kind of get this meeting on the books, to really move things forward with -- if Ukraine is getting more frustrated, does that -- did that raise any flags for you? Did that make you want to move?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah. I mean, we were jerking Ukraine around, and I didn't like it.

MS. HILL: Okay. What do you mean by that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I mean we were -- we were continually putting new conditions on a meeting which should have occurred, because they had already issued an unconditional invitation.

MS. HILL: Got it, okay. And at that point, it looks like on the same date, Yermak says that -- he specifically states that they will announce the upcoming visit once there's a date locked in for the meeting and outlining the vision for the reboot of the U.S.-Ukraine relationship, including, among other things, Burisma and the election meddling investigations.

MS. HILL: So at that stage, on August 10th, you knew about Burisma and the meddling, the supposed meddling, that that was the condition that the White House wanted, right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Presumably, that's when we got to that phase of the continuum.

MS. HILL: Through Giuliani, right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MS. HILL: That was how it was indicated? Okay.

So if you continue on, then it gets to -- it looks like there's a shift in who is kind of leading things, in my opinion, on the text messages. And I'm not sure if this is right, but, given escalation, I would assume it might be, where suddenly it looks like Kurt Volker sends something to you, the statement -- this is on the text messages from August 13th.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Can you give me a page?

MS. HILL: I'm not looking at something with the same page numbers as you, so maybe --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: August 13th?

MS. HILL: August 13th at 10:26 in the morning.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Oh.

MR. LUSKIN: Which text chain?

MS. HILL: Ambassador -- let's see. Yeah, it was Volker and Sondland. Yeah. So it looks like it was just you and Sondland -- I mean you and Volker.

Okay. Well, either way, he sends the statement to you that to me seems --

MR. LUSKIN: Hold on. Give us 1 second.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: One second. Okay. Okay, what date, again?

MS. HILL: August 13th.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: At what time?

MS. HILL: At 10:26 a.m.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Wait a minute. This is all -- this is Yermak and me on page 23. It's the wrong page. Yermak and Volker and me.

MS. HILL: What I'm looking at is a longer message from Kurt Volker that says "special attention" --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah, okay, I've got that. That's the last text. Got it.

MS. HILL: Okay. And so it's a long statement, right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yep.

MS. HILL: And so it looks to me like he might be sending that to you for approval. Does that sound right? Because you say afterwards: "Perfect, let's send to Andrey after our call."

THE CHAIRMAN: Can I just interrupt, Representative Hill? And I don’t know if you were here at the time, but we went through all these text messages. If you still need further clarification, but --

MS. HILL: Yes. It was mainly the approval part that I wanted to clarify, because that's where it seems to me like things are starting to shift where you're taking more of a lead role than Volker. And I just wanted to know if you had any -- if this was related to your concerns perhaps escalating.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I'm trying to find the followup where you say I said "perfect." Oh, okay, got it, got it, got it. Okay.

MS. HILL: I'm not going to grill you on the specifics of those anyway.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I mean, again, this was -- this was not a question of who was or wasn't in charge. This was sort of a collaborative effort. I think what we were trying to do here was to get something on paper that we could tentatively say, yeah, that sounds like something Giuliani would be okay with, and Yermak could say, yeah, I think Zelensky would be okay with it.

And then -- again, I'm speculating -- once we got to some language, we would send the language off to our respective principals and figure out if we had a statement we could agree on. Not unlike negotiating a lot of different statements.

MS. HILL: Okay. And, sorry, because the reason I was asking is that by the 17th you were having direct conversations with Yermak, whereas it looked more previously like Volker was talking with Yermak and it was coming to you.

So I was wondering if that was kind of -- that might be the crisis mitigation that we were talking about when Ukraine is getting more upset, when you're having to kind of step in and take more of a leadership role.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I will take the compliment, but I don't think that that really was the case. I think this was just circumstantial. Sometimes Yermak could reach me. Sometimes he could reach Volker. Sometimes Volker was at the McCain Institute, because he wasn't working full time. He had other duties. So I think it was catch as catch can.

MS. HILL: So by the time you had the visit -- or the President canceled the trip to Poland and you went, right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I did.

MS. HILL: You met with Zelensky. And --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: The Vice President met with Zelensky. I sat in on the meeting.

MS. HILL: Okay, got it. What was your impression by then? This was the escalation. This was the -- to me, this is kind of the critical mass moment where it's all coming to a head. How was it with Zelensky at that point?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Oh, I think Zelensky, you know, in my opinion, put on a good game face. I think he was disappointed, because I think he thought this was going to be his first meeting with President Trump. I think he understood the hurricane was beyond President Trump's control. You know, he was being gracious, but I think he would have preferred to meet with the President of the United States then the Vice President of the United States. That's just normal.

MS. HILL: Do you feel like at this point they felt -- Ukraine felt more pressure to kind of accommodate those requests?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't know if they felt more pressure. I don't think this was a case of turning up the pressure. I think this was circumstantial. And then, again, we tried to figure out when the next opportunity would be for him to meet with the President, which turned out to be at the UNGA.

MS. HILL: Okay. And then the last thing and I'll stop is that you have -- on September 8th, it says -- these are the final text messages that I'm referring to. It's one between you, Taylor, and Volker on September 8th at 11:20 a.m.

MR. LUSKIN: And, again, we're going to have to try and find it.

MS. HILL: I know. I'm sorry.

MR. NOBLE: 53.

MR. LUSKIN: Thank you. Okay, go ahead

MS. HILL: So you say that you have multiple conversations with Zelensky and POTUS at this point, but by now you're aware that the aid had been withheld, right? Yes, that happened on August 29th.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I think I was aware that the aid had been withheld in July when Taylor sent me a text to the effect that I had just got off of a video conference and someone said something about a hold on the aid. I think that's when I became --

MS. HILL: In July?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah, in July. But I didn't have any reason to know why it was being withheld.

MS. HILL: Got it, okay, because I saw the one from Yermak on August 29th, so --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't think the Ukrainians knew it was being withheld back in July.

MS. HILL: Only in August.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah.

MS. HILL: So you knew in July that the aid was being withheld?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I knew what Taylor told me.

MS. HILL: Okay. And so by September 8th, you said: Guys, multiple conversations with Zelensky and POTUS, let's talk. Right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Which time?

MS. HILL: That was the 11:20 a.m.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah. I don't recall. I see it. I don’t recall the -- I don't recall the conversations.

MS. HILL: You don't recall the conversations with Zelensky and --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't -- I don't recall the conversations. I'd need more refreshment to recall the conversations.

MS. HILL: Okay. Well, then that same day in that same text message chain, Bill Taylor says: "Gordon and I just spoke. I can brief you" -- I'm assuming this is to Volker -"I can brief you if you and Gordon didn't connect." Does that refresh your memory at all?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Yeah. I mean, I obviously must have relayed to Bill Taylor what I talked about, but I don't remember what it is.

MS. HILL: Okay. So there's nothing right around this time of September 8th or 9th where you feel like -- is this when the red flag is really hitting for you?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: You know, this is just before I believe that -- this is just before I got the text from Taylor talking about that everything's connected. I believe that's -- this is one day before I got that text.

MS. HILL: Okay. And then --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: And that was the text that said, I hope this isn't being, you know, withheld for political reasons, or something to that effect.

MS. HILL: Right.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: And that's when I made the phone call to--

MS. HILL: The President.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: -- the President, yeah.

MS. HILL: But that night, on the 8th, you don't recall what you and Taylor were talking about or what you and Volker were talking about?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't know if it may have led up to that text. He may have said something to warn, that I'm feeling this, but then I got the text on the 9th, and then I knew conclusively that he was concerned.

MS. HILL: But on the 8th is when you said that there were multiple conversations with Zelensky and POTUS. What do you think that was?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don't know, because I don't think I would have talked to POTUS the day before I talked to him again. I don't think I talked to him twice in 2 days.

MS. HILL: So you don't know what you might have been referring to there?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No, I don't.

MS. HILL: Okay. Okay, thank you.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Thank you. Sorry.

THE CHAIRMAN: I promise you're almost at the end. I just have a couple questions, my staff has a couple of cleanup questions.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Great.

THE CHAIRMAN: And then, unless Mr. Swalwell has a burning question, I think we're done on our side.

MR. CASTOR: And I have one or two.

THE CHAIRMAN: I wanted to ask you, at the press conference today with Chief of Staff Mulvaney, he was asked: "So he," meaning the President, "was never realistically entertaining a meeting with President Zelensky?"

And Mr. Mulvaney's answer was: "I mean, I -- we -- we get asked by foreign leaders all the time to either come visit their country or to have them come visit here, and we go -- try to be courteous and say yes. And some of them we're able to accommodate and some of them we are not, but I do not remember -- excuse me, I'm going to answer her question -- that I don't remember serious conversation about setting up an actual meeting. There were no dates discussed. There was not -- I -- I saw that as one of the typical pleasantries that we have, and I don't think it was dangling a -- a meeting or anything like that."

I take it, Ambassador, that was not your understanding of the situation when that letter went out?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Not at all.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Noble.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Ambassador, going back to September 1st, the meetings in Warsaw, the bilat between Vice President Pence and President Zelensky.

A  Yes.

Q  So this was after the July 25th call between President Trump and President Zelensky, correct?

A  What was the Warsaw date?

Q  September 1st.

A  Yes.

Q  And it's also after the Politico article made public that the U.S. had frozen the aid to Ukraine on August 28th.

A  I think that's right.

Q  A few days later after that, right?

A  Yeah.

Q  Do you recall any conversation between Vice President Pence and President Zelensky about the frozen aid or the White House visit?

A  I sat in, as I said, I sat in on a bilat with about 20 people, at least, on each side, so maybe 30 or 40 people total. And I'm sure there were contemporaneous notes taken of the meeting. And as I also testified, I don't believe there was a private pull-aside. I think it was one of these large bilats.

And I don't -- I don't remember if President Zelensky did one of his quips like, "When am I going to get my date?" which he did when he and the President had their bilat in New York. He may have done that. He's been -- he was a little snarky about it, because it had been withheld for so long. And this is new news to me about Chief of Staff Mulvaney.

As far as the aid is concerned, I don't remember him bringing it up, at least in the big bilat. Now, again, I don't know if he and Vice President Pence had a private conversation afterwards, but I don't recall.

Q  So you don't recall Vice President Pence saying something to the effect that the U.S. was not going to lift the freeze at that time to President Zelensky?

A  I don't -- again, he may have done -- I don't remember it. I honestly don't.

Q  Do you know whether Vice President Pence had been briefed or had read the transcript of the July 25th call at that point?

A  I don't know. I never asked him.

Q  And then the next day, September 2nd, I believe you said Secretary Pompeo traveled to Brussels and you had meetings with Secretary Pompeo.

A  Correct.

Q  So that's the day after you had that text message exchange with Ambassador Taylor where he said or asked: "Are we now saying that security assistance and White House meeting are conditioned on investigations?"

Did you discuss Ambassador Taylor's concerns with Secretary Pompeo about the linkage?

A  No. And the reason I didn't was we were so consumed with the meetings, which were very fragile, getting those meetings scheduled, and then potentially losing them after President Trump decided not to travel to Warsaw, because we were all going to travel together, that I was totally focused on the EU meetings. And I didn't discuss anything with Secretary Pompeo that I can recall other than the EU meetings with the four leaders.

Q  Did you ever discuss with Secretary Pompeo the linkage between security assistance, White House meeting, and the investigations?

A  I think the only thing I did was encourage Ambassador Taylor to deal with it and to call Secretary Pompeo.

Q  You never had any direct discussions with Secretary Pompeo?

A  I don't recall any. I mean, I do recall I was highly focused on the four leaders when we were there. It was a very tight schedule.

Q  Did you ever discuss Rudy Giuliani with Secretary Pompeo?

A  Only in general terms.

Q  And what did you discuss?

A  That he's involved in affairs. And Pompeo rolled his eyes and said: Yes, it's something we have to deal with.

Q  What about his counselor, Ulrich Brechbuhl? You said you had lots of conversations with Mr. Brechbuhl?

A  On and off, yes.

Q  Did you discuss the linkage between the security assistance, the White House meeting, and the investigations with him?

A  I don't believe I did, but I don't recall.

Q  What about Rudy Giuliani, did you discuss Giuliani with Brechbuhl?

A  I may have. Again, people usually smiled when they heard Rudy's name because he was always swirling around somewhere.

Q  Yeah, but, I mean, he was causing serious issues in the U.S. relationship with Ukraine. Did you raise those concerns with --

A  Listen, the State Department was fully aware of the issues, and there was very little they could do about it if the President decided he wanted his lawyer involved.

Q  And does that include Secretary Pompeo and his counselor, Ulrich Brechbuhl?

A  My speculation is yes, that they hit a brick wall when it came to getting rid of Mr. Giuliani.

Q  I just want to ask you about whether you know of anything about a September 17th phone call between Secretary Pompeo and the Ukrainian Foreign Minister?

A  Would that be with Mr. Prystaiko?

Q  I believe so. You can pronounce it, I can’t.

A  What was the question?

Q  Are you familiar with the September 17th call between the Secretary and the Foreign Minister?

A  I'm aware they had a call. I don't believe I ever saw a readout.

Q  So you don't know what the content --

A  I don't.

Q  What about a September 18th call between Vice President Pence and President Zelensky?

A  Again, don't recall. Again, this was the disorganization. We weren't kept in the loop that the call was going to occur. We weren't asked to listen in. So a lot of this was catchup.

Q  Okay. You've had some testimony today about the United Nations General Assembly and the meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky. Could you just describe for us kind of their interactions during UNGA?

A  Yeah. I mean, it was a typical bilat where you had a press scrum prior to the formal meeting and a lot of questions shouted. And, you know, we all know what President Trump said. It was widely reported. No pressure, it was a perfect meeting, you heard all of that. Then the press was ushered out.

And President Trump and President Zelensky had sort of a colloquy back and forth, and President Zelensky jokingly said: When am I going to get my date for the White House? I'm still -- I had my invitation, where's the date? And President Trump sort of deferred the -- you know, punted on the question, didn't answer it.

Q  Is that -- are you referring to the press conference they held together on television, or was this the conversation that also occurred in private?

A  I think it occurred in private as well, yeah. Private, I mean, there were 30 people in the room, probably.

Q  Was there any discussion during the private session about the July 25th call or President Trump's interest in Ukraine pursuing the investigations that he discussed during that call?

A  I don't recall that.

Q  What about -- did they have -- were there any discussions about the investigations with any other officials on the side that President Trump had?

A  I wasn't with President Trump for any other discussions. I came into the bilat and then I left.

Q  Just for the -- with President Zelensky?

A  Yes.

Q  What about you, did you have any discussions with other officials regarding the July 25th call?

A  I don't recall, no. I don't recall having.

Q  I just have some final questions about, of all things, recordkeeping.

So you say you used your personal -- or you had a dual cell phone for personal and business. Are you familiar with the Federal Records Act and its requirements for recordkeeping?

A  I am.

Q  So, obviously, you used WhatsApp to communicate with other U.S. officials. Did you also use WhatsApp to communicate with foreign officials?

A  Yeah, it's very customary in Europe. Everyone uses WhatsApp. That's one of the only mediums that foreign leaders use in Europe.

Q  Did you also use -- did you ever use personal email to communicate with foreign leaders or U.S. Government officials?

A  I tried to avoid it, but when I did I also tried to copy my State email, because the State email is really hard to send attachments or forward. It's just -- it's really a cumbersome system.

Q  So did you not always follow that requirement to copy your State email?

A  When I didn’t, I tried to remedy the situation by moving it over. But as far as my counsel is concerned, I think I’m now in complete compliance with that act.

Is that correct?

MR. LUSKIN: That is correct.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Did you do it within 20 days --

A  I don’t recall.

Q  -- of when you initially sent the message or communication?

A  I don’t recall.

Q  What did you do to comply with the recordkeeping requirements as it pertains to your WhatsApp messages?

MR. LUSKIN: They’ve all been forwarded to the State Department electronically.

MR. NOBLE: Did that occur within 20 days of the communication?

MR. MEADOWS: Counsel, with all due respect --

MR. SWALWELL: He’s asking the question. No, no, no. Mark, he gets to ask the questions.

THE CHAIRMAN: Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen.

MR. MEADOWS: If we’re going to get into the 20 days, Adam, let me just tell you what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Okay? And I promise you if you want --

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, the gander endured 2-1/2 years of Benghazi over emails, so --

MR. MEADOWS: I’m looking for 30,000 emails, Adam, 30,000 emails.

THE CHAIRMAN: I think it is appropriate to --

MR. MEADOWS: You want to talk about 20 days? Come on.

THE CHAIRMAN: I think it is appropriate to ask -- excuse me.

MR. MEADOWS: It is 9 hours and now we’re getting into this kind of crap, and that’s what it is.

THE CHAIRMAN: Excuse me. I think it is appropriate to ask whether the Ambassador provided his text messages --

MR. MEADOWS: And he said yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Let me finish. Contemporaneously when they were produced or only recently when this matter became under investigation.

So would you please respond, Ambassador?

MR. MEADOWS: Listen, it’s under my committee. I know it. If you want to go back and forth --

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, then you should want to hear the answer.

MR. MEADOWS: I want to hear it. He said they were preserved, and now we’re going to try to talk about 20 days.

THE CHAIRMAN: No. His counsel said that they were in compliance now. The question is --

MR. MEADOWS: Did you have a personal server, Ambassador Sondland?

THE CHAIRMAN: Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me, Mr. Meadows.

Ambassador, did you contemporaneously provide your WhatsApp messages to the State Department, per the requirements of the Federal Records Act, or was that done only recently upon the initiation of the investigation?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I was told that because of my phone having a dual SIM that everything wound up on the State server because one of the SIMs is my State SIM, my State email. That was not correct. And none of those texts or those WhatsApps wound up on the State server. They wound up just staying on the phone. So I did recently comply and put them on the State server.

THE CHAIRMAN: And how recently?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: In the last week or 2, I think.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  One other question on the text messages. Did you delete any of your text messages after that exchange with Ambassador Taylor on September 9th, or your WhatsApp messages or emails?

A  Did I delete any --

Q  Did you delete any of your WhatsApp messages, text messages, or emails after September 9th when you had that exchange with Ambassador Taylor?

A  I may have, but I don’t recall. I occasionally delete texts that are personal texts. I don’t recall.

Q  Anything pertaining to Ukraine?

A  I’d have to go back and look. I don’t recall.

Q  Do you know whether those were preserved?

A  Everything that’s there was preserved.

Q  But some may have been deleted before you turned over your messages?

A  Again, I don’t want to swear to it, because I get a lot of texts. So --

Q  I mean, do you have any specific -- I mean, so at that point, right, you’re sending this email that President Trump is claiming there is no quid pro quo. You’re like let’s stop talking about this over text message. At that point, did you delete any of your messages?

A  No, at that point I did not delete anything on that stream.

Q  Well, any other stream relating to Ukraine?

A  Again, I don’t recall. I will get back to you if you’d like me to look into it.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Swalwell.

MR. SWALWELL: Thank you, Chairman.

Do you have a daily read book as an Ambassador?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I’m sorry?

MR. SWALWELL: Do you have a daily read book? Like, you mentioned cables that come across your desk.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I get them electronically, and sometimes I get a read book, depending on where I am.

MR. SWALWELL: Do you get press clippings every day?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I get a summary.

MR. SWALWELL: Who compiles that for you?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: The staff.

MR. SWALWELL: Who was compiling that for you in the spring of 2019?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don’t recall.

MR. SWALWELL: Okay. And that would -- did those press clippings, do they relate to Ukraine as well?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don’t read a lot of the press clippings. I have way too much to do to sit and read. I could read press clippings all day long.

MR. SWALWELL: Okay. But they are routinely customarily provided for you?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: They are provided for everyone. There is a press clipping summary for the entire mission.

MR. SWALWELL: But on a daily basis, you will receive press clippings?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: No. No, it’s all done electronically for the mission.

MR. SWALWELL: Okay. But I’m asking, your email address, on a daily basis you receive press clippings as it relates to your duties?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I do, along with everyone else.

MR. SWALWELL: Okay.

I yield back.

THE CHAIRMAN: Over to the minority if they have any additional questions.

MR. JORDAN: Ambassador, President Zelensky wins his election, I think, April 21st, 2019, overwhelmingly, and then shortly thereafter gets a call from President Trump, a congratulatory call. Is that right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I understand that happened, yes.

MR. JORDAN: And then sort of the next -- I’m looking at your timeline -- the next event is the inauguration approximately a month later, May 20th, 2019.

Did you start working on -- I mean, based on the 8, 9 hours you’ve been here, you’ve talked about your focus was getting a second call and an official meeting between the Presidents.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: My preference would have been just to go right to a meeting, but when I found out that the meeting was going to be problematic as it kept getting delayed, I pushed for a call at a minimum.

MR. JORDAN: Yeah. And I think you described it as you wanted to arrange a working phone call.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: The congratulatory call was probably a very short, "great job, talk to you soon."

MR. JORDAN: We’ve all got them.

So did you start working on that pretty soon in this whole continuum, as you’ve described it? Did you start like late April, early May, start, like, you know, we need to get these guys together?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I think the delegation when we came back from the inauguration -- are you talking about after the inauguration or between the election and the inauguration?

MR. JORDAN: I’m talking whenever you decided it was time to get a working -- to arrange a working phone call.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I think -- I don’t know how much activity we really had between the election and the inauguration, because the inauguration was fairly soon after the election.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. So is it fair to say you started thinking about putting together the second phone call between President Trump and President Zelensky when you had the delegation there in Ukraine on May 20th, 2019, for President Zelensky’s inauguration?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I think we really started that in earnest after the briefing with President Trump on the 23rd.

MR. JORDAN: Was there any discussion on May 20th, 2019, with the folks who were part of the delegation in Ukraine at the inauguration?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: About a meeting or a phone call?

MR. JORDAN: Yes.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: There may have been. I mean, we had a lot of dinners and lunches, and it probably came up, but I don’t remember specifically.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. And, again, and the folks at the inauguration were Mr. Perry, Secretary Perry, Senator Johnson, Ambassador Volker, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, those were the individuals that were part of the delegation?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: And myself.

MR. JORDAN: And yourself.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. And so you think you started talking about we need to get these guys together on a working phone call and at some kind of meeting, you think that started May 20th?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: It could have.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. Then the next meeting is at the White House a few days later, where you’re debriefing and you’re talking about the situation, what happened a few days earlier at the inauguration, correct?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: All right. And you started to talk then to President Trump and amongst yourselves again about the idea to get this phone call, get this meeting?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, we only had the one conversation with President Trump, which, as I testified, didn’t go very well, when he said talk to Rudy.

MR. JORDAN: Right.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Then we regrouped afterwards and said we need to really start pushing for the meeting or the phone call, because then we found out 3 or 4 days later that an invitation had been issued, which was unusual, considering President Trump’s attitude toward Ukraine, that he would issue an invitation.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. So then I get to -- and that was -- and was everyone in agreement?

Everyone wanted this phone call to happen starting clear back May 20th at the inauguration. The President didn’t want it.

MR. LUSKIN: Who do you mean by everyone, so we can be clear?

MR. JORDAN: Let me say it this way. Let’s just jump to the July 10th meeting.

So you wanted a phone call.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: July 10th meeting?

MR. JORDAN: Moving ahead now.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

MR. JORDAN: You wanted a phone call. Ambassador Volker wanted a phone call. Ambassador Taylor wanted a phone call. Secretary Perry wanted a phone call. And you wanted a phone call with no preconditions. Is that right?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: All right. But you get to this July 10th meeting, and you made that argument, and then at the end of that paragraph in your testimony where you described that meeting, you said the NSC did not.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: And why?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: They would never really articulate it other than there’s no reason to have a call.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: That was the only -- the only thing I could get out of them was: Why aren’t we having this call? There’s no reason to have a call.

MR. JORDAN: What I don’t understand is the NSC was part of the inauguration, the delegation who was there for President Zelensky’s inauguration. Lieutenant Colonel --

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Well, Mr. Vindman was there, and he was a, you know, low-level NSC person. Dr. Hill wasn’t there. Ambassador Bolton wasn’t there.

MR. JORDAN: Did Mr. Vindman express any reservations to a second phone call in the time you spent with him at the inauguration or any subsequent meetings or discussions you may have had with him?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don’t know. I didn’t -- I didn’t consider him to be a champion of the phone call. I thought everyone else in the delegation was a strong champion of the phone call.

MR. JORDAN: Was Mr. Vindman opposed to the phone call clear back in May? Did you get any indication of that?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don’t remember when he was opposed, but I think it became apparent during the meeting -- one of the meetings on June -- July 10th that he didn’t think it was a good idea because there was no reason for it.

MR. JORDAN: And he hadn’t expressed any concern in any other interactions you had?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Not prior to that, no.

MR. JORDAN: Not prior to that, and not at the May 20th inauguration in Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: I don’t think he -- you know, to answer your question exactly, I don’t think he expressed an opinion that we should have one or that we shouldn’t have one until the July 10th meeting.

MR. JORDAN: And was Mr. Vindman -- my understanding is he was not in the May 23rd meeting at the White House.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: He was not in the Oval, correct.

MR. JORDAN: He was not in that meeting?

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

THE CHAIRMAN: Ambassador, I want to thank you.

MR. JORDAN: If I could ask one thing, Mr. Chairman?

THE CHAIRMAN: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: Just before we close, I just want to ask you some questions. Do we know the schedule? Is there a deposition tomorrow?

THE CHAIRMAN: I think we have released the schedule, have we not?

MR. BITAR: There’s noting tomorrow.

MR. JORDAN: Nothing tomorrow, okay. And then --

MR. BITAR: There’s a formal notice that has gone to all committee members and staff.

MR. CASTOR: I’m in the SCIF.

MR. BITAR: No, it was already entered earlier today.

MR. JORDAN: And can I just ask, Mr. Chairman, for next week, are there any days where there are two -- we had heard rumblings of this -- any days where there are two depositions going on the same day?

THE CHAIRMAN: I think the short answer is at the moment we think there’s only one, but there are witnesses that we --

MR. NOBLE: We have noticed two for 2 days.

[6:51 p.m.]

THE CHAIRMAN: So we have noticed two? Oh, okay.

MR. NOBLE: When we get confirmation, we will let the minority know right away.

MR. JORDAN: I’m guess I’m asking --

MR. ZELDIN: On 2 days.

MR. JORDAN: If two people agree to come the same day, I guess I’m asking are they going to be be simultaneous?

MR. GOLDMAN: You can’t be in two places at once?

THE CHAIRMAN: We will have to decide if that should be the case, whether to move one of them, or whether to do them concurrently in different rooms.

MR. JORDAN: Mr. Chairman, I point out you guys have got a few more staff than we’ve got. So we would I think be a little reluctant to have two depositions happening at the -- simultaneously. If we could stack the -- we’re willing to stay all day.

THE CHAIRMAN: You know, I would just say, first of all, that -- let me go back to thanking the Ambassador for his willingness to answer the subpoena, and for his long testimony today. We appreciate your coming in and you are excused.

AMBASSADOR SONDLAND: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for conducting a very pleasant hearing.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 6:53 p.m., the deposition was concluded.]

A logo: Paul Hastings.

robertluskin@paulhastings.com

November 4, 2019

Adam B. Schiff Chairman

Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

United States House of Representatives

Washington, DC 20515

Re: Sworn Testimony of Ambassador Gordon Sondland

Dear Chairman Schiff:

Pursuant to Rule 8 of the 116th Congress Regulations for Use of Deposition Authority and Rule 8(e)(2)(B) of the Rules for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, please find attached the Declaration of Ambassador Gordon Sondland, which supplements his testimony of October 17, 2019. In accordance with the House and Committee rules, this letter and the attached Declaration should be included as an appendix to his sworn testimony.

Ambassador Sondland has reviewed and approved the attached Declaration and his sworn testimony. His signature on the attached Declaration shall serve, in accordance with the relevant rules, as his affirmation that he has also reviewed and approved the transcript of his testimony.

Sincerly,

A signature:

Robert D. Luskin
Kwame J. Manley

PAUL HASTINGS LLP

DECLARATION OF AMBASSADOR GORDON D. SONDLAND

I, Gordon Sondland, do hereby swear and affirm as follows:

1. I have reviewed the October 22, 2019, opening statement of Ambassador William Taylor. I have also reviewed the October 31, 2019, opening statement of Tim Morrison. These two opening statements have refreshed my recollection about certain conversations in early September 2019.

2. Ambassador Taylor recalls that I told Mr. Morrison in early September 2019 that the resumption of U.S. aid to Ukraine had become tied to a public statement to be issued by Ukraine agreeing to investigate Burisma. Ambassador Taylor recalls that Mr. Morrison told Ambassador Taylor that I told Mr. Morrison that I had conveyed this message to Mr. Yermak on September 1, 2019, in connection with Vice President Pence’s visit to Warsaw and a meeting with President Zelensky. Mr. Morrison recalls that I said to him in early September that resumption of U.S. aid to Ukraine might be conditioned on a public statement reopening the Burisma investigation.

3. In my October 17, 2019 prepared testimony and in my deposition, I made clear that I had understood sometime after our May 23, 2019, White House debriefing that scheduling a White House visit for President Zelensky was conditioned upon President Zelensky’s agreement to make a public anti-corruption statement. This condition had been communicated by Rudy Giuliani, with whom President Trump directed Ambassador Volker, Secretary Perry, and me, on May 23, 2019, to discuss issues related to the President’s concerns about Ukraine. Ambassador Volker, Secretary Perry, and I understood that satisfying Mr. Giuliani was a condition for scheduling the White House visit, which we all strongly believed to be in the mutual interest of the United States and Ukraine.

4. With respect to the September 1, 2019, Warsaw meeting, the conversations described in Ambassador Taylor’s and Mr. Morrison’s opening statements have refreshed my recollection about conversations involving the suspension of U.S. aid, which had become public only days earlier. I always believed that suspending aid to Ukraine was ill-advised, although I did not know (and still do not know) when, why, or by whom the aid was suspended. However, by the beginning of September 2019, and in the absence of any credible explanation for the suspension of aid, I presumed that the aid suspension had become linked to the proposed anti-corruption statement. As I said in my prepared testimony, security aid to Ukraine was in our vital national interest and should not have been delayed for any reason. And it would have been natural for me to have voiced what I had presumed to Ambassador Taylor, Senator Johnson, the Ukrainians, and Mr. Morrison.

5. Also, I now do recall a conversation on September 1, 2019, in Warsaw with Mr. Yermak. This brief pull-aside conversation followed the larger meeting involving Vice President Pence and President Zelensky, in which President Zelensky had raised the issue of the suspension of U.S. aid to Ukraine directly with Vice President Pence. After that large meeting, I now recall speaking individually with Mr. Yermak, where I said that resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks. I also recall some question as to whether the public statement could come from the newly appointed Ukrainian Prosecutor General, rather than from President Zelensky directly.

6. Soon thereafter, I came to understand that, in fact, the public statement would need to come directly from President Zelensky himself. I do not specifically recall how I learned this, but I believe that the information may have come either from Mr. Giuliani or from Ambassador Volker, who may have discussed this with Mr. Giuliani. In a later conversation with Ambassador Taylor, I told him that I had been mistaken about whether a public statement could come from the Prosecutor General; I had come to understand that the public statement would have to come from President Zelensky himself.

7. Finally, as of this writing, I cannot specifically recall if I had one or two phone calls with President Trump in the September 6-9 time frame. Despite repeated requests to the White House and the State Department, I have not been granted access to all of the phone records, and I would like to review those phone records, along with any notes and other documents that may exist, to determine if I can provide more complete testimony to assist Congress. However, although I have no specific recollection of phone calls during this period with Ambassador Taylor or Mr. Morrison, I have no reason to question the substance of their recollection about my September 1 conversation with Mr. Yermak.

I declare under penalty of perjury that the aforementioned is true.

Executed on November 4, 2019.

Kurt Volker Testimony

PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE,

joint with the

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM

and the

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

WASHINGTON, D.C.

INTERVIEW OF: KURT VOLKER

Thursday, October 3, 2019
Washington, D.C.

The interview in the above matter was held in Room HVC-304, Capitol Visitor Center, commencing at 9:40 a.m.

Present: Representatives Schiff, Speier, Swalwell, Nunes, and Turner.

Also Present: Representatives Connelly, Raskin, Jordan, Meadows, Perry, and Zeldin.

Appearances:

For the PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE:

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For KURT VOLKER:

MARGARET E. DAUM,

PARTNER,

SQUIRE PATTON BOGGS LLP

2550 M STREET, NW

WASHINGTON, DC 20037

THE CHAIRMAN: Good morning. The interview will come to order.

I just want to make a few brief remarks before we get started.

This is the first witness interview as part of the impeachment inquiry. It is being conducted by the House Intelligence Committee with the participation of the Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees.

This will be a staff-led interview. We have tried to keep the room to a reasonable size. We expect the questions to be professional, that you'll be treated civilly. We very much appreciate your coming in today.

Once my colleague makes some prefatory remarks you'll be given as much time as you'd like to make an opening statement. Then we'll begin the questioning, and my colleague will set out the time limits. But we appreciate your being here today.

MR. VOLKER: Thank you.

MR. GOLDMAN: Good morning, Ambassador Volker.

This is a transcribed interview that is conducted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, pursuant to the impeachment inquiry announced by the Speaker of the House on September 24th.

Before we begin, if you could just please state your full name and spell your last name for the record.

MR. VOLKER: My name is Kurt Volker, and that is K-u-r-t V-o-l-k-e-r.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you.

Along with the other proceedings in furtherance of the inquiry, this interview is being led by the Intelligence Committee in exercise of its oversight and legislative jurisdiction and in coordination with the Committees on Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform.

In the room today are two majority staff members and two minority staff members from both the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Oversight Committee, as well as majority and minority staff from HPSCI.

My name is Daniel Goldman. I'm the director of investigations for the HPSCI majority staff, and I want to thank you for coming in today.

To my left here is Daniel Noble. He's a senior counsel for the majority staff, and he will be conducting the majority of the questions today.

Before we begin, I would just like to ask that we go around the room and that the staff members all introduce themselves and announce themselves for the record so that the court reporter knows who everybody is. I'll begin to my right.

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MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you.

This interview will be conducted entirely at the unclassified level. However, because the -- the interview is being conducted here in the Intelligence Committee's secure spaces and in the presence of staff who all have appropriate security clearances.

It is the committee's expectation that neither the questions asked of you, the witness, nor answers by you or your counsel would require discussion of any information that is currently or at any point could be properly classified under executive order 13526.

Moreover, EO 13526 states that, quote, "In no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified," unquote, for the purpose of concealing any violations of law or preventing embarrassment of any person or entity.

Today's interview is not being taken in executive session, but because of the sensitive and confidential nature of some of the topics and materials that will be discussed, access to the transcript will be limited to the three committees in attendance, the Intelligence Committee, Foreign Affairs Committee, and Committee on Oversight and Reform.

In advance of today's interview you voluntarily produced certain documents to the committees, which you have marked as confidential, and they have Bates numbers KV1 through KV65.

We may refer to some of those documents today.

Mr. Volker, can you please confirm the documents you produced to the committees were generated on unclassified systems and that it is your understanding that the documents are today and were at all times unclassified?

MR. VOLKER: Yes, that is my understanding.

MR. GOLDMAN: Now, if any of our questions can only be answered with classified information, please inform us of that before you answer the question, and we will reserve time at the end for a classified portion of the interview.

Now, let me go over the ground rules for the interview.

First, the structure of this transcribed interview. The interview will proceed as follows. The majority will be given 1 hour to ask questions, then the minority will be given 1 hour to ask questions. Thereafter, we will alternate back and forth between majority and minority in 45-minute rounds until the questioning is complete. We will take periodic breaks as needed, and if you need a break at any time, please let us know.

Under the committee rules you are allowed to have an attorney present during this interview, and that I see you have brought one.

At this time, if counsel could state her appearance for the record.

MS. DAUM: Margaret Daum, Squire Patton Boggs, counsel for Ambassador Volker.

MR. GOLDMAN: There is a stenographer to your left taking down everything that I say and everything that you say to make a written record of the interview. For the record to be clear, please wait until each question is asked before you answer, and we will wait until you finish your response before asking you the next question.

The stenographer cannot record nonverbal answers, such as shaking your head, so it is important that you answer each question with an audible, verbal answer.

We ask that you give complete replies to questions based on your best recollection. If a question is unclear or you are uncertain in your response, please let us know. And if you do not know the answer to a question or cannot remember, simply say so.

Now, finally, you are reminded that it is unlawful to deliberately provide false information to Members of Congress or congressional staff.

Now, as we are conducting this interview under oath,

Mr. Volker, would you please raise your right hand to be sworn?

Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

MR. VOLKER: I so swear.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you.

The record will reflect that the witness has been duly sworn.

Now, Mr. Volker, with that, we turn it over to you for any opening statement that you would like to make.

MR. CASTOR: If we may, I believe Mr. Jordan has some welcoming remarks.

MR. JORDAN: I want to be clear on the ground rules. Members are permitted to ask questions?

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Jordan, it was our intention to make this a staff-only interview. I'm not going to prohibit Members, but we'd like to keep this professional at the staff level.

MR. JORDAN: Mr. Chairman, I've probably sat in on more transcribed interviews than maybe any other Member, at least on our side, and I have never seen an effort to prohibit Members from asking the witness questions. So we will be able to ask questions?

THE CHAIRMAN: I'm not going to prohibit you, Mr. Jordan, but we will expect you to treat the witness with respect.

MR. JORDAN: Certainly.

THE CHAIRMAN: We have conducted innumerable interviews in the HPSCI over the last several years without any difficulty, and I hope that the decorum that we expect here will be represented on both sides.

MR. JORDAN: I certainly agree with that. Just a couple other things I would like to get on the record.

In the countless number of transcribed interviews I have participated in before we have never seen the limitations placed on staff that you have done to the Oversight Committee and to the Foreign Affairs Committee. I have never seen a time where agency counsel was not allowed to be present. And I've certainly never seen an indication that you would prefer Members not even participate in the interview.

But with that, we'll proceed. But I at least wanted to get that on the record before we heard from our witness today.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I yield back to Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Mr. Volker, if you have an opening statement, now is the time for you to deliver it.

MR. VOLKER: Thank you. I do.

And thank you very much for the opportunity to provide this testimony today.

Allow me to begin by stressing that you and the American people can be reassured and proud that the Department of State and the Department of Defense and the professionals working there, civil and Foreign Service and military, have conducted themselves with the highest degree of professionalism, integrity, and dedication to the national interest. That is a testament to the strength of our people, our institutions, and our country.

MR. JORDAN: Ambassador, could you just pull it really close, the microphone?

MR. VOLKER: Oh, I'm sorry.

As a former member of the senior Foreign Service and in conducting my role as U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine negotiations, I have similarly acted solely to advance U.S. national interests, which included supporting democracy and reform in Ukraine, helping Ukraine better defend itself and deter Russian aggression, and leading U.S. negotiating efforts to end the war and restore Ukraine's territorial integrity.

Throughout my career, whether as a career diplomat, U.S. Ambassador to NATO, or in my other capacities, I have tried to be courageous, energetic, clear-eyed, and plainspoken, always acting with integrity to advance core American values and interests. My efforts as U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine negotiations were no different.

In carrying out this role I at some stage found myself faced with a choice: to be aware of a problem and to ignore it, or rather to accept that it was my responsibility to try to fix it. I would not have been true to myself, my duties, or my commitment to the people of the United States or Ukraine if I did not dive in and try to fix problems as best I could.

There are five key points I would like to stress in this testimony, and I would like to submit a longer version and timeline of events for the record.

THE CHAIRMAN: Without objection.

[The information follows:]

******** COMMITTEE INSERT ********

MR. VOLKER: Let me be clear that I wish to be complete and open in my testimony in order to help get the facts out and the record straight.

First, my efforts were entirely focused on advancing U.S. foreign policy goals with respect to Ukraine. In this we were quite successful. U.S. policy toward Ukraine for the past 2 years has been strong, consistent, and has enjoyed support across the administration, bipartisan support in Congress, and support among our allies and Ukraine. While I will not be there to lead these efforts any longer, I sincerely hope that we are able to keep this policy strong going forward.

You may recall that in the spring of 2017, when then Secretary of State Tillerson asked if I would take on these responsibilities, there were major complicated questions swirling in public debate about the direction of U.S. policy towards Ukraine:

Would the administration lift sanctions against Russia?

Would it make some kind of grand bargain with Russia in which it would trade recognition of Russia's seizure of Ukrainian territory for some other deal in Syria or elsewhere?

Would the administration recognize Russia's claimed annexation of Crimea?

Will this just become another frozen conflict?

There were also a number -- a vast number of vacancies in key diplomatic positions, so no one was really representing the United States in the negotiating process about ending the war in eastern Ukraine.

Caring deeply about supporting Ukraine, recognizing that it stands for all of us in building a democracy and pushing back Russian aggression on their soil, and seeking to make sure American policy is in the right place, I agreed to take on these responsibilities.

Then Secretary of State Tillerson and I agreed that our fundamental policy goals would be to restore the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and to assure the safety and security of all Ukrainian citizens, regardless of ethnicity, nationality, or religion.

I did this on a voluntary basis, with no salary paid by the U.S. taxpayer, simply because I believed it was important to serve our country in this way. I believed I could steer U.S. policy in the right direction.

In 2 years the track record speaks for itself. I was the administration's most outspoken figure highlighting Russia's ongoing aggression against Ukraine and Russia's responsibility to end the war.

We coordinated closely with our European allies and Canada to maintain a united front against Russian aggression and for Ukraine's democracy, reform, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. Ukraine policy is perhaps the one area where the U.S. and its European allies are in lockstep.

This coordination helped to strengthen U.S. sanctions against Russia and to maintain EU sanctions as well. Along with others in the administration, I strongly advocated for lifting the ban on the sale of lethal defensive arms to Ukraine, advocated for increasing U.S. security assistance to Ukraine, and urged other countries to follow the U.S. lead.

I engaged with our allies, with Ukraine, and with Russia in negotiations to implement the Minsk agreements, holding a firm line on insisting on the withdrawal of Russian forces, dismantling of the so-called People's Republics, and restoring Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity.

In order to shine a spotlight on Russian aggression and to highlight the humanitarian plight suffered by the people in the Donbas as a result, I visited the war zone in Ukraine three times with media in tow.

Together with others in the administration, we kept U.S. policy steady through Presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine and worked hard to strengthen the U.S.-Ukraine bilateral relationship under the new President and government, helping shepherd a peaceful transition of power in Ukraine.

In short, whereas 2 years ago most observers would have said that time is on Russia's side, we've turned the tables, and now time is on Ukraine's side. That was first, but a very long point.

Second, in May of this year, I became concerned that a negative narrative about Ukraine fueled by assertions made by Ukraine's departing prosecutor general was reaching the President of the United States and impeding our ability to support the new Ukrainian government as robustly as I believed we should.

After sharing my concerns with the Ukrainian leadership, an adviser to President Zelensky asked me to connect him to the President's personal lawyer, Mayor Rudy Giuliani. I did so. I did so solely because I understood that the new Ukrainian leadership wanted to convince those, like Mayor Giuliani, who believed such a negative narrative about Ukraine, that times have changed and that, under President Zelensky, Ukraine is worthy of U.S. support.

I also made clear to the Ukrainians on a number of occasions that Mayor Giuliani is a private citizen and the President's personal lawyer and that he does not represent the United States Government.

Third, at no time was I aware of or took part in an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden. As you will see from the extensive text messages I am providing, which convey a sense of real-time dialogue with several different actors, Vice President Biden was never a topic of discussion.

Moreover, as I was aware of public accusations about the Vice President, Vice President Biden, several times I cautioned the Ukrainians to distinguish between highlighting their own efforts to fight corruption domestically, including investigating Ukrainian individuals, something we support as a matter of U.S. policy, and doing anything that could be seen as impacting U.S. elections, which is in neither the United States' nor Ukraine's own interest.

To the best of my knowledge, no such actions by Ukraine were ever taken, at least in part, I believe, because of the advice I gave them.

Notably, I did not listen in on the July 25th, 2019, phone call between President Trump and President Zelensky and received only superficial readouts about that conversation afterwards.

In addition, I was not aware that Vice President Biden's name was mentioned or a request was made to investigate him until the transcript of this call was released on September 25th, 2019.

Fourth, while executing my duties, I kept my colleagues at the State Department and National Security Council informed and also briefed Congress about my actions. This included in-person meetings with senior U.S. officials at State, Defense, and the NSC, as well as staff briefings on Capitol Hill and public testimony in the Senate on June 18th, 2019.

I have an extensive record of public commentary about our Ukraine policy. I have no doubt that there is a substantial paper trail of State Department correspondence concerning my meetings with Ukrainians, allies, and so forth. As a matter of practice, I did not edit or clear on these messages but told the reporting officers just to report as they normally would.

Fifth, and finally, I strongly supported the provision of U.S. security assistance, including lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine, throughout my tenure. I became aware of a hold on congressional notifications about proceeding with that assistance on July 18th, 2019, and immediately tried to weigh in to reverse that position.

I was confident that this position would indeed be reversed in the end because the provision of such assistance was uniformly supported at State, Defense, the National Security Council, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the expert community in Washington.

As I was confident the position would not stand, I did not discuss the hold with my Ukrainian counterparts until the matter became public in late August. The position was indeed reversed and assistance allowed to continue within a few weeks after that.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide this testimony, and I look forward to answering your questions.

EXAMINATION

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Thank you, Mr. Volker. And, again, my name is Daniel Noble. I'm a senior counsel on HPSCI, and I'm going to be asking you most of the questions today.

Before I begin, I just want to remind you that you're under oath and that it's very important, obviously, for you to tell the truth today.

I want to begin at the beginning -- at the end actually -- and it's our understanding that on September 27th, 2019, you resigned your position as the Special Envoy for Ukraine. Is that correct?

A  Yes, that is correct.

Q  Why did you resign?

A  I felt that I would no longer be effective as a special representative with this impeachment inquiry beginning and my name associated with that and all the media attention around that. I didn't think I would be able to go to Ukraine or meet with Russians and be able to carry out those duties in that way anymore.

I also wanted to make sure that I would be able to provide testimony, because I could see this coming, with as much candor and integrity as I possibly could.

Q  Okay. Was there any pressure from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for you to resign?

A  Quite the opposite. He was very disappointed.

Q  Did you receive pressure from anyone in the Trump administration to resign?

A  No.

Q  Can you describe your conversation with Secretary Pompeo in connection with your resignation?

A  Yes. I called him and told him that I was very sorry, I felt that I would not be able to be effective as a special representative going forward, and I thought it was important that I be able to provide testimony as I have just done.

He was disappointed because he was focused on the mission with Ukraine, and after the record that we had accomplished over 2 years it's going to be very difficult to have someone step in and pick that up from here.

Q  Did you discuss anything regarding the investigations that were made aware -- made public in the whistleblower's complaint?

A  I don't recall discussing the whistleblower's complaint with him in that call.

Q  Did you discuss the July 25th call between President Trump and President Zelensky with Secretary Pompeo?

A  No, we didn’t.

Q  Did you discuss your resignation with anyone else at the State Department before resigning?

A  I believe I spoke with Marik String, who is the acting legal adviser, before I spoke with the Secretary. And I believe I told Marik I was going to talk to the Secretary. I think it was within about a half an hour of each other.

Q  Did you raise any concerns either with that person or Secretary Pompeo regarding Rudy Giuliani and his activities in Ukraine?

A  I had several conversations with a number of people -- Marik String was not one of them -- but with others over the course of May through August.

Q  Okay. Well, we'll get through those at some point today, but I was speaking specifically about in connection with your resignation discussion --

A  No.

Q  -- with Secretary Pompeo?

A  No.

Q  Okay. Did you discuss your resignation with Rudy Giuliani?

A  No.

Q  Did you destroy any records in connection with your departure from the State Department?

A  No.

Q  Did you discuss today's testimony with Secretary Pompeo or anyone else at the State Department before today?

A  No.

Q  Are you aware of any --

A May I -- may I -- I did not discuss the contents of the testimony that I just read. I did discuss the fact that I'm going to testify.

Q  With whom did you discuss that?

A  With Marik String, the legal adviser.

Q  Okay. Are you aware of any efforts by Secretary Pompeo or others at the State Department to try to stop witnesses from cooperating with Congress in connection with this impeachment inquiry?

A  I read the letter that Secretary Pompeo sent to the committee.

Q  Do you consider that an effort by Secretary Pompeo to stop witnesses from cooperating with Congress?

A  It did not provide any instruction not to cooperate, and neither did I receive any separate instruction.

Q  Are you aware of any other efforts by Secretary Pompeo or others at the State Department to intimidate State Department employees in connection with this inquiry?

A  I am not aware of any efforts like that.

Q  Have you ever received any communications, written or otherwise, from the State Department about your testimony today?

A  Did we?

We did receive a letter.

Q  From whom did you receive that letter?

A  It would have been from Marik String?

MS. DAUM: That's correct.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  We'd ask that you provide a copy of that letter to the committee for the record.

A  Of course.

Q  And do you have an extra copy for the minority as well?

A  So this is a letter dated October 2nd, 2019. It is addressed to my attorney, Ms. Margaret Daum at Squire Patton Boggs. It is from Marik String, the acting legal adviser at the State Department.

Q  And have you read that letter?

A  I have not read it with any care, no.

[Volker Exhibit No. 1

Was marked for identification.]

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  For the record, we're going to mark the letter that's dated October 2nd, 2019, as Exhibit 1.

Do you have an extra copy for the minority? Otherwise we'll make a copy.

During your discussion with the legal adviser, what, if anything, did he tell you about your testimony?

A  I think the last conversation I had with him would have had to have been Tuesday of this week, which today is the 3rd, so it must have been the 1st of October. And he told me that he did not have any clear guidance -- that the administration was still deliberating internally what they would say. That was prior to Secretary Pompeo's letter being issued.

Q  When did you first become aware of efforts by the President of the United States to try to instigate investigations by the Ukraine into a company called Burisma Holdings?

A  By --

Q  I'm sorry. Burisma Holdings.

A  Burisma, yeah.

I became aware of the President's interest in -- well, let me take that back.

I don't recall ever hearing that the President was interested in investigating Burisma. I became aware of the President being interested in investigations concerning Vice President Biden and his son on September 25th when the transcript of the phone call came out.

Q  Did you ever have any discussions with Rudy Giuliani or anyone at the State Department regarding investigations into Burisma Holdings?

A  Yes, I did.

Q  Okay. We're going to go through some of your text messages that you turned over, and I'll ask you some more questions about that.

Did you ever learn of the President's desire for Ukraine to investigate the origins of their investigation into Paul Manafort?

A  No.

Q  Did you ever have any discussions with anyone at the State Department or with Rudy Giuliani regarding a desire on the part of Rudy Giuliani or the President for Ukraine to investigate the Paul Manafort case?

A  No.

Q  What about anything regarding interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election?

A  Yes.

Q  Are you aware that former Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden once sat on the board of Burisma Holdings?

A  Yes.

Q  Did you know that -- when did you first learn that?

A  I think early this year, early 2019, as this was being reported in media in the U.S.

Q  So during your discussions about Burisma Holdings, that we're going to get to in your text messages with other individuals at the State Department, you are aware that Burisma Holdings was associated with Hunter Biden?

A  I was aware that -- yes, I was aware that he had been a board member.

Q  Now, I believe in your opening statement you said that President Trump -- you were not aware of President Trump exerting pressure on Ukraine to open investigations. Is that correct?

A  That's correct, to open investigations into Vice President Biden or his son.

Q  What about to open up investigations into Burisma Holdings?

A  No, never aware that he had an interest in Burisma.

Q  What about openings up investigations into the origins of the 20 -- or into election interference in the 2016 election?

A  I knew that he was concerned about the possibility of there having been election interference. I do not recall him asking for investigations in that. I did hear that separately from Mr. Giuliani.

Q  And how did you learn that?

A  We had a meeting with the President in May following my participation in a Presidential delegation for the inauguration of the new Ukrainian President.

Q  And that was on May 20th, the inauguration?

A  No. I believe the inauguration was the 21st. Am I wrong?

Q  May 20th or 21st, on or about?

A  Okay.

Q  Okay. And who participated in that meeting with you and the President?

A  I know that those of us who were part of the Presidential delegation all took part. That was Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, it was Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, it was Senator Ron Johnson, and it was myself.

And there were other people in the room. I don't remember exactly who was there. I believe the deputy national security adviser, Mr. Kupperman (ph), was one person who was there.

Q  And where did this meeting take place?

A  It took place in the Oval Office.

Q  Can you describe the conversation during that meeting?

A  Yes. The four of us, who had been part of the Presidential delegation, had requested the meeting in order to brief the President after our participation at the inauguration of the new Ukrainian President, and meeting with the new President, an hour-long meeting that we had with him.

And we had a very favorable impression of President Zelensky. We believed that he was sincerely committed to reform in Ukraine, to fighting corruption. And we believed that this was the best opportunity that Ukraine has had for 20-some years to really break the grip of corruption that has set the country back for so long.

And we wanted to convey this to the President and urge that the U.S. and that he personally engage with the President of Ukraine in order to demonstrate full U.S. support for him.

We thought that he would -- that he, being President Zelensky, would face a lot of challenges, that going after oligarchs and corruption in Ukraine is not going to be easy, and he's going to need support. And so we wanted to advocate for that U.S. support.

In response to that, President Trump demonstrated that he had a very deeply rooted negative view of Ukraine based on past corruption. And that's a reasonable position. Most people who would know anything about Ukraine would think that. That's why it was important that we wanted to brief him, because we were saying, it's different, this guy is different.

But the President had a very deeply rooted negative view. We urged that he invite President Zelensky to meet with him at the White House. He was skeptical of that. We persisted. And he finally agreed, okay, I'll do it.

Q  Why --

A  May I continue?

Q  Yes.

A  I'm sorry.

During the course of this conversation he did reference Mayor Giuliani, because he said that what we were saying as a positive narrative about Ukraine is not what he hears. And he gave the example of hearing from Rudy Giuliani that they're all corrupt, they're all terrible people, that they were -- they tried to take me down -- meaning the President in the 2016 election. And so he was clearly demonstrating that he had a negative view of and that information that he was getting from other sources was reinforcing that negative view.

Q  And what did you understand him, the President, to mean when he said he believed that Ukraine had a role in trying to, I think you said, bring him down?

A  Yes.

Q  Can you explain that?

A  Yes. There were accusations that had been made by the prosecutor general of Ukraine.

Q  Is that Prosecutor General Lutsenko?

A  Lutsenko.

Q  Lutsenko.

A  Yuriy Lutsenko, L-u-t-s-e-n-k-o.

Q  Thank you. I think that would be helpful for the court reporter to spell some of the Ukrainian names.

A  Yes. Yuriy is Y-u-r-i-y.

And he, in early 2019 --

Q  "He" being the President?

A  No, "he" being the prosecutor general of Ukraine, made a couple of accusations or allegations in early 2019. don't know exactly when. And they made their way into U.S. media, reported both in print and then a journalist's writing who was then interviewed on television, so it was major news.

Q  And can I stop you there, Ambassador Volker?

A  Yes.

Q  Which news publication, written news publication in particular?

A  I believe it was The Hill.

Q  And do you know the author of these articles?

A  I do.

Q  Who?

A  John Solomon.

Q  Okay. Continue, please.

A  Okay. These allegations were twofold. One of them that Ukrainians had sought to influence the 2016 election by providing derogatory information about President Trump and about Mr. Manafort to the Hillary Clinton campaign, that this was done by passing that information to our ambassador at the time in Ukraine, Masha Yovanovitch.

And --

Q  Could you please spell that name for the record, too?

A  Of course. Her proper name is Marie L. Yovanovitch, Y-o-v-a -- 1 second -- Y-o-v-a-n-o-v-i-t-c-h, and she goes by Masha, and I've known her for 30 years -- is that correct? -- '88 to now, so 31 years.

So the accusation was that derogatory material to influence the election was given to her and to the Ukrainian ambassador in Washington, Valeri, V-a-l-e-r-i, Chaliy, C-h-a-l-i-y. And this information was therefore intended to reach the Hillary campaign to influence the election. That was one allegation.

Q  Can I stop you there --

A  Yes.

Q  -- before you get to the second allegation. You've used the word "allegation." Do you know whether or not that allegation was ever true or proven, or was there ever any evidence to support it?

A  I do not know. I know the allegation was made. I have my opinions about the prosecutor general who made them.

Q  What is your opinion about that allegation, whether it's true or false?

A  My opinion is that he was --

Q  "He" being --

A  He, the prosecutor general.

Q  Lutsenko, for the record.

A  Lutsenko, yes. Okay. That's right.

Q  Because I believe we'll probably be discussing multiple prosecutor generals today.

A  Yes. Yes. Yes.

Q  So let's just be clear for the record.

A  That's a good point. Thank you.

My opinion of Prosecutor General Lutsenko was that he was acting in a self-serving manner, frankly making things up, in order to appear important to the United States, because he wanted to save his job. He was on his way out with the election of a new President. You could read the writing on the wall. This was before Zelensky was elected, but you could see the wave of popularity.

He had been put in place by the former President, Petro Poroshenko. I think there were a couple motivations to this, but I think most important was that he would stay in office probably to prevent investigations into himself for things that he may have done as prosecutor general.

And so by making himself seem important and valuable to the United States, the United States then might object or prevent him from being removed by the new President.

Q  And to whom was he trying to make himself important precisely?

A  Well, my assumption was the United States generally. The President himself, you know, the State Department. He --

Q  What about Rudy Giuliani?

A  Well, he obviously met with Rudy Giuliani, I've learned that from media reports, and therefore that was also a target of how to get information into the U.S. system.

Q  Is it your opinion that President Trump believed these allegations?

A  Yes, it is my opinion that he believed them. I know that Mr. Giuliani did, and I know that Mr. Giuliani reported to President Trump. So I believe that President Trump believed them. I don't know that he believed them.

Q  Did President Trump want Ukraine to investigate those allegations?

A  He never said that. He never raised that with me.

Q  Did the President ever withhold a meeting with President Zelensky until the Ukrainians committed to investigating those allegations?

A  We had a difficult time scheduling a bilateral meeting between President Zelensky and President Trump.

Q  Ambassador Volker, that was a yes-or-no question.

A  Well, if I -- can you repeat the question then?

Q  Sure. Did President Trump ever withhold a meeting with President Zelensky or delay a meeting with President Zelensky until the Ukrainians committed to investigate the allegations that you just described concerning the 2016 Presidential election?

A  The answer to the question is no. if you want a yes-or-no answer. But the reason the answer is no is we did have difficulty scheduling a meeting, but there was no linkage like that.

Q  Okay. Let's go to the second allegation. And we're going to come back to the President's interest in that investigation later on. But could you describe, you said there was a second allegation?

A  Yes. The second allegation is the one about Burisma and Hunter Biden and Vice President Biden. And the allegation there is that Hunter Biden was put on the board of a corrupt company that a prior prosecutor general, Shokin -- I believe it's S-h-o-k-i-n -- was seeking to investigate that company and that Vice President Biden weighed in with the President of Ukraine to have that prosecutor general, Shokin, fired. That's the allegation.

Q  Okay. And to your knowledge, is there any evidence to support that allegation?

A  There is clear evidence that Vice President Biden did indeed weigh in with the President of Ukraine to have Shokin fired, but the motivations for that are entirely different from those contained in that allegation.

Q  That were pushed by Prosecutor General Lutsenko --

A  Correct.

Q  -- and adopted by John Solomon in The Hill and then repeated on televised news?

A  Correct. When Vice President Biden made those representations to President Poroshenko he was representing U.S. policy at the time. And it was a general assumption -- I was not doing U.S. policy at the time -- but a general assumption among the European Union, France, Germany, American diplomats, U.K., that Shokin was not doing his job as a prosecutor general. He was not pursuing corruption cases.

Q  So it wasn't just former Vice President Biden who was pushing for his removal, it was those other parties you just mentioned?

A  I don't know about any other specific efforts. It would not surprise me.

Q  Now, you mentioned that during your Oval Office meeting with the President and others, following the May 20th or 21st inauguration, you urged the President to have a meeting with President Zelensky. Is that correct?

A  That's correct.

Q  Was that an Oval Office meeting that you were urging?

A  It was a White House visit, so, yes, it would have been an Oval Office meeting.

Q  And why was the Oval Office meeting important to Ukraine?

A  It was important to show support for the new Ukrainian President. He was taking on an effort to reform Ukraine, fight corruption, a big sea change in everything that had happened in Ukraine before, and demonstrating strong U.S. support for him would have been very important.

Q  Okay. And what is it about an Oval Office meeting that is so significant, and why does it send such a strong signal of support for the new Ukrainian administration?

A  It's just the optics. In addition to what the content of the meeting would be, where we do have a very strong policy of supporting Ukraine, the imagery of the Ukrainian President, you know, at the White House, walking down the colonnade, in the Rose Garden, whatever it might be, that imagery conveys a message of U.S. support.

Q  Okay. I have two more questions on the second allegation, as you call it, and then I'm going to move on to your text messages.

First, did President Trump ever express an interest or desire for Ukraine to open or reopen an investigation of Burisma Holdings?

A  I never heard that from President Trump.

Q  What about Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani?

A  Giuliani did.

Q  And who did Giuliani work for?

A  He's President Trump's personal lawyer.

Q  Does he have -- he has no official role at the State Department. Is that correct?

A  I have --

Q  What was your understanding?

A  Yeah. I believed him to be a private citizen who is President Trump's personal attorney.

Q  Okay. To your knowledge, has a new prosecutor general been appointed by President Zelensky or the Ukrainian Parliament?

A  Yes.

Q  Do you know that person's name?

A  Yes. This is a tough one. Ryabshapka. And R-y-a-b-s-h-a-p-k-a. That's my best guess.

Q  And I’m not even going to attempt it, so I'll just ask you, do you know approximately when the new prosecutor general was appointed?

A  Approximately September 2nd to 5th timeframe, somewhere in that range, I believe.

Q  Do you know whether the new prosecutor general has opened an investigation into what you called the first allegation?

A  No, I don't.

Q  Do you know whether he has opened an investigation or reopened an investigation into Burisma Holdings --

A  No, I don't.

Q  -- the second allegation that you described?

A  No, I don't.

Q  Okay. So I'd like to turn to some of your text messages that were produced.

So before we move to the text messages, I want to ask you a clarifying question. You said that you were not aware of any linkage between the delay in the Oval Office meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky and the Ukrainian commitment to investigate the two allegations as you described them, correct?

A  Correct.

Q  Do you know whether there was any linkage that Rudy Giuliani drew between the two of those things?

A  No. If I can explain --

Q  You do not know or he did not --

A  I do not know whether he advocated for any linkage between those things or not.

Q  Okay. What about President Trump, do you know one way or the other?

A  No, I don't. May I say --

Q  Yes.

A  So the issue as I understood it was this deep-rooted, skeptical view of Ukraine, a negative view of Ukraine, preexisting 2019, you know, going back.

When I started this I had one other meeting with President Trump and President Poroshenko. It was in September of 2017. And at that time he had a very skeptical view of Ukraine. So I know he had a very deep-rooted skeptical view.

And my understanding at the time was that even though he agreed in the meeting that we had with him, say, okay, I'll invite him, he didn't really want to do it. And that's why the meeting kept being delayed and delayed.

And we ended up at a point in talking with the Ukrainians -- who we'll come to this, but, you know, who had asked to communicate with Giuliani -- that they wanted to convey that they really are different. And we ended up talking about, well, then, make a statement about investigating corruption and your commitment to reform and so forth.

Q  Is that the statement that you discussed in your text messages --

A  Yes.

Q  -- around August of 2019?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay.

A  Yeah. To say make a statement along those lines. And the thought behind that was just trying to be convincing that they are serious and different from the Ukraine of the past.

Q  Now. I recall that in that text -- one of the text messages to Andrey Yermak -- I might have you spell that for the record.

A  Okay. Andrey is A-n-d-r-e-y, and Yermak is Y-e-r-m-a-k, and he is an assistant to -- or a -- I don't know what the exact title is -- but an assistant to the President of Ukraine, probably his closest adviser.

Q  I believe in the text messages, and we'll probably go through it, but you sent a proposed statement to Mr. Yermak for President Zelensky to release. Is that correct?

A  It was the other way around. He sent it to me.

Q  Okay. And in at least one version of that statement include references to investigations into Burisma Holdings, correct?

A  That is correct.

Q  And also into the 2016 election interference?

A  That is correct.

Q  Why did you single out those two specific allegations --

A  Right.

Q  -- for the statement that President Zelensky was going to release --

A  Yes.

Q  -- in order to get the White House visit?

A  Right. He sent the draft statement to me, and I discussed it with Gordon Sondland, our ambassador to the European Union, and with Rudy Giuliani, we had a conference call together, because I was hoping that this would be convincing, that this is --

Q  Convincing to who?

A  To Giuliani, and therefore that information flow reaching the President would be more positive than it had been.

And Rudy did not find that convincing. He said that if they're not willing to investigate those things, Burisma --

Q  Referring to the two allegations we were discussing?

A  Burisma -- correct -- Burisma and 2016, then what does it mean?

And so we talked about it, and I said, well, if it said Burisma, let's be clear, we're talking about the Ukrainian company and Ukrainians that may have violated Ukrainian law or whether any Ukrainians may have tried to influence U.S. elections, that's what we're talking about. And that was, yes, you know, that is what we were talking about.

I then wrote a version -- I added that to the statement that Mr. Yermak had sent me so we could look at it and say -- Gordon and I, I believe, looked at it -- say, is this what we're talking about? Gordon says, yes.

I sent that to Andrey Yermak and discussed it with him. And in that conversation with Andrey and a subsequent conversation I advised him, this is not a good idea.

Q  Why did you think -- what specifically was not a good idea?

A  To --

Q  And why did you think that?

A  Yeah. I advised him that making those specific references was not a good idea, that a generic statement about fighting corruption and, you know, if anyone had tried to interfere in U.S. domestic politics, it's unacceptable, we have to make sure that never happens again, that's fine. But making those specific references, I said, is not a good idea.

Andrey's argumentation, let me start with that, was that, first off, he didn’t want to see any evidence destroyed by --

Q  What do you mean by that?

A  By -- yes. Very important point. Prosecutor General Lutsenko was at this time still in office, and so the one who's making these allegations, which, you know, there is no -- no evidence was brought forward to support. I thought they were very self-serving and not credible.

Q  And not only that, since Prosecutor General Lutsenko made those allegations, didn't he later come out and retract the allegations as completely false?

A  Yeah. I believe that he did.

Q  Okay.

A  Yeah. And so he said, first off, we don't want to -- if there is any evidence here, we don't want to say this and then have Lutsenko destroy it.

Secondly, we don't want to commit to anything that we might do as an investigation without having our own prosecutor general in place, that is the new team that took office.

And my comment back to him was I think those are good reasons. And in addition, I just think it's important that you avoid anything that would look like it would play into our domestic politics, and this could. So just don't do it. I agree with -- so I told Andrey, I agree with you, don't do it.

Q  So you believe that if the Ukrainians were to announce that they were pursuing investigations into what we've been describing as the two allegations, that could have an impact on U.S. domestic politics?

A  Yeah. For the reason that you highlighted earlier, which is that it was known that Hunter Biden was a board member of Burisma, so it could be interpreted that way.

Q  And would it be fair to say that if the Ukrainians announce that they were opening an investigation into those two allegations, it could accrue to the benefit of President Trump's reelection campaign?

A  We didn't discuss that.

Q  Do you believe that it could be perceived that way here in the United States?

A  Clearly, because it has now been perceived that way.

Q  And you agree with that perception?

A  Well, we're talking about what we see today especially in light of the phone call on July 25th. At the time I was not aware of that phone -- the contents of that phone call.

Q  And yet, you raised concerns about it, correct?

A  Yes, I was --

Q  At the time.

A  In August, because of conversations with Giuliani, I wanted to make sure that I was cautioning the Ukrainians, don't get sucked in.

Q  Did you understand that Rudy Giuliani spoke for President Trump when he was dealing with the Ukrainians?

A  No.

Q  Did he -- but you said he was his personal lawyer. Is that correct?

A  Yes.

Q  Was he -- do you know whether he was conveying -- Rudy Giuliani -- conveying messages that President Trump wanted conveyed to the Ukrainians?

A  I did not have that impression. I believe that he was doing his own communication about what he believed and was interested in.

Q  But you said he was working for President Trump?

A  He is President Trump's personal attorney.

Q  Yeah. So why would Rudy Giuliani have any role in dealing with the Ukrainians?

A  Because the Ukrainians asked to be connected to him in order to try to get across their message of being different from the past.

Q  So the Ukrainians believed that by speaking to Rudy Giuliani they could communicate to President Trump?

A  That information flow would reach the President.

Q  Because Rudy Giuliani would convey that information to the President presumably, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. So I do want to go through the text messages because I believe that they're a good anchor for some of the other topics that we've been discussing that I do want to discuss.

So I have a copy for you. I don't know if you --

A  That's helpful if you do. Thank you.

Q  Okay. So for the record, I'm handing the witness what the witness produced yesterday as KV1 through KV65. And we're not going to put this whole thing in as exhibits. We're going to do portions of them that we'll mark separately as separate exhibits.

[Volker Exhibit No. 2

Was marked for identification.]

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  So I'd like to first turn to page 36, and we're going to mark, as exhibit 2, 36, 37, 38, and 39.

A  Am I correct that it's -- the bottom right is the page number?

Q  Yes. On the bottom right it should say KV36. Do you see that?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. Great.

Up at the top, this is a group message chat between Gordon and Bill. Is that correct?

A  Yes.

Q  And what medium were these messages exchanged in?

A  I believe this was in WhatsApp.

Q  Okay. And who are Gordon and Bill?

A  Gordon is U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland; and Bill is Ambassador Bill Taylor, who is the Charge d'affaires in Kyiv.

Q  So just a preliminary question. If you jump down to -- and I think it will be easiest to refer to the messages by the date and timestamps on the left-hand side. Do you see those?

A  Yep.

Q  Okay. So jumping down a few lines to 6/19/19 at 5:12 a.m., do you see where it says, "This message was deleted"?

A  Yes.

Q  That appears throughout your text messages that you produced. Do you know why certain text messages were deleted?

A  Yes. Let me clarify that. When a person sends a text message in WhatsApp and then they go in themselves and delete it, because they're correcting what they were trying to say, I did this, didn't -- you know, I wanted to say something different instead, they delete that. And WhatsApp records that there was a prior message that was deleted before the next message is there.

Q  Okay. So jumping down to 6/19/19 at 8:33 a.m.

A  Yes.

Q  Bill Taylor is writing. And just can you explain again who Bill Taylor is and where he was and what his role was?

A  Yeah. Bill Taylor is the Charge d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.

Q  Okay. Is he a career U.S. State Foreign Service officer?

A  He was a career civil servant, and he served as Ambassador to Ukraine, I believe, in the late 2000s. And when Ambassador Yovanovitch departed, the DCM at the Embassy also was at the end of her tour.

And it was my judgment, and I recommended this to Secretary Pompeo, that we needed a more seasoned diplomat in place to be the U.S. Charge. And so I recommended Bill. And Bill had been the vice president of USIP, and he took a leave of absence from that to take on the role of Charge.

Q  Okay. And just generally, did you have conversations throughout, I guess, 2019 with Bill Taylor and Gordon Sondland regarding the issues that we’ve been discussing here today? Is that fair to say?

[10:40 a.m.]

Mr. Volker. Yes. On a routine basis, we were very closely in touch.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Okay. Let's jump to 6/24/19 at 3:01 p.m. Do you see that one?

A  Yes, I do.

Q  And can you read that for the record, what Bill Taylor writes?

A  So Bill Taylor writes.

Q  Gordon.

A  Yes. Bill Taylor: Gordon, can I ask you to see if you can break through on two key issues, a date from the White House for the Zelensky visit -- ZE visit means Zelensky.

Q  And throughout this, sometimes there's a ZE. Throughout these messages, ZE or Z, that refers generally to President Zelensky of Ukraine?

A  Correct. So can I ask you to see if you can break through on two key issues, a date from the White House for the Zelensky visit and a senior lead for a delegation to Kyiv for their Independence Day parade and celebration on August 24th? The date for the visit is urgent. The NSC has not been able to get a date. Many are travel -- in parentheses, many are traveling, of course. Two years ago, Secretary Mattis came for Independence Day. Last year Ambassador Bolton. Secretary Pompeo can't make it. The Vice President, question mark? Many thanks.

Q  Please continue.

A  A further message from Bill Taylor: Gordon, you might not have seen the message from George Kent on the high side that tells us that senior levels at the White House said that the visit is not happening any time soon. Very discouraging. Any chance you can turn this around? If not, I don't think a senior call with the Ukrainians on Friday, as your staff is suggesting, makes sense. Plus, it's a Ukrainian holiday, Constitution Day. Your thoughts?

Q  Then you go on to say: Let’s have an internal call on Friday?

A  Let's have an internal call Friday, three of us plus Secretary Perry. So rallying that Presidential delegation.

Q  And please go ahead and read the next line.

A  Gordon Sondland: This is Vindman and is being fixed. Agree, Kurt, let's talk Friday.

Q  Okay. I want to ask you about two of the people who are mentioned in these messages. Who is George Kent?

A  George Kent is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State responsible for Ukraine, Georgia, and this part of the world. He's formerly the Deputy Chief of Mission in Ukraine.

Q  Okay. And Mr. Vindman?

A  Alex Vindman is a National Security Council staffer who has worked on Ukraine.

Q  And can you explain just what you were -- you and Ambassador Sondland and Mr. Taylor were discussing on this -- in these exchanges?

A  Yes. So this is after President Trump wrote a letter to President Zelensky, inviting him to meet with him at the White House. And then, in trying to nail down a date to propose to the Ukrainians for that visit, we were not getting anywhere. What Gordon is referring to is his belief when he says, "This is Vindman and is being fixed." He believed that Alex Vindman was slow-rolling this invitation to President Zelensky.

Q  Who believed that?

A  Gordon Sondland did. He believed that this is Vindman and is being fixed. He believed that the invitation was being slow-rolled by Alex, who was saying: We need to have more content to justify why we have this visit. There's no -- there's nothing for them to talk about. There's no deliverable. There's no accomplishments here. So we need to do more first with Ukraine to build up to White House visit.

Q  And at this time, what was your position regarding whether or not a meeting should occur between President Trump and President Zelensky?

A  My -- first off, let me say that I don't think that was what Alex Vindman was doing.

Q  Okay.

A  I think Gordon was wrong about that. But it was what Gordon believed. And my view on a visit was that the opposite is true. We need the personal relationship between President Trump and President Zelensky. Once they get to know each other, that will give President Trump the confidence that this is a new day in Ukraine, a new President, a team committed to reform. So I just wanted to get the two of them together as quickly as possible.

Q  Okay. Now, you referenced a letter from President Trump to President Zelensky congratulating him on his inauguration. Is that correct?

A  Correct.

Q  And you’ve produced a copy of that to us, which I believe is KV-12. Do you have that in front of you? And we're going to mark KV-12 as exhibit 3.

[Volker Exhibit No. 3

Was marked for identification.]

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Do you see that?

A  Yes, I do.

Q  And this is the letter where President Trump invites President Zelensky to visit him in Washington, D.C.?

A  That is correct.

Q  And the date of this letter is May 29th, 2019?

A  That is correct.

Q  And yet, as of the time of these text messages in late June, no meeting had yet been scheduled. Is that right?

A  That is correct.

Q  I'm going to jump down, still on page 36, to 6/28/19 at 8:30 a.m. And Ambassador Sondland says: Whoo, glad you stayed on.

And then can you read what Bill Taylor wrote? And just read the next few lines, and I'll tell you when to stop.

A  Okay. Gordon Sondland: Whoo, glad you stayed on.

Bill Taylor: Me too. I might see him Sunday with Congressman Hoyer's delegation.

Bill Taylor: How do you plan to handle informing anyone else about the call? I will completely follow your lead.

Kurt Volker: I think we just keep it among ourselves and try to build a working relationship and get the damn date for the meeting.

Q  The "damn" is blanked out, though, right?

A  The "damn" is, yes. I don't usually -- and a smiley face because I don't normally use profanity. So I already felt bad about it.

Gordon Sondland: Agree with KV, very close hold.

Bill Taylor: Got it.

Bill Taylor: Kurt had a good meeting with Zelensky, I hear.

This is now July 3rd.

Q  Oh, yeah.

A  I'm sorry. That's now July 3rd. So that's --

Q  Yeah, let's stop there. Let's go back up. First of all, can you explain what Ambassador Sondland's role was with respect to Ukraine because you said he was the Ambassador to the European Union, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  Why was he involved in U.S.-Ukrainian relations?

A  He took a strong interest in Ukraine at the EU. We wanted to strengthen EU support for Ukraine. They do a lot of budgetary assistance. We wanted more political assistance. And, for instance, February 28th, we had a U.S. Destroyer visit the Port of Odessa. I went there, as the senior representative, to be there for that Destroyer visit. And Ambassador Sondland came for that as well.

And then he was part of the Presidential delegation in May for the President's inauguration. And I found his engagement to be very useful. He had -- he's a political appointee and had close ties with the political side of the White House that I did not have.

Q  Okay. And did you understand his -- you said political ties to President Trump, what the nature of those were?

A  I don't know what the nature was. I just know that he had a relationship with President Trump that I did not have.

Q  Are you aware that he donated a large sum of money to his inauguration fund?

A  I would not be surprised. I didn't know that.

Q  But you said he -- was he close -- would you say he was close to President Trump?

A  I would say that he felt that he could call the President and that they could have conversations. I don't know how close.

Q  Now, what is this call -- what is the call that you're discussing in these messages that you later say -- or Ambassador Sondland says, very close hold?

A  Yes.

Q  What is this call?

A  Yes. So what I understand this to be -- it took me a while to reconstruct this in my own mind. I believe that Gordon and Bill had a phone call with President Zelensky, and they were -- I don't know what the purpose was, but they were trying to somehow steer President Zelensky on the where we are with the request for a meeting because we had the letter, you know --

Q  From the President.

A  -- being invited to the White House, and we're not offering a date. And I believe they had a conversation with him about that.

Q  Were the Ukrainians -- and I should be more specific. President Zelensky or his close adviser Andriy Yermak, were they pressing you or Ambassador Sondland or Bill Taylor to get this meeting with the President set up?

A  Yes, they were.

Q  Okay. And can you describe your conversations with them -- and let's just stick to this general timeframe, May-June of 2019 -- regarding a meeting?

A  Yeah. They had the letter. They knew that the President was invited to the White House. We were not in a position to give them a date. And they would check in, I'd say, every other day. Anything new? You know, do you have -- and we would just report, you know, or answer their question, you know: Don't have anything. We are trying. We are trying to get a date out.

And we -- various different times, you know, we'd weigh in with the National Security Council staff, with -- I know that Gordon Sondland called the chief of staff once. But we were not getting anywhere in getting a date nailed down.

Q  Why did the Ukrainians keeping contacting you about setting up this meeting with the President? Why was it so important to them? What’s your understanding?

A  For the reason that we discussed earlier. That is a tremendous symbol of support to have their president visiting with our President in the White House.

Q  Okay. Going back to these text messages, the call that you were discussing, which I believe you said you were not on the call?

A  I was not.

Q  Do you know what was discussed during that call?

A  I believe it was trying to explain to President

Zelensky personally: We are working this. We're committed to having you there. We are trying to get a date.

That's what I believe it was, but I don't know the specific contents.

Q  Okay. Jumping down to the line that's 7/3/19 at 1:50 p.m.

A  Yes. Gordon Sondland: I have not briefed Ulrich yet. Waiting for the Bolton meeting and then a comprehensive briefing. If you want to chat with him sooner, no worries on my end. Have a great Fourth.

Q  Who is Ulrich?

A  Ulrich is Ulrich Brechbuhl, who is the counselor of the State Department.

Q  He's a counselor at the State Department, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  And what is -- are you aware of his relationship to Secretary Pompeo?

A  I believe they have a very close relationship and work well together.

Q  Okay. And what was Ulrich's role with respect to U.S.-Ukrainian relations during 2019?

A  He played no real role in U.S.-Ukrainian relations at all. He was a way of communicating so that information could get to the Secretary if he needed it to.

Q  Fair to say Ulrich was a conduit to Secretary Pompeo?

A  Yes. And one that I did not use very much, but I think Gordon and Bill did call him a few more times than I did.

Q  I'm sorry. Going back up to that call that we were discussing in the June 28, 2019, text messages, why were you not on that call?

A  I don't know. I'd have to look at -- I’d have to think about calendar and where I might have been or what I was doing, but I'm not sure.

Q  Would you normally have been on such calls with Bill Taylor and Gordon Sondland himself and President Zelensky?

A  Well, there wasn't a normal. This was the only time it happened.

Q  Okay. Going back down to the 7/3/19 line, Ambassador Sondland wrote: Waiting for the Bolton meeting.

What Bolton meeting was he referring to? And I assume he's referring to former National Security Advisor John Bolton?

A  That is correct. That is who he's referring to. Let me check something. So I don't know what the Bolton meeting is. It may be that we had a meeting or -- waiting for the Bolton meeting. Ah, okay. I think I understand it. The name in here that is misspelled, in the 7/3/19 message, 1:22, it says: Did Dayliuk get confirmed with Bolton for next week?

That is a misspelling. It is Danylyuk.

Q  Can you spell it correctly for the record?

A  The correct spelling is D-a-n-y-l-y-u-k. And --

Q  Oleksandr Danylyuk?

A  Oleksandr Danylyuk --

Q  Danylyuk.

A  -- was at that time -- he's since resigned. He was at that time the chair of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, appointed by President Zelensky. And he was seeking a meeting with National Security Advisor John Bolton as a first meeting with his counterpart.

Q  I see.

A  And I believe the meeting in question with Bolton -- waiting for the Bolton meeting I understand to be--

Q  Is that the meeting that -- I apologize for interrupting, but is that the meeting that later took place on July 10th --

A  That is correct.

Q  -- at the White House?

A  That is correct.

Q  And Oleksandr Dany -- I can't pronounce it, but Danylyuk and Andriy Yermak attended that meeting on the Ukrainian side?

A  That is correct. That is correct.

Q  Okay. Does Oleksandr Danylyuk also go by Sasha?

A  Yes.

Q  Can we jump down to the text messages on July 10th, '19? And I'll just have you read those, starting with what Bill Taylor said at 7:56 a.m.

A  Yes. So Bill Taylor on July 10th: Just had a meeting with Andriy and Vadym.

Q  Apology there. Who are Andriy and who are Vadym, for the record?

A  Vadym is Vadym Prystaiko, P-r-y-s-t-a-i-k-o. He is now the Foreign Minister of Ukraine but at this time was a diplomatic adviser to President Zelensky. Andriy could be one of two people. It could be Andriy Bohdan, A-n-d-r-i-y, Bohdan but spelled in the Ukrainian way, B-o-h-d-a-n. He's the chief of staff of the Presidential administration. That's who I think it is.

Q  You believe it's Bohdan?

A  I believe it's Bohdan. The other person it could be, however, is Andriy Yermak. His name is spelled A-n-d-r-e-y.

Q  Okay. But, to be clear, you're not sure who Bill Taylor was referring to, which Andriy?

A  I'm not sure. I believe it was Bohdan, but I'm not sure.

Q  All right. Continue.

A  Just had a meeting with Andriy and Vadym. Very concerned about what Lutsenko told them. That according to Rudy Giuliani --

Q  That's RG in the text message?

A  Yes. RG is Rudy Giuliani, yes.

The Zelensky-POTUS meeting will not happen. Advice? And I responded, Kurt Volker: Good grief, please tell Vadym to let the official USG representatives speak for the U.S. Lutsenko has his own self-interest here. And this is what we discussed earlier.

Q  And please continue.

A  Okay.

Bill Taylor: Exactly what I told them.

Bill Taylor: And I said that RG, Rudy Giuliani, is a private citizen.

Bill Taylor: I briefed Ulrich this afternoon on this.

Bill Taylor: Eager to hear if your meeting with Danylyuk and Bolton resulted in a decision on a call, a phone call between President Trump and President Zelensky.

If I can explain that --

Q  Let's finish the text, then we’ll go back and have you explain some things.

A  Sure.

Bill Taylor: How did the meeting go?

Kurt Volker: Not good, let's talk. KV.

Q  And the meeting that's being referred to is the July 10th meeting at the White House?

A  That's right.

Q  All right. So I want to go back up to the first line. Andriy and Vadym were very concerned about what Lutsenko told them. Do you know what Lutsenko told them, you wrote?

A  Just what it says here, that according to Rudy Giuliani, the Zelensky-POTUS meeting will not happen.

Q  And how did Lutsenko know that?

A  Because it says here "according to Rudy Giuliani." So, apparently, they spoke.

Q  Are you aware of whether Prosecutor General Lutsenko and Rudy Giuliani had direct communication?

A  I know that they met earlier in the year. So it's possible that they had further communications, but I don't know.

Q  Did Rudy Giuliani ever back brief you on those conversations he had with Lutsenko?

A  No.

Q  All right. Bill Taylor says he briefed Ulrich on this. Do you have an understanding why Bill Taylor briefed Ulrich on the situation?

A  Yes, because with the message that Lutsenko said, that according to Rudy Giuliani this meeting will not happen, he wanted to make sure that the Secretary -- by briefing Ulrich, it would get to the Secretary -- that there's this issue, that this is what was said.

Q  Do you know what Bill Taylor told Ulrich, Counselor Ulrich exactly?

A  Well, when he says "briefed Ulrich this afternoon on this," I assume what it is, is that message from Andriy and Vadym about what Lutsenko told them.

Q  Okay. So Bill Taylor learns from Andriy and Vadym that Rudy Giuliani told Lutsenko that the meeting with the President of the United States was not happening. Is that right?

A  That's what it says.

Q  Okay. And then Bill Taylor briefs that to Counselor Ulrich so that Ulrich can inform Secretary Pompeo. Is that fair?

A  Yes.

Q  Now, when you're asked about the meeting between Danylyuk and Bolton at the White House on July 10th, you say: It did not go -- you said -- when asked how it went, you said: Not good.

A  Yes.

Q  Sorry, that was garbled. But why did you say that?

A  Because Alex Danylyuk led the meeting and was talking really very bureaucratically. He was getting into the weeds about restructuring the intelligence services, the security services in Ukraine, into the weeds about restructuring the Defense Ministry, how they were going to set up a National Security Council apparatus different from the one -- and this is not the level of conversation you should be having with the National Security Advisor of the United States.

You should be conveying a much more top-line strategic message: We're a new team. We understand the problems in Ukraine. We are committed to solving them. We want to work with -- that's what the message should have been, and he just didn't do it.

Q  Okay. And who was in the room during that conversation?

A  John Bolton, of course, and with him Rick Perry, Secretary of Energy; Ambassador Sondland; myself. So we had this same Presidential delegation team. We kind of tried to shepherd this relationship together as best we could. Andriy Yermak. Obviously, Oleksandr Danylyuk.

There must have been an NSC staffer with John. I don't remember who it was now, whether it was Alex or -- Vindman or whether it was senior director at the time. I don't remember who that was.

Q  Would that have been Fiona Hill?

A  I don't remember when Fiona left and when Tim Morrison started.

Q  Tony Morrison?

A  No, Tim.

Q  Tim Morrison, I'm sorry.

A  Yes. So Fiona was there as senior director up to a point. And when she left, she was replaced by Tim Morrison, and I don't remember when that transition took place.

Q  During that meeting was there any discussion about setting up the July 25th telephone call with President Trump and President Zelensky?

A  I believe -- let me just double-check what it says here too. Yes, there was, because Bill was asking me: Eager to hear if your meeting with Danylyuk and Bolton resulted in a decision on a call.

And the reason we were now seeking a phone call was because it had been so long since the letter inviting the President of Ukraine to the White House without scheduling the visit that we thought it would be a good idea for President Trump to call him again.

And, in addition, we were looking forward to the Parliamentary election, which was going to be concluded on July 21st. And so we were saying: Let's see if we can get agreement that we'll do a phone call either just before or just after that Parliamentary election.

Q  Thank you, Ambassador Volker.

My time is up, so I'm going to turn it over to my colleagues on the minority side.

MR. VOLKER: May we have a short biological break and come back?

THE CHAIRMAN: Yes, take a 5-minute break.

[Recess.]

MR. CASTOR: Back on the record. It's 11:13. Everybody comfortable to start now?

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  My name is Steve Castor with the Republican staff. Thank you so much for coming in. We were just amazed by your deep knowledge of the region, your ability to recall specific names, pronounce them. During the break, all of the members, the staff at large talked about it, just an incredible appreciation for your knowledge of the region. So thank you for coming in.

And we want to signal at the start that we have great respect for you. We have great respect for the career Foreign Service officers, and to the extent any Foreign Service officer is thrust into the political realm, we appreciate that that is just an unfortunate circumstance.

Nevertheless, you're here. You're here to answer all the questions. It's very encouraging. So, you know, I'm a congressional staffer. I'm not a career Foreign Service person. So, if I get any of the names, if I mispronounce it, anything of that sort, if I'm not as savvy as you, please forgive me. It in no way is a lack of respect for the job that you and your colleagues do. And, with that in mind, I mean, you mentioned in your opening statement that at all times you conducted yourself with the highest level of personal and professional integrity. Is that fair?

A  Yes.

Q  And so any of the facts here, you connecting Mr. Giuliani with Mr. Yermak and to the extent you were facilitating Mr. Giuliani's communication with anybody in the Ukraine, you were operating under the best interests of the United States?

A  Absolutely.

Q  And to the extent Mr. Giuliani is tight with the President, has a good relationship with him, has the ability to influence him, is it fair to say that, at times, it was in the U. S.' interest to have Mr. Giuliani connecting with these Ukrainian officials?

A  Yes, I would say it this way: It was I think in the U.S. interest for the information that was reaching the President to be accurate and fresh and coming from the right people. And if some of what Mr. Giuliani believed or heard from, for instance, the former Prosecutor General Lutsenko was self-serving, inaccurate, wrong, et cetera, I think correcting that perception that he has is important, because to the extent that the President does hear from him, as he would, you don't want this dissonant information reaching the President.

Q  And you mentioned that the President was skeptical, had a deep-rooted view of the Ukraine. Is that correct?

A  That is correct.

Q  And that, whether fair or unfair, he believed there were officials in Ukraine that were out to get him in the run-up to his election?

A  That is correct.

Q  So, to the extent there are allegations lodged, credible or uncredible, if the President was made aware of those allegations, whether it was via The Hill or, you know, via Mr. Giuliani or via cable news, if the President was made aware of these allegations, isn't it fair to say that he may, in fact, have believed they were credible?

A  Yes, I believe so.

Q  And to that end, did you feel that it was worthwhile to give a little bit with Mr. Giuliani, in terms of the statement?

A  What I wanted to do with the statement -- and it was not my idea. I believe it must have come up in the conversation that Mr. Giuliani had with Mr. Yermak in Madrid on August 2nd because it was Yermak who came to me with a draft statement.

And I viewed this as valuable for getting the Ukrainian Government on the record about their commitment to reform and change and fighting corruption because I believed that would be helpful in overcoming this deep skepticism that the President had about Ukraine.

Q  And the draft statement went through some iterations. Is that correct?

A  Yeah. It was pretty quick, though. I don't know the timeline exactly. We have it. But, basically, Andriy sends me a text. I share it with Gordon Sondland. We have a conversation with Rudy to say: The Ukrainians are looking at this text.

Rudy says: Well, if it doesn't say Burisma and if it doesn't say 2016, what does it mean? You know, it's not credible. You know, they're hiding something.

And so we talked and I said: So what you're saying is just at the end of the -- same statement, just insert Burisma and 2016, you think that would be more credible?

And he said: Yes.

So I sent that back to Andriy, conveyed the conversation with him -- because he had spoken with Rudy prior to that, not me -- conveyed the conversation, and Andriy said that he was not -- he did not think this was a good idea, and I shared his view.

Q  You had testified from the beginning you didn't think it was a good idea to mention Burisma or 2016.

A  Correct.

Q  But then, as I understand it, you came to believe that if we're going to do the statement, maybe it’s necessary to have that reference in there, correct?

A  I'd say I was in the middle. I wouldn't say I thought it was necessary to have it in there because I thought the target here is not the specific investigations. The target is getting Ukraine to be seen as credible in changing the country, fighting corruption, introducing reform, that Zelensky is the real deal.

You may remember that there was a statement that Rudy Giuliani made when he canceled his visit to Ukraine in May of 2019 that President Zelensky is surrounded by enemies of the United States. And I just knew that to be fundamentally not true. And so I think, when you talk about overcoming skepticism, that's kind of what I'm talking about, getting these guys out there publicly saying: We are different.

Q  I guess what I'm trying to get to, though, is that there was a point where you tweaked --

A  Oh, yeah. Yes.

Q  -- the draft statement and you sent it back, even though you weren't really in favor of --

A  Well, I wanted to do that because I was trying to communicate clearly. So what is it that you are saying here? You know, Rudy Giuliani, Gordon was on the phone with that as well. What are you saying? Is this what you're saying?

And there is an important distinction about Burisma that I think I made earlier, but I want to repeat it again. Burisma is known for years to have been a corrupt company accused of money laundering, et cetera. So, when someone says investigate Burisma, that's fine. You know, what were Ukrainian citizens doing, and do you want to look into that? Saying investigating Vice President Biden or his son, that is not fine. And that was never part of the conversation.

Q  And you said earlier today that that was never part of any conversation --

A  Correct.

Q  -- you had with --

A  Yes. And if you go through the pages and pages here, you know, there's -- of everything that was the topic of conversation -- and there's a lot -- that never comes up.

Q  Okay. And you're the official U.S. representative for the Ukraine, along with the Ambassador, right?

A  For -- yes. Yes is probably the simplest way to say that.

Q  And are you confident that the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine also never ever advocated for the investigation of --

A  Yes.

Q  -- Vice President Biden or Hunter Biden?

A  Yes. I am more than -- more than that, I know from having spoken with Bill Taylor, our Charge there, that he specifically advised Ukrainians: Don't do anything to interfere, that that would be seen as interfering in U.S. elections.

Q  And the fact that the President may have been zeroed in on the four digits 2016 and Burisma is in line with the President's, you know, often stated concerns about attempts to damage him in the run-up to the 2016 election, right?

A  That is correct.

Q  I'd like to -- you know, the Burisma, it's a natural gas company, right, in Ukraine?

A  Yes.

Q  Under the control of one of the oligarchs, Zlochevsky?

A  That sounds right. I don't know the name off the top of my head.

Q  And he's a former Interior Minister?

A  I don't know.

Q  It's my understanding he's a former Interior Minister and that he has great control over energy companies in the energy sector. Is that something you're familiar with?

A  I'm not really familiar with the details of the company.

Q  And, you know, there was an issue of whether the former prosecutor general before Lutsenko -- so I guess two prosecutor generals ago?

A  Yes. This would be Prosecutor General Shokin.

Q  Shokin. There was a question of whether he was, you know -- some in the United States -- and maybe credible and maybe uncredible, people might get mad that I suggest it's credible, but -- were concerned that Shokin wasn't aggressively going after some of these companies controlled by this former Interior Minister?

A  That is my understanding.

Q  And Burisma is one of those companies?

A  That is my understanding.

Q  And so, when folks are agitating for Shokin to go after Burisma, it's in the context of there are Ukrainians affiliated with this company that may have been involved with corrupt activities?

A  Correct.

Q  And are you aware of whether, you know, Burisma was sufficiently investigated in that time period during the Shokin era?

A  I don't know. I was not really involved in policy at that time.

Q  Do you have any awareness, given your deep understanding of the area, whether --

A  I don't. I'll make one general comment. Ukraine has a long history of pervasive corruption throughout the economy throughout the country, and it has been incredibly difficult for Ukraine as a country to deal with this, to investigate it, to prosecute it.

It seemed -- let me put it this way: A slogan that I have used a lot or in explaining this to people is that in a situation where everybody is guilty of something, the choice of whom to prosecute is a political decision. And that's the way anticorruption was played out in Ukraine for decades, that it wasn't about just fighting corruption: it was about who are my enemies and who are my friends and back and forth.

Q  Was Shokin regarded --

A  His reputation, as I know it -- I was not involved in policy at this time, but his reputation is one of a prosecutor general who was protecting certain interests rather than prosecuting them.

Q  And looking to Lutsenko, did Lutsenko express an interest or advance, you know, did he advance investigations into the energy sector companies?

A  I don't know.

Q  Then what was the knock on Lutsenko, other than you had said earlier that he may not have been a reliable --

A  Well, the information about Lutsenko -- and I'm not vouching for this; I'm telling you what was the rumor mill in Kyiv -- that he himself was corrupt, that he was protecting President Poroshenko and friends of President Poroshenko in this, you know, how does prosecution work. He was protecting those sorts of things. He was a politician himself who became the prosecutor general, not a judge or lawyer who got into that position directly, and playing a very political role as prosecutor general.

And that he saw the writing on the wall when Zelensky's popularity was rising and Poroshenko was likely to lose the election, and he was concerned about possible investigations into himself once he was out of office and possible investigations into President Poroshenko once he was out of office. So very anxious to see whether he would be able to stay on.

Q  Going back to the statement of a possible White House meeting, the letter from the President was in May?

A  May 29th.

Q  In your experience as a veteran Foreign Service official, is this a long time? I mean, don't these meetings between countries sometimes take a long time to get scheduled?

A  They do. They do.

Q  And were the facts that were unfolding after the May 29th letter and the effort to try to expedite the meeting from the Ukrainian side and maybe the concerns from the U.S. side, did that strike you as novel?

A  Not novel, no. It struck me as normal at the beginning, and then the longer it went on, it became clear there's an issue here. This is not moving.

Q  But in your career as a Foreign Service veteran, you've seen these --

A  I've seen that happen. I -- when I was at the National Security Council staff, trying to get meetings with President Bush for various leaders there, banging your head against the wall trying to get it scheduled.

Q  And it can take months. It can take a year.

A  It sometimes just doesn't happen.

Q  And sometimes doesn't happen.

And the same with the issue of the aid, the foreign assistance. You know, in your experience, foreign assistance sometimes gets locked up. There's issues to work through. Then it's released. Is what happened here unusual?

A  You are correct. I agree with you in saying that assistance gets held up for a variety of reasons at various times. That is true.

In this case, here you had an instance where everyone that I spoke with in the policy side of the administration -- you know, Pentagon, military, civilian, State Department, National Security Council -- they all thought this is really important to provide this assistance. And so, in that circumstance, for there to be a hold placed struck me as unusual.

I didn't know the reason. No reason was ever given as to why that was. It came from 0MB, so I immediately thought about budgetary issues, that, for whatever reason, there's a hold placed. There was one report about a hold placed on all assistance because of a concern about end-of-year spending not being done efficiently.

And I just didn't believe that this hold would ever be sustained because the policy community in the administration was determined to see it go forward.

Q  And it did?

A  And it did.

Q  Looking back on it now, is this something, in the grand scheme of things, that's very significant? I mean, is this worthy of investigating, or is this just another chapter in the rough and tumble world of diplomacy and foreign assistance?

A  In my view, this hold on security assistance was not significant. I don't believe -- in fact, I am quite sure that at least I, Secretary Pompeo, the official representatives of the U.S., never communicated to Ukrainians that it is being held for a reason. We never had a reason.

And I tried to avoid talking to Ukrainians about it for as long as I could until it came out in Politico a month later because I was confident we were going to get it fixed internally.

Q  So, as one of the official U.S. representatives to the Ukraine, you never explained to them that they needed to do X, Y, or Z to get the aid?

A  No. By the time it hit Politico publicly, I believe it was the end of August. And I got a text message from, it was either the Foreign Minister or -- I think it was the future Foreign Minister.

And, you know, basically, you're just -- you're -- I have to verbalize this. You're just trying to explain that we are trying this. We have a complicated system. We have a lot of players in this. We are working this. Give us time to fix it.

Q  So anybody on the Ukrainian side of things ever express like grave concern that this would not get worked out?

A  Not that it wouldn't get worked out, no, they did not. They expressed concern that, since this has now come out publicly in this Politico article, it looks like that they're being, you know, singled out and penalized for some reason. That's the image that that would create in Ukraine.

Q  And you assured them that --

A  I told them that is absolutely not the case.

Q  You were the -- you were working for free --

A  Yes.

Q  -- right? And it seems from going through your text messages, the United States Government, that taxpayers were getting a good value.

A  It's kind of you to say.

Q  You were working hard?

A  I was.

Q  And can you maybe just help us understand why you decided to do this for free?

A  Yes. I was working and still am as the executive director of the McCain Institute. It was founded by Senator and Mrs. McCain and Arizona State University. I was the founding executive director in 2012. We were building this institute. Some of you may have heard of it by now, which means that we've been successfully building this institute. And I did not feel that I could leave those responsibilities, to leave the McCain family or Arizona State University in order to take on a full-time position.

But, because I cared about the issues and I knew that we had a gap, that we were not in the game on Ukraine in early 2017 the way we should be, I wanted to help. And so I asked then-Secretary of State Tillerson if he would be okay if I did this on a part-time, voluntary, unpaid basis rather than as a full-time employee because I didn't want -- I didn't feel I could give up the responsibilities I had taken on in developing the McCain Institute.

I also had some other personal reasons that I'd rather not dive into, but I did not want to be joining the administration full time at that point.

Q  So the McCain Institute is your full-time job?

A  Correct, correct.

Q  And now you have, as a result largely of this firestorm, you've been -- you had to resign. Is that correct?

A  No, that is not correct. I am still executive director.

Q  No, from being a Special Envoy?

A  Oh, yes. There I would say quite unfortunately because I think we were in a very -- we had developed a very strong Ukraine policy. We had developed a strong relationship with this new government now. We did have a bilateral meeting between the two Presidents in New York. We did get the arms -- the security assistance moving. And there is renewed pressure on Russia. The Ukrainians are being very smart about the negotiations right now, and it's developing some new pressure on Russia. So to be unable to be in a position to keep pressing that I think is very unfortunate.

Q  So, I mean, is it fair to say you're a little bit of a victim here of this political --

A  I don't characterize myself as a victim. I would rather characterize myself as a professional. You do the best job you can for as long as you can.

Q  Secretary Pompeo, I mean, he was disappointed you had decided to leave?

A  He was disappointed because he saw what I just described as well. We worked this policy well. It's been one of the bright spots in our foreign policy.

Q  The decision to release the call transcript, the July 25th transcript between President Trump and President Zelensky, was unusual, correct?

A  Absolutely.

Q  And do you think it was a good idea -- generally speaking, is it a good idea to release call transcripts?

A  Generally speaking, I take a view that we need to protect the conversations of our foreign interlocutors. We want to be able to have candid conversations with them, and we don't want to feel that they will not have that degree of openness in speaking with us if they believe what they tell us is going to be released publicly.

Q  Do you think the release of this particular transcript, the thrusting of Ukraine into the number one national story, is good for Ukrainian-U.S. relations?

A  That's -- the decision to release it is not my decision. That's taking place at a much higher pay grade. And you could -- as far as the impact on U.S.-Ukraine relations, I believe that the substance of those relations is pretty strong right now, and I don't see it changing. Ukraine needs the support of the United States. The U.S. is committed to supporting Ukraine.

Q  Can you walk us through the foreign assistance provided by the United States since 2016 -- I'm sorry, since January 2017 a little bit?

A  Yes.

Q  Characterize it for us?

A  Yes. So there has been U.S. assistance provided to Ukraine for some time, under the Bush administration, Obama administration, and now under the Trump administration. I was particularly interested in the security assistance and lethal defensive weapons. The reason for this is this was something that the Obama administration did not approve. They did not want to send lethal defensive arms to Ukraine.

I fundamentally disagreed with that decision. It is not my -- you know, I was just a private citizen, but that's my opinion. I thought that this is a country that is defending itself against Russian aggression. They had their military largely destroyed by Russia in 2014 and '15 and needed the help. And humanitarian assistance is great, and nonlethal assistance, you know, MREs and blankets and all, that's fine, but if you're being attacked with mortars and artilleries and tanks, you need to be able to fight back.

The argument against this assistance being provided, the lethal defensive assistance, was that it would be provocative and could escalate the fighting with Russia. I had a fundamentally different view that if we did not provide it, it's an inducement to Russia to keep up the aggression, and there's no deterrence of Russia from trying to go further into Ukraine. So I believed it was important to help them rebuild their defensive capabilities and to deter Russia. It's also a symbol of U.S. support.

So I argued very strongly from the time I was appointed by Secretary Tillerson that the rationale for why we were not providing lethal defensive assistance to me doesn't hold water and that is a much stronger rationale that we should be doing it.

That eventually became administration policy. It took a while, but Secretary Tillerson, you know, he wanted to think it through, see how that would play out. How would the allies react to this? How would Russia react to this? How would the Ukrainians handle it? And we managed those issues. Secretary Mattis was very much in favor. And they met -- I did not meet with the President about this -- but they met with the President and the President approved it.

Q  And how soon into 2017 did that assistance start flowing?

A  Well, flowing, probably late 2017-early 2018. Decisionmaking about this really -- I started in July, and I think we had the decisionmaking beginning around September and then finalized a little bit later in the autumn.

Q  And all along, the officials in the Ukraine knew that you were advocating for it?

A  Absolutely. I was very public about it.

Q  And could you characterize the assistance that was provided to Ukraine prior to that a little bit more than you have? You said about nonlethal assistance, MREs?

A  Yeah. I mean, that's the pejorative. I mean, I'm sure there were other things, like night vision goggles, scopes for rifles, counter-battery radars. So, if you're being fired on with mortar or artillery, you can calibrate where that's coming from better with a counter-battery radar, and that enables you to then fire back more accurately.

So we weren't giving them the weapon to fire back, but we were giving them the radar. So these are the sorts of things that were being finessed by the Pentagon before we changed the policy. And then said, no, we’re going to provide genuine lethal defensive arms, anti-tank missiles, anti-sniper systems, and so forth.

Q  And has the lethal defensive arms that have been provided to date, has that been helpful?

A  It has been extremely helpful.

Q  And there has been a material -- you know, you can see materially that this is helping the country of Ukraine?

A  Absolutely.

Q  And stoking Russian aggression -- or preventing Russian aggression?

A  Deterring further Russian incursions into Ukraine.

Q  So it has been successful?

A  Yes. Let me -- deterring further Russian incursions into Ukraine on land. They did attack the Ukrainian Navy and seize a bunch of sailors. We have not done as much in the naval and coastal defense area as we have on ground.

Q  Turning back to President Trump's skepticism of Ukraine and the corruption there, do you think you made any inroads in convincing him that Zelensky was a good partner?

A  I do. I do. I attended the President's meeting with President Zelensky in New York on, I guess it was the 25th of September. And I could see the body language and the chemistry between them was positive, and I felt that this is what we needed all along.

Q  And there's been some controversy about the curtailment of the prior Ambassador's term?

A  Yes.

Q  Ambassador Yovanovitch?

A  Yes.

Q  And the facts leading up to her being brought home. How early was she brought home, do you know?

A  I believe it was about 3 weeks prior to what the opening of the normal Foreign Service transfer season would be.

Q  Okay. And granted that the facts relating to her being brought home early, it may be subject to debate, but if the President genuinely believed that Ambassador Yovanovitch was not on his team, if Ambassador Yovanovitch wasn't fully committed to the Trump administration, is it fair, in your view, if the President believed that, to make the decision that he did?

A  Well, without commenting on the merits of it, it is absolutely the right of the President to determine who his Ambassadors are in the world. That is a Presidential nomination, a Senate confirmation, and the President has the right to recall anyone at any time that he wants.

Q  The recall of the Ambassador has provoked some I'd even say emotion on the part of her allies. Would you agree with that?

A  I would agree that she feels that it was improper and that she should not have been removed early, and there has been an emotional response to that. Yes, I agree with that.

Q  The fact that she was brought home early, whether it's 3 weeks or whether that 3 weeks could be characterized as, yeah, actually, she would get to stay longer, do you think the extreme emotion around her being brought home is fair for her and her allies?

A  Well, it impugns her character and credibility. It makes it look like she was doing something wrong. And I think that's unfortunate for her because she is a professional. She's hardworking. She did a good job in Ukraine. And I think it is unfair to her to have that reputational damage or that image created as a result.

Q  I mean, there was one allegation, not that I'm trying to lend credibility to it, but there is, you know, one allegation that she was speaking negatively about President Trump in foreign relations circles?

A  Yes, that is an allegation, and it was an allegation that made its way into media in the U.S.A I know that that -- well, let me say it this way. I don’t know. President Trump would understandably be concerned if that was true because you want to have trust and confidence in your Ambassadors.

Q  Do you know whether Ambassador Yovanovitch was maligning the President?

A  I don't know. I have known her for 31 years. We served together in 1988 the first time. And I have always known her to be upstanding, high integrity, capable, honest, and professional in the way she carries out her duties.

Q  So you never heard her besmirch the President?

A  No.

Q  Did you hear secondhand from anyone that you trust that perhaps that she did besmirch the President?

A  No, no. It's only this public narrative that I saw.

Q  And given her sophistication -- she's a sophisticated career Foreign Service diplomat, right?

A  She is.

Q  She's familiar with -- she's also sophisticated to know about the U.S. political system currently?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  I mean, is it fair to say that -- I guess part of the trouble that some of my Republican colleagues are having with the emotion connected to her recall is, granted, anything that besmirches your character and integrity, anybody would be upset about that, to a degree a little bit emotional.

But the degree to which -- you know, in this environment, if the President for whatever reason, true or untrue, develops a feeling that he's got an Ambassador that isn't loyal to him, he's going to bring them home, correct?

A  It's the President's right to do that.

Q  And so the question is, okay, look, you know, is this as big of a deal as everybody is making it out to be?

A  I think you can look at it as a matter of the President's prerogatives as President, and it's unquestionable. This is his right, as the President, to choose his Ambassadors.

If you look at it from the perspective of a capable career diplomat who then suffers some damage to her reputation or career or perceptions about her, that is unfortunate. And I think you can see both of those at the same time.

Q  There have been allegations that, from time to time, not just on one occasion, that officials from the Embassy in Ukraine, whether it be Ambassador Yovanovitch or Ambassador Pyatt, communicated to the prosecutors general in Ukraine, both Shokin and Lutsenko at various points in time, that there were certain entities or individuals that should not be prosecuted. Are you aware of that allegation?

A  I've heard of that allegation.

Q  And do you have any firsthand knowledge of communications to that effect?

A  I have no firsthand knowledge of anything like that.

Q  Okay. And there's a question of whether or not a list was given by Ambassador Yovanovitch.

A  I've seen that allegation as well, and I believe the State Department put out a statement addressing that. I don't recall exactly how it was addressed, but --

Q  There certainly are facts on both sides, and there are -- like I said, this is one of those allegations that provokes great emotion. But Lutsenko has said that there was a list of, you know, entities not to prosecute. And you're aware of that?

A  He said that. And this is the same prosecutor general who I described earlier as saying things that I believed were intended to be self-serving.

Q  And Shokin I think at various points in time has alleged that he was encouraged not to investigate Burisma.

A  Well, this -- there's more of a record on that, where it was a matter of U.S. policy to investigate corruption in Ukraine, disappointment with him in not doing that, and then a push to remove him for those reasons.

Q  And you're not aware, you don't have any firsthand knowledge of anybody, whether it be Ambassador Yovanovitch or her predecessor, Ambassador Pyatt, ever communicating a list, whether it's orally --

A  No. I have no knowledge of that.

[11:45 a.m.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  So to the extent when that has been reported, given your knowledge of the area, your impression of that allegation is it's not --

A  Yeah. My impression of that allegation is that it's made up.

Q  Have you ever had any communications with Ambassador Yovanovitch about that allegation?

A  No. Actually, I haven't.

Q  Anybody else that might have, you know, firsthand knowledge of --

A  I did communicate about it with George Kent, who was the deputy chief of mission at the time and is now the deputy assistant secretary of state, and he's the one that took the lead in putting together a response for the State Department about it.

Q  Have you ever been in any official meetings with Ambassador Yovanovitch and Lutsenko?

A  Not at the same time. I met with President Poroshenko once. I believe it -- well, I met with President Poroshenko many times. On one occasion when I met with him, he brought Prosecutor General Lutsenko to the meeting so I could meet with him. We shook hands. We spoke for 5 minutes, maybe. I was -- that was just me with President Poroshenko.

I don't remember how many meetings I had with him, but possibly, you know, 10, 12, something like that.

Ambassador Yovanovitch, we interacted quite regularly, just as you see with Bill Taylor here. When she was ambassador, we interacted quite a lot. And when I visited Ukraine, for the most part, we were in all our meetings together. There were a few when she was not there.

Q  Did you ever speak with any, you know, U.S. official in the Embassy about the origins of this allegation?

A  The allegation of there being a list?

Q  Yes.

A  Not really, no.

Q  Okay. So do you think it was treated seriously or was it just thought, oh, this is Lutsenko talking out of school?

A  Oh, I think -- again, I'd have to refer back to the statement that the State Department put out addressing this, because I think that was actually put together -- researched and put together. I don't think it was handled lightly.

Q  There's another allegation that Lutsenko's visa was denied, he wanted to come to the U.S. and he had his visa denied. Are you aware of that allegation?

A  Not aware of that, no.

Q  How would -- if Lutsenko wanted to come to the United States, how would that visa ordinarily be processed?

A  Right. Normally an applicant for a visa will go to the U.S. Embassy. They'll fill in the application. The Embassy will send that back to Washington. An interagency review process takes place pretty quickly. Normally it's purely electronic.

If a name is flagged for any reason, then it triggers a review by people, and then they make a decision as to whether to approve a visa or not.

Q  So you have no knowledge of whether Lutsenko had a visa denied?

A  I have no idea.

Q  Have you seen it reported in the press?

A  No, I haven't, actually.

Q  If it was denied, would there be another mechanism for Lutsenko to get a second crack at it?

A  If someone applies for a visa and the visa is denied, then you can apply for a waiver of the denial, depending on what the denial is.

And I used to do this when I was a visa officer in London. I was -- I was the -- I don't know what you would call it -- the waiver officer. And they submit an explanation, a petition, to have a waiver of the denial.

You send that back to Washington with a recommendation. The interagency community in Washington vets it, gives you an answer. You convey that answer to the applicant.

Q  You know, if Lutsenko really wanted to come, you know, his visa was denied, would he have been able to have other Ukrainian officials go to bat for him with the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine?

A  I don't know any of the circumstances of this.

Q  Okay. You mentioned this morning that in advance of your coming in for the interview nobody at the State Department told you, you couldn't come. Is that correct?

A  That is correct.

Q  And while there was a letter from Pompeo and -- the State Department has concerns about their diplomatic --

A  Yeah.

Q  -- interests and information?

A  Yeah. Let me -- they do. And let me say on that, I read Secretary Pompeo's letter. I think he made a few good points. One of them is the importance of protecting members of our Foreign Service. I agree with that.

Another is that it is difficult to put together information of the right quality for a committee like this in such a short period of time.

So I think those are fair things.

And I noticed even in the long form written testimony that I prepared for you, I already noticed this morning I got three dates wrong. So we'll correct those in what we give you.

And there's probably more that the State Department has that I have not had a chance to review, because I'm only going based on what my personal recollections and knowledge and what I can find from reviewing these text messages, and so there's probably more that would be in the State Department official reporting that I’ve not had a chance to review.

Q  Other than the letter that we talked about from the Secretary and then there was a letter last night from Marik String to your lawyer, that's the extent of any communications you've had from the State Department? If we're trying to look at the whole record --

A  Yes.

Q  -- and the State Department's activities trying to block your testimony, that's --

A  Yeah. So I had a conversation with the acting legal adviser, Marik String, on the Tuesday of this week, which had to have been the 1st of October. I saw -- I had prior conversations with him, but those prior conversations were not at a point where it would -- I had resigned and was -- clearly was going to testify.

It was only the 27th -- 27th of September is when I resigned, and then -- and that is a date when I spoke with Marik String. I may have called him over the weekend as well, and then October 1st.

In none of these conversations did he say I am instructed not to testify. In my conversation with Secretary Pompeo, he did not say that either.

I read the letter. The letter does not say, don't do it, and there was no formal instruction.

There was a concern expressed in this letter that was sent to my attorney last night about protection of classified material. As was asked earlier, I believe all of the information that is contained in these things that I'm discussing is unclassified. I was communicating on unclassified devices, I was doing it with people, there's no intelligence, there's no deep national security information.

There are a couple of conversations I would categorize as sensitive, but I would not characterize any of those as classified. And that is, however, one of the things that was communicated in that letter from Marik String.

Q  Nobody from the White House told you not to cooperate?

A  No. No. I had a conversation with White House Counsel lawyers soon after the -- not the subpoena -- when the request for transcribed testimony came in, and I had a conversation with White House Counsel.

Q  But nobody told you not to cooperate with Congress?

A  No, no. They -- that was a fact-finding phone call --

Q  Okay.

A  -- to find out what do I know about anything.

[Discussion off the record.]

MR. VOLKER: Yes. Thank you.

As a matter of completeness, the State Department acting legal adviser did call my attorney yesterday. Again, there was no request to have me not testify.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Okay. And to your knowledge, you didn't see any State Department lawyers or White House lawyers outside to try to prevent you from joining us here today?

A  No, no.

Q  In the whistleblower complaint, there's a reference to you.

A  Yes.

Q  I'm sure you're aware of that.

A  I believe there's two.

Q  So maybe we could just get you to talk about your reaction when you saw your name --

A  Yeah.

Q  -- thrust into this document.

A  Yeah. I thought that it was a fairly accurate characterization. He got some facts wrong, but I thought that trying to do damage limitation -- I wouldn't have used the word "damage limitation," but I under -- I kind of get what he's talking about.

This is what I am referring to when I say make sure that there's a -- there's not a negative narrative about Ukraine that’s reaching the President from other means, that we get one story straight.

And then secondly, helping the Ukrainians "navigate," was the word that he used, "requests," I believe he said from the President, if I'm not mistaken. There are some mistakes in this.

Helping Ukrainians navigate, I would say that's accurate, but navigate what? Navigate how to provide convincing presentation of themselves as being the new team that is committed to fighting corruption, that is committed to reform, and avoiding things that would drag them into U.S. domestic politics or anything relating to 2020, just helping them and coaching them, "Don't go there."

Q  Right.

A  So helping them navigate in that sense.

I -- the whistleblower report says that I was dispatched to Ukraine after the President's phone call to meet with President Zelensky to talk about it. That's not accurate.

I was planning a visit to Ukraine to fall after the 21st of July, which is when the parliamentary election was. I did not want to show up in Ukraine during an election campaign, because all they do is ask you, do you like this candidate, do you like that candidate, did you talk to these -- so I just avoid going during election seasons.

So I wanted to go after that, and I wanted particularly to go to the conflict zone, which I tried to do every year, as a way of highlighting that Russia is still here killing people. And I did that.

So in setting that trip up, we arranged it to be around the 25th, 26th of July. I left Washington on the 23rd of July, and en route I learned that the proposed phone call, congratulatory phone call from President Trump to President Zelensky, was then starting to be scheduled. I didn't know whether or when it would take place.

It turns out that it took place on the 25th of July, which was the day I was in Kyiv already having meetings.

The next day is when my meeting with President Zelensky was scheduled, and then after that meeting, we went out to eastern Ukraine to the conflict zone.

Q  So you're in Ukraine when the call happens. You weren’t on the call?

A  Correct.

Q  You get a readout from the call?

A  I got an oral readout from the staffer who works for me in the State Department and our Charge, as well as from Andriy Yermak, who had been on the call in Ukraine himself.

Q  So you got two readouts?

A  Yeah.

Q  One from each side?

A  Correct.

Q  What was the top line message you got from the State Department?

A  Well, they were the same, actually, which is interesting. But the message was congratulations from the President to President Zelensky; President Zelensky reiterating that he is committed to fighting corruption and reform in the Ukraine; and President Trump reiterating an invitation for President Zelensky to visit him at the White House. That was it.

Q  When it subsequently came out the President was talking about investigating Burisma and the facts relating to the 2016 election, did that surprise you?

A  Yes, it did.

Q  Okay. But that was not related to you in any of the readouts?

A  No, it wasn't.

Q  Okay. So if there's a top line message coming from the Ukrainians, it didn't involve that?

A  That's correct.

Q  The top line message coming from your people at the State Department, the people that you work with, it wasn't in that?

A  That is correct.

Q  I'm running out of time, so I'll wrap up. And we like to be real strict with our 1 hour, so I will literally try to stop in the middle of a sentence at my hour, because we don't want to abuse the process.

Your text messages with Rudy Giuliani, you know, evidence that you were carrying on somewhat regular communications with Rudy Giuliani, right?

A  Yes, for a period of time, from -- I had some initial contact when I heard that he was going to visit Ukraine in mid-May. He cancelled that visit, and that kind of dropped off.

And then in July, I was starting to see that there's a problem here, that we're -- we're not -- how do I want to put that?

We saw in text messages that we discussed earlier, on July 10th, Giuliani apparently had been in touch with Lutsenko. And in my view, that's the wrong person to be talking to in Ukraine.

And so I could see we have a problem of this negative feed, coming possibly from Lutsenko through Rudy Giuliani, reinforcing a negative perception of the President, possibly.

So I resumed contact with Rudy, saying, can we get together and can we try to get this in the box?

MR. CASTOR: Okay. I've been advised Congressman Zeldin had a brief question. I want to defer to him.

MR. ZELDIN: Ambassador Volker, Lee Zeldin from New York 1. Thank you for being here. Just a few quick followups.

When do you learn that you were referenced in the whistleblower report?

MR. VOLKER: When it came out publicly.

MR. ZELDIN: Have you had any contact with the whistleblower?

MR. VOLKER: I don't know who the whistleblower is.

MR. ZELDIN: With regards to Burisma, are you aware of what specific role Hunter Biden had with the company?

MR. VOLKER: I was vaguely aware, meaning I had heard in early 2019 that he was on the board of Burisma. I didn't know much more about the company or the details than that -- other than that it had a bad reputation, which is probably why they wanted him on the board.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you know when Hunter Biden became a board member of Burisma?

MR. VOLKER: I don't.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you know why Hunter Biden joined Burisma?

MR. VOLKER: I don't know why.

MR. ZELDIN: Have you had any communications with Hunter Biden?

MR. VOLKER: No, I have not.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you know if Hunter Biden had any business expertise related to the Ukrainian energy industry?

MR. VOLKER: I don't know Hunter Biden and I don't know what expertise he has.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you have any thought as to why he would have been hired by Burisma?

MR. VOLKER: My suspicion is that Burisma, having had a very bad reputation as a company for corruption and money laundering, was looking to spruce up its image by having, you know, prominent-named people on its board.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you know if Viktor Shokin was investigating Burisma at the time he was removed as prosecutor?

MR. VOLKER: I don't know.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you know what has happened with the Burisma investigation since --

MR. VOLKER: I don’t.

MR. ZELDIN: -- Mr. Shokin was --

MR. VOLKER: I don't.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you know who Christopher Heinz is?

MR. VOLKER: I'm sorry. Christopher?

MR. ZELDIN: Heinz.

MR. VOLKER: Heinz. Chris Heinz. That name rings a bell, but I can't place it.

MR. ZELDIN: Christopher Heinz is the stepson of then Secretary of State John Kerry, co-owned --

MR. VOLKER: I -- yes.

MR. ZELDIN: -- Rosemont Seneca Partners with Hunter Biden.

MR. VOLKER: Yes. I heard -- that's where I heard the name, yes, in a press report.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you familiar with the name Devon Archer (ph)?

MR. VOLKER: I'm not, no.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you know Matt Sommers (ph) or David Wade (ph)?

MR. VOLKER: No, I don't.

MR. ZELDIN: Can you speak to the loan guarantee treaty that we have between our countries and the mutual legal assistance in criminal matters?

MR. VOLKER: I don't know the specifics of these concerning Ukraine. I know generally what they are as matters of treaties.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you -- you are aware, though, that there's a mutual legal assistance treaty between the U.S. and Ukraine?

MR. VOLKER: I believe there is, yes.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you able to talk through whether or not requests for documents or evidence in criminal matters for anticorruption efforts have been made before under this treaty?

MR. VOLKER: I'm not, no.

MR. ZELDIN: You are familiar with the loan guarantee treaty with Ukraine?

MR. VOLKER: I'm not, no.

MR. ZELDIN: In the interests of time, I'll stop there before opening up a new line of questions. Thank you.

MR. VOLKER: Thank you, Congressman.

MR. CASTOR: I think we're good to take a break. We very much appreciate your continuing. These interviews tend to take a while.

MR. VOLKER: Of course. I understand.

MR. CASTOR: So we appreciate your indulgence.

MR. VOLKER: Thank you very much.

THE CHAIRMAN: Break for another 5 minutes and then we will resume.

[Recess.]

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. The interview will come back to order.

I want to ask a few followup questions before I pass it back to staff.

THE CHAIRMAN: Ambassador, we’ve been discussing the events, in many respects, as if the call between the President and President Zelensky never happened.

I realize you weren't on the call, but we now know what was said on that call, and I think we need to evaluate what you witnessed in the context of a call that we now know the details of. So let me present you with a record of the call. It's been marked as Exhibit 4.

[Volker Exhibit No. 4

Was marked for identification.]

THE CHAIRMAN: If you could turn to page 4 of the call record. And in the top paragraph, if you could read the line beginning with, "The other thing," the rest of the paragraph beginning with, "The other thing."

MR. VOLKER: Would you like me to read it?

THE CHAIRMAN: Yes, please.

MR. VOLKER: The other thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that. So whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it. It sounds horrible to me.

Keep going?

THE CHAIRMAN: No. That's fine.

So the President's request here is that President Zelensky look into allegations concerning Joe Biden and his son. Am I right?

MR. VOLKER: Yes. Insofar as I'm reading it, yes, you're right, but it's specifically about stopping this prosecution, which I think is the conversation with Shokin that Vice President Biden would have had at that time. I think --

THE CHAIRMAN: So that as you read it, the focus is on Joe Biden here?

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, the President doesn't mention here Burisma.

MR. VOLKER: Oh, that's a very good point, Congressman.

I'm sorry.

It refers to Biden, it says: There's a lot of talk about Biden's son -- and then it says -- that Biden stopped the prosecution.

And I interpreted that immediately as the first one being the son and the second one being Joe Biden, but you could read it as both being the son. But I interpreted it --

THE CHAIRMAN: Ambassador, the President here is asking his counterpart, the President of Ukraine, to look into "talk about Biden's son," and then it says that "Biden stopped the prosecution."

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: That's referring to Joe Biden, right?

MR. VOLKER: That's what I understand, too.

THE CHAIRMAN: So I'm correct that --

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- here the President is asking his counterpart to look into, investigate Joe Biden and his son and these allegations?

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: The President doesn't mention Burisma here, right?

MR. VOLKER: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: He's talking about the Bidens.

MR. VOLKER: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: Correct?

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: This isn't some generic interest in energy companies or one particular company. The President's interest as expressed here is in Joe Biden and his son.

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: This is the context in which you would later discuss the statement that Andriy Yermak was proposing to get a meeting with the President for his boss, Mr. Zelensky, correct?

MR. VOLKER: Yes. Except that I didn't know that this was the context at the time.

THE CHAIRMAN: No, I realize you didn't know that, but Andriy Yermak would know that, wouldn't he?

MR. VOLKER: He would have been on this phone call.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. So Andriy Yermak knows that the President of the United States wants Joe Biden and his son investigated and that the President thus far has not been willing to commit to a date for a meeting.

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Correct?

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And the meeting is very important to Zelensky to establish his credibility back home and because of the key relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine?

MR. VOLKER: That is correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: A key relationship in which they are dependent on the United States for military support, economic support, diplomatic support, and every other way?

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: So this meeting is really important to them?

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And some time after this call, Rudy Giuliani goes to Madrid to meet with Andriy Yermak. Do I have the chronology right?

MR. VOLKER: Yes. That took place on August 2nd.

THE CHAIRMAN: So after the President-to-President call.

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And so after that meeting, Yermak proposes to include in this statement to get the meeting a mention of Burisma?

MR. VOLKER: No. Andriy Yermak sent me a draft statement that did not include that. And I discussed that statement with Gordon Sondland and with Rudy Giuliani to see -- in my -- not knowing this, is this going to be helpful, will this help convey a sense of commitment of Ukraine to fighting corruption, et cetera.

And in that conversation it was Mr. Giuliani who said: If it doesn't say Burisma and 2016, it's not credible, because what are they hiding?

I then discussed that with Mr. Yermak after that conversation, and he did not want to include Burisma and 2016, and I agreed with him.

THE CHAIRMAN: So let me ask you about then, Giuliani said that unless there was a mention of Burisma, the statement wouldn't be credible, that is, it wouldn't be helpful in getting the meeting?

MR. VOLKER: That it -- well, what I interpreted that to mean, which I thought at the time, is that it doesn't convey a sense this Ukraine, this leader, this leadership in Ukraine being any different than the past.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, you say that what you believed at the time, but at the time, you didn't know that the President had made a specific ask of his counterpart --

MR. VOLKER: That's right.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- a specific ask that Yermak would have been aware of, that Zelensky have the prosecutors investigate the Bidens, right?

MR. VOLKER: That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: So now you do know that and now you can put in context what Giuliani was saying, because Giuliani was saying: Without a mention of Burisma, this statement won't be credible; that is, it won't help get the meeting. Am I right?

MR. VOLKER: He said -- he said that it needs to mention Burisma and 2016, and if it doesn't do that, it's not credible in terms of being a convincing statement that this Ukrainian Government is serious about finding out what happened in the past, cleaning it up.

THE CHAIRMAN: This is what Giuliani represented to you.

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: But you didn't know about the Presidential call at that point?

MR. VOLKER: That's exactly right.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, since the President never mentions Burisma, it’s fair to say that in Giuliani's mind -- and you didn't know this at the time, I think you're testifying -- in Giuliani's mind, Burisma is synonymous with the President's ask during this call to investigate the Bidens?

MR. VOLKER: I can't speak to what was in his mind, but it makes --

THE CHAIRMAN: We don't need to be --

MR. VOLKER: Yeah.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- naive here, right?

MR. VOLKER: Right.

THE CHAIRMAN: Rudy Giuliani doesn't have an interest in other companies for the sake of other companies in Ukraine, right? He was interested in Burisma because he thought it reflected ill on the Bidens and would be helpful to his client. Am I right?

MR. VOLKER: I can't speak to that. I can only testify to what I know. So I can't speak to that, but I understand what you're saying.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, Rudy Giuliani was not representing the State Department, right? You made that clear.

MR. VOLKER: That is correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: But he was representing the President.

MR. VOLKER: He is the President's personal attorney. I don't know whether he was representing the President or whether he was doing his own things to try to be helpful to the President.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, he's the President's agent, is he not?

MR. VOLKER: I did not make a judgment about that.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, you understood, didn't you, Ambassador --

MR. VOLKER: I understood that he communicates with the President.

THE CHAIRMAN: You understood that the Ukrainians recognized that Rudy Giuliani represented the President, that he was the agent of the President, that he was a direct channel to the President. Ukrainian officials you were dealing with would have understood that, would they not?

MR. VOLKER: I would not say that they thought of him as an agent, but that he was a way of communicating, that you could get something to Giuliani and he would be someone who would be talking to the President anyway, so it would flow information that way.

THE CHAIRMAN: So this was someone who had the President's ear?

MR. VOLKER: Yes. That's fair.

THE CHAIRMAN: And that was, at least in title, the attorney for the President?

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And so when Mr. Giuliani said that without mentioning Burisma the statement wouldn't be credible, they would have understood that he was communicating for the President?

MR. VOLKER: I'm not so sure about that, because I don't know whether -- I was not part of the discussion that they had in Madrid. I don't know whether Mr. Giuliani represented himself as speaking for the President. I don't know any of that.

I do know from the Ukrainians that they viewed him as someone who communicated with the President and, therefore, they wanted to tell their story to him.

THE CHAIRMAN: So you acknowledge that you don't know what was said in private meetings and discussions between Mr. Giuliani and Ukrainian officials?

MR. VOLKER: That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And if Giuliani was communicating with them that in order to get a meeting with the President, they were going to have to be very specific about looking into the Bidens, you would not have been privy to that?

MR. VOLKER: That’s correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: But they would have understood that Giuliani was Trump's agent, he wasn't an agent of the State Department?

MR. VOLKER: They knew that he was President Trump's personal attorney.

THE CHAIRMAN: And so here there's a meeting that's being held up for whatever reason, and we now know the President was asking for an investigation into the Bidens, and Rudy Giuliani is saying that in order to get this meeting there has to be a mention of Burisma, correct?

MR. VOLKER: He's saying that the statement, in order to be credible, needs to mention Burisma and 2016.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, the --

MR. VOLKER: It's less clearly linked to that that would break free the scheduling of a meeting. I don't think Mr. Giuliani ever -- ever suggested that he's in a position to do that.

THE CHAIRMAN: Because there's no indication from the call record of any interest by the President in Burisma, but there is an interest of the President in the Bidens. Isn't it fair to say that when Rudy Giuliani uses the term "Burisma," it's really code for Biden?

MR. VOLKER: I think that is something I was aware of at the time, that there's a linkage between Joe Biden's son and Burisma, but Burisma stands on its own as a company that is an issue of longstanding, and so --

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, maybe in your mind, but the President never mentions --

MR. VOLKER: No, he doesn't.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- Burisma.

MR. VOLKER: And so I think in -- Congressman, what I hear you suggesting, if I understand correctly, is Rudy Giuliani seeing these as synonymous.

THE CHAIRMAN: Yes.

MR. VOLKER: And I'm saying that I can see how that would be the case.

What I was trying to do was understand, you know, what is the request to investigate Burisma. Is it reasonable for the Ukrainians to do that or not, to say that they would do so. I didn't know the context of all of this at the time.

And in talking with the Ukrainians and conveying that that was what Rudy Giuliani had said, it should mention Burisma and 2016, they expressed discomfort with that, and I agreed with that and said I don't think you should do it.

THE CHAIRMAN: And why would -- why did they and how did they express discomfort with --

MR. VOLKER: Yeah. There were a few --

THE CHAIRMAN: -- looking into Burisma?

MR. VOLKER: There were a few reasons given. One of them was that the prosecutor general in place at the time was not, quote, unquote, their prosecutor general, it was the carryover from the previous government, Lutsenko. So they didn't trust him and they didn't want to put anything out suggesting investigations that would either get him engaged, or that he would then try to obstruct or thwart somehow. That was one reason.

Another is they didn't want to mention a specific company, period. Just as a matter of prudence, you don't mention a particular company.

And then another was, what they expressed -- I put less credibility into this explanation -- but they expressed a fear that the current prosecutor general would destroy any evidence that might exist from previous investigations.

THE CHAIRMAN: Wasn't there also a concern, Ambassador, with not being used to investigate a political candidate in the 2020 election?

MR. VOLKER: I think the way they put it was they don’t want to be seen as a factor or a football in American domestic politics.

THE CHAIRMAN: They didn't want to be drawn into --

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- helping the President's campaign?

MR. VOLKER: The campaign was not mentioned. 2020 was not mentioned.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, we're --

MR. VOLKER: But --

THE CHAIRMAN: I think we're -- we're toying around the edges here.

MR. VOLKER: But --

THE CHAIRMAN: They didn’t want to be drawn into investigating a Democratic candidate for President, which would mean only peril for Ukraine. Is that fair to say?

MR. VOLKER: That may be true. That may be true. They didn't express that to me, and, of course, I didn't know that was the context at the time.

THE CHAIRMAN: Part of the other context is vital military support is being withheld from the Ukraine during this period, right?

MR. VOLKER: That was not part of the context at the time. At least to my knowledge, they were not aware of that.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, that is, you didn't discuss it with them?

MR. VOLKER: I did not. And the first conversation I had was when the diplomatic adviser to President Zelensky, Vadym Prystaiko, I believe it was, texted me a copy of the Politico article about the hold on assistance.

So I had had many conversations with him in the months prior to that, and this did not come up from him to me, which makes me believe that this was not on his radar until that time when he saw the article.

THE CHAIRMAN: And when did the suspension in aid come to your attention?

MR. VOLKER: July 18th.

THE CHAIRMAN: So it came to your attention before the President's call with President Zelensky?

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And you tried to find out the reason for the suspension. I think you said you --

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- talked to the State Department, the Defense Department, and no one understood the reasons why the aid was being --

MR. VOLKER: Nobody ever gave a reason why. And I gave -- I made those contacts specifically to give reasons why we should not have a hold, that --

THE CHAIRMAN: I understand that, but --

MR. VOLKER: Yeah.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- but with something this serious and bipartisan and significant, there should be an explanation, right?

MR. VOLKER: There should have been, but there wasn't.

THE CHAIRMAN: You weren't able to find out. Senator McConnell said recently he wasn't able to find out. It was a mystery why it was being withheld.

MR. VOLKER: Yes. The only statement made was that there's a review.

THE CHAIRMAN: And you would agree, Ambassador, that if the President makes a request of a foreign power that is dependent on the United States for military support, that request is going to carry enormous weight with that foreign leader. Am I right?

MR. VOLKER: Yes. And I would even go further and say any request from the President of the United States will be taken very seriously by any foreign country, it is -- that wants to have a friendly relationship with the U.S., and those things are noticed.

THE CHAIRMAN: Can we also agree that no President of the United States should ask a foreign leader to help interfere in a U.S. election?

MR. VOLKER: I agree with that.

THE CHAIRMAN: And that would be particularly egregious if it was done in the context of withholding foreign assistance?

MR. VOLKER: We're getting now into, you know, a conflation of these things that I didn't think was actually there.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, you weren't knowledgeable about the request at all at the time, but you are now.

MR. VOLKER: Right.

THE CHAIRMAN: You would agree, would you, that if it's inappropriate for a President to seek foreign help in a U.S. election, it would be doubly so if a President was doing that at a time when the United States was withholding military support from the country?

MR. VOLKER: Yeah, I can't -- I can't really speak to that. My understanding of the security assistance issue is --

THE CHAIRMAN: Why can't you speak to that, Ambassador? You're a career diplomat. You can understand the enormous leverage --

MR. VOLKER: Well --

THE CHAIRMAN: -- can't you, that -- let me finish the question -- the enormous leverage that a President would have while withholding military support from an ally at war with Russia? You can understand just how significant that would be, correct?

MR. VOLKER: I can understand that that would be significant.

THE CHAIRMAN: And when that suspension of aid became known to that country, to Ukraine, it would be all the more weighty to consider what the President had asked of them, wouldn't it?

MR. VOLKER: So, again, Congressman, I don't believe --

THE CHAIRMAN: It's a pretty straightforward question.

MR. VOLKER: No. But I don't believe the Ukrainians were aware --

THE CHAIRMAN: But they --

MR. VOLKER: -- that the assistance was being held up.

THE CHAIRMAN: They became aware of it.

MR. VOLKER: They became aware later, but I don't believe --

THE CHAIRMAN: They were --

MR. VOLKER: -- they were aware at the time, so there was no leverage implied.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, what I'm asking you is, when they became aware that military assistance was being withheld for a reason you couldn't explain, no one could explain, weren't they under even greater pressure to give the President what he had asked for in that call?

MR. VOLKER: The timeline doesn't -- as I understand it, and, again, my understanding here will have been impartial, because I was not privy to a lot of information -- but the timeline about talking with Andriy Yermak about whether there would be a statement or not to convey their commitment to fighting corruption and being a new day in Ukraine was in the middle of August.

To my knowledge, the news about a hold on security assistance did not get into Ukrainian Government circles, as indicated to me by the current foreign minister, then diplomatic adviser, until the end of August. And by the time that we had that, we had dropped the idea of even looking at a statement.

THE CHAIRMAN: Ambassador, you're making this much more complicated than it has to be.

MR. VOLKER: I'm sorry.

THE CHAIRMAN: My question is very simple. You would agree that when Ukraine learned that the U.S. was withholding military assistance that it desperately needed, that the President's request to investigate his opponent carried that much more weight and urgency?

MR. VOLKER: I can't say that. I don't -- I think that the sequence of events goes the other direction, that --

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, at some point, Ambassador, they learned that aid was being withheld, right?

MR. VOLKER: They did.

THE CHAIRMAN: And at the point at which they learned that aid was being withheld, that was after the President had made a request --

MR. VOLKER: That is correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- that they investigate the Bidens?

MR. VOLKER: That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: So we have the chronology correct.

MR. VOLKER: We have -- we have that.

THE CHAIRMAN: The request is made. And even though the suspension may have occurred earlier, the request is made to investigate the Bidens, and then Ukraine learns, for mysterious reasons, hundreds of millions in military support is being withheld.

Do I have the chronology correct?

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: At the point they learned that, wouldn't that give them added urgency to meet the President's request on the Bidens?

MR. VOLKER: I don't know the answer to that. The --

THE CHAIRMAN: Ambassador --

MR. VOLKER: When that -- no --

THE CHAIRMAN: -- as a career diplomat, you can't venture --

MR. VOLKER: But, Congressman, this is why I'm trying to the say the context is different, because at the time they learned that, if we assume it's August 29th, they had just had a visit from the National Security Advisor, John Bolton. That's a high level meeting already.

He was recommending and working on scheduling the visit of President Zelensky to Washington. We were also working on a bilateral meeting to take place in Warsaw on the margins of a commemoration on the beginning of World War II.

And in that context, I think the Ukrainians felt like things are going the right direction, and they had not done anything on -- they had not done anything on an investigation, they had not done anything on a statement, and things were ramping up in terms of their engagement with the administration. So I think they were actually feeling pretty good by then.

THE CHAIRMAN: Ambassador, I find it remarkable as a career diplomat that you have difficulty acknowledging that when Ukraine learned that their aid had been suspended for unknown reasons, that this wouldn't add additional urgency to a request by the President of the United States. I find that remarkable.

But let me yield to my colleague here.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  So, Ambassador Volker, I want to make sure we get this straight. You're saying that the Ukrainians learned that the aid had been frozen on or about August 29th?

A  That’s what I -- we should check our timeline, but I believe that's when they texted me with this article with, you know, a -- I don't remember exactly how it was phrased, but a question mark saying, What is going on?

Q  Around that time, did you have any conversation with Ambassador Sondland or with Bill Taylor about the fact that there was a quid pro quo, that security assistance and a White House meeting were being withheld --

A  I don’t --

Q  -- until -- let me finish the question -- President Zelensky committed to investigating Joe Biden or Burisma, or the origins of the Manafort investigation or the interference with the 2016 U.S. election? Did you have any conversations around that time with your fellow diplomats?

A  Let me check the record. I believe -- before I answer, let me just double-check.

Q  Okay. I'll help you.

A  Yeah. Because I think it's -- I think --

Q  Can we turn to exhibit 2? It's page 39. And I'll point you to the entry at 9/1/19 at 12:08 p.m. Can you please just read what Bill Taylor wrote?

A  Yes. Thank you.

Are we now saying that security assistance and White House meeting are conditioned on investigations?

Q  And what did Ambassador Sondland respond?

A  He said: Call me.

Q  What conversations did you have with Ambassador Sondland and Bill Taylor around this time about the quid pro quo that the President had devised with President Zelensky that required foreign assistance from the U.S. and a White House visit to be dependent on President Zelensky's commitment to making a public announcement of investigations into Burisma or Joe Biden or Hunter Biden or Paul Manafort and the origins of the interference in the 2016 election? What conversations did you have with your fellow diplomats?

A  Well, you asked what conversations did I have about that quid pro quo, et cetera. None, because I didn't know that there was a quid pro quo.

Q  What -- Ambassador, with all due respect, Bill Taylor, your fellow diplomat here, is saying that there is a linkage between those two things.

A  No, he's asking.

Q  Okay. And what did you discuss in that regard?

A  Well, I believe he was asking this based on the Politico article. And I discussed with him that there is no linkage here. I view this as an internal thing, and we are going to get it fixed.

There's no chance that -- as the Congressman said as well -- there's no chance, given the broad support for this in Washington, this will not go through. So I and others were communicating to the Ukrainians, We will get this taken care of.

Q  If we could just back up a little bit. On 8/30/19 at 12:14, Bill Taylor wrote: Trip cancelled.

A  Yes.

Q  And then he asked the question: Was security assistance and White House meeting being conditioned on investigations?

A  Yes.

Q  What trip had been cancelled at that time?

A  This was the President's trip to Warsaw as part of that World War II commemoration. That was when he cancelled because of the hurricane watch.

Q  And was President Trump supposed to meet with President Zelensky during that summit?

A  Yes.

[Volker Exhibit No. 5

Was marked for identification.]

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  I'd like to mark as exhibit 5 page 53 of your text. If you could turn to that.

Am I correct that this is a text message exchange with you, Ambassador Sondland, and Bill Taylor again?

A  It looks it, yes.

Q  Can you please start reading the fourth line down on September 8th, 2018, 11:20 a.m., what Ambassador Sondland wrote?

A  Guys, multiple conversations with Zelensky, POTUS. Let's talk.

Q  POTUS is Trump?

A  Yes.

Q  Continue.

A  Bill Taylor: Now is fine with me.

Q  What did you say?

A  Kurt Volker: Try again. Could not hear.

Q  Please just keep reading.

A  14 minutes later, Bill Taylor writes: Gordon and I just spoke. I can brief you if you and Gordon don't connect.

Bill Taylor an hour later -- or almost an hour later, 57 minutes later: The nightmare is they give the interview and don't get the security assistance. The Russians love it, and I quit.

Q  Okay. Let's just pause there.

What did you understand Bill Taylor to be saying --

A  I didn't.

Q  -- what this nightmare was?

A  Yeah. I didn't. You will see the next text message from me in response to that: I'm not in the loop.

Q  Do you know what interview he was referring to?

A  I believe this is still the idea of a statement or interview by Zelensky talking about his commitment to fighting corruption and mentioning Burisma and the 2016 election interference.

Q  So this is -- and he just said he had just had a conversation with Ambassador Sondland. Is that right?

A  Yeah. He said, at 11:40, that he and Gordon had spoken.

Q  So during that conversation, is it fair to infer that Bill Taylor and Ambassador Sondland discussed the possibility that Zelensky goes ahead, gives a public interview, releases a public statement saying that the Ukrainians are going to investigate Burisma and the 2016 elections, and then the U.S. and President Trump still don't release the security assistance? Is that right?

A  That seems to be what he is asking.

Q  And he said the Russians would love that?

A  Yes, he did.

Q  And then he said he would threaten -- he would quit if that happened?

A  He said that.

Q  Did you talk to him about this and what his concerns were?

A  I --

Q  Bill Taylor.

A  Yeah. I suspect I did. I don't have any clear indicator here, but it would be normal for me to talk to him.

Q  So what is your recollection of the conversation that you had with Bill Taylor regarding this nightmare?

A  Well, my -- well, about the nightmare, again, I said there's no linkage here. We are working to get the security assistance lifted. We had a letter from several members of the Senate to 0MB pushing to get that lifted, and I was confident that it would.

So one aspect is, don't get too concerned about this. It'll get fixed. I'm confident that it will get fixed.

The other is that, we need you in Ukraine. Like, don't give up. It's important that we have competent professional people staying on the job here.

Q  Is it fair to say, though, Bill Taylor was concerned that there was a quid pro quo between President Trump and Zelensky?

A  He was saying that there's a nightmare scenario here. They come out and they make a statement like this and then we still don't lift security assistance, and the Russians will see that and that will benefit Russia.

Q  And, again, Bill Taylor was threatening that he would resign --

A  He did.

Q  -- if that were ever to occur?

A  Well, he was saying if that nightmare scenario plays out, that he would quit.

Q  Okay. Can we jump down to 9/9/19 at 12:31 and read what Bill Taylor wrote?

A  Okay.

The message to the Ukrainians -- parenthesis -- (and Russians), we send with the decision on security assistance is key.

Let me read that again for meaning now that I understand it.

The message to the Ukrainians (and Russians) we send with the decision on security assistance is key. With the hold, we have already shaken their faith in us; thus, my nightmare scenario.

Q  Please continue.

A  Bill Taylor continues: Counting on you to be right about this interview, Gordon.

Gordon Sondland: Bill, I never said I was right. I said we are where we are, and believe we have identified the best pathway forward. Let's hope it works.

Q  Please continue.

A  Bill Taylor: As I said on the phone, I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.

Gordon Sondland: Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump's intentions. The President has been crystal clear: no quid pro quos of any kind. The President is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised during his campaign. I suggest we stop the back and forth by text. If you still have concerns, I recommend you give Lisa Kenna (ph) or S -- meaning Secretary Pompeo -- a call to discuss them directly. Thanks.

Bill Taylor: I agree.

Q  So then you stopped texting about this concern that Bill Taylor raised?

A  Yes.

Q  Bill Taylor said: I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.

A  Yes.

Q  Whose political campaign was he referring to?

A  I could only interpret this as meaning President Trump's political campaign and that he thought it would be crazy to withhold security assistance to help with that.

Q  And when you testified earlier that you were unaware of this linkage that President Trump had made between the security assistance and the White House meeting and Ukraine starting these investigations, you were not on the July 25th call between President Trump and President Zelensky, correct?

A  That is correct.

Q  Who's Lisa Kenna (ph) and who is S?

A  Yeah. Lisa Kenna (ph) is the executive secretary of the State Department and S refers to Secretary Pompeo.

Q  Do you know whether Bill Taylor ever reached out to Secretary Pompeo about his concerns?

A  I don't.

Q  To your knowledge, did President Zelensky campaign on investigating Burisma or interference in the U.S. 2016 Presidential campaign?

A  To my knowledge, no. His message was just broader in general about fighting corruption in Ukraine.

Q  I'd like to go back to some more questions about the July 25th call between President Trump and President Zelensky.

Before that call, is it true -- is it accurate that you set up a meeting between Rudy Giuliani and Andriy Yermak, President Zelensky's assistant.

A  Yes, that's correct.

Q  Why did you do that?

A  I believed that Rudy Giuliani, as we saw in an earlier text message, he had been in touch with Prosecutor General Lutsenko. I believe he was getting bad information, and I believe that his negative messaging about Ukraine would be reinforcing the President's already negative position about Ukraine.

So I discussed this with President Zelensky when I saw him in Toronto on July 3rd, and I said I think this is a problem that we have Mayor Giuliani -- so I didn't discuss his meeting with Lutsenko then. That came later. I only learned about that later.

But I discussed even on July 3rd with President Zelensky that you have a problem with your message of being, you know, clean, reform, that we need to support you, is not getting -- or is getting countermanded or contradicted by a negative narrative about Ukraine, that it is still corrupt, there's still terrible people around you.

At this time, there was concern about his chief of presidential administration, Andriy Bohdan, who had been a lawyer for a very famous oligarch in Ukraine. And so I discussed this negative narrative about Ukraine that Mr. Giuliani seemed to be furthering with the President.

Q  And, Ambassador Volker, just to be clear, in your opening statement, you referred to a problem that you had to deal with.

A  Yes. This was the problem.

Q  Rudy Giuliani was the problem?

A  The negative narrative about Ukraine which Mr. Giuliani was furthering was the problem. It was, in my view, it was impeding our ability to build the relationship the way we should be doing, in my -- as I understood it.

Q  Do you know what Rudy Giuliani and Andriy Yermak discussed in advance of the call between President Trump and President Zelensky?

A  So the sequence here is Andriy met with me on the 10th of July. I reached out to Rudy to see whether -- and Andriy asked me to connect him to Rudy. I reached out to Rudy to see whether he could get together so that I could ask him whether he wanted to be connected to Yermak. I wanted both parties to want to be connected to each other before doing anything.

And he -- we met on, I believe, the 19th of July. I then set up a phone call between the two of them on the 22nd of July. And it was just an introductory phone call so they could talk to each other and --

Q  Were you on that call?

A  I was on that call. And it was literally, you know, let me introduce, you know, Mr. Giuliani, let me introduce Mr. Yermak. I wanted to put you in touch, blah, blah, blah.

And they agreed to meet in person. And Mr. Giuliani suggested he was going to be in Madrid the following week, or in the May 1 to 5 timeframe, and Mr. Yermak agreed to meet him there.

Q  Was that -- do you mean August? I believe you said May.

A  I am sorry. August, yeah. August.

Q  Sure.

A  Thank you.

Q  What, if anything, did Rudy Giuliani say during that phone call with Andriy Yermak about the investigations that President Trump wanted into Burisma, Hunter Biden, and the 2016 election?

A  Nothing in that phone call.

Q  Nothing about wanting investigations?

A  No, to the best of my recollection it was purely just an introductory phone call.

Q  After that phone call, did Rudy Giuliani advocate for a telephone call between President Trump and President Zelensky?

A  I don't know whether he did or not. I hoped that he would.

[Volker Exhibit No. 6

Was marked for identification.]

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  I'd like to mark as exhibit 6 pages 18, 19, and 20 of your text messages. And if you could turn to page 19, please.

And I'd like to start on July 25th, 2019, at 8:36 a.m. And if you can just read what you wrote.

And to set the scene, I believe this is after the July 25th call between Trump and Zelensky, correct?

A  I'm not where you want me to be.

Q  Oh, actually, maybe it's before. I'm sorry. Let's go back.

July 25th, 2019, at 8:36 a.m., do you see that, on page 19?

A  Page 19. July 25th. And what time?

Q  8:36a.m.

[1:07 p.m.]

MR. VOLKER: Thank you. Kurt Volker, good lunch. Thanks.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  And here you're speaking to Andriy Yermak, to be clear, right?

A  Yes, that is correct.

Q  Okay.

A  We had --

Q  Please continue.

A  It appears we had lunch. I know I had lunch with him that day. The timestamp is confusing, but --

Q  Yeah. Because I believe you were in Ukraine at this time, correct?

A  I was, yes.

Q  Okay.

A  So maybe the app is still reflecting of Washington time.

Q  Okay. Can you just please continue the message?

A  Good lunch. Thanks. Heard from White House. Assuming President Zelensky convinces Trump, he will investigate slash get to the bottom of what happened in 2016. We will nail down date for visit to Washington. Good luck. See you tomorrow.

Q  Okay.

A  This was in advance of the phone call between President Trump and President Zelensky.

Q  Who did you hear from at the White House about this?

A  The best of my recollection is I heard from Gordon, who spoke to someone at the White House. I don't believe I heard directly from the White House.

Q  And you said Andriy Yermak was going to be on the call with President Zelensky and President Trump?

A  Yes.

Q  And is it fair to say you were sending a message to Mr. Yermak that he should convey to President Zelensky that he needed to convince President Trump that Zelensky would investigate slash, quote, get to the bottom of what happened in 2016, and then after that President Trump would be willing to, quote, nail down date for visit to Washington?

A  Yes, that is correct.

Q  So is that not -- is there no linkage there between a commitment from Zelensky to investigate the things President Trump wanted him to investigate and whether or not he was going to get a White House visit?

A  The things that President Trump wanted to investigate I did not know, and this was before the call and well before I found out what was in the call.

In terms of getting to the bottom of what happened in 2016, remember, you had the allegation from the prosecutor general that there had been Ukrainians who had passed documents to try to influence the 2016 election. And so this is a reference to getting to the bottom of what happened. And my belief is that the prosecutor general was spinning a yarn here.

Q  You did not believe there was any validity to the two allegations as we --

A  No, I do not.

Q  -- called them earlier, and yet, that's what President Trump wanted Zelensky to commit to investigating before he could get --

A  Right.

Q  -- a visit to the White House?

A  Yes. It's a matter of President Zelensky being convincing that he is going to get to the bottom of what happened.

Q  Okay. And then it looks like later that day Andriy Yermak reports back: Phone call went well. President Trump proposed to choose any convenient date.

So on that call it went well and President Trump asked President Zelensky to propose dates for a White House visit. Is that correct?

A  That is correct.

Q  Okay. And then at the end there it says: Please remind Mr. Mayor -- that's Rudy Giuliani -- to share the Madrid dates.

A  Right.

Q  Is that right? And that was the upcoming meeting between Andriy Yermak and Rudy Giuliani in Madrid on or about August 2nd?

A  That's correct.

Q  If you can jump down to August 7th, 2019. So this is after the meeting between Giuliani and Yermak --

A  Yes.

Q  -- in Madrid.

Okay. I'm going to let my colleague, Dan Goldman, ask some questions on this.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Real briefly, because we only have a couple minutes, Ambassador Volker.

Whether or not you believed it was true, you relayed a message from the White House to President Zelensky that he needed to convince President Trump that he will get to the bottom of what happened in 2016 in order for there to be a White House meeting. Is that what that text message -- you understand that text message to say?

A  I understand it to be get to the bottom of what happened in 2016, and we will nail down a visit for Washington. So, yes, that we need to do both.

Q  Now, when one follows the other --

A  Yes.

Q  -- you would agree with me --

A  Yes.

Q  -- that that is linkage, correct?

A  That it would be helpful. In other words, what I'm quibbling about is I believe we were still going to push for a White House visit anyway, whether or not Zelensky did, you know, a convincing job saying that I am committed to finding out if there was any effort in election interference, finding out what Lutsenko was talking about. But even if he didn't, we would still try to nail it down. But here is that if he is, you know, strong in this phone call, that will help.

Q  Right. This was right before the phone call, correct?

A  Correct.

Q  Right? So you're relaying a message from the White House to President Zelensky as to what he should say on that phone call?

A  Correct.

Q  You didn't say, "Oh, if you can convince President Trump that you're going to root out corruption in Ukraine then we can set up a White House visit" --

A  Correct.

A  -- did you?

A  Correct.

Q  No, you directly referenced the investigations.

A  Get to the bottom of what happened in 2016.

Q  Right. So when you then say, as you are sitting here today, that you had no idea that President Trump was going to discuss investigations either related to Burisma or to 2016 on that call, that's not accurate according to this text message, is it?

A  Get to the bottom of what happened in 2016 is a reference to the prosecutor general's claims that there was interference. That to be investigated I always thought was fine, because that is just a matter of, you know, we don't want anybody interfering in our elections and did it happen.

And my belief was that it didn't, and this is helping -- trying to help President Zelensky convey the right message in a phone call to build a relationship with the President that he needs to build just to have confidence in each other.

Q  To say what the President wanted him to hear -- wanted to hear?

A  To make sure he conveyed a message that would be convincing to the President.

Q  Because that’s what the President wanted to hear.

You agree with that?

A  Yeah.

MR. GOLDMAN: Okay. I think our time is up now. I think we'll take a half-hour lunch break?

THE CHAIRMAN: Would you like to do that?

MR. VOLKER: Sure.

THE CHAIRMAN: Let's break for half an hour.

[Recess.]

[1:56 p.m.]

MR. SWALWELL: Okay. It's 1:55. Going back on the record, and it's minority, 45 minutes.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Welcome back, Ambassador. Thank you for coming back. We were talking -- last time we were asking you questions, the Republicans, about the President's skeptical, deep concerns about Ukraine prior to President Zelensky.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  And we talked about some of the issues that Mr. Giuliani brought to his attention. Are you aware of any other issues that, you know, the President may have held about Ukraine other than what Mr. Giuliani brought to his attention?

A  Well, Ukraine, you know, leaving aside the President for a moment. I don't know what he would have been aware of or not. But Ukraine had for decades a reputation of being just a corrupt place. There are a handful of people who own a disproportionate amount of the economy. Oligarchs, they use corruption as kind of the coin of the realm to get what they want, including influencing the Parliament, the judiciary, the government, state-owned industries.

And so businessmen generally don't want to invest in Ukraine, even to this day, because they just fear that it's a horrible environment to be working in, and they don't want to put -- expose themselves to that risk. I would have to believe that President Trump would be aware of that general climate.

Q  So it wasn't just, you know, issues that Lutsenko and Shokin brought to the attention of Mr. Giuliani or John Solomon at The Hill?

A  No. My view is that there's already a baseline of negative assessment and then this just reinforces.

Q  And it's fair to say that the investigation, prosecution of Paul Manafort during -- either -- that too surely --

A  Yeah, I would think so as well that there was a Ukraine connection in that somehow.

Q  So Manafort used to work for Yanukovych?

A  Right.

Q  And then Poroshenko comes in as President.

A  Yeah.

Q  And so there's a belief, fair or not, that perhaps Poroshenko or his allies were feeding information to somebody to, you know, get Paul Manafort in trouble.

A  I don't know about that. It's possible. There was something. In the investigations of Manafort's activities in Ukraine, there was a supposed ledger, and there’s been in the media discussions, is this a valid ledger, is this a forgery ledger. And it was introduced publicly by an investigative journalist who became a member of Parliament named Sergei Leshchenko, L-e-s-h-c-h-e-n-k-o, Sergei, S-e-r-g-e-i.

And he was believed incorrectly to be close to President Zelensky and even in Ukraine, because he was campaigning, you know, or speaking publicly on behalf of President Zelensky's campaign, but he was never really part of President Zelensky's inner circle.

Q  Was he an ally of Poroshenko?

A  At one point, yes, he was. Yeah. Enough. He's played a variety of roles from journalist to member of Parliament, supporting Poroshenko, opposing Poroshenko, supporting Zelensky, not supporting Zelensky's team.

Q  Given the fact that we know about Manafort, maybe not facts that, you know, you know from a firsthand account, but isn't it reasonable to believe that the President, President Trump, may have felt that Poroshenko or somebody aligned with him was behind the effort to get Manafort as a proxy to get the President?

A  I don’t know whether he thought that or not.

Q  But is that a reasonable thing to think?

A  I could see why someone would think that. May I add also, I met with President Poroshenko, I don't know, a dozen times, perhaps 10 times, 12 times, and I believe that he did a very good job on introducing reforms in Ukraine but not enough, that he would go so far but -- and that was because he had a very difficult, political environment in which to do things. He did not easily control a majority in Parliament.

And I also believe that he took office after the Maidan, and it was an optimistic time in Ukraine about change after Yovanovitch, and very quickly became a wartime President as Russia attacked and took Crimea and took eastern Ukraine.

And he was forged by that, so he was really focused on, you know, fighting back, building the military, trying to stabilize the economy, really playing the role of a wartime President. And I personally did not see him as, you know, motivated by anything other than that.

Q  You know, if the President, President Trump believed that these ledgers were falsified like some allegations --

A  Uh-huh, there were allegations that they were. I believe that they were investigated and declared to be valid, but, nonetheless, this was in the public domain.

Q  So, if President Trump had that belief --

A  Yes.

Q  -- whether you think it's reasonable or not, but if he held that belief, can you understand why he would want Ukraine to investigate why perhaps these ledgers were fabricated, if he held that belief?

A  Yes.

Q  Going back to exhibit 4, which is the --

A  The transcript.

Q  Right. Going back to the same page we were on, page four.

A  Yes.

Q  The second paragraph where President Zelensky is talking at the end, he relays to President Trump that: Her attitude towards me -- and this is Yovanovitch -- her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the previous President, and she was on his side. Do you know whether that is a widely held belief or true? It's the penultimate sentence of that paragraph and then the last sentence. Her attitude towards me --

A  Yes. Yes.

Q  Talking about Yovanovitch.

A  Yes. Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the previous President, and she was on his side. She would not accept me as a new President well enough.

Well, he's expressing his view, and I -- in my dealings with Masha, I found her trying to be impartial. I found her trying to navigate the election without taking sides on anyone.

Some of the context to this is that Zelensky kind of came up out of nowhere. He was not a candidate for all of 2018. There were other prominent candidates, so most of the focal point was Poroshenko or Yulia Tymoshenko, will he run, will he not run about a rock star named Sovavakochuk (ph), and Zelensky was not in the picture.

When he arose kind of meteorically, as an outside figure and a popular candidate, I think it did take everybody by surprise. And maybe he felt that she was not like on board, you know, communicating with him early enough, that that's possible, as he perceived it.

Q  And if he perceived that Ambassador Yovanovitch wasn't on his side or may have supported the previous President, and he communicated that to U.S. officials, is it reasonable that perhaps the President would want to curtail her assignment?

A  No. No, I don’t think that's a good reason. What a foreign leader thinks of our ambassador shouldn't drive how we treat our ambassadors. I think it's the President's own judgment about our ambassadors that should matter.

Q  You know, a lot has been made of the discussion of Biden on the call.

A  Yep.

Q  His name doesn't show up that much in the readout. And the passage we're reading this morning, on the same page, page four, it begins with a transitional phrase.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  The other thing --

A  Yep.

Q  -- meaning we're turning -- I mean, there's a lot of ambiguities in this document, and so it's very difficult to know for certain what's in the mind of the people that are recorded on the transcript. Is that a fair assessment?

A  Yes. You have to really know the issues and the context to understand what they're talking about, because it was in a particular moment. They knew what they were discussing, but, you know, if you read it just cold and you don't know the context, I'm sure it's hard to figure out.

Q  And that's the case with any call transcript of --

A  Yes.

Q  -- any President.

A  Any conversation.

Q  And so, at the end of page three and then the top of page four, they're talking, and then the transitional phrase comes up that says: The other thing. There's a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped this prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that. So whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.

You know, one reading of this could be it's a throwaway statement.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  I mean, Biden doesn't show up a ton in this interview transcript. He says: The other thing. There's a lot of people talking about Biden's son, a lot of talk about Biden's son.

I mean, that's not "go investigate Joe Biden," right?

A  Yeah. Well, what's interesting here to me is he says, "Whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great," which means: Get it into an official communication, an official contact between Ukraine and the Attorney General.

And it's not specifically saying investigate, but I think, you know, this came out in September, September 25th, and there's been a lot of commentary about that. And I don't think you can make any other assumption than that it meant investigate, but it was at least saying, you know, work in an official, legal channel.

Q  You'd agree Biden comes up in this paragraph, but that's pretty much the extent of it?

A  I'm sorry.

Q  I was just mentioning that Biden shows up in this paragraph, you know, the top of page four, but the call doesn't -- I mean, this call -- it wasn't a call about Joe Biden.

A  Correct. Again, I want to reiterate: I was not on the call and didn't get a detailed readout at the time, so I'm only reading the same text as you are.

The purpose of the call is the very first thing the President says, which is: Congratulations on the great victory.

In addition to coming out of nowhere to win the Presidential election, President Zelensky built a political party out of nowhere and won an absolute majority in the Parliament, and congratulating him on that and reestablishing a relationship is the heart of the call.

Q  When we were speaking in our morning hour, you mentioned you got a readout from the Ukraine, you got a readout from the State Department, and you didn't hear anything about Joe Biden.

A  That is correct.

Q  You’ve got this interview transcript here. This is five pages, right. And so Biden is mentioned, okay. He's mentioned.

A  Yes.

Q  But he's mentioned at the top of page four, so I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't underselling that.

A  That's correct.

Could I also just draw your attention on the 27th of July, is a Saturday. I was back in Kyiv after visiting the conflict zone and gave an interview and was asked about the phone call and at that time reiterated the readouts that I was given at the time, so this did not come up.

Q  I think it was maybe suggested that Biden is synonymous for Burisma or Burisma is synonymous for Biden. But there's an ambiguity there.

A  Yeah.

Q  And that interpretation could go both ways. I mean, the name Burisma may not have been on the tip of the President's tongue during the call. Isn't that a fair --

A  No doubt. No doubt that he would not know or even know how to pronounce or be familiar with the name of a company like that.

Q  So, if you try to get inside the President's head, I mean, he may have been searching for the name Burisma but couldn't grasp it so he spits out Biden?

A  I wouldn't want to say that. I would not want to say that. What I would say, however, is that there are three separate things going on here: There is Burisma the company, which was notorious for having had a history of corruption and been investigated for money laundering: there is Vice President Biden and his son; and there is 2016 election interference that had been alleged by the prosecutor general of Ukraine. So there are three separate things that we're talking about, and sometimes they're getting conflated in the discussion here, but they are three distinct things.

Q  Is anybody in Ukraine investigating Burisma or Hunter Biden?

A  I don't believe so. I don't know the answer to that, but I have never heard that they are.

Q  And certainly nobody's investigating Joe Biden?

A  No. And, in fact, I think it would only be proper for Ukrainians to investigate Ukrainian citizens who violated Ukrainian law, which is what the middle of those, Burisma, is about.

Q  The Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. is Valeri Chaliy?

A  Yes.

Q  Did I pronounce that right?

A  Correct.

Q  What is your relationship with Chaliy?

A  Well, he was the Ukrainian Ambassador here for some time. And in my duties as the special representative I would meet with him, talk with him. We sometimes spoke together at public events. He -- how do I want to say this? He was a good interlocutor. He knew what was going on in Ukraine. He was able to convey that. I could get updates from him. I could tell him what I was doing.

But at the same time, my principal engagement was visiting Ukraine and meeting the President and staying in touch with the Foreign Minister and the diplomatic adviser to the President.

Q  Are you familiar with an individual named Alexandra Chalupa?

A  That does ring a bell. Can you remind me what her position was?

Q  She is a consultant that -- hired by the DNC during the 2016 election cycle, was paid $71,000.

A  Yes, I heard about this. I read about --

Q  Do you know anything about --

A  No, I have no personal knowledge of any of it. I've read about it in the press.

Q  So you don't know anything about her efforts to work with the Embassy here?

A  I don't know anything about that.

Q  So anything you know about Chalupa is just what you've read in the press --

A  Exactly. Correct.

Q  -- and you don't have any -- you did not have any discussions with State Department officials about Chalupa?

A  No. No.

Q  But you're aware of the general allegations that Chalupa is trying to --

A  That she was looking for things for the benefit of the DNC and the election campaign.

Q  And could harm President Trump's political prospects?

A  Yeah. That's what the media reports are about.

Q  And so that, in fact, may be another data point to the President's uncomfortable posture towards Ukraine prior to Zelensky's election?

A  It’s possible.

Q  You mentioned Leshchenko earlier. Have you ever had any firsthand dealings with him?

A  Yes, I have. I first met him in New York City. We happened to be booked on a radio interview at the same time about Ukraine, and so we were chatting there. He struck me as a very earnest and committed reformer at the time. He then attended a conference in Tbilisi, Georgia, and I met him and his new wife at that time. Again, came across well.

Then I did not see him again after that until I visited Ukraine for the U.S. Destroyer visit to Odessa, went up to Kyiv that evening, had a meeting with candidate Zelensky, and he was at that meeting along with a number of other people.

Q  And any other meetings with him or --

A  No.

Q  Okay. So his involvement in the Manafort-related issues, you never had any firsthand --

A  I never spoke -- I didn't know that he was involved in that until I later read about it in the media that he had a role with the ledger.

Q  We were discussing on text message chain, I think it was exhibit 5, and Bill Taylor was, you know, mentioned he might resign.

A  Yes. Can you remind me the page number? Anyway, please continue.

Q  Fifty-three I think it is. I just wanted to get your reaction. I mean, was Bill Taylor actually talking about resigning, or was he just sort of venting and maybe just upset by the situation?

A  Well, I think if -- I think he was serious, to be honest. I think he was serious that, if we don't give Ukraine the security assistance, because we all believe this is critically important, then he would step down, and that would be beneficial to the Russians as well because if we can't get our policy right, then I don't think he wants to be there representing it.

Q  But during the same time period, I mean, you had confidence the assistance --

A  I was very confident that that hold would not stand.

Q  Okay. And does that --

A  And I was surprised that Bill was not confident. He has been around a long time too. And he should know that nobody in any of the policy agencies would sit still for suspending this.

Q  Okay. And that it's fair to say there's -- sometimes this is a rocky road, there's ups, there's downs?

A  Yes.

Q  And that's consistent with foreign assistance, you know, at all times, all countries, all eras?

A  Yes. I don't need to go into examples, but I've come across many in my experience for any number of reasons where there is a hold on assistance or a condition placed on assistance because they want a particular policy outcome.

The IMF does this all the time with conditionality on fiscal policy. Sometimes it's human rights related, so that we're trying to get a government to do -- you know, release a political prisoner or, you know, respect human rights better. So there's a lot of reasons why assistance gets held from time to time.

Q  You had quite a deal of interactions with Mr. Giuliani

A  Yes.

Q  -- for a certain period of time?

A  Yes, about 2-month period.

Q  Two-month period. From your text messages, we can see that you had coffee with him, breakfast?

A  Yeah. We had one meeting, one breakfast, and the rest was just by text or by phone.

Q  And so, for this 2-month period, is there anything in your communications with Mr. Giuliani that you didn't feel was, you know, towards advancing the interest of the United States?

A  Not at all, quite the opposite. The reason I assisted the Ukrainians in contacting him was precisely to advance the interests of the U.S. because I wanted the information that the President would be getting to reflect a better understanding of who this new President, who his new team are.

Q  So any assertion or claim that it was improper to be bringing Rudy Giuliani into that process, you would rebut that, right?

A  I would disagree with that. I believe it's part of my job to try to advance the relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine, to advance U.S. interests with Ukraine, foreign policy, national security interests, to strengthen Ukraine as a democracy.

And I -- as the special representative, there's a lot of public role with that, and so you meet with a lot of people, you communicate with a lot of people, you try to bridge-build, and problem-solve.

And I didn't view -- let me put it this way: I didn't think it improper to contact Mr. Giuliani much as I would, you know, not think it improper to contact anybody. You know, I've had meetings with businessmen who have invested in Ukraine. I've had meetings with clergy. I've had meetings with American citizens who have had problems in Ukraine and that wanted to tell me about them, you know, all kinds of things.

Q  And that essentially was part of your job --

A  Exactly.

Q  -- was fielding these calls, connecting some people, not connecting others, making decisions to plug in, say, Rudy Giuliani with Yermak?

A  Correct.

Q  And there were probably, you know, some individuals you decided not to do that with. Is that fair to say?

A  Probably, yes. I can't imagine just even as a matter of time that I would have done that, but the focal point here, again, as you already stated, was how do we advance the U.S. interests here and the relationship between the United States and Ukraine.

Q  You had a tricky job. I mean, the U.S.-Ukrainian relations have its own set of issues.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  The Ukrainian-Russia relations is its own problem.

A  Yes.

Q  And your job was essentially to, in a nuanced fashion, try to make everything work?

A  That's correct. To elaborate on that point, it was clear to me after, say, the spring of 2018 that the Russians were not going to move out of eastern Ukraine; they were content to keep the war going. We had had some exploratory discussions late 2017, early 2018, that I thought might have some promise. But by the time we hit the middle of 2018, it was clear they had made a conclusion to just keep the war going.

As a result of that, I concluded that the only thing we can really do is strengthen Ukraine. If we want Russia to negotiate a way out, the only way they're going to do that is if they are convinced that it's pointless to stay.

And so helping Ukraine militarily, economically, security, reform, fighting corruption, and demonstrating a critically strong U.S. relationship is all part of demonstrating to the Russians that this is an expensive, wasted effort to keep this war going in eastern Ukraine.

MR. CASTOR: I want to make sure that I give time to our members if they have questions.

MR. PERRY: Thank you, Ambassador.

I want to start out with this skepticism that the President had -- that you talked about that the President had for Ukraine. And would you assess that, based on your dealings with him and the situation as it is that he has held them for some time, or did they just start --

MR. VOLKER: No.

MR. PERRY: -- fairly recently?

MR. VOLKER: My assessment was that these were longstanding.

MR. PERRY: Longstanding. So you would say that they -- I don't want to put words in your mouth. Would you say that he had these skepticism or some level of skepticism before his personal attorney Giuliani may have imparted some of his opinions?

MR. VOLKER: Well, what I can say is that when I briefed the President and then participated in his meeting with President Poroshenko in September 2017, it was already clear then that he had a very skeptical view of Ukraine.

MR. PERRY: Okay. Thank you. I just want to -- most of my questions are just clarifying.

In the last round, you were asked to read a portion of the conversation between the President of the United States and that of Ukraine on page four.

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. PERRY: And I’ll read it this time: The other thing, there's a lot of talk about by Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.

Would you assess that that's the President looking backward to things that already occurred or looking forward to things that might occur?

MR. VOLKER: Definitely looking backward.

MR. PERRY: Okay. And that's how I took it too, but it wasn't necessarily clear.

Let me ask you this: We talked a little bit about some of the agreements that we have with Ukraine, and I know that you're not intimately familiar with them, but we do have a treaty or an agreement regarding share information, law enforcement, et cetera, in that context.

MR. VOLKER: Yeah. Mutual legal assistance treaty.

MR. PERRY: Is it normal -- because I'm not in the Foreign Service, but is it normal when such agreements are present for heads of state to discuss potential collaboration on investigations that might cross shores and involve both countries?

MR. VOLKER: Yes and no.

MR. PERRY: Okay.

MR. VOLKER: Yes, and no. Typically, leaders do not talk about the specifics of investigations. They leave that to the law enforcement community, the Attorney General, prosecutor general, things like that. But on the need for cooperation as a general matter, then, yes, I've heard that raised in other phone calls in previous administrations.

MR. PERRY: In this context, since the President of Ukraine is new, and, quite honestly, new to politics and new to elected office, as I understand, would it be appropriate -- because he talks very specifically about the Attorney General. Of course, he's referring to -- the President is referring to Attorney General Barr.

In that context, is it appropriate to say -- have the conversation, based on our shared interest and under the agreement we have, this is my Attorney General. I'm making an entree to kind of set the table, set the stage open the window. Is that reasonable?

MR. VOLKER: Yes. In terms of process to say work with the Attorney General, that's the right process.

MR. PERRY: In the last round, there was a conversation you had with Chairman Schiff that I just want to kind of clarify. First of all, the folks that you dealt with in Ukraine at the very highest level, I don't know, but I'm going to ask, do you feel like they had a fair amount of trust in you?

MR. VOLKER: Absolutely.

MR. PERRY: And I assess that too from the conversation that we had. So they would confide things in you if they had a question?

MR. VOLKER: They would confide things. They would ask questions. They would ask for help. We had a very candid relationship.

MR. PERRY: So you had said that you get the readout from the call that was basically congratulations, fighting corruptions, and then initiation to a White House visit, so to speak. That was the assessment.

MR. VOLKER: That is what I was briefed as the content of the call.

MR. PERRY: But in your conversation with Representative Schiff, he kind of implied and wanted you to intimate that there was an agreement based on that conversation that: If you do the investigation, then you can have a meeting and maybe we'll consider this military aid.

If that were the case from the call, do you feel, because they had some trust in you, that they would have come to you and said, "Hey, how do we handle this? Is this what the President of the United States is asking?" Would they confide -- would they ask you that?

MR. VOLKER: Yes, they would have asked me exactly that, you know: How do we handle this?

And, in fact, we had conversations, and some of them are in these text streams here, where they wanted to make a statement to show that they are serious about investigating the past and fighting corruption and turn a new page in Ukraine. And we engaged over what to say, what not to say.

MR. PERRY: And so they did not ask you that particular question?

MR. VOLKER: No.

MR. PERRY: Not at all, okay.

I think I just have two more. I'm turning to page 53.Your text transcript, 9/9/19, 5:19 a.m., from Gordo Sondland: Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump's intentions. The President has been crystal clear, no quid pro quos of any kind.

Would Gordon Sondland -- would he make that up?

MR. VOLKER: No. No. Gordon and I and, you know, Bill and other -- were in frequent contact. And Gordon was repeating here what we all understood.

MR. PERRY: Okay. And my final question is, in the last round you were questioned a few times regarding the acceptability of a President seeking the assistance of a foreign government regarding our electoral process. And I think -- I don't want to paraphrase or put any words in your mouth -- but you agreed with Representative Schiff that that would be wrong?

MR. VOLKER: That would be.

MR. PERRY: So would you assess that it would be acceptable or unacceptable for Members of Congress to seek that same foreign assistance?

MR. VOLKER: The same. The same.

MR. PERRY: It would be wrong?

MR. VOLKER: My view -- just an American citizen here; it doesn't have anything to do with being a special representative to Ukraine -- but my view is that we do not want foreign countries interfering in American elections, period.

MR. PERRY: Thank you.

I yield the balance.

MR. MEADOWS: Mr. Ambassador, it's Mark Meadows from North Carolina, and I'm not going to ask questions because the majority has indicated that they don't want members to do that. But I want to go on the record and in three different ways.

I'm going on the record to indicate to the majority that we need to make sure that we clarify the rules, and members should be allowed to ask questions. And I can tell you that, from my standpoint, it is critically important that we establish this going forward.

And I wish Chairman Schiff were here. And I'm not asking you to comment. This is for the record, and I can tell you that I object to the way that this deposition -- transcribed interview has been conducted in terms of the overall rules.

Mr. Ambassador, I want to go further, because I want to say thank you. On behalf of the American people, it is a great loss that you are going back to your passion. I can tell that you have done an incredible job of representing our country.

You've represented the State Department and our Foreign Service personnel in such a gracious way today that I just want to say thank you. And your testimony here today has given me such great encouragement that, regardless of the outcome of what you believe or didn't believe, you've come across in an unbelievably transparent and authentic way, and I just want to thank you for that.

MR. SWALWELL: Mr. Meadows, I just want to clarify --

MR. MEADOWS: It's my time. I didn't interrupt you.

MR. SWALWELL: I just want to clarify, you can ask questions. You said that you're not allowed to. We are affording you the opportunity. So --

MR. MEADOWS: At the very beginning --

MR. SWALWELL: You have 6 minutes.

MR. MEADOWS: -- what I would love for us to do is, going forward on these transcribed interviews, is let’s set out what -- because at the very beginning, we were saying: We discourage members from asking questions.

MR. SWALWELL: I'm telling you, you can ask questions, so--

MR. MEADOWS: I appreciate that. And when I hear it from the chairman --

MR. SWALWELL: I’m acting as the chairman for the rest of the day, so you can ask questions. You've got 5 minutes.

MR. MEADOWS: Well, I appreciate it. And so I assume that that's going to be the way for every transcribed interview? Are you on the record as saying every transcribed interview members can ask questions as many as they want?

MR. SWALWELL: We've got the witness here. You can ask questions, so --

MR. MEADOWS: I'm asking going forward because that's why I put it on the record, Mr. Swalwell. You know. Listen, this is not your first rodeo, nor mine. So are you saying, going forward, members are going to be allowed to ask questions, as the acting chairman?

MR. SWALWELL: Today, you can ask questions. I'm not going to speak for the chairman for tomorrow.

MR. MEADOWS: Yeah. Well, when Chairman Schiff gets back, we'll ask someone who is really in Charge.

MR. SWALWELL: Okay. You've got 4 minutes.

MR. MEADOWS: And so here is the last thing I would say: You've done a great job of answering as a fact witness, and I think that that's critically important, that in the context of all of this for the record is, when there's a fact, you have answered those to the best of your ability.

Now, I would say my friends opposite have tried to lead you down a road where you're supposed to get in the mind of everybody else that was on a text message and have you opine on what they thought. And if we were in a court, it would be thrown out immediately. And I think all the counselors around here realize that it would be leading the witness.

But I want to say thank you for sticking to the facts and allowing us and, more importantly, the American people to see exactly the kind of career diplomats that we have servicing and sacrificially serving our country. And I want to just say thank you for the record, Ambassador.

And I'll give it back to Steve.

MR. VOLKER: Thank you, Congressman.

It's very kind of you. And I do find it a pleasure to be here. I wanted to do this testimony. I believe it's important to bring the facts out.

MR. ZELDIN: Picking up where Congressman Perry just left off with regards to Members of Congress requesting a foreign government to interfere in critical elections here in the United States, are you familiar with a May 2018 letter of three Democratic Senators sent to Lutsenko demanding his assistance in the Mueller probe?

MR. VOLKER: No, I was not aware of that letter.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. Well, there was a letter that was submitted by three Democratic Senators to Lutsenko demanding his assistance with regards to the Mueller probe. So you haven't had any conversations then, I guess, with Ukrainian officials with regards to that letter? You're not familiar with --

MR. VOLKER: No. No, I did not. As I told you earlier,

I had my own views about Lutsenko and what the value of that engagement would be, but I was not aware of that and didn't engage in that.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. Senators Menendez, Murphy, have they directly reached out to you with regards to demanding assistance of the Ukrainian Government with Oregards to the Mueller probe?

MR. VOLKER: No, they have not.

MR. ZELDIN: And just to clarify, up to this point of today's transcribed interview, has anything been stated that you would say classified?

MR. VOLKER: No.

MR. ZELDIN: Everything is unclassified up to this point?

MR. VOLKER: In my mind, all of this is unclassified. As I said, there are a few sensitive exchanges that I think would be detrimental if made public, but those are not classified information.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay.

MR. CASTRO: Thank you. Our round is up.

MR. SWALWELL: If you have any followup questions, go ahead.

MR. CASTRO: No. I'm good.

MR. SWALWELL: Are you sure?

Ambassador, I'm inclined to keep going, unless you want another break.

MR. VOLKER: No.

MR. SWALWELL: Okay. We'll start our 45-minute block.

Ambassador, you said that it was not inappropriate for you to work with Mr. Giuliani in the way that you did. Have you ever seen though in your years of service, in the Foreign Service, any person like Mr. Giuliani hold a role like he held for Mr. Trump?

MR. VOLKER: I can't say that I have, no.

MR. SWALWELL: To your knowledge, did Mr. Giuliani have a security clearance?

MR. VOLKER: I don't know.

MR. SWALWELL: Did you ever discuss classified information with him?

MR. VOLKER: No.

MR. SWALWELL: You testified earlier that a problem in the past for Ukraine was its leaders investigating political rivals. Is that right?

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. SWALWELL: Do you believe it's okay for a United States President to ask a United States Attorney General to investigate a political rival?

MR. VOLKER: That's just getting my opinion on domestic things.

MR. SWALWELL: So I guess, as an American citizen, do you think that that's okay?

MR. VOLKER: As an American citizen, I believe that no one is above the law.

MR. SWALWELL: Do you believe that it's okay for a U.S. President to ask a foreign country to investigate a political rival?

MR. VOLKER: I think it's inappropriate.

MR. SWALWELL: You mentioned that President Trump had expressed skepticism about Ukraine as long as you had known President Trump's views on Ukraine. Do you know what informed his views about Ukraine, like the source of that?

MR. VOLKER: Can you repeat that question again?

MR. SWALWELL: You had said that, as long as you had known Mr. Trump had a view on Ukraine, you believed he had skepticism about Ukraine.

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. SWALWELL: Do you know the source of his views on Ukraine?

MR. VOLKER: Well, only my interactions with him. There were two. There was the meeting with President Poroshenko in September 2017, and then there was the Oval Office meeting on May 23rd of this year. And it was remarkably negative going back even to September.

If you look at President Trump's bio, he had visited Ukraine, I believe, Miss America or Miss Universe Pageant, something like that. I know he was always looking at business investments. And I don't believe he ever invested in Ukraine. And like a lot of businesspeople, I think he just recoiled at the corrupt environment.

MR. SWALWELL: Do you know if --

MR. VOLKER: I don't know any of that as a fact.

MR. SWALWELL: Sure.

MR. VOLKER: It's just -- it is my interpretation.

MR. SWALWELL: Do you know if President Putin informed President Trump's views on Ukraine?

MR. VOLKER: I don't know.

MR. SWALWELL: Would you say that Russia is as corrupt as Ukraine?

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. SWALWELL: And President Trump has invested in

Russia, to your knowledge?

MR. VOLKER: I don't know if that happened or not. I read about --

MR. SWALWELL: Well, he had the Miss Universe contest there.

MR. VOLKER: Oh, they did. Okay.

MR. SWALWELL: Has President Trump ever expressed concerns about corruption in any other country besides Ukraine to you?

MR. VOLKER: To me, no.

MR. SWALWELL: You mentioned that, I think to Mr. Perry, that it is not unusual for countries to have an investigation cooperation agreement, you know, as far as law enforcement goes, but you said it would be unusual to discuss specific investigations. Have you ever heard a U.S. President, from any call readouts you've seen or conversations you observed, a prior U.S. President reference a specific investigation?

MR. VOLKER: I can think of one, and it would be a classified conversation. And there may be more, but I can certainly think of one.

MR. SWALWELL: I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Noble.

MR. NOBLE: I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Bitar.

MR. BITAR: Hi. Ambassador Volker, my name is Maher Bitar. I'm the general counsel for the Intelligence Committee. I'd just like to level set in light of many of the questions you received today.

I, like you, was a senior State Department official in a prior life. I've also worked on the National Security Council staff. I've been on innumerable diplomatic trips. I've prepared Presidents for meetings and phone calls. I've prepared packages for their meetings. I've consulted with them before and after those phone calls and meetings. I've traveled with Secretaries of State across the world.

I have to say, the evidentiary record that has emerged, in part those text messages that you have provided, as well as the phone call record that the White House produced, is abnormal, highly unusual, and raises profound concern, at least among many Members of Congress as well as staff, that the use of the Office of the President -- that the Office of the President may have been used to advance personal political interests of Mr. Donald Trump rather than the national interest.

I just want to level set here because I think, like you, I've seen how diplomacy works, and having seen that in action, it's possible to also identify when it deviates significantly. And when even the most laudable goals of trying to advance national interests can get ensnared and enmeshed with efforts to advance personal political interests.

So I'm going to turn it over to my colleagues now. We're going to go in more depth into specific text messages exchanges that you have had as well as the broader timeline, because I think it's time to step back as well and look at the broader timeline and put all the pieces together.

And I think what will emerge is a very troubling story where you have -- you did your best, it looks like, in a very difficult situation to try and protect and preserve the bilateral relationships despite efforts by Mr. Donald Trump and his personal agent, Rudy Giuliani, to advance separate parallel interests. And I think it's going to be an important thing to clarify for the rest of this interview.

So if I can turn to my colleague, Dan Noble. Thank you.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  I’d like to go back to what my colleague on the minority asked you about. He said that, during the July 25th call, and I’ll point you to page four of the transcript again, where the President tells President Zelensky: There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the acting -- with the Attorney General would be great.

My colleague suggested that when the President said Biden no less than three times in the portion of the transcript I just read, he actually meant to say Burisma. You agree that’s ridiculous, right?

A  I do not agree he meant to say Burisma. I think he meant to say Biden.

Q  In that paragraph, and I’ll let you take the time you need to look at it, the President actually never mentions the name of any company, does he?

A  I don’t believe that he does.

Q  Okay. But in the next paragraph, President Zelensky understands what President Trump is referring to, correct? He says, the next prosecutor general will be 100 percent my person, my candidate who will be approved by the Parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue.

So the company is Burisma, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  So it’s fair to say Burisma or President Zelensky understood President Trump to be referring to both Burisma and Biden when President Trump said Biden, correct?

A  I think what I read in this is that President Zelensky understood that there’s a linkage here, and he is not responding to President Trump about Biden, and he is instead saying: We’ll investigate the company.

Q  So it’s fair to say, by referring to the company or to Burisma, President Zelensky avoided saying that he was going to investigate the former Vice President of the United States or his son?

A  That is my reading of it.

Q  I’d now like to go back to some of your text messages. If you could turn to page 42, and this is going to be marked, I believe, as a new exhibit, Exhibit 6.

MR. CASTOR: Exhibit 7.

MR. NOBLE: Exhibit 7. And exhibit 7, for the record, is pages 42, 43, and 44.

Do you have page 42 in front of you?

[Volker Exhibit No. 7

was marked for identification.]

[2:50 p.m.]

BY MR. NOBLE:

A  Yes, I do.

Q  Okay. I’d like to go to kind of the bottom third, picking up at August 9th, 2019, at 5:35 p.m., where Ambassador Sondland writes: Morrison ready to get dates as soon as Yermak confirms.

A  Okay.

Q  What was Ambassador Sondland saying there?

A  Morrison ready to get dates as soon as Yermak confirms. And I believe this referred to Yermak confirming that President Zelensky was going to make a statement along the lines that we had discussed in that other exchange.

Q  A statement about the investigation?

A  A statement about Ukraine’s commitment to fighting corruption and investigating things that happened in the past, and that was where we had this question that we discussed earlier about whether it would specifically mention Burisma and 2016 or not. That’s the statement in reference.

Q  Okay. If you can just continue to read the next few lines.

A  I said: Excellent. How did you sway him? Because -- and shall I explain it or just keep reading?

Q  Sure, go ahead and explain what you meant there.

A  Okay. So I was very pleased that Morrison was going to get dates for a visit, because we had been trying and trying and trying and not getting anywhere.

Q  And by this point, it had been since the end of May?

A  Yeah.

Q  Over 2 months?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. And go ahead and continue what Ambassador Sondland said.

A  Gordon Sondland: Not sure I did. I think POTUS really wants the deliverable, meaning the statement.

Q  And what -- yeah, what did you understand what the President wanted by deliverable?

A  That statement that had been under conversation.

Q  That was the deliverable from Zelensky that the President wanted before he would commit to --

A  He wanted to see that they’re going to come out publicly and commit to reform, investigate the past, et cetera.

Q  Before President Trump agreed to host President Zelensky at the White House?

A  Yes, that’s what Gordon is saying. And I said: But does he know that -- meaning Morrison -- does Morrison know that the President is looking for that? The reason I asked this question is because there is a -- to me, anyway, it appeared that the flow of information to the President up and down from the National Security Council staff was not working very well.

Q  And if you can skip down to August 9th, 2019, at 5:51 p.m., and just read what Ambassador Sondland said.

A  I’m sorry. Yes.

Q  I believe it says: To avoid --

A  8/9/19. Yeah. Right.

So to avoid misunderstandings, it might be helpful to have Andriy -- to ask Andriy for a draft statement -- that’s the one we’re talking about -- embargoed -- that he can see exactly what they propose to cover. Even though Zelensky does a live presser, they can still summarize in a brief statement. Thoughts?

And I said: I agree.

Q  And then on the next, I guess the next day, August 10th, 2019, Ambassador Sondland says he briefed Ulrich. That’s Pompeo’s counselor, correct?

A  Correct, yes.

Q  And then what did you say?

A  I said: This came in from Andriy. I suggested we talk at 10 a.m., his 5 p.m. tomorrow.

Q  And then is the next line the message that you received from Andriy Yermak?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. And can you read what your message --

A  So I forwarded to Gordon this text message from Andriy Yermak: Hi, Kurt, please let me know when you can talk. I think it’s possible to make this declaration and mention all these things which we discussed yesterday, but it will be logic to do after we receive a confirmation of date. We inform about date of visit and our expectations and our guarantees for future visit. Let’s discuss it.

Q  Okay. Can you describe the call that you had with Mr. Yermak that he refers to in this message?

A  Yes. So I discussed with him their making a generic statement. And we talked about fighting corruption. We talked about reform. We talked about making sure that there is no effort to interfere in U.S. elections and that if there was anything in the past it should never happen again. Very much what he drafted and sent to me.

Q  Okay. Let’s go to that. If you could turn to page 19, and I believe this is already marked as part of exhibit 6.

A  Okay.

Q  And if you could jump down to kind of the bottom quarter of the page, August 10th, 2019, at 4:56 p.m., from Mr. Yermak.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  Can you read what he wrote?

A  Yeah. It’s the same --

Q  The same thing?

A  The same message.

Q  And that’s the message you forwarded to Ambassador Sondland?

A  That’s the message that I forwarded to Gordon, correct.

Q  Sorry to talk over you. All right.

And then if you could skip down to August 10th, 2019, the same day, at 5:42 p.m., what Mr. Yermak wrote.

A  Right. Andriy Yermak: Once we have a date, we’ll call for a press briefing announcing upcoming visit and outlining vision for the reboot of U.S.-Ukraine relationship, including, among other things, Burisma and election meddling in investigations.

Q  Why did Mr. Yermak add the fact that he was going to include in the statement Burisma and election meddling in investigation?

A  That is -- I’d have to check the timeline here.

That is clearly what he heard from either Rudy or from Gordon, that those were important additions.

Q  Are those the only two people he may have heard that from, Rudy Giuliani and Ambassador Sondland?

A  I may have been on a call with all of them at the same time. I don’t know. Because I have to check the timeline, because if you remember, Rudy discussed, Rudy Giuliani and Gordon and I, what it is they are looking for. And I shared that with Andriy.

And then Andriy came back to me and said: We don’t think it’s a good idea. So that was obviously before Andriy came back and said: We don’t want to do that.

Q  Okay. We’re going to go through the various versions of the statement in a moment.

But sticking to this message, is it fair to say that Andriy Yermak and presumably President Zelensky had linked doing this press briefing and making the statement about the investigation to whether or not they were going to get the White House visit? And you appear to be arguing or having some disagreement about which came first, it’s a chicken and the egg problem.

A  Yes, that is correct.

Q  Can you just explain that a little bit?

A  Sure. And, again -- well, let me explain first. So the Ukrainians were saying that just coming out of the blue and making a statement didn’t make any sense to them. If they’re invited to come to the White House in a specific date for President Zelensky’s visit, then it would make sense for President Zelensky to come out and say something, and it would be a much broader statement about a reboot of U.S.-Ukraine relations, not just on we’re investigating these things.

Q  All right. So let’s go to the next page, page 20, and at the top there, on August 12th, 2019, Mr. Yermak sends -- I presume this is Ukrainian?

A  I presume it’s Ukrainian.

Q  With a translation below?

A  With a translation below.

Q  And what is this? Is this a draft of the statement that they, the Ukrainians, intend to release?

A  Yes, a portion of it that relates to it.

Q  Can you read what it says?

A  It says: Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States, especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians. I want to declare that this is unacceptable. We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes which, in turn, will prevent recurrence of this problem in the future.

Q  And there’s no mention of Burisma or the 2016 election meddling in there, is there?

A  There is not.

[Volker Exhibit No. 8

Was marked for identification.]

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Let’s go to page 23, which we’re going to mark as a new exhibit, exhibit 8.

This appears to be a text message group with Mr. Yermak, Ambassador Sondland, and yourself, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  Can you just read this message, all the messages, starting with the third one down, on August 9th, 2019, at 2:24 p.m.?

A  Hi, Andriy. We have all consulted here, including with Rudy. Can you do a call later today or tomorrow your afternoon time?

Gordon Sondland: I have a call scheduled at 3 p.m. eastern for the three of us. Ops will call.

Kurt: Hi, Andriy. We spoke with Rudy. When is good to call you? Because he hadn’t answered.

13th, Andriy Yermak: Hi, Kurt.

Q  I’m sorry, you can stop there.

Let’s talk about that call with Rudy. Were you on that call?

A  Yes.

Q  Who else was on that call?

A  Gordon Sondland.

Q  And what did you discuss with Rudy Giuliani?

A  We discussed the Ukrainians’ intention to make that statement.

Q  Did you discuss the specifics of the statement?

A  Yes.

Q  What did Rudy want in the statement?

A  He wanted to hear that Burisma and 2016 elections were included.

Q  All right. Let’s jump down to the last two messages, August 13, 2019, at 12:11 p.m. What did you write to Mr. Yermak?

A  I said: Hi, Andriy, good talking. Following is text with insert at the end for the two key items. We will work on official request.

Q  What did you mean by the two key items?

A  That is Burisma and 2016 elections.

Q  And that’s what Rudy Giuliani wanted to be in the statement from --

A  That’s right.

Q  -- the President of Ukraine?

A  That’s correct. And when I say we will work on official request, Andriy asked whether any request had ever been made by the U.S. to investigate election interference in 2016.

Q  A request from the U.S. Department of Justice?

A  Yes.

Q  Were you aware at that time whether or not the Department of Justice had requested an investigation into either Burisma or election meddling in 2016?

A  No. That’s why I said I will work on that, because I didn’t know what the answer was.

Q  All right. Can you just read the statement that -- I assume this is the version that Rudy Giuliani wanted Mr. Yermak to pass on to President Zelensky?

A  This is a version, yes, that includes -- well, let’s be clear. This is a version that inserted Burisma and 2016 U.S. elections into the text that Andriy had provided, and it was meant to reflect the conversation with Rudy that we had just talked about, so that he could see what it was that we were talking about.

Q  Why did Rudy Giuliani want Burisma specifically to be mentioned in President Zelensky’s statement?

A  He said that if they did not mention Burisma and 2016 elections that he did not feel such a statement would have any credibility, that there’s still no commitment to finding out what happened in the past.

Q  In your mind, though, you knew --

A  And it would, therefore, be no different from the previous Ukraine governments.

Q  You knew Burisma was referring to Hunter Biden, though, at this time, right?

A  Well, I was aware that he had been a board member, yes.

Q  And so by calling for an investigation in Burisma, it was essentially calling for an investigation of Biden?

A  No. In my mind, those are three separate things. There is Bidens; there is Burisma as a company, which has a long history; and there is 2016 elections. And part of what I was doing was making sure -- and why I wanted to make sure I was in this conversation -- that we are not getting the Ukrainians into a position about talking about anything other than their own citizens, their own company, or whether their own citizens had done anything in 2016.

Q  So that was your interpretation, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  You don’t know what Rudy Giuliani meant by that?

A  I don’t know what Rudy Giuliani meant by that.

Q  Or why exactly he wanted Burisma in there?

A  We can speculate now in hindsight, but --

Q  And in your conversations with the Ukrainians, did they link Burisma with the Bidens?

A  They never mentioned Biden to me.

Q  But when President Trump told President Zelensky he wanted President Zelensky to start an investigation of the Bidens, President Trump -- or President Zelensky understood that to also be referring to Burisma. He said, the company.

A  Well, as I said earlier, I think what he was doing was exactly what I was doing, was differentiating. President Trump asked about investigating Biden, said work with the Attorney General concerning Biden, and President Zelensky responded by saying, we will look into the company.

Q  Is that because, in your mind and in presumably President Zelensky’s mind, it would be highly inappropriate for President Zelensky to announce that he was investigating the Bidens?

A  Yes. I’m sure he would not want to have said that or do that.

Q  Because that would be essentially interfering in U.S. domestic politics?

A  Correct. I’m not even sure if he thought that far ahead. I think he would have thought this was a former Vice President of the United States, it would be highly political, a politicized thing, it would just be seen that way.

Q  I’d like to turn to page -- go back to page 43 of your text messages, and I believe that’s exhibit 7.

So on August 13th, 2019, at 10:26 a.m., you write again that same statement that includes Burisma and the 2016 U.S. elections. Is that right?

A  Yes.

Q  This is the message -- you’re sending this -- this is the statement and you’re sending it to Ambassador Sondland?

A  That’s correct. I wanted to go over it with Gordon, make sure we understood the same thing before I discussed it with -- I assume the timing backs that up, I have to check it -- but before discussing it with Andriy.

Q  Okay. And Ambassador Sondland, how does he respond when you send him the version of the statement with Burisma and the elections in it?

A  He says: Perfect, let’s send to Andriy after our call.

Q  Do you know whether Ambassador Sondland had one-on-one phone calls with President Trump during this timeframe?

A  I believe he had one or two. I don’t know any of the details of that.

Q  Do you know if he had one-on-one conversations with Rudy Giuliani?

A  That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer to that.

Q  Skipping down to a couple days later, August 15th, 2019, the message at 7:26 a.m., Ambassador Sondland writes: Hi -- to you -- did you connect with Andriy? And then how did you respond?

A  I’m sorry, I missed this. The 26th?

Q  August 15th.

A  Oh, 15th.

Q  Sorry. The first -- I just read the first message on August 15th.

A  Hi, did you connect with Andriy? Yeah.

Q  And then what did you say?

A  Not yet. Will talk with Bill and then call him later today. Want to know our status on asking them to investigate.

Q  Okay. What did you mean by "our status on asking them to investigate"?

A  Whether we had ever made an official request from the Department of Justice.

Q  And then skipping down later, you say: Hi -- this is August 17th, 2019, at 3:02 -- Hi, I’ve got nothing. Bill -- meaning Bill Taylor, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  Had no info on requesting an investigation. Calling a friend at DOJ, Bruce Schwartz (ph).

Who is Bruce Schwartz (ph)?

A  Bruce Schwartz is a senior official in the Department of Justice responsible for international affairs, someone I’ve known for many years.

Q  Did you reach out to Mr. Schwartz (ph) about mentioning these investigations or whether -- I’m sorry, strike that.

Did you reach out to Mr. Schwartz (ph) about whether the U.S. had ever requested an official investigation in Ukraine about these two issues that we’ve been talking about?

A  I reached out to him and we did not connect.

Q  So you never spoke with Bruce Schwartz (ph)?

A  At this -- not at this -- not in -- well --

Q  Not in this context?

A  Not in this context and not since then.

Q  Did you speak with anyone at DOJ about whether the U.S. had requested an official investigation?

A  No, I did not. I did ask -- I did ask our Charge to also check. And I later understood that we never had. And because of that was another factor in my advising the Ukrainians then don’t put it in now.

Q  You told the Ukrainians don’t put it in the specific investigation?

A  Yes, yes.

Q  Did you speak with the Ukrainians about whether or not the U.S. had ever requested an official investigation?

A  It came up in this conversation with Andriy about the statement, and he asked whether we ever had. I didn’t know the answer. That’s why I wanted to go back and find out. As I found out the answer that we had not, I said, well, let’s just not go there.

Q  So Mr. Yermak wanted to know whether the U.S. DOJ --

A  Yes.

Q  -- had ever made an official request?

A  Yes. He said, I think quite appropriately, that if they are responding to an official request, that’s one thing. If there’s no official request, that’s different. And I agree with that.

Q  And then Ambassador Sondland then asked: Do we still want Zelensky to give us an unequivocal draft with 2016 and Burisma?

A  Yes.

Q  And you responded how?

A  I said: That’s the clear message so far.

Q  That’s the clear message from whom?

A  From Giuliani and what we had discussed with Gordon. That’s the clear message so far.

Q  That was the message from the White House?

A  No.

Q  That was the message from Giuliani and Sondland?

A  Yeah, from our conversations.

Q  Who have direct one-on-one conversations with President Trump?

A  I don’t know if they occurred during this timeframe. I know he did speak with him occasionally.

Q  Skipping down to August 19th --

A  And when I say that’s the clear message so far, I just literally mean that.

Q  And then -- sorry. I do want to ask you about the next line that you wrote. You wrote: I’m hoping we can get -- can put something out there that causes him to respond with that.

What did you mean by that?

A  Yeah. When I said that’s the clear message so far, that means that I have not made up in my mind that this is where we want to go, okay. And then when I say I’m hoping we can put something out there that causes him to respond with that, meaning that we actually have an official request. And if we have an official request through appropriate channels, then it’s a reasonable thing for them to respond to. And if we don’t have that, then obviously they wouldn’t.

Q  And, to your knowledge, there never was an official United States Department of Justice request?

A  To my knowledge, there never was. And about this time, I stopped pursuing it as well, because I was becoming now here convinced this is going down the wrong road.

Q  Got it. And on August 19th, 2019, at 8:56, Ambassador Sondland wrote: Drove the, quote, larger issue home with Yermak.

A  Yes.

Q  What did he -- do you have an understanding of what that meant?

A  Yes. It’s what we’ve talked about earlier. It is the level of trust that the President has with President Zelensky. He has this general negative assumption about everything Ukraine, and that’s the larger issue.

BY MR. BITAR:

Q  I’m sorry, Mr. -- Ambassador Volker?

A  Yes?

Q  I have a question. You said you were concerned that it would go down the wrong road --

A  Yes.

Q  -- if there was not an official Department of Justice request, although even if you didn’t know there had been an official request from President Trump to President Zelensky. What do you mean by wrong road?

A  First off, I didn’t know anything about the Presidential conversation which was referencing Vice President Biden. What we’re talking about here is pushing the Ukrainians or asking the Ukrainians to include Burisma and 2016 in a statement that they would make.

And when it came to saying investigate 2016 elections, you know, was there an effort to interfere, it was rattling in my mind, you know, we’ve had a number of inquiries about 2016 elections and foreign interference, Russia, China, potentially others. And so I thought, you know, before going down this road with the Ukrainians, I should check to see whether there has ever been an official request about that.

And when I discovered that there had not been, then I thought, oh, then we should not be going further than what we have done in official channels.

Q  Just to be clear, because you were unaware of the phone call or the substance of the phone call, when you say there had not been an official request, you mean you were not aware that there had been, for example, through law enforcement channels an official request?

A  Yeah. When I say official request, I mean law enforcement channels, Department of Justice to law enforcement in Ukraine, please investigate was there any effort to interfere in the U.S. elections.

Q  Okay. So just one more thing. So in this context, you also mentioned that Yermak had raised concerns that there had not been an official request. So is that correct?

A  No. He asked whether there had ever been, and I didn't know the answer.

Q  Okay. Because it seems that in this context, although the President made a personal request, it appears that Rudy Giuliani is personally involved in crafting and ensuring that this public statement by the Ukrainians has the right words in them that refer back to what the President said, which includes Biden, because I think one thing that you've distinguished, which the record doesn't really support, is that Burisma and Biden are somehow different. They're actually the same in the record.

That it was actually your caution, perhaps, as well as the Ukrainians' caution, that may not have led to the immediate issuance of a statement, despite the President's effort and Giuliani's effort to get a statement?

A  Definitely the latter, that their caution and my advising and agreeing with that caution I think led them to never make a statement.

Q  But in this August -- mid-August timeframe specifically, because there's obviously another effort to get a statement out in September once the military aid has become a public matter, but we'll get to that later.

A  Okay.

Q  Thank you.

A  There's something in the first part of your question, though, that I wanted to comment on.

Do you remember what it was?

MR. VOLKER: Can you read back the beginning of that question?

I remember what it was now, so no need to read back now, but thank you.

One of the things that I said in that breakfast that I had with Mr. Giuliani, the only time Vice President Biden was ever discussed with me, and he was repeating -- he wasn't making an accusation and he wasn't seeking an investigation -- but he was repeating all of the things that were in the media that we talked about earlier about, you know, firing the prosecutor general and his son being on the company and all that.

And I said to Rudy in that breakfast the first time we sat down to talk that it is simply not credible to me that Joe Biden would be influenced in his duties as Vice President by money or things for his son or anything like that. I've known him a long time, he's a person of integrity, and that's not credible.

On the other hand, whether Ukrainians may have sought to influence our elections or sought to buy influence, that's entirely plausible.

BY MR. BITAR:

Q  Just on that point, one last thing. When Giuliani described the Bidens and the company, did he clarify Burisma?

A  In that conversation he had them -- you know, he had the whole narrative that was in the media.

Q  Right. And so, therefore, Biden and Biden's son are intimately linked in that narrative to Burisma, correct?

A  Yeah, in -- yes, that's right.

Q  Okay, thank you. I just want to make that clear.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Ambassador Volker, I want to take a step back for a quick second.

A  May I just finish answering that question? I'm sorry, there’s one more point. I apologize for interrupting.

Q  Go ahead.

A  Yes is the answer to your question. That is -- that linkage is there in Mr. Giuliani's mind.

In my understanding, as I said, I'm separating the two, that there's one thing about the Bidens, there's another thing about Ukrainians trying to do bad things, and it's appropriate to investigate the second.

Q  Did you have any reason to think that in 2019 Burisma was doing anything wrong?

A  I didn't know enough. I had no reason. I knew they had a track record of a company that had a lot of problems.

Q  But you knew all their problems were several years ago that were in the media?

A  Yes.

Q  So why did you separate them out as if there was some reason that you knew of for Burisma to be investigated?

A  Well, this is investigating what happened then, not what's happening now.

Q  I see.

All right. I want to take a step back, because I think you testified earlier that President Zelensky was, in your mind, the best hope in 20 years to root out corruption in Ukraine. Is that right?

A  Correct, correct.

Q  And he ran on a platform of anticorruption. Is that correct?

A  Correct.

Q  And that was his primary core message. Is that right?

A  That -- he had two. That was one, and the other one was peace, that he was going to be, you know, redoubling efforts, doing anything he could to bring peace to eastern Ukraine.

Q  Right. And so it was your view that he was a legitimate anticorruption President?

A  Absolutely.

Q  Did Bill Taylor share that view with you?

A  Yes.

Q  Did the other Ukrainian diplomats in the State Department -- not Ukrainian, the other diplomats who focused on Ukraine share that view as well?

A  Yes. I'd say to varying degrees. I think some have just been around Ukraine so long, they are just skeptical of everybody. But I'd say for the vast majority of diplomats, especially those in the Embassy who were there soaking up the environment, they were certainly of that point of view.

Q  So the official message coming from the State Department about Zelensky was that he was a legitimate anticorruption --

A  Yes.

Q  -- President. Is that right?

A  That is correct.

Q  Okay.

A  May I also add, importantly, from the Presidential delegation at the inauguration, because we viewed ourselves as having been empowered as a Presidential delegation to go there, meet, make an assessment, and report, and that's exactly what we reported.

Q  And that's a very good point. And on that delegation was Secretary Perry. Is that right?

A  Correct, yes.

Q  And Gordon Sondland?

A  Yes.

Q  And they shared that view --

A  Yes.

Q  -- of President Zelensky?

A  Yes.

Q  So this notion that I think you said earlier, that Rudy Giuliani required mentions of Burisma and the 2016 elections, I think what you said is in order to put some credibility on the message?

A  Yes.

Q  That flies in the face of official -- the official diplomatic State Department view of Zelensky, right?

A  That's exactly the problem.

Q  And, in fact, wouldn't you agree that if President Zelensky actually undertook those two investigations at the behest of President Trump, that that would actually undermine his message of anticorruption?

A  I don't agree with that.

Q  Why not?

A  If things happened in the past that were corrupt or illegal, then President Zelensky is quite appropriately investigating them. If nothing happened in the past, then you don't turn up anything and there's no problem. So I don't see that that is actually undermining him. And, indeed, it was the Ukrainians' own message that they want to clean up Ukraine, find out if anything happened, make sure it doesn't happen again.

Q  Right. But you may have distinguished Burisma and Biden, but you already testified that Giuliani linked the two and the Ukrainians linked the two, right?

A  That Giuliani linked the two, yes, as we discussed. I think the Ukrainians were doing the same thing I was doing, is drawing a distinction. Our own company and whether they were trying to influence the U.S. in an inappropriate way, we can look into that. Looking into what Hunter Biden or Joe Biden's relationships were, different issue.

Q  Well, isn't it true that because of these potential investigations, Bill Taylor, for one, told the Ukrainians to stay out of the U.S. politics?

A  Yes.

Q  Right. Did you send that message as well?

A  Yes, I did.

Q  And what did you mean by that?

A  I mean that, for example, although we didn't discuss Vice President Biden, but that is an example of if they had done something like that, that would have been seen very politically and that would have had a ripple effect. So don't do things that are going to play into our elections. Stay out.

Q  Okay. But you're trying to draw a very fine line here. The message that Giuliani was sending to change the statement was so that they would include an announcement of an investigation into Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. That's what he was trying to do, right?

A  That's not what it says. I know that may be what's in his mind, I understand that, that may be what's in his mind, but by saying Burisma and 2016, that is a legitimate thing for the Ukrainians to check out.

Q  But you said you have no reason to believe that there was anything that should have been investigated with Burisma?

A  No, I didn't say that. Whether any Ukrainians had done anything improper -- and this was a company that had a history of improper things -- that's legitimate for them to investigate.

Q  Well, why did you counsel Andriy Yermak that Ukraine should not issue the statement that Giuliani wanted to with those two additions?

A  Because it was the 2016 one that concerned me even more, because we had not made an official request. And so now we're going down the road in talking about a statement of asking them to investigate something or them saying they will investigate something where we have not made such an official request.

Q  Would you agree that Rudy Giuliani's requests to investigate Burisma and the 2016 U.S. elections were to serve either his or Donald Trump's political interests?

A  As I understood it at the time, we were all convinced, Rudy -- not Rudy -- Gordon Sondland, myself, Rick Perry, Bill Taylor, that this is someone we very much need to support in Ukraine. His government is going to move in the right direction.

Rudy Giuliani was not convinced of that and was no doubt, therefore, continuing to convey a negative assessment to the President through his own contacts with the President. So I'm trying to figure out what would be convincing to you, Rudy, so that he would be conveying a more positive message to the President.

Q  I understand what you were trying to do and I understand you're trying to protect yourself. What I'm asking is, is it clear to you, as it appears to be here, that Rudy Giuliani was pushing for these two investigations to serve Donald Trump's political interests and not the national interests, not what you were doing, what Rudy Giuliani was doing?

A  Yeah. In retrospect, when you see the transcript of the phone call and you hear what Rudy Giuliani has now said on television, that's clear.

Q  But you understand he was tweeting about that and saying that long before the phone call in July and this statement in early August, right?

A  He was -- he was saying that that is his view. It was not clear to me that he was seeking investigations of that specifically by Ukraine.

Q  I understand, but that was his view. Then when he asks for those specific investigations, they're part and parcel of the same thing, right?

A  Well, that's where I'm trying to differentiate and saying, no, don't get out there. And eventually --

Q  You're trying to differentiate with Ukraine?

A  With Rudy and with Ukraine, and saying to the Ukrainians, you know, investigating your own people for what things may have happened in the past is reasonable, but the further we talked about it the more I became convinced that even this is not a good idea.

Q  And it's not a good idea because you understood that it was to serve Donald Trump's political interests, not the national interests of either the United States or Ukraine?

A  That it would be seen politically here, and that wouldn't be in Ukraine's interests.

MR. NOBLE: And Rudy Giuliani publicly tweeted on June 21st, 2019, well before the events -- most of the events we've been talking today, quote: New Pres of Ukraine still silent on investigation of the Ukrainian interference in 2016 election and alleged Biden bribery of President Poroshenko. Time for leadership and investigate both if you want to purge how Ukraine was abused by Hillary and Obama people.

It was publicly known, was it not, that Rudy Giuliani wanted the Ukrainians to investigate Biden to serve the political interests of President Donald Trump?

MR. VOLKER: If that tweet was -- I'm not familiar with the tweet, but yes, then that would have been in public.

MR. SWALWELL: And finally, Ambassador, I understand your belief that it's okay to look in the past at corruption if that's what the Ukrainians were going to do, but you would agree that Burisma associated with Biden. Biden is a candidate in 2020. You knew that at the time, right?

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. SWALWELL: Okay. That's the time, so I think a 5-minute bathroom break, if that works for you.

[Recess.]

MR. GOLDMAN: If we're ready, we'll go back on the record. It's 3:38, and it is the minority's 45-minute round.

MR. ZELDIN: Ambassador Volker, thanks for your patience.

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: Several hours in today answering a lot of questions, much appreciated. Would you say that President Trump in the phone call -- and you've read the transcript and you're familiar with all the parties -- was asking President Zelensky to manufacture dirt on the Bidens?

MR. VOLKER: No. And I’ve seen that phrase thrown around a lot. And I think there's a difference between the manufacture or dig up dirt versus finding out did anything happen in the 2016 campaign or did anything happen with Burisma. I think -- or even if he's asking them to investigate the Bidens, it is to find out what facts there may be rather than to manufacture something.

MR. ZELDIN: It is not an accurate statement of what the President was asking Ukraine to sum it up as saying that President Trump was asking Ukraine to manufacture dirt?

MR. VOLKER: Yeah, I agree with that. May I add one point, based on the previous round of questioning, if it's all right to take some of your time? I apologize.

MR. CASTRO: Please.

MR. VOLKER: But I just wanted to reiterate, when I had that breakfast with Rudy Giuliani in May, I pushed back on his discussing the Bidens just as they had been in the media, I pushed back on that. And I made that differentiation then, the first time we sat down together, to say: I don't put any credibility in this at all. Whether Ukrainians may have wanted to buy influence in some way, that's another matter, or whether this company was doing anything, that's another matter.

After that conversation, he never brought up Biden or Bidens with me again. And so, when we talked or heard Burisma, I literally meant Burisma and that, not the conflation of that with the Bidens.

So I know that as we look in hindsight, we can see what he's saying and thinking, but I drew from the beginning a very clear distinction. And that is something that I think is important to understand when we're talking about Burisma later on in August what I'm talking about and what I understood us to be talking about together.

MR. ZELDIN: Earlier, you referenced the term "readout" --

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: -- or what you received after the phone call. Did you receive readouts from both the United States and Ukraine?

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: In what form do you receive those readouts? Is this informal? Is it formal?

MR. VOLKER: Completely informal conversation. Conversation with Andriy Yermak on the Ukrainian side and an overall readout, overall briefing from Charge Bill Taylor, and from my assistant in the State Department who was traveling to Ukraine with me at the time. And she, I believe, had been in touch with NSC staff to get a cursory readout of the call.

MR. ZELDIN: And in no way, shape, or form in either the readouts from the United States or Ukraine did you receive any indication whatsoever for anything that resembles a quid pro quo?

MR. VOLKER: Correct.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Any idea why Hunter Biden was able to get this position with Burisma?

A  I don't know any facts in this. I know -- I believe that because Burisma had a reputation for corruption and money laundering that they were trying to spruce up their image, and one way that a company might do that is to put, you know, names on their board that would make it appear, okay, we've cleaned ourselves up.

Q  Was Hunter Biden well-known for being an anticorruption leader, businessman?

A  No.

Q  Do you know if he spoke the relevant languages?

A  I don't know. I never met him. I don't know really much about him.

Q  Do you know --

A  I don't know.

Q  It's been reported --

A  I'd say that I don't know much about him at all.

Q  It's been reported that he was drawing a monthly salary of 50,000 or more. You would agree that that raises some questions, right?

A  It's a lot of money.

Q  And so the average American and the Americans that all our Members represent, you know, wonder, you know, what were his qualifications? Why, other than the fact that his father is a prominent U.S. official, does he get the opportunity to draw this type of --

A  Right.

Q  -- fantastic salary. I mean, over the years, it's millions of dollars if you add it up. So you can understand why --

A  Of course.

Q  -- people would have questions?

A  Of course.

Q  And if, in fact, he was not performing very many duties for Burisma, if he did not speak the language, if he did not provide any value to the company other than the fact that his father is the U.S. Vice President, that would be evidence of something worthy of investigating, right?

A  No, this is what I was referring to is that I don't believe that Vice President Biden would be corrupted in the way that he would carry out his duties as Vice President at all. But whether Ukrainians may have sought to buy influence or to believe that they were buying influence, that's quite possible.

Q  Do you think it's worthy of evaluating like why would -- you know, if somebody takes a no-show job and essentially gets paid for nothing, is that worthy of investigating?

A  I don't know the answer to that. I'm sure there are lots of examples of things like that where famous names get paid just for their name.

Q  I mean, this isn't -- you know, this isn't, you know, appointing former Senator Mitchell to somebody's board. You know, Senator Mitchell has experience in good governance and corporate governance issues, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  So, to your knowledge, Hunter Biden doesn't have a reputation for corporate governance excellence, does he?

A  I don't know anything about his background.

Q  Do you know anything about Christopher Heinz?

A  That came up earlier, and I was reminded that he was also associated with Hunter Biden and Burisma in some way. I just read that in the media. That's all.

Q  And then the fellow named Devon Archer (ph)?

A  I don't know that name.

Q  You never heard that name before?

A  If it was in the same media reports, I probably just skimmed right over it.

Q  Is it common from your experience in the Ukraine that these companies hire U.S. officials in the wake of this, you know, anticorruption reform era?

A  Yeah. It is -- it's a way of trying to demonstrate cleanliness and credibility, getting some international people on your board because Ukraine has such a bad reputation of its own.

Q  We should help you get one of those jobs.

A  No, thank you.

Q  I am going to leave it there for now.

A  Okay, thank you.

Q  Thank you. And flip it back to the Democrats.

MR. SWALWELL: Thank you, Ambassador. We're going to have Mr. Noble continue.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Ambassador Volker, I appreciate your patience --

A  Of course.

Q  -- with us, but we do have some more questions.

A  Of course.

Q  I want to go back to your text messages, and I'd like to turn to the text messages with Rudy Giuliani.

MR. NOBLE: And I'm going to mark as the next exhibit, exhibit 9, pages 2 through 9, 2 through 9.

[Volker Exhibit No. 9

Was marked for identification.]

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  But I really only -- I think we've covered a lot of the ground regarding how you introduced Mr. Giuliani to Mr. Yermak. I believe that was in July of 2019, correct?

A  That is correct.

Q  I kind of want to just turn to the end of these, this message chain, to page 7. And if I can direct your attention just to the bottom of the page there, that's a text message on September 22nd, 2019, and I believe this is from Mr. Giuliani to you. Is that correct?

A  Yes.

Q  At the very bottom. And it says: Kurt, thanks for the support. All I need is for you to tell the truth. You called me about Yermak, and I reported back to you and Sondland, e.g., a conference call on August 11th, three others before. Really, this is not hard. Just fair to affirm truth. Rudy.

And then, in the next message, he says: Also, Secretary seems not to know you put us together. Straighten him out.

I presume he's referring to Secretary Pompeo?

A  I do too.

Q  Okay. Let's go back to the first part of the message. What did you understand Rudy Giuliani to mean when he asked you to tell the truth? What was going on at this time? Let's set the scene.

A  Well, yes, the scene is that, in the days prior, Rudy Giuliani went very public on television, talking about my connecting him with Andriy Yermak, and he was I think -- well, let me not speculate on that, but he was asserting that he was doing these conversations and having these meetings at the request of the State Department and reporting back, and he was being directed by the State Department, so he's not just off out there on his own.

That's what he was asserting in media appearances. And he was very, very public, you know, and I think, you know, cell phones held up on camera and, you know, text messages tweeted out and feeding these out there. And I was not responding to any of that. And I think he was getting frustrated that I was not responding to any of that because I'm not backing up that story. And so I think he, with a bit of irony, says: Thanks for the support.

Q  Okay. So he was joking there?

A  That's the way I took it.

Q  That's how you took it, okay.

A  And all I need is for you to tell the truth, which is I called him about Yermak, and I reported back to you and Sondland, et cetera, conference calls. And that is actually accurate. So I did put him in touch with Andriy. They met. He called after the meeting. We had a couple of conversations. That's all true.

Q  But what was it about what you were saying that led Rudy Giuliani to believe that you weren't fully backing him up?

A  Well, he was saying that we were directing him and that he was acting on the behest of the State Department to do things. And --

Q  And if that was the truth, why did he ask you to tell the truth?

A  Well, it's not the truth.

Q  Rudy Giuliani was not telling the truth when he was saying that he was acting at the direction of --

A  Correct.

Q  -- the U.S. State Department?

A  Correct. And, again, we went over this earlier, but Andriy asked me to introduce him to Rudy. I asked Rudy if he wanted to be connected to Andriy. And my thought was he's going to get much better information than he's getting from Lutsenko. And he said he did want to be connected, so I facilitated that. But I wasn't giving any direction to him in any way. He did call and report back.

So what he says here, "You called me about, I reported back," et cetera, that's true, but that is not what he was saying in the media, not only that that he was saying in the media. He was saying many, many more things.

Q  And the second message from Giuliani: Also, Secretary seems not to know you put us together. Straighten him out. What did you interpret that to mean?

A  Well, I'm not sure what it means, because I had spoken with the Secretary and I knew the Secretary knew that I had connected them. So, when he says the Secretary seems not to know, I don't know what he's referring to.

It may be that there was a media appearance that the Secretary made where he did not affirm that, indeed, I had connected them. And so let the Secretary know that I did, indeed, do that.

Q  So, to be clear, Secretary Pompeo knew that you had connected Yermak to Rudy Giuliani?

A  Correct.

Q  When did you inform Pompeo of that? Was it contemporaneous with the introduction?

A  In -- I don't want to say same day, but we're talking in the same time period.

Q  So it’s fair to say the Secretary was aware of what Rudy Giuliani -- that the fact that at least Rudy Giuliani was communicating directly with Andriy Yermak--

A  Yes.

Q  -- the adviser to Zelensky?

A  Yes, he knew that. I’m -- please go ahead and keep asking, but I can skip ahead to something here if you would like.

Q  Sure. Why don’t you tell us what you would like to tell us. I may have more questions, but I'll let you drive for now.

A  So, skipping ahead, so the date of these text messages is Sunday, the 22nd of September. I had two missed calls from Rudy on Friday, the 20th of September. These are the dates that are wrong in my long-form testimony, by the way. They're off by one day.

He tried to call twice on the 20th of September, probably from the green room. I mean, he's constantly in the media. You can't work out in the gym without seeing him on TV. So I did not answer those calls, and I think that's partly why I think he was frustrated.

I did speak the next day with Ulrich Brechbuhl, the counselor of the State Department, to say that, you know, Rudy's way out there. Ulrich called me to say: What's the story here, what's the background? Remind me. Walk me through this again. I had done it earlier in August, and he just wanted to be refreshed. I did that.

Sunday morning, I get all these text messages, this long stream of text messages from Rudy. Some are the first two that you mentioned, and then he continues on saying that he's going to let the Secretary know that he connected, which fine.

And then he's forwarding old messages that I had sent to him to demonstrate to me that he has these text messages, which, of course, I know, he's got them on television. And I did say: Thanks for your help, just the courtesy, you know, of getting together with Andriy.

And then he says: Get out a statement that the State Department connected me to Yermak, and I reported back to State on my conversations. Yermak has talked about this to press, so it's now public information. All I'm asking is to tell the truth. I can send you text chain if you need to check your recollection.

And, again, I didn't answer any of these at the time.

I spoke with Secretary Pompeo. Gordon Sondland was with him. They were in New York at the UNGA meeting. I was in Washington. Marik String, the acting legal adviser, was also on that call. And I walked the Secretary through, again, you know, the narrative so it was fresh in his mind. And he said: Yeah, I know, I know.

Then he said that he had spoken with Rudy himself, gotten a call or called him, I don’t know which. I suppose Rudy called him. And he said, what Rudy was concerned about was that we were not affirming that we had connected Yermak and him rather than him just doing it on his own.

And I said: Well, that's easy, because on August 22nd, we put out a statement from the State Department saying that Yermak had asked me, and I had put him in touch with Rudy, because it had made media back then.

And so he said: Well, then that's great. So why don't you call Rudy back, tell him that, and give him a copy of what was handed out at the time. So I did that.

Q  And that's what this final message is here?

A  That's what that final thing is there. It was handed at the State -- in the State Department. It was not -- there was no briefing that day, I believe, or if it was, this was not included in the briefing. But it was prepared, it was cleared, and it was handed to Ken Vogel (ph), who then tweeted it.

Q  Were you aware that Secretary Pompeo was on the July 25th call with President Trump and President Zelensky?

A  I was not.

Q  When did you first learn that?

A  When he said so. I believe it was yesterday morning.

Q  So you never had any conversations with Pompeo about that call?

A  No.

Q  Did you ever have any, aside from the ones that we were just talking about, conversations with Secretary Pompeo about Rudy Giuliani and what he was up to in the Ukraine?

A  Yes, yes. I described my concern that he is projecting a damaging or a negative image about Ukraine, and that's reaching the President, and that I am trying to work with Ukrainians to correct that messaging, correct that impression.

Q  What did Secretary Pompeo do?

A  Said: I'm glad you're doing it.

Q  Trying to correct it?

A  Yes.

Q  Did he ever say he took your concerns to the President?

A  He did not.

Q  Do you know whether Rudy Giuliani and Secretary Pompeo had any direct conversations, one-on-one conversations?

A  Only the one that I just mentioned, which was around September 22nd.

Q  I also want to just kind of put a marker down for the record. When was the first time that you spoke with Rudy Giuliani about anything having to do with Ukraine?

A  Yes. It was in -- earlier in May.

Q  Yeah. If you flip to page 6, there's a message from May 11th, 2019.

A  Yes, that would be it.

Q  Okay. And I'll let you read that and refresh your recollection. And my question is going to be, what was the sum and substance of the conversation you had with Giuliani?

A  So, on May 11th, I wrote to Mayor Giuliani saying: Mr. Mayor -- hi, Mr. Mayor, Kurt Volker here. Good speaking with you yesterday, which meant May 10th then I must have spoken with him. Call any time up to about 4 p.m. today if you want to follow up. We would like to brief you more about the Zelensky discussion and also Russia-Ukraine dynamic.

So I had learned through the media that he was going to go to Ukraine and he was intending to pursue these allegations that Lutsenko had made, and he was going to go investigate these things. And I reached out to him to brief him, a couple of key points. Lutsenko is not credible. Don't listen to what he is saying.

Q  You told Rudy Giuliani that, that Lutsenko is not credible?

A  Yes. Yes, I did.

Q  Okay.

A  To say that I had met with Zelensky as a Presidential candidate, and I believe he's the real deal, and we should be trying to support him. And, third, I wanted to talk to him about what's going on with Russia and Ukraine so he's aware of that.

We spoke briefly on the 10th. It must have been -- I don't have an exact time in mind, but I'm guessing it was 10 minutes, something like that. And he had to go. So I texted him the next day, saying: I'm happy to follow up, because we didn't have a full conversation, and he was going to go to Ukraine.

And so I said: This number is good for text and cell phone.

And he never got back to me, and he canceled his trip. And that's when he announced also he was canceling the trip, that President Zelensky is surrounded by enemies of the United States, which I thought is --

Q  Was that helpful for U.S. relations with Ukraine?

A  Certainly not. So that conversation took place and dropped then. Because he didn't go to Ukraine, there was no point in pursuing it any further.

Q  So, just to be clear, prior to this time, you had not had any conversations, communications with Rudy Giuliani about Ukraine --

A  No.

Q  -- prior to May 11th?

A  No.

Q  Or the conversation that you had on or about May 11th?

A  No.

Q  The phone conversation.

A  This is it.

Q  Okay. Were you aware, though, that Giuliani was involved in Ukraine, so to speak, prior to this time?

A  Not at the time. Even at this time, I wasn't aware that he had as many Ukraine connections as it later became apparent that he did.

Q  Do you know anyone -- do you know somebody associated with Giuliani named Lev Parnas?

A  Yes.

Q  Who is Lev Parnas?

A  Lev Parnas is a Ukrainian-American businessman. I believe he's based in Florida. And he attended the breakfast that I had with Rudy Giuliani on May 20-whatever, 25th, something like that.

Q  And which breakfast was that, May 25th?

A  No, no, no, I take it back. Not May 25th. July 19th.

Q  Okay.

A  I did not have a breakfast with him on May 25th.

Q  This is the breakfast at the White House meeting --

A  I'm confusing the White House readout after the inauguration as the date. July 19th is when I had breakfast with Rudy, and Lev Parnas attended that breakfast.

Q  Who is Lev Parnas? What's his relationship to Giuliani?

A  I don't know what their relationship is. They appear to be friends. I assumed that Giuliani brought him along to the meeting because he's Ukrainian-American and, therefore, knows a lot about Ukraine.

Q  Do you know if Lev Parnas was doing anything to help Giuliani get introduced to Ukrainian officials?

A  I don't know.

Q  Do you know anything else about Lev Parnas? Had you had any interactions with him prior to that breakfast meeting?

A  Never met him before or since.

Q  Where did you have breakfast?

A  At the Trump Hotel.

Q  Why did you have breakfast at the Trump Hotel?

A  Because I was guessing that's where Rudy was going to be staying, so that would be the easiest thing to do.

Q  When you met with Andriy Yermak when he was in D.C., where did he stay?

A  I believe he stayed at the Trump Hotel.

Q  Do you know why he stayed at the Trump Hotel?

A  I don't know why.

Q  Did you ever have any conversations with the Ukrainians about currying favor with President Trump by staying at their property?

A  I did not, no.

Q  Did you have any discussions with the Ukrainians about Lev Parnas?

A  No, I didn’t.

Q  Do you know someone by the name of Igor Fruman?

A  I read that name in press reports. I don't remember. It's possible he was at the same breakfast, but I honestly don't remember.

Q  You said that maybe he -- Fruman may have been at the breakfast?

A  He may have been there.

Q  How many people were at the breakfast?

A  I recall Lev Parnas, Rudy Giuliani, and myself sitting at a table. There were two other people at a separate table. And that -- and one of them may have been Igor Fruman or not. I don't know.

Q  Did you ever have any conversations with Donald Trump, Jr., about Ukraine?

A  I've never met him.

Q  Have you ever spoken to him?

A  No.

Q  What did Lev Parnas or the person that may have been Igor Fruman, at least that you remember, say during that breakfast meeting with Ukraine?

A  Sure. I don't remember anything about Igor Fruman. I'm not even sure if he was there. It's possible he was. I just don't know.

Q  How about Lev Parnas then?

A  Lev Parnas, it was interesting, because I was expecting to have a very negative view of Zelensky and to have a very pro-supportive view of Lutsenko, the prosecutor general. And as we were talking about things, I just kind of like launched in and said: I think these guys are for real. It's a good team. He's assembling some good people. He campaigned on changing the country. I think he's the best hope we've had. I think there’s a 3- to 6-month window in which the next 5 years of the Ukraine are going to be determined. And he needs all our support.

And, to my surprise, both -- Parnas basically was very knowledgeable about people in Ukraine and events, largely agreed with that. I didn't expect him to agree with that. But he said: Yeah, that's what I think too. He seems to be trying to do all the right things.

And then we got to talking about Lutsenko, and I said that: Don't believe what Lutsenko has been saying. I think this is a self-serving narrative to preserve himself in power and protect himself, possibly protect Poroshenko as well.

And, again, to my surprise, Rudy agreed with that and said: Yes, I've come to that conclusion too.

So he initially believed Lutsenko, but I think had distanced himself from that after that, maybe because Lutsenko had then come out and disavowed his own allegations from earlier in the year.

[4:07 p.m.]

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  And we talked about that earlier.

A  Yes.

Q  All right. I think I want to switch gears a little bit and ask you about some other messages. If you could turn to page 26. And we're going to mark pages 26, 27, and 28 as exhibit 10.

[Volker Exhibit No. 10

was marked for identification.]

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  And on page 26, I'd like to direct your attention to the first entry for May 26, 2019.

A  Yep.

Q  So can you set the scene --

A  Yes.

Q  -- you know, as of May 26th?

A  Yes.

Q  What was going on?

A  Very happy to. So our -- let's get the sequence here. Our ambassador to Ukraine had departed post.

Q  That's -- your ambassador, Ambassador Yovanovitch?

A  Ambassador Yovanovitch. She had departed. I was there for the presidential inauguration with the others that we discussed. I had the meeting in the Oval Office with the President. And I was concerned that we were not going to have a serious senior diplomat on the ground in Ukraine once Ambassador Yovanovitch had left. We were getting a brand-new DCM later that week who had not served in Ukraine before, so completely new, and I, therefore, thought it was important that we get a seasoned diplomat in there. And I suggested Bill Taylor because he had been ambassador there before, he knew the country, he knew the players, he had a lot of experience, and he could go on a temporary basis as a Charge while we appointed a new ambassador.

So I discussed this with Bill. He was reluctant. I don’t want to -- I don't want to over-characterize his reasons, but, you know, being on the outside and seeing the administration, he was not sure if we would maintain as robust a support for Ukraine as we had had for the past 2 years.

I had been fighting for this every day and we had, I think, a very strong policy, but he was just worried it was going to get undermined at some point.

Q  What did -- did he say what he thought would undermine?

A  He didn't say specifically. It was more a generic fear, but I think hanging over everyone's head on the expert community is, is there some grand bargain with Russia where we throw Ukraine under the bus.

And I kept assuring him, Bill, I've been at this, and it's been the other way around. We have strengthened our support for Ukraine. We have lift -- we have increased sanctions, we have lifted the arms embargo. We did the Pompeo declaration on nonrecognition of Crimea. We've been more vocal about Russia's aggression. We are on track here, and it's important that we have people in there fighting to do that.

So that was the nature of our back-and-forth, talking about whether he would agree to be a Charge.

Q  How did -- just pausing for a second. How do you reconcile that, the fact that all these measures were being taken while you were special envoy to Ukraine to, as you say, strengthen the relationship, strengthen Ukraine, build up Ukraine so that it could defend itself against Russia, as you say, with weapons that you believe they needed in order to either deter an attack or fight the war that's ongoing?

How do you reconcile that with the decision to freeze military assistance, hundreds of millions of dollars of military assistance to Ukraine? Why did that not strike you as highly problematic to U.S. national security, or to our national security interests?

A  It did strike me as problematic, and therefore, I acted immediately to argue that this has to be reversed and we have to keep the assistance going.

Q  And I believe you testified that everyone in the interagency from the NSC, to DoD, to the official State Department position, everyone supported that funding going to Ukraine, correct?

A  That's correct. It was OMB that announced in the interagency meeting that there was a hold --

Q  Okay.

A  -- or a review.

Q  And I believe you said the first time you learned about that was -- well, actually, it's in the text messages.

I believe it might have been Bill Taylor said there was a SVTC.

A  Yes.

Q  A secure conference call from OMB announcing the freeze in July?

A  July 18.

Q  July 18th. Oh. And do you know who at OMB was responsible for the freeze, or for implementing the freeze, or communicating the freeze to the interagency?

A  Yeah, I don't know. I didn't attend the interagency meetings. I typically did riot.

And it was a sub PCC meeting, which is typically deputy assistant secretary level.

Q  Did you attend the sub PCC meeting?

A  No.

Q  Let's go back to your text messages, page 26. So let's pick up where Bill Taylor says -- and I believe he's talking about his decision whether or not to --

A  Correct.

Q  -- I guess --

A  To accept the job.

Q  -- to accept the job as ambassador to Ukraine. "I am still struggling with the decision whether to go. Can anyone hope to succeed with the Giuliani-Biden issue swirling for the next 18 months? Can S," meaning Secretary Pompeo, "offer any reassurance on this issue?"

What do you think he meant by the Giuliani-Biden issue? And just to recall, we're talking -- we're talking about May 26, 2019, which is approximately 2 months before President Trump's phone call with President Zelensky when he urged President Zelensky to investigate the Bidens. What was Bill Taylor referring to here?

A  He was referring to what he had seen in the media about Giuliani talking about Hunter Biden and whether Vice President Biden had acted inappropriately in attacking the former Prosecutor General Shokin.

Bill was at this time not in the U.S. government. He was working at USIP, so he's just referring to the -- what's out there in the media swirl.

Q  Did you have discussions with Bill Taylor about his concerns about what Giuliani was saying in the media about Ukraine needing to investigate the Bidens?

A  Yes.

Q  Aside from this text message?

A  Yes. Aside from the -- yes, I did, because in conversations about whether he would take the job, I would reiterate, "Look, Giuliani does not represent the U.S. government. Don't worry about that. We are actually getting -- we have our policy in the right place, and we need people in the U.S. government to actually be continuing to push for the right policies."

Q  And what did he ultimately decide, Bill Taylor?

A  He did decide to take the job, after we had a meeting with Secretary Pompeo and Ulrich Brechbuhl and Bill and myself to discuss our policy. Bill wanted to be reassured that the Secretary of State is saying the same thing that I'm saying about where our policy is, that we are robustly in support of Ukraine. And, of course, Secretary Pompeo did that.

Q  And later in this text message exchange, you tell Bill Taylor, this is 5/2G/19 at 11:23, "Let's see how it looks on Tuesday. I don't know if there's much to do about the Giuliani thing, but I do think the key thing is to do what we can right now since the future of the country is in play right now."

A  Yes.

Q  Which country were you referring to?

A  Ukraine.

Q  And what did you mean by this when you were telling this to Bill Taylor?

A  Yeah. So I say there's not much to do about the Giuliani thing. He's going to be out there speaking publicly and saying what he says no matter what. We can't fix that. That's going to happen.

But we can right now -- you know, the key thing is what we can do, meaning those of supporting United States and U.S. interests, what we can do, since the future of Ukraine is in play right now. We have a new president, there’s going to be a new parliament, a new government, and it's going to be a dicey time. I was trying to encourage him to accept the position.

Q  But isn't there something that the Secretary of State could have done about Giuliani? Are you telling us that Secretary of State Pompeo was helpless to stop Giuliani from interfering with official U.S. diplomacy in Ukraine?

A  Honestly, yes. I'm sure he could have called Rudy Giuliani, but would Rudy Giuliani stop doing what he's doing because the Secretary of State calls him? I'd be surprised.

Q  What if President Trump had called Giuliani and said to knock it off?

A  Because they had a different relationship, attorney for the President, then perhaps.

Q  Do you know whether Secretary Pompeo ever discussed Rudy Giuliani with President Trump?

A  I don't know.

Q  Specifically, Giuliani's efforts in Ukraine?

A  I don't know whether he did.

MR. SWALWELL: Just real quick. When you say "attorney for the President," you mean attorney for Donald Trump, right, not the Office of the President?

MR. VOLKER: Yes. Yes, that's what I mean.

MR. SWALWELL: Thanks.

MR. VOLKER: Personal attorney. Thank you.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  And you mentioned a meeting that you had with Secretary Pompeo and his counsel, Ulrich Brechbuhl, and Bill Taylor?

A  Yes.

Q  You were discussing whether Bill Taylor --

A  Yes.

Q  -- should take the job. What, if anything, was discussed about Rudy Giuliani in that meeting?

A  I don't recall that that actually came up. I think it was more about can we be sure that the policy will remain the same, you know, sanctions, arms, et cetera.

Q  So did the Bidens or an investigation of the Bidens come up in that conversation?

A  No, no.

Q  So the Rudy Giuliani issue, as you call it, didn't --

A  Yeah.

Q  -- come up at all?

A  No. I don't recall that coming up at all.

And just reading on, so Bill is saying, "You're absolutely right. We need somebody there. Why don't you be Charge?"

Q  To you, right?

A  To me, right.

Q  And did you want that job or no?

A  I did not want that job.

Q  Why didn't you want that job?

A  Personal reasons. Part of it, as you know, I'm getting married on Saturday, and I --

Q  Congratulations again.

A  -- and I wanted to be here. Thank you.

And also I felt I was more effective doing the special envoy position, because there you can engage with the interagency, you can engage with the allies, you can engage with NATO, you can engage with the EU. It's a much broader range of things that you can do from there, rather than being on the ground in Ukraine.

Q  Can we go to page 27, just hit this quickly? There's a text message exchange on July 8, 2019, at about 9:14 a.m.

A  I'm sorry. What page again?

Q  Page 27.

A  Yes. And --

Q  7/8/19 at 9:14.

A  Yes.

Q  And you say, "Zelensky was on board. Bohdan was skeptical"?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  What were you talking about here?

A  That refers to seeking to schedule a presidential phone call.

Q  Okay. "And worried that a call substitutes for a visit. I pulled the two of them aside at the end and explained the Giuliani factor."

A  Yes.

Q  What did you mean by "Giuliani factor," and who were you explaining the Giuliani factor to?

A  I explained it to President Zelensky and the Chief of Presidential Administration, Andriy Bohdan, was standing next to him. And I explained that I thought that there is a negative narrative about Ukraine that is counteracting all the good things that he is doing, and that we are officially communicating back, and that this is being amplified by Rudy Giuliani. So this is a negative factor for Ukraine's image in the United States and our ability to advance the bilateral relationship.

MR. SWALWELL: And, Ambassador, 17 days after you explained that, we now know, you know, the phone call readout from the White House of the call between President Trump and President Zelensky.

How do you think President Zelensky reconciled what you had told him about 17 days earlier and what he would hear from the President, which was, in fact, the person -- one of the persons you should follow up with is Rudy Giuliani? Was that confusing?

MR. VOLKER: I don't know, yeah, because I was not aware of the content of that phone call. President Zelensky and Andrey Yermak never mentioned that to me, so I don't know.

MR. SWALWELL: But would that undermine what you're telling President Zelensky just 17 days earlier, that he has a more elevated role than what you are telling him?

MR. VOLKER: I actually -- I hadn't thought about it, you know, in this context before, but as I think about it, it was probably very helpful that I had told this to President Zelensky when I did so that when he heard this from the President, he was forewarned, right, there's a Giuliani problem here.

MR. SWALWELL: Right. But with all due respect, Ambassador, as you said earlier, any time the President of the United States asks any other foreign leader, because of the weight of the United States, whether you have forewarned Zelensky about Giuliani or not, the fact that the United States President is giving Mr. Giuliani this status, that would be important for Mr. Zelensky, right?

MR. VOLKER: I suppose it would.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Going back to page 28, if you can flip to the bottom portion on August 26, 2019, at 11:05 p.m. Do you see that --

A  Yes.

Q  -- where Bill Taylor says, "When you briefed Bolton, did you recommend he see Yermak?"

What was he asking about there? This is August 26th, leading up to --

A  Yes.

Q  -- the summit in Warsaw -- or the World War II Memorial --

A  Yes, yes.

Q  -- in Warsaw.

A  So I had a phone call briefing with John Bolton before his trip to Ukraine to just make sure he was up-to-date, because he was going to be visiting there. And Bill asked me if I recommended that he see Yermak.

Q  While --

A  While visiting Ukraine.

Q  While Bolton was in Ukraine?

A  Yes. He was going to see the President; he was going to see Danylyuk, who was technically his counterpart. Context: Danylyuk's star within the Zelensky orbit was fading at this point, and he's since resigned, and Yermak's star was up.

Q  And just out of curiosity, do you know whether Danylyuk resigned or was fired? Was he pushed out?

A  I believe he resigned. I haven't spoken with him since he resigned. He did -- he did send me a text message before this testimony today to wish me well, but I haven't spoken with him.

Q  Okay.

A  But my understanding is that he became very uncomfortable with the visibility of this oligarch, Igor Kolomoisky (ph), in recent months in Ukraine.

Q  Who became uncomfortable?

A  Danylyuk became uncomfortable with it, and did not want to continue in his duties if he thought that this individual is having too much freedom of maneuver in Ukraine.

Q  Can you explain a little bit more about the nature of his concerns about Kolomoisky?

A  Yes. So Igor Kolomoisky is one of the handful of very, very, very wealthy Ukrainians. Together, if you include influence over state-owned industry as well as privately owned things, they probably control at least 20 percent of the GDP, and it is all the GDP that matters; so energy, energy distribution, infrastructure, defense industries, coal and steel production, transportation, you name it, media, especially, they have got it.

And Kolomoisky had a bank called Privat Bank (ph), and that bank made a number of bad loans, $5 billion worth, to -- it disappeared and -- basically to him and his other leaders of the bank, and it was nationalized. And the Ukrainian taxpayer officially is bailing out the bank for the money that Kolomoisky stole.

Because the IMF provides budgetary support to Ukraine, we actually ended up bailing out this bank.

And he was being pursued by President Poroshenko. He was living in exile in Switzerland, and then moved to exile in Israel.

He is subject to a civil suit in Delaware now over this bank as well.

The courts in Ukraine -- just before the presidential election, the courts in Ukraine had a finding that the nationalization of the bank that had been done was not done properly, and that opened the possibility of restoring the bank to Mr. Kolomoisky, and possibly even paying compensation.

Q  Okay. I don't mean to cut you off. I mean, we don't have -- I don't want to keep you here all night --

A  Okay.

Q  -- so I'd like to keep going on.

A  But anyway, you get the nature --

Q  Kolomoisky went back to Ukraine after Zelensky was elected. Is that fair to say?

A  Yes. After Zelensky was elected, he returned to Ukraine, he visited some of his businesses, he gave media interviews, he played a very visible public role. And the Privat Bank issue has still not been definitively resolved.

And I think Danylyuk was becoming increasingly concerned that this is giving the appearance -- also there's a photograph of Kolomoisky meeting Zelensky in Zelensky's office that was released by the presidential administration; transparent, but still a bad sign. So Danylyuk, I think, left for all of these reasons.

Q  Okay. Back to your text messages.

A  I'm sorry to get on a tangent.

Q  That's okay.

Back to your text messages. 8/27/2019 at 7:34, Bill Taylor wrote; "Bolton said he talked to you and Gordon briefly." That's Ambassador Sondland. "Nothing specific. What should they talk about? Tim says Bolton wants to stay out of politics. "Tim, who is that?

A  Tim is Tim Morrison, who is the Senior Director for Europe at the National Security Council.

Q  And what did you understand it to mean when Bolton wanted to stay out of politics? Is that a reference to the --

A  Yeah.

Q  Administration's -- or to Trump and Giuliani's efforts to get Ukraine to open the investigations we've been talking about?

A  Yeah. It's not clear. I think it may have been more about Giuliani's role generally.

Q  Did you have any conversations with National Security Advisor Bolton about Giuliani?

A  I did back earlier in August.

Q  And what did you say to him and he to you?

A  Basically the same as with Secretary Pompeo: "I want you to know Giuliani's out there spinning these narratives. I'm concerned that this is affecting the President's views of Ukraine."

I'm trying to work with Ukrainians, and they are trying to communicate a message back to Bolton to convey that they are actually a different crowd, not from 2016, not corrupt, so that positive message gets back to the President. So I explained all that to Bolton.

He did not engage on that, by the way.

Q  He did not engage on that?

A  He did not.

Secretary Pompeo, as I said, "Good. I'm glad you're doing that."

Bolton just kind of said, "Okay."

Q  Was Bolton on the July 25th call, do you know?

A  I don't know.

Q  At the end here -- so we're -- on September 1st is when the meeting in Warsaw occurred, correct?

A  With the vice president.

Q  With the vice president. And I'll get to that, but here at the very end, you wrote, Kurt -- or Bill Taylor wrote to you, "Kurt, can you WhatsApp Defense Minister" -- oh, wow -- Zagor --

A  Zagorodnyuk.

Q  "We just met to discuss the pause in security assistance. He would like your advice and assistance."

So at this point, the Ukrainians were clearly aware --

A  Right.

Q  -- of the freeze. Is that right?

A  That's right.

Q  Okay. And did you have a conversation with the Ukrainian defense minister about the freeze?

A  Yes, I did.

Q  What did you say to him and he to you?

A  I said that everyone in Washington is trying to figure this out and fix it: Pentagon, State Department, NSC, and even in Congress. I had done some staff meetings with the Armed Services Committee, Senate Armed Services Committee.

And in terms of advice, I suggested that he called Secretary of Defense Esper, that he's a brand-new defense minister. He should establish a counterpart relationship, and give a call and express his concern about this, and empower Esper to raise this issue.

And I also suggested that he plan an early visit to Washington when Congress is in session, so that he could meet both with Esper, or if Esper's not in town, whoever is there from the Pentagon, but also have a chance to meet with Members of Congress.

Q  And do you know whether he reached out to Secretary Esper?

A  He did.

Q  He did? Do you know what they talked about or what the conversation was about?

A  I did not get a readout on the call. I’m not sure when the call took place. I have a feeling it was after a delay.

Also, somewhere in here I texted him a letter that several Senators signed to Chief of Staff Mulvaney urging -- saying that they had heard that there was a hold, and urging that there not be such a hold.

Q  Do you know who else was on that letter?

A  I believe it's in here somewhere. I know -- here it is. Very good. Page 32 and 33. Senator Shaheen, Senator Durbin, Senator Blumenthal, Senator Portman, and Senator Johnson, and it was addressed to the Director of OMB, Mick Mulvaney, in that capacity and copied to Secretary Pompeo and Secretary Esper.

Q  So I want to skip to page 56. And I think that is a new exhibit I have to create. So this will be Exhibit 11, and it will be pages 54 through 57.

[Volker Exhibit No. 11

was marked for identification.]

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  And, again, to page 56, I want to direct your attention to August 29th, 2019.

A  Yes.

Q  The message starting at 5:02, where you write: "Trump not going to Warsaw now. Pence going. I'm so sorry."

Who are you telling this to?

A  This is Vadym Prystaiko, who was the diplomatic advisor to President Zelensky. He had been ambassador to -- Ukraine's ambassador to NATO, was tapped to be diplomatic advisor. He is currently the foreign minister.

Q  Do you know why President Trump decided not to go to Warsaw?

A  The hurricane news. There was a possibility of a hurricane hitting Florida, and he cancelled his trip for that stated reason.

Q  Do you know for a fact that's why he cancelled it or was that the stated reason?

A  That -- that’s the only reason that’s been given.

Q  And President Trump was supposed to meet with President Zelensky in Warsaw. Is that right?

A  That’s correct.

Q  And had you been working leading up to that meeting? Had you been working to arrange that meeting?

A  I had been pushing for the two of them to get together from May; that I sincerely believed that once President Trump sat down with President Zelensky, he would have the same conclusion that this is someone we can work with, as I had when I met with him.

Q  Did you attend the meeting in Warsaw?

A  No.

MR. NOBLE: Is it time's up? Okay. I see. My time's up, so I'll --

MR. VOLKER: Okay.

MR. CASTOR: Might be possible -- should we take a break or keep going?

MR. SWALWELL: I prefer to keep going.

MR. VOLKER: I’m okay.

MR. CASTOR: Okay. Keep going?

Do you have any questions at this time?

MR. PERRY: I don't.

MR. MEADOWS: As long as we have at the end where we can come back and do a round.

MR. SWALWELL: Sure.

MR. CASTOR: We might have couple of things here. I don't think it's worth turning over.

MR. MEADOWS: He is getting married on Saturday.

MR. NOBLE: We won't be here on Saturday.

MR. VOLKER: Thank you.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  So did -- I'm sorry. I think I was asking you, did you attend the Warsaw meeting?

A  And that's correct. And I did not.

Q  You did not. Did you get a readout from that meeting about the meeting between Vice-President Pence and Zelensky?

A  Not much of one, actually. Very, very sketchy. I did not get much of a readout at all.

MR. SWALWELL: Ambassador, with respect to the Warsaw meeting, with a high-level official like the Vice President meeting with the President of Ukraine, is that a meeting you would typically be in?

MR. VOLKER: Depends. I had just been traveling for about a week prior to that, including to Ukraine, and I had some scheduling conflicts. And with the Vice President going there and not being part -- manifested on the delegation to the Warsaw, whatever it is, anniversary of World War II, it just wouldn't have been possible to attempt.

MR. SWALWELL: Did you prepare the Vice President for that meeting?

MR. VOLKER: I did not.

MR. SWALWELL: Do you know who did prepare the Vice President for that meeting?

MR. VOLKER: I assume his staff prepared him and the NSC staff.

MR. SWALWELL: So are you aware of any State officials who were a part of the preparation for that meeting?

MR. VOLKER: I'm not aware. I would think that there would have been some contact with the State Department, but I’m not aware of who would have done that.

MR. SWALWELL: Was Bill Taylor at that meeting?

MR. VOLKER: I don't believe so.

MR. SWALWELL: How about Ambassador Sondland?

MR. VOLKER: I believe he was, but I'm not sure.

MR. SWALWELL: Again, I guess, is it -- it strikes me as unusual that you would not be -- and I understand the travel issue, but, again --

MR. VOLKER: Yeah.

MR. SWALWELL: -- the Vice President of the United States --

MR. VOLKER: I know.

MR. SWALWELL: -- standing in for the President, is it unusual that you were not more a part of that meeting at least in the preparation?

MR. VOLKER: In Munich, in February of -- I guess it was February of this year, February 2019, Vice President Pence led the administration delegation to the Munich Security Conference, and I was there. I had asked to be included in his meeting with President Poroshenko, and I was not included in that meeting.

MR. SWALWELL: Whose decision was that?

MR. VOLKER: The Vice President's staff, the Vice President or Vice President's staff.

MR. SWALWELL: Who informed you that you would not be --

MR. VOLKER: Someone working on his staff at the time.

MR. SWALWELL: Do you know who that was?

MR. VOLKER: Gabrielle. I don't remember the last name.

MR. SWALWELL: Okay. Sorry. Keep going.

MR. VOLKER: But in any event, I was not included in that meeting. And I my understanding is that the Vice President likes to keep his meetings very, very small. So when it was the Vice President going, flying from the U.S., I'm heading back -- or had just headed back to the U.S., I didn't really push for it.

MR. SWALWELL: But would there typically be coordination among State and the Vice President's office for a high-level meeting like that --

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. SWALWELL: -- what the priorities are?

MR. VOLKER: Typically there would be.

MR. SWALWELL: So you don't know who briefed the Vice President on what the meeting should entail?

MR. VOLKER: I don't. I don't. I mean, it was a last minute swap-in. It was going to have been the President. The President declined, sent Pence instead.

MR. SWALWELL: Was there a readout of the meeting?

MR. VOLKER: As I said, I barely got any readout of the meeting.

MR. SWALWELL: What readout did you get?

MR. VOLKER: Essentially that it went well, that concerning security assistance, the Vice President did not have an answer to lifting the hold. So he said, Whatever the decision ultimately is, rest assured that we stand side by side with Ukraine, we support you, and that he would advocate for a meeting with the President when he got back.

MR. SWALWELL: Who gave you the readout?

MR. VOLKER: I don't honestly remember now. The logical person would have been my assistant at the State Department, Catherine Croft.

MR. SWALWELL: And do you know if it was orally or electronically or --

MR. VOLKER: Yes, orally, orally.

MR. SWALWELL: And did you seek to obtain any more information post readout just so you knew how to deal with your Ukrainian counterparts?

MR. VOLKER: I didn't. I figured that that's about as much as I needed to know. I know a lot more.

MR. SWALWELL: Let me go back to Mr. Noble.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  And in terms of readouts, you got a readout -- that's the readout on the U.S. side, but in your text messages, you seem to get a readout from the foreign minister of Ukraine, Vadym?

A  Yes. He repeated that same line of -- I don't -- maybe you know where it is in the timeline here.

Q  Sure. So on September 1st, 2019, at 1:27. This is page 56.

A  Yes.

Q  I'm just going to call him Vadym, if that's okay.

A  Yes, yes. Vadym.

Q  He writes: Have to recognize it was a good meet. Nobody was rushing. Seems the chemistry was there. It could easily be a very successful meeting with POTUS. However, on assistance side, it did not become clear, quote, "regardless of the decision, you have to know that the U.S. is staying strong next to UA in its war against.."

So help interpret that for us.

A  Right. So I texted Vadym -- thank you for reminding me, because I had forgotten this -- How was Pence meeting?

And Vadym Prystaiko, who is on the verge of being the foreign minister, if not the foreign minister on this day, says: "Have to recognize it was a good meet." So it was a good meeting. "Nobody was rushing. Seems the chemistry was there. It could easily be a very successful meeting with POTUS," meaning that if we have a President Trump-President Zelensky meeting, Vadym is convinced that would go well.

Q  Okay. So just to set the table, at this point in time, September 1st, 2019, the security assistance funds to Ukraine was frozen. The Ukrainians were aware of it.

A  Yes.

Q  You were still, and the Ukrainians were still pushing for a White House meeting.

A  Yes.

Q  And then they -- there's this meeting with Vice President Pence --

A  Yes.

Q  -- and the President of Ukraine. And Vice President Pence can't tell the Ukrainians why the funds are being frozen?

A  Right.

Q  And can't commit to a White House meeting for President Zelensky?

A  He couldn't give a date for the meeting with President Zelensky, but he undertook to support such a meeting.

Q  At this point in time, had the Ukrainians committed to putting out the statement by President Zelensky about Burisma and the 2016 elections?

A  No.

Q  So we had talked about that before, the statement that we were going back -- you were going back and forth on.

A  Yeah.

Q  Whatever happened to that statement?

A  It died. I mean, no one -- once we started seeing a tempo of engagement with Ukraine, we had first the sense that Rudy was not going to be convinced that it meant anything, and, therefore, convey a positive message to the President if it didn't say Burisma and 2016.

I agreed with the Ukrainians they shouldn't do it, and in fact told them just drop it, wait till you have your own prosecutor general in place. Let's work on substantive issues like this, security assistance and all. Let's just do that. So we dropped it.

And -- so by this time, there's -- I'm not actively discussing that with anybody anymore.

Should we continue or --

Q  Yeah. And then -- yeah. Just the next line, you say, "Good grief."

A  Yes.

Q  "We need to get our side sorted out on the assistance."

A  That's much more -- that’s much more like me than saying, "Damn Date."

Q  "We need to get our side sorted out on the assistance," meaning the assistance to Ukraine that had been frozen, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  "But glad the meeting was good overall. Still working for the White House visit." Right?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay.

A  I think that's clear.

Q  And at this point in time, you still did not know why the funds supporting Ukraine were being frozen?

A  To this day, no reason has ever been given.

Q  Can we go to page 54, at the very bottom? I just want to ask you a couple more things about --

A  Sure.

Q  -- your messages with the foreign minister.

A  At this time, diplomatic advisor to the President.

Q  When did he -- just so I know going forward, when did he become foreign minister?

A  Around -- once the government -- so the parliament had to be seated, which took place, I believe, on September 1st. And then once the parliament was seated, then they could vote in the ministers. And so somewhere around 1st, 2nd, 3rd, he would have been voted in.

Q  Okay. And going back to the statement that you said the Ukrainians dropped, did they do that because Zelensky never got a date for a White House meeting?

A  No. They did it because we agreed it just wasn't a good idea, it's not productive.

Q  So at the very bottom here, Vadym says, "Thank you. It was important contact. I must admit, I felt that you sugarcoated a message on a visit, or the message I got earlier was not correct. The visit went well. He is fast learner and adapts constantly. Frankly, this one was expectedly easy and friendly. Will introduce him to tougher ones gradually. What was your reading?"

Can you set the scene for us? This is July 4th, 2019. What was going on?

A  So I met with President Zelensky on the previous day, July 3rd. This was in Toronto. There was a conference hosted by the Canadians on supporting Ukrainian economic reforms, and I led the U.S. delegation.

And I had this meeting with President Zelensky. And Prystaiko, I asked him what his take was on the meeting. He said, "Thank you. It was important contact. I must admit, I felt that you sugarcoated a message on a visit."

So I was not as negative about getting a White House visit scheduled as Prystaiko believed I should have been. I was saying, "Look, we're working it. We will get this done. You know, it’s -- sometimes it takes time, it's hard, but we -- you know, we are here working this."

Prystaiko was more anxious about it. And I had probably communicated with him, I can go back and look, but explaining that, you know, we're getting nowhere here. We're trying, but we're not getting any date out of the White House.

And he thought I maybe sugarcoated it when I should have been more negative in my way of presenting it with President Zelensky.

Q  Is that because something -- a message was communicated to him in Toronto, something that made him think that you had kind of led them on that the White House meeting would be occurring soon, or --

A  Well --

Q  Why does he think you sugarcoated it?

A  Yeah. Just exactly what I just said, that in the meeting with President Zelensky, I didn't say, this is a problem in terms of getting a meeting. I said we are working it, I’m confident we're going to get there, more like that. And so I think he felt that was --

Q  Sugarcoating it for President Zelensky?

A  Sugarcoating it for President Zelensky, yes.

Q  Okay. Let's go to the top of the next page. And you wrote, "I wanted to make sure he knew we are supporting him," meaning Zelensky, right?

A  Yeah.

Q  "and his stated commitment to reforms, and that there are still concerns at the highest level he needs to address proactively about Kolo" --

A  Kolomoisky.

Q  That is Kolomoisky that you're talking about earlier?

A  Yes.

Q  -- "and whether he will really pursue reforms he says. I talked to him privately about Giuliani and impact on President."

A  Yes.

Q  Let's focus on that last part there. Who are you -- which President were you referring to?

A  President Trump.

Q  Okay. And what did you communicate to President Zelensky about Giuliani's impact on President Trump?

A  I told him that he believes a lot of these negative narratives about Ukraine; that there may be people around Zelensky that are, as he said in his tweet -- or in his press, enemies of the United States; and that he is continuing to put out a negative narrative, and that that is probably influencing President Trump's thinking.

So this is that discussion that I had on July 3rd with President Zelensky that we talked about earlier.

This text message is my conveying to Vadym Prystaiko, the diplomatic advisor, what I had told to President Zelensky the day before.

Q  Okay. Thank you. That answers my question on that.

So I think I might be done with text messages. I'm not making any promises, but we can set those aside for right now.

MR. NOBLE: I'm going to let my colleague, Dan Goldman, ask a few questions.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Ambassador Volker, I want to turn back for a moment to the security assistance issue.

Let me direct your attention to Bates number 37 of your text messages, if you have them there. It is one exhibit. I don’t know which one.

MR. CASTOR: Which one of the exhibits? 37?

MR. GOLDMAN: Yeah. 37. I'm not sure which one, but -- on July 18th --

MR. CASTOR: 2. It's exhibit 2, page 2.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you. Exhibit 2.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  On July 18th at 10:19 in the morning, can you read what Bill Taylor texted to you and Gordon Sondland?

A  Yes. July 18th, Bill Taylor: "OMB" -- Office of Management and Budget, on a SVTC, that's secure video teleconference, it should be a C -- "just now said that all security assistance to Ukraine is frozen per a conversation with Mulvaney and POTUS. Over to you."

Q  So at that point, you understood that the President of the United States had issued the order to freeze the Ukrainian aid. Is that right?

A  That is what this says. I had not heard that from my assistant or from others who were at the meeting, so I was a little confused that this was true, but this is what Bill said.

Q  Did you subsequently learn whether that was true or not?

A  I believe it to be true. I don't know. I don't -- this -- I never got a clear explanation as to what happened.

Q  Well, you know that it came from OMB?

A  From OMB, which would be Mulvaney as the director.

Q  Right. And also the acting chief of staff, Mulvaney?

A  Yes.

Q  Right? And presumably he's acting at the direction of the President?

A  Presumably.

Q  Okay. You don't have any reason to think that this was not a directive from the President, do you?

A  No, I don't.

Q  In fact, none of the other agencies understood why this was happening?

A  Correct.

Q  Right? So it was not coming from any of the other interagencies that you were aware of?

A  Correct.

Q  So when -- and to your knowledge, up until it became public at the end of August, you were -- you were not aware that any Ukrainians knew about this hold, is that right --

A  That's correct.

Q  -- on the security assistance?

A  That's correct.

Q  But they then became aware of it on, I believe you said, August 29th?

A  That's my recollection.

Q  Okay. And then the next day, August 30th, was when President Trump cancelled his trip to Warsaw. Is that right?

A  I'm not sure what date that was cancelled. It could be.

Q  Okay. Well, the meeting in Warsaw with Vice President Pence was September 1st.

A  Yes.

Q  Right? So President Trump obviously cancelled before that?

A  He had been in France at the G-7, and then I believe he returned to the United States rather than do the other stop.

Q  And what did you understand, or what did you learn subsequent to Vice President Pence's meeting with President Zelensky in Warsaw that they discussed related to the security assistance?

A  It's exactly the message that we saw on the other text.

Q  You didn't learn anything more than what was written in that message?

A  No, no.

Q  Okay. Now, Vice President Pence relayed to the Ukrainians -- he did not relay an official explanation for why the aid was being held. Is that right?

A  That's my understanding, that's correct.

Q  And you were not aware of any explanation for why the aid was being held?

A  No explanation was ever given.

Q  And did you relay that to the Ukrainians as well?

A  Yes, I did.

Q  So from the Ukrainian perspective, they understood from their American counterparts that, one, the aid was being held, and two, no one had a reason why. Is that right?

A  That is correct.

Q  Okay.

A  And three -- may I? Three, that we all thought this is a mistake, and we're going to fix it.

Q  Exactly. In addition, all the professionals who focus on this area of the world thought it was a mistake?

A  Yes.

Q  Now, from July 18th up until September 1st, during that period of time, you became aware of an effort by Rudy Giuliani, at a minimum, to influence Ukrainian to open these two particular investigations. Is that right?

A  Yes, to have that included in a statement the Ukrainians would make.

Q  Well, it's not just to have it in a statement --

A  Yeah.

Q  They wanted --

A  That if they stated they would do it.

Q  -- them to begin the investigations, right?

A  Yes.

Q  It would be memorialized in a statement --

A  Right.

Q  -- but that's what Giuliani wanted.

A  Yes.

Q  And now in retrospect, you know from reading that call record that Donald Trump wanted that as well, right?

A  Yes. The call record, I think, kind of speaks for itself as to what the President said. It's a little different than saying Burisma and 2016, but the call record is there.

Q  Right. As part of your job as a special envoy to Ukraine, do you read all of President Zelensky's press releases?

A  Do I read them all? No.

Q  You don't read them all?

A  No.

Q  You don't want to know -- well, did you -- do you think it would be part of your duties to read a readout of President Zelensky related to a telephone call that he had with Donald Trump --

A  Yes.

Q  -- the President of the United States?

A  Yes. That, I probably saw.

Q  And did you read that Ukrainian readout?

A  I probably did. I'd have to see it to remember if I did or not.

Q  Okay. Well, I want to mark this as --

MR. SWALWELL: 12.

MR. GOLDMAN: Exhibit 12.

MR. CASTOR: We might need copies of this one.

MR. NOBLE: We have plenty of copies.

[Volker Exhibit No. 12

was marked for identification.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Do you recognize this to be a readout from the Ukrainians of a call between President Zelensky and President Trump on July 25th?

A  Yes, I do recognize this, and I did read it at the time.

Q  So you did read it at the time. Could you read the second paragraph, please?

A  "Donald Trump is convinced that the new Ukrainian Government will be able to quickly improve image of Ukraine, complete investigation of corruption cases, which inhibited the interaction between Ukraine and the U.S.A."

Q  Okay. When you read that at the time, what did you think?

A  I thought that's good; that that was the whole idea, is for President Zelensky to convince President Trump he is serious about fighting corruption, he's going to prevent things from happening in the future.

We've had enormous issues of pressing Ukraine to fight corruption under previous governments in Ukraine, getting an anticorruption court established, setting up a special prosecutor's office for corruption cases, special investigatory office of corruption. It was a real struggle to push Ukraine to fight corruption, and that had been an impediment.

And so he's saying that, "I believe Zelensky is serious about changing the direction of things." And he's saying here that he believes that he convinced President Trump that he is serious and will be able to do this, and that will help to improve the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.

Q  All right. Let's try this again in a different way.

There was no readout from the office of the presidency here. Is that right?

A  You mean a readout --

Q  There was no official readout from the White House of this call.

A  I don't believe so, no.

Q  Right. Did that strike you as a little odd?

A  Not really. I don't know if all calls are read out, and if they are, they are just so perfunctory, you don't learn anything from it anyway.

Q  So that's a very nice gloss on the call and which he read in this readout, but let me take you back to the text message that you wrote to Andriy Yermak right before this call where you said, "Heard from White House. Assuming President Z convinces Trump he will investigate/'get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington."

So with that knowledge in hand, when you read this, you did not think that what the Ukrainians were referring to was the specific investigation that you told them to reference in the call?

A  What I said is -- well, two different things.

First off, what the actual statement says is "complete investigation of corruption cases which inhibited the interaction." So I take it to mean what it says.

Second, what I said concerning that message to Andriy Yermak is, "convince the President," so be convincing, "and get to the bottom of what happened in 2016."

So this is looking backward at whether there was any election interference.

Q  So you didn't say to Andriy Yermak: Convince President Trump that you are really serious about rooting out corruption in Ukraine, and then we can set a White House visit, did you?

A  No. You said -- No. It said -- I have it in front of me here, but you know what it says.

Q  Right.

A  It says --

Q  And given your conversations with Rudy Giuliani and the fact that you had connected Rudy Giuliani to Andriy Yermak shortly before this call, you also understood that that was -- that those investigations were very important to, at a minimum, Rudy Giuliani, right?

A  The connection between Andriy Yermak and Rudy Giuliani, I believe, is the 22nd of July.

Q  And this call was the 25th?

A  Right. And they did not have a detailed conversation until August 2nd when they met in Madrid. So I put them together and then had no follow-up from either of them about that other than --

Q  And just to be clear, they had planned that meeting in Madrid prior to the President's call -- A Correct.

Q  -- on July 25th?

A  That is correct.

Q  Do you know whether Rudy Giuliani had any role in making that call happen between President Trump and President Zelensky on July 25th?

A  I don't know whether he did.

Q  You don’t know?

A  No.

Q  You didn't hear anything about it?

A  No. He did not take credit for that. And I believe he may have been helpful, but I don't know that.

Q  Okay. So moving ahead now where we are with the security assistance where I was before is, you were aware that during that whole time from mid July until late August, that the security assistance had been held --

A  Uh-huh.

Q  -- and that there was no official explanation for it?

A  Right.

Q  And then that message was relayed to the Ukrainians at the end of August, right?

A  Which message?

Q  That there was -- there was a hold on the security assistance and that there was no explanation for why?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay.

A  And that we were going to try to fix it.

Q  And that you were going to try to fix it.

And that during this time while that was going on, Rudy Giuliani, and now we know President Trump as well from this call, was pushing Ukraine to initiate these investigations, correct?

A  That is true.

Q  So, Ambassador Volker -- one moment.

Before I get to the next point, if we could go to 42, which I don't believe is an exhibit. Actually, it is. We'll get the exhibit. I'll find the exhibit.

Do you have it in front of you?

A  I do.

Q  Okay. Near the top of the page, 7/22 at 4:27 p.m., could you read what you texted to Gordon Sondland?

A  4:27 p.m.?

Q  Yes.

A  Kurt Volker: "Orchestrated a great phone call with Rudy and Yermak. They are going to get together when Rudy goes to Madrid in a couple of weeks."

Q  Can you read the next one?

A  "In the meantime, Rudy is now advocating for a phone call."

Q  And what did you understand that to mean?

A  That he would support the President calling Zelensky.

Q  Well, you actually used the word "advocating." That's different than "support," right?

A  Yeah. Advocate for, support. That's the same thing.

Q  Well, "advocating" actually, doesn't that mean that he’s actually pushing for it rather than just supporting one? He's affirmatively trying to make a phone call happen, that's -- correct me if I'm wrong.

A  Yeah. Is now advocating for a phone call, is now supporting a phone -- I -- I take them to be the same, but, okay; advocating for, urging that there be a phone call.

Q  Okay. And if you read two lines down at 4:28:48.

A  Now, to be clear, I never heard back from Rudy. That's what he told me, but then I don't know whether he did or not.

Q  Okay. If you could read --

A  Two lines down. "I can tell Bolton and you can tell Mick" -- that is Mulvaney, the OMB Director, that Gordon knows -- "that Rudy agrees on the call if that helps."

Q  And then 3 days later, the call occurred, right?

A  Yes.

Q  And this was a phone call that you had been trying to get --

A  Yes.

Q  -- for a couple months, right?

A  Yes.

Q  Now, Ambassador Volker, given the pressure that Rudy Giuliani was putting on the Ukrainian administration to initiate these investigations, do you not think that the Ukrainians would not have understood that the actual explanation for the security assistance being held up was the fact that they did not issue that statement, or they had not initiated those investigations if there was no official explanation?

A  That -- I see why you're asking this question.

Q  Because it makes sense?

A  But even my own understanding of this is back to the meeting I had in the Oval Office with the others and the President in May.

His views on Ukraine were so sharply negative, and reinforced in a negative understanding, that it makes more sense to me, it's more direct that this is happening independently; that he sees that we are about to launch a notification of millions of dollars to Ukraine. Wait a second. You know, are they -- can we work with these guys? Are they corrupt still? Why should we be giving them American money? Why aren't the Germans doing this?

That's what I interpreted at the time what the issue is. And I don’t know whether I said it that explicitly to the Ukrainians, but I think it’s reasonable to see this as something happening on its own.

Q  Right. Now, you said in one text that you were out of the loop, you had only two phone conversations with Donald Trump, you were not privy to Rudy Giuliani's conversations with the Ukrainians. Is that right?

A  Yes.

Q  And, in fact, you weren't even present for Mike Pence's meeting with Zelensky?

A  That's correct.

Q  So you don't really have firsthand knowledge as to what messages were relayed to the Ukrainians. Is that right?

A  In those meetings, yes, that's correct.

Q  Yes. That's right.

The -- did you -- you reviewed the call record of the July 25th call --

A  Yes.

Q  -- closely?

A  Yes.

Q  Did you see anywhere where President Trump mentions the word "corruption"?

A  I'd have to go back and read it. I'm suspecting you know the answer. (Pause-referring).

Okay. I do not see the word "corruption." I see a few things that infer corruption, but I do not see the word "corruption."

Q  In fact, in your conversation with the President in May, the stated reasons why he had a deeply rooted distrust or dislike of the Ukrainians was because of what he perceived to be their role in the 2016 election and/or the Paul Manaforte case. Is that right?

A  That was mentioned, but it was a long -- longer statement that "they are all corrupt, they are all terrible people, and," you know, "I don't want to spend any time with that." That was -- it was a broader statement. And he also said, "and they tried to take me down."

Q  So he didn't have any specific examples other than the fact that they tried to take him down?

A  He did not give any other specific examples.

Q  Right. And, in fact, in this call, he does specifically reference an investigation related to the 2016 election and an investigation related to Joe Biden, right?

A  He does.

Q  Okay. So you don't really, sitting here, believe, do you, that the President or Rudy Giuliani needed some assurance that President Zelensky was actually against corruption? That's not what they were really concerned about. You understand that, right?

A  Yeah. No, I do believe that. We have to differentiate between the President and Rudy Giuliani.

What I heard from President Trump in the meeting in the oval office was blanket, like, "this -- these are terrible people, this is a corrupt country," you know, "I don’t believe it."

I made the argument that President Zelensky is the real deal, he is going to try to fix things, and, you know, he just did not believe it. He waved it off. So there’s a general issue there.

He did not mention investigations to me in that meeting, or call for investigations. I was not aware that he did so in the July 25th call later.

His attitude towards Ukraine was just general and negative.

Rudy Giuliani, as we know from a lot of his public commentary, talks about this all the time. He’s interested in that, but that doesn't mean that the President is as focused on that as Rudy is, and so I would -- I would differentiate there.

And I think the target as I saw it, is to make sure the President is not being reinforced in such a negative view, and gets on with a bilateral relationship with the new president.

[5:05 p.m.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Are you aware of President Trump expressing publicly any concerns about corruption in any other countries?

A  Well, Russia. I've heard him mention, you know --

Q  You have?

A  -- corruption in Russia, in the same conversation, like they're all terrible. I can't say that I've been --

Q  Do you recall -- just on the topic of Russia, do you recall when President Trump in Helsinki said that he believed Vladimir Putin over his intelligence agencies?

A  I do remember that press conference.

Q  Okay.

A  But we're talking about corruption, and I think we're talking really, you know, business climate there.

MR. NOBLE: But President Trump took multiple meetings with President Putin but would not meet with President Zelensky, right? To this day he's not met with President Zelensky in the Oval Office, but he would take meetings with President Putin. So if he's truly concerned about corruption, why meet with Putin but not meet with Zelensky?

MR. VOLKER: Yeah. I can't answer other than that I think it's important that both take place. You know, it's important to fight corruption. It’s important that the President meet with Zelensky and support him. It's also important that the President meet with President Putin because we can't have a risk of conflict with Russia either.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Ambassador Volker, we understand that you are in a difficult position, and I don't think anyone here has any doubt that you were singularly focused on promoting the bilateral relationship between the United States and Ukraine and supporting Ukraine in their efforts to promote democracy and in their best interest, which I take it you understand is also in our best interest.

A  Yes.

Q  Is that right?

But you don't live under a rock. And for you to sit here and say that you don't think that through all of your efforts to persuade Rudy Giuliani, through all of the Ukrainian efforts to communicate and coordinate with Rudy Giuliani that he’s acting alone as a rogue actor without any connection to Donald Trump, who is his client.

And part of the reason that we know that and that you know that sitting here is that both Rudy Giuliani and President Trump have admitted as much. So I'm struggling to understand why you are still trying to tell us that they were not interested in pursuing these investigations and that that had nothing to do with the President's views on Ukraine?

A  Well, there's a difference between understanding at the time and what we have in public domain today. So at the time, neither President Trump nor Rudy Giuliani, after that first breakfast meeting that I had with him, ever brought up Joe Biden.

I had pushed back on that and separated it, and said, one thing about corruption in Ukraine, whether Ukrainian officials may have done improper things, Burisma, or otherwise, and that -- and so every time that came up after that I felt I had already put up that marker.

Q  Okay. Now, understanding that you've been testifying today primarily to what you knew at the time, let's just take a step back and look back with hindsight that is 20/20, because you know this area very well. You're an expert in this area.

Now, looking back, as you see it today, understanding that you are not privy to a lot of this information, do you recognize the concerns -- or the Ukrainian -- do you recognize that the Ukrainians may very well have perceived that the security assistance hold related to Rudy Giuliani's efforts to influence them to initiate these investigations?

A  Right. Is it possible that they believe that, yes, it's possible. I had conversations with them about this after August 29, and for about a week and they never raised that with me.

Q  Understood.

Mr. Noble, do you want to go through a couple of the other meetings?

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Sure. And I wanted to go back to a point of clarification. When we were talking about the statement that was being drafted in August of 2018, I believe you testified it was never issued.

A  Right.

Q  The Ukrainians dropped it. But they continued to talk about a possible interview --

A  Yes.

Q  -- that President Zelensky was going to do, correct?

A  Yes. I was not involved in that. I heard about that from Gordon Sondland that he had been in touch with Ukraine, and there was talk about Zelensky giving an interview in which he would talk about his commitment to investigating things that happened in the past. I don't know the details of those conversations, and I don't believe any such interview happened.

Q  And was the plan for that interview for President Zelensky to specifically mention Burisma and the 2016 elections?

A  I don't know.

Q  So I would like to go through and talk about some of the other conversations between U.S. officials and Ukrainians, and I'm going to do this in chronological order. So I'd like to go back in time to April 21 of 2019 when President Zelensky was elected. And there was, I understand, a congratulatory call --

A  Yeah.

Q  -- between President Trump and President Zelensky. Is that correct?

A  That is correct.

Q  Did you participate in that call?

A  I did not.

Q  Okay. Did you get a readout about the call?

A  Just that it was a good congratulatory phone call.

That's all.

Q  Do you know how long the call lasted?

A  I don't.

Q  You do not?

A  No.

Q  Okay. Do you know who else participated in the call?

A  I don't.

Q  Okay. And do you know what in sum and substance was said by President Trump and President Zelensky during the call?

A  No. My understanding is that it was just a congratulatory phone call on his election victory.

Q  Do you know whether they discussed Joe Biden or Hunter Biden?

A  I don't.

Q  Do you know whether they discussed Burisma?

A  I do not.

Q  Do you know whether they discussed Paul Manafort?

A  I don't.

Q  Do you know whether they discussed a White House visit?

A  I don't.

Q  Do you know whether there's a transcript or a summary or a memo or notes of that call?

A  I don't know that either.

Q  You never saw such notes?

A  No. No.

Q  Did you ever discuss the call with Secretary Pompeo or anyone else at the State Department?

A  Just the fact of a congratulatory phone call, no more than that.

Q  Did anyone ever express any concerns about the April 21st call?

A  Not that I heard.

Q  So I'd like to now turn to the May 20, 2019, the U.S. delegation to the inauguration of President Zelensky in Kyiv.

A  Yes.

Q  It's our understanding that the White House had put the inauguration for President Zelensky on Vice President Pence's calendar, but at some point President Trump instructed Vice President Pence not to attend the inauguration. Were you aware of that at the time?

A  I was aware that we were trying to get Vice President Pence to lead the delegation, and in the end he wasn't able to do so. Given that this was put together over the course of a couple days, I'm not surprised -- I wasn't surprised at the time that the Vice President couldn't do it.

Q  Do you know the reason why President Trump directed Vice President Pence not to go to the inauguration?

A  I was not aware that it was at the direction of President Trump, and I assumed it was just a matter of scheduling.

Q  Who led the U.S. delegation?

A  Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.

Q  Why was that?

A  Cabinet level, so that we were at least, if we weren't getting the vice president, it was still important to have someone at a cabinet level, and because we have a lot of issues with Ukraine on energy. He has an interest in Ukraine, so I think he was very happy to take on the assignment.

Q  To what extent had Secretary Perry been involved in U.S.-Ukraine relations up to that point?

A  He and I had not really intersected up to that point on Ukraine. I had known him years past, but nothing concerning Ukraine in a contemporary time space until we went there together.

Q  Who are the three amigos?

A  That refers -- I don't use that phrase either because I think of three other people as the three amigos.

Q  Fair enough.

A  But that refers -- Gordon Sondland usually uses that, and he was referring to himself and to Rick Perry and to me.

Q  Why didn't Secretary Pompeo lead the delegation? Wouldn't he have been more appropriate?

A  He would have been a great choice. I don't know why, probably also scheduling.

Q  Okay. Who else was in the U.S. delegation besides Secretary Perry?

A  Senator Ron Johnson was there as well and our Charge d'affaires at the time Joe Pennington.

Q  Joe Pennington?

A  Yeah.

Q  Was Ambassador Sondland there?

A  Yes, he was one of the ones in the delegation.

Q  Okay. And you were there as well?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. Do you know who they met with in Kyiv during the inauguration, which Ukrainian officials?

A  I have to think back. We met with President Zelensky. Several advisers were with him in that meeting. We met with the speaker of the parliament, the then-speaker of the parliament because it was before the parliamentary election. Yeah, I'd have to think back who else we may have met with.

Q  Okay. During the meeting with Zelensky, was there any discussion about Rudy Giuliani or the investigations --

A  No.

Q  -- that we've been talking about?

A  No. That did not come up.

Q  Do you know whether President Trump directed anyone in the U.S. delegation to deliver a message to Zelensky about the investigations?

A  No.

Q  You don’t know one way or the other?

A  I don't know one way or the other. I don't believe anything's happened, but I don't know.

Q  Do you know whether Ambassador Sondland delivered any message to President Zelensky or any of his advisers?

A  I don't believe so. I don't know.

Q  Do you know whether Ambassador Sondland had any one-on-one meetings or meetings that you did not attend while you were in Kyiv for the inauguration?

A  For the inauguration, I believe we did everything together.

MR. CASTOR: I think we've got the 45 minutes is up.

MR. NOBLE: Okay. We have more, but we'll turn it over to you.

MR. CASTOR: Okay. Anybody need a break?

MR. VOLKER: Yeah, maybe a quick break.

MR. NOBLE: 5-minute break?

MR. VOLKER: Yeah.

[Recess.]

MR. BITAR: We'll return on the record. It's 5:27 for the minority.

MR. NUNES: Welcome, Ambassador. My name is Devon Nunes. I'm from California. I just wanted to welcome you to the committee.

MR. VOLKER: Thank you.

MR. NUNES: I was a little surprised that this was still going, so I'm sure you're exhausted. But from what I understand, you're answering the questions, sticking to the facts, and I appreciate your willingness to come in on your own and testify before the committee here.

MR. VOLKER: Thank you, Congressman.

MR. NUNES: And I don't think we have very many questions left, if any, but we may have just a couple.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Yeah. Just a few. We're very respectful of your time. These all-day interviews can be a challenge, so we would like -- we wish you could get home by, you know, 6:00 or at some reasonable hour, so we'll try not to stand in the way of that.

A  Thank you.

Q  Appreciate you sticking to the facts that you have firsthand knowledge about. In the last round there was some questions that present some ambiguous facts --

A  Uh-huh.

Q  -- you know, for what reason Vice President Pence didn't lead the delegation. You know, that's what investigations do. They look for evidence and proof. And, you know, you were asked whether Vice President Pence didn't travel because of, you know, the aid issue or there wasn't an investigation into Joe Biden and so forth. And you testified that you didn't have any firsthand knowledge on that and, in fact, you said it was probably his schedule.

A  That was my assumption. It is difficult to get things on the President or Vice President's calendar.

Q  And you mentioned that it happened on short notice?

A  It was a very short notice announcement of when the inauguration would be, so I think, as a -- you know, anybody in the world only had like 4 days' notice, and putting together a presidential delegation in that short space of time is tough.

Q  But the delegation did include some key players, Senator Johnson?

A  Yes.

Q  Secretary Perry?

A  Yes.

Q  And Ambassador Sondland?

A  Sondland.

Q  So that was a very reasonable size delegation?

A  It was a very -- it was the largest delegation from any country there, and it was a high-level one.

Q  Okay. So there's no reason to suggest that the roster of officials on the delegation was anything less than what you'd expect?

A  Right. It would have been nice to have the Vice President, but, you know, you can't always -- yeah.

Q  Or the Secretary?

A  Yeah.

Q  You were asked whether there's any mention of corruption on the call, going back to Exhibit 4, the readout of the telephone conversation. I'm not certain the word "corruption" appears, but, you know, if you turn to page three at the bottom --

A  Yes.

Q  -- the President says some very bad people.

A  Yes.

Q  You know, I don't know if that's an ambiguous statement or not, but, you know, reasonable people could equate very bad people --

A  Right.

Q  -- to corruption.

A  Yes. So the question that I answered was whether the word "corruption" appears and does the President say it. And I said, no. I said, there are some things that you can infer, and that was what I was looking at is, he talks about a prosecutor who was very good getting shut down, says that’s really unfair. He says, they shut down -- you had some very bad people involved. So that's an inference even if it's not using the word "corruption."

Q  At various points today we've talked about the President's deep-seated concern about Ukraine, the business culture there. And we've gone through several reasons why the President may have had that view, whether it was related to his prior business experience --

A  Possibly.

Q  -- whether it was related to the business experience of his colleagues in the business community --

A  Possibly.

Q  -- whether it related to Paul Manafort --

A  Possibly.

Q  -- whether it related to, you know, this allegation of Ms. Chalupa. But among all of those things, you would testify that indeed the President had a very genuine --

A  Yes.

Q  -- deep-seated concern about Ukraine and corruption, for whatever reason, a variety of reasons?

A  Yes.

Q  Is that true?

A  That is true, and that was crystal clear to me.

Q  And you have been with the President and you've had readouts about his concerns about Ukraine.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  And so is it fair to say that this wasn't a pretext --

A  Right.

Q  -- for all things Biden?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay.

A  Correct.

Q  Exhibit 12 was the Ukrainians' readout from the call.

A  Say that again?

Q  Exhibit 12 earlier was the --

A  Oh, yes, the statement from the President's Office of Ukraine, yes.

Q  Right. And, you know, at various points today we've talked about, you had a readout from the State Department after the call happened?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  Nobody told you anything about that?

A  Right.

Q  You had a readout from your Ukrainian folks --

A  Right.

Q  -- that you have a rather sophisticated relationship with --

A  Yes.

Q  I mean, you're in constant contact with these Ukrainian officials?

A  Yes.

Q  You have trust. They trust you?

A  Yes.

Q  And they never mentioned anything about Joe Biden to you?

A  That’s correct.

Q  And then on this readout I don't see the word "Biden, Burisma, Hunter Biden," anything, right?

A  That is correct.

Q  Okay. So this is like another data point, a piece of evidence about the call that, you know, if you're looking to characterize what happened on the call, this is another piece of evidence?

A  Right.

Q  This morning we spoke in some detail about the delay in the assistance funds.

A  Yes.

Q  And you testified that these delays happen.

A  They do.

Q  There are complicated facts. There's different power centers on any type of assistance to a foreign nation. Is that correct?

A  In general, yes, that's true.

Q  Okay. But you believed all along that these assistance funds would be released?

A  Yes.

Q  And the United States commitment --

A  Yes.

Q  -- to stepping up the aid to Ukraine, and especially the types of aid, the more lethal and helping them with some, you know, anti-weapons systems, was it in the United States interest?

A  Yes.

Q  Was it in the interest of Ukraine?

A  Yes.

Q  And you expressed confidence, you know, that this aid would be released?

A  Yes, I did.

Q  And you also testified that you tried to convey that to the Ukrainians?

A  Yes, I did.

Q  And you tried to convey that to the other U.S. officials?

A  Yes.

Q  So to the extent there were some, you know, hair-on-fire moments, for lack of a better word, that this wasn't going to happen, you stayed the course, you stayed confident, and indeed, in the end, the assistance funds were --

A  That is exactly right.

Q  There was some discussion about whether President Trump has met with Rudy Giuliani in the Oval Office. Are you aware of any such things?

A  I have no knowledge of that.

Q  President Trump has met with -- I'm sorry, with Vladimir Putin in the Oval Office?

A  Is that a question?

Q  Yeah. Do you know if --

A  I don't know. I'd have to go back and check. I know he's had meetings with Putin. I don't know whether he's met him in the Oval Office.

Q  Most of these meetings have occurred in international locations, haven't they?

A  That's my understanding, yeah.

Q  But I believe there was a suggestion that Putin had been invited to the Oval Office and Zelensky hadn't -- in one of the earlier rounds?

A  Yeah. There have been meetings with President Putin.

Q  Right.

A  And there had been no -- it had been difficult scheduling a meeting with President Zelensky. That being said, we had a meeting with President Poroshenko in 2017. President Zelensky was elected in May of 2019, and we had a meeting in September of 2019. So it took a lot of work, but we got there.

Q  But since President Trump has been in office, you're not aware of any meeting with Vladimir Putin in the Oval Office, are you?

A  No.

Q  In New York the President did meet with Zelensky?

A  Yes.

Q  And so the President has met with Zelensky at international meetings, this one happened to be in New York, just like the President has met with Vladimir Putin at international meetings, correct?

A  That is correct.

Q  Okay. I think that's all we have for -- Mr. Perry, I’m sorry.

MR. PERRY: Thank you.

Ambassador, in the last series there was a lot of time spent on the fact that the funds weren't forthcoming and you didn't know why, nobody seemed to know why, but you were going to have to address the officials in the Ukrainian Government in your normal course of your business.

And it was implied that surely they knew because of Mr. Giuliani's statements, things in the press, that there could only be one thing, right. We don't have the money. The money is not forthcoming yet. You can't tell me the reason why. So the only reason that can be is because these investigations are or are not involved. That was kind of the implication.

Now, previously in another round you had talked to me about the trust that the same officials from Ukraine had in you personally.

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. PERRY: And you had conversations with them about the fact --

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. PERRY: -- that the money was not forthcoming and you didn't know why.

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. PERRY: And not once did they imply, ask, infer that you know of that it had anything to do with investigation?

MR. VOLKER: That is true.

MR. PERRY: And you're confident that if that was something they were concerned about, that they were worried that that was -- there was a connection, a nexus, that they would have asked you or brought that up as a possibility?

MR. VOLKER: It never came up in conversation with them, and I believe they had trust in me that they would have asked if that was really what they were worried about.

MR. PERRY: Okay. I yield.

MR. CASTOR: That's all we have for now.

MR. SWALWELL: Ambassador, with respect to the security assistance, am I correct that that was appropriated by Congress in 2018? Is that right?

MR. VOLKER: I believe that's right.

MR. SWALWELL: Okay. And so the second that’s appropriated and the President signs into law, the Ukrainians have an expectation that it's coming. Is that right?

MR. VOLKER: That is correct.

MR. SWALWELL: Okay. So whether they learned about the hold in August or before, every day that goes by after it's appropriated and they don't receive it, as far as they're concerned, it's binary. They don't have it. Is that right?

MR. VOLKER: Yes, I think that's fair.

MR. SWALWELL: Okay. I'll turn it over to Mr. Noble.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  In the text messaging exchange on September 8 or September 9 with Bill Taylor, where he says that he believes that the aid was being held up and the White House visit was being withheld because of the investigations, do you know why he had that concern or what basis he had for believing that?

A  No, I don't. I believe, and I'd have to go back and read it again, but I believe it was the Politico article that suggested that. And we, Gordon Sondland and I, both spoke with Bill and said, I don't think that's it, and don't panic over this. We are working to get this fixed.

Q  But Bill Taylor was threatening to resign if that turned out to be the case, that that was U.S. policy?

A  No, I think the way I read his note, if we actually did not deliver the security assistance, that would be a major change in U.S. policy and that would cause him to resign.

Q  I'd like to ask you about Secretary Perry. After the May 20 delegation to Kyiv, did he have a continuing role going forward in dealing with Ukraine?

A  He did. We tried to work as a team, that group that had been part of the presidential delegation, at least Gordon and Rick Perry and myself and with Bill Taylor, in order to try to keep momentum, keep Ukraine on the front burner, build a bilateral relationship, get the White House visit, and so forth. And he had some particular issues in the energy sector that he was very keen on working with the Ukrainians, and so he was very active on that.

Q  Okay. So he continued to communicate with the Ukrainians at that point -- from that point?

A  Yes. Yes, I'm sure he did.

Q  Okay. I want to ask you about the May 23, 2019, Oval Office meeting.

A  Yes.

Q  I think we talked a little about that at the beginning. But could you just remind us, who all was present for that meeting?

A  Yes. To recap, we had the delegation that had been the presidential delegation, Rick Perry, myself, Gordon Sondland, and Senator Johnson. I believe Mr. Kupperman, the deputy national security adviser was there, I believe Mr. Mulvaney was there, but I'm not sure about that. Our Charge at the time in Kyiv, Joe Pennington, was not there.

Q  Okay. And approximately how long did the meeting last?

A  I would suspect about a half an hour.

Q  And can you describe the discussion --

A  Yes.

Q  -- that occurred?

A  Yes. The President started the meeting and started with kind of a negative assessment of the Ukraine. As I've said earlier --

Q  Yep.

A  -- it's a terrible place, all corrupt, terrible people, just dumping on Ukraine.

Q  And they were out to get me in 2016.

A  And they were out to get -- and they tried to take me down.

Q  In 2016?

A  Yes. And each of us took turns from this delegation giving our point of view, which was that this is a new crowd, it's a new President, he is committed to doing the right things. I believe I said, he agrees with you. That's why he got elected. It is a terrible place, and he campaigned on cleaning it up, and that's why the Ukrainian people supported him.

So, you know, we strongly encouraged him to engage with this new President because he's committed to fighting all of those things that President Trump was complaining about.

Q  And how did the President react?

A  He just didn't believe it. He was skeptical. And he also said, that's not what I hear. I hear, you know, he's got some terrible people around him. And he referenced that he hears from Mr. Giuliani as part of that.

Q  Can you explain a little bit more about what the President said about Rudy Giuliani in that meeting?

A  He said that's not what I hear. I hear a whole bunch of other things. And I don't know how he phrased it with Rudy, but it was -- I think he said, not as an instruction but just as a comment, talk to Rudy, you know. He knows all of these things, and they've got some bad people around him. And that was the nature of it.

It was clear that he also had other sources. It wasn't only Rudy Giuliani. I don't know who those might be, but he -- or at least he said, I hear from people.

Q  Okay. Did anyone else come into the Oval Office during the meeting that you can recall?

A  Not that I can recall. It's possible, but -- I was sitting facing the desk, and he was sitting facing us, and I couldn't see what was happening behind me.

Q  He being the President?

A  Yeah, the President sitting at his desk, the delegation facing him, and I could not see what was happening behind.

Q  Okay. Do you know whether Rudy Giuliani was at the White House that day?

A  I don't.

Q  He was not in the meeting?

A  He was not in the meeting.

Q  And what was the outcome of that meeting? What was the conclusion, the takeaways?

A  The outcome was that the President agreed to sign a congratulatory letter to President Zelensky and invite him to the White House.

Q  And that's the letter we talked about earlier?

A  And that's the letter we have.

Q  Okay. So I'd like to move on, ask you quickly about a June 4, 2019 meeting between Jared Kushner and President Zelensky at the U.S. mission to the EU's Independence Day celebration. Are you aware of that meeting?

A  I am aware of President Zelensky going to U.S. -- or to the European Union, and I believe there was a dinner that Gordon Sondland was at with him or maybe Gordon even hosted. I'm not sure who else was there.

Q  Did you attend the meeting?

A  I did not.

Q  Okay. Did you prep the meeting?

A  No, I did not.

Q  Okay. Did you get a readout from the meeting?

A  I did not really get a readout either, other than Gordon told me that Jay Leno was there. And that was --

Q  Why was Jay Leno there?

A  I have no idea.

Q  And who else -- Secretary Perry was there, correct?

A  I don't know. I don't know the answer to that.

Q  Oh, you don't know.

A  I don't know.

Q  You don't know the participants on the U.S. side?

A  No, I don't.

Q  Do you know anything else about the June 4 meeting?

A  I don't. I was not really plugged into that.

Q  All right. So I want to move to -- jump to the July 10th meeting.

A  Yes.

Q  This is with the Ukrainians.

A  Yes.

Q  Danylyuk and Yermak at the White House?

A  Yes. Yes. With John Bolton.

Q  Can you just describe kind of the course of events for the Ukrainians visit to Washington, D.C., who they met with, the sequence of meetings that you participated in, just give us the lay of the land.

A  Yeah. To the best of my recollection, Danylyuk was coming in his official capacity as the chairman of the National Security and Defense Council for a meeting with Bolton as a counterpart, so starting up that relationship. I had drinks with him the night before.

Andriy Yermak was also in town at the same time. This was not fully coordinated between the two of them. And there was some obvious, I don't want to call it tension, but a little sense of Danylyuk assuming the official role when Yermak feels that he's the one closer to President Zelensky, so it just created a little bit of a dynamic between them that you could see. I met with -- so I said I met with Danylyuk for drinks in the evening before.

Q  Where did you have drinks?

A  At the Metropolitan Club. And the next morning I met with Yermak for coffee.

Q  And where was that?

A  And that was at the Trump Hotel. And then I saw both of them at the meeting with John Bolton.

Q  At the White House?

A  At the White House.

Q  Okay. And remind us who the other participants were.

A  I believe it was Rick Perry, Gordon Sondland, myself, an NSC staffer, I'm not sure who it was now, somebody from the National Security Council staff, John Bolton himself.

Q  What was discussed at the meeting, sum and substance?

A  Yeah. It was --

Q  Is this the one you were telling us about earlier where Danylyuk was getting way too bureaucratic?

A  Exactly, yes. It was talking about legislation to reform the security services, legislation to reform the defense establishment, and really getting down into the bureaucratic weeds, and not conveying a top-level message, a strategic message.

And Yermak didn't say a word in the meeting. It was only Danylyuk doing his presentation and talking because he was -- Yermak was respecting Danylyuk's role of making this presentation. And the meeting was just kind of flat, and I thought it was a missed opportunity.

Q  Did you have a goal for the meeting, something that was supposed to happen with Bolton?

A  Well, two things: One of them, I wasn't involved in scheduling the meeting. It was just a normal, you know, he's coming as a new counterpart, but I was hoping that Danylyuk would give Bolton more of a political sense about what's going on in Ukraine, who the new team is, who Zelensky is, and he didn't talk about that. So I thought that was the missed opportunity. He did not convey what's really happening.

And I was also hoping that with that John Bolton would become more activated in trying to get the date for the White House visit for Zelensky, and that didn't happen.

Q  Which had been promised by President Trump in that letter?

A  Yes.

Q  At the end of May?

A  Yes. And that's why I texted Bill Taylor that this was not good.

Q  Was there any discussion during that meeting about Giuliani's --

A  No.

Q  -- activities in Ukraine?

A  No.

Q  Okay. Anything about the investigations that we've been talking about?

A  No.

Q  Was there any discussion about possible U.S. sanctions on a Russian oil pipeline?

A  That’s possible. I don't remember, but it is possible that that was a topic.

Q  Was there a discussion of possible Trump-Zelensky Oval Office meeting at that meeting?

A  Yes. Yes. I'm sure --

Q  What was discussed in that about that?

A  It was just do we have a date for a visit yet, and John Bolton saying, no, we don't have a date.

Q  Did he give an explanation why?

A  I believe it was just scheduling. You know, it's tough to schedule. The President's got a lot of things stacked up on his calendar looking forward, not giving a substantive reason but a scheduling reason.

Q  That's what Bolton gave?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. Were there any other meetings between the Ukrainians and U.S. Government officials on that visit to D.C.?

A  Probably. I don't know. Well, I do know. I take that back. I do know that Andriy met with Members of Congress.

Q  Do you know who Andriy met with?

A  I don't. But he told --

Q  Did you ever get a readout of who --

A  No. No. He told me subsequently and it was probably -- we're probably looking at least a month later, we were talking, and he mentioned that not only was he there for the Bolton meeting but he had other meetings with Members of Congress as well, bipartisan.

Q  I want to jump forward to July 26, 2019. That's the day after the Trump Zelensky call.

A  Yes.

Q  You had a meeting in Kyiv along with Ambassador Sondland and Ukrainian officials, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  Who did you meet with?

A  So on the 25th I had a series of meetings with a variety of people. I wanted to meet with the heads of each of the different parties that had been elected to the parliament. So new parliament, new people in town.

So that would include Poroshenko, who has his own party; Tymoshenko, who has her own party; Slava Vakarchuk (ph) , who has a new party called The Voice; a representative of the United Opposition Block, which tends to be more Russian leaning, that was Boyko.

And I'm sure there are a few others. I think I had a breakfast with humanitarian organizations working in the Donbas, maybe a civil society group as well that are dealing with the anticorruption issues. The next day -- I had lunch with Yermak that day as well, on the 25th.

Q  On the 25th?

A  On the 25th.

On the 26th I had -- I guess that’s when I had the breakfast with the humanitarian organizations. We had a meeting with President Zelensky. Bill Taylor was at that meeting as well, along with other staff from the embassy. And then we went out to visit the conflict zone.

Q  Okay. Did you discuss with the Ukrainians after President Trump and President Zelensky's call about the call, having any discussions --

A  Just very briefly as we discussed before, just top lines. They were pleased that the call had taken place. It was a congratulatory call. They thought it went well. And they were encouraged again because the President had asked them to pick dates for coming to the White House.

Can I also add --

Q  Sure.

A  -- the principle topic of the meeting with Zelensky at the time was what was going on in Stanitsa Luhanska with the disengagement of Ukrainian forces, what the Russians were doing, and how the Ukrainians now saw the next steps of how to improve the ceasefire, work towards Minsk implementation.

This was the first time that Zelensky really seemed to have a command of those issues and was doing things. And so we had a -- I'd say, at least two-thirds of the conversation, if not more, was just about that.

Q  Okay. I want to fast forward to September 9 of 2019.

A  Yep.

Q  Were you aware on that date that the Intelligence Committee, the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and the Foreign Affairs Committee launched an investigation into Rudy Giuliani's activities in Ukraine, the withholding of -- or the freeze of military assistance to Ukraine? Were you aware that that investigation had been launched?

A  Yeah. There are two letters -- there were two letters sent from the three committees to Secretary Pompeo, one seeking this transcribed testimony and another one seeking documents. You're now referring to those two?

Q  No. I'm referring to September 9.

A  Yeah. I don't remember that.

Q  To the State Department.

MR. GOLDMAN: Yeah. There was a September 9th document request to the State Department. That was the -- and as well as the White House.

MR. VOLKER: Do you mind if I check the timeline that we have here to see what I was doing at that time?

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Sure. Sure.

A  No, I was not aware of that. I was hosting a conference in Tbilisi for the McCain Institute.

Q  Did there come a time when you learned about the investigation?

A  Just now.

Q  You weren't aware that Congress had launched an investigation on September 9 --

A  No.

Q  -- in the --

A  No.

Q  So I can take it, you didn't have discussions about that investigation --

A  No.

Q  -- with anyone at the State Department?

A  No. Sorry.

Q  Okay. No. Just asking. Just checking. Okay.

MR. SWALWELL: But let me, Ambassador --

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. SWALWELL: -- you became aware, I'm sure, through public reporting in early September that there was a whistleblower complaint and news outlets were reporting that that complaint related --

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. SWALWELL: -- to Ukraine?

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. SWALWELL: You were aware?

MR. VOLKER: When the news media broke the story about there being a whistleblower who was -- the initial news reports were that the President made an inappropriate promise in a phone call with a foreign leader. And I remember hearing that.

And then I believe it was about 2 days later it emerged that it was about Ukraine. And then, you know, the cycle just escalated from there, and I followed those media reports and then I saw the transcript released and then I saw the whistleblower report released.

MR. SWALWELL: Thanks.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Okay. So going to jump forward to September 17. We understand there was a call between Secretary Pompeo and the Ukrainian foreign minister. Are you aware of that call, September 17?

A  That rings a bell. September 17. We don't have any more information -- that rings a bell. I believe that took place.

Q  Okay. So did you help prepare the Secretary for that call?

A  In the sense that I would meet with the Secretary periodically to update him on what I was doing and things with Ukraine. I think I had met with him on -- I had just made a note as I was going through some of these messages that are in here. I know that I met with him on August 19.

Q  With Secretary Pompeo, August 19?

A  With Secretary Pompeo. Then we had the national day things, then we had Bolton's visit, then we had Labor Day, and then I was traveling. And so I did not speak to the Secretary specifically before that phone call in a narrow time window, but I was pretty sure he was up to speed on things happening with Ukraine.

Q  Did you get a readout from that call?

A  No, I didn't. I believe that it was a first phone call, you know, that it's, I'm the new foreign minister. I've just been appointed. Happy to work with you. That is my understanding.

Q  Okay. And we understand that on September 18 Vice President Pence had a call with President Zelensky? Are you aware of that?

A  Say that again. September 18?

Q  September 18, the next day, a call between Vice President Pence and President Zelensky?

A  That I'm not sure I did know about.

Q  So you don't know anything about that particular call?

A  Yeah. I'm just trying to think. Yes. Wait. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. I take it back.

Q  This is leading up to UNGA.

A  Yeah. This was a followup. He had met with President Zelensky in Warsaw. Remember, he had no information to give about security assistance, and he was going to advocate for a White House meeting. And I believe that this phone call was the Vice President getting back to President Zelensky to follow up on those things, saying security assistance is moving, and we are moving ahead with a White House visit -- with a bilateral meeting.

Q  And you said you believe that. Why do you believe that?

A  I'm just trying to remember conversations I had with Bill Taylor who told me about it.

Q  Okay. Bill Taylor told you about the September 18 call?

A  Yes.

Q  So then I want to jump to the meetings on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly --

A  Yes.

Q  -- between President Trump and President Zelensky on September 25. You attended UNGA, didn't you?

A  I did.

Q  Did you help prepare for that meeting?

A  Yes.

Q  Between the Presidents?

A  I did not prepare the Presidents specifically. I did have these conversations with Secretary Pompeo in advance of the UNGA meetings.

Q  What did you discuss with Secretary Pompeo about the meeting?

A  Well, that it's great that we can schedule it, important to get the two leaders together. By this time it was all well in the public domain about Rudy Giuliani, about text messages, about, you know, investigations and so forth.

And, you know, I had several things that -- one of them is, Ukrainians, if you're going to release the transcript of the call, the Ukrainians want to see it first. They would also like to have the meeting first and talk before releasing a transcript. That did not happen.

Q  Who made that request to you from the Ukrainian side?

A  Yermak, Andriy Yermak.

Q  And do you know why he wanted to see the transcript first or have the meeting about it?

A  So they could prepare their own messaging and prepare the President. And also there's -- in their minds this is also a little bit of respect, that if -- you know, they first off, don't want a transcript involving their leader to be released, but if it's going to be released, at least do the courtesy of sharing it and talking about it first so that it can be seen to be something that they agreed on rather than just letting it go.

Q  And to your knowledge, did the White House or anyone else consult with the Ukrainians as they requested about the release of the transcript?

A  I believe that Secretary Pompeo spoke with President Zelensky and informed him that we felt we had no choice but to release the transcript.

Q  Did Secretary Pompeo say why he had no choice but to release the transcript?

A  I think it was just the public buildup of, you know, expectation from the whistleblower report or from the knowledge of the whistleblower report -- it wasn't released yet -- but from the knowledge of the whistleblower report, we've got to release this phone call transcript.

Q  And after the transcript was publicly released, did you have conversations with any Ukrainian officials about its contents?

A  I'm sure I did, but nothing really to say. I mean, the transcript was what it was. We didn't really go over it. It was something that then was being managed at pretty high levels.

Q  What do you mean by that?

A  Well, I'm not -- having read the transcript, it's a lot of information that I wasn't aware of. And the public commentary about this was coming from the President, so I'm not really engaging in trying to discuss it.

Q  Okay. Did the Ukrainians express any concerns to you about the contents of the call?

A  They didn't express concern about the content. They did express concern about the fact of its release.

Q  And what was their concern about the fact of the release?

A  That it had not been well coordinated with them. They felt that they were being a little bit -- that their interests were being disregarded or subordinated to U.S. domestic political activity.

Q  In advance of President Trump and President Zelensky's press conference at UNGA, do you know whether President Zelensky or any of his advisers spoke to any of the -- to the President or to any of his advisers?

A  In advance of that?

Q  Yeah.

A  I spoke with Andriy Yermak in advance, and we were talking more about -- one of them he was raising a concern about the release of the transcript. I said I would see what I could do, and I conveyed that message to Secretary Pompeo and through an intermediary, through the executive secretary.

And then we talked about what some of the substance and followup of the meeting could be, how do we build on this, and that was the conversation I had with Andriy the night before.

Q  At any point during UNGA or leading up to UNGA, was the subject of the investigations that President Trump and Rudy Giuliani had been pressing the Ukrainians to commence raised, the issue of the investigations?

A  No, not with me and not in any of my conversations.

Q  Do you know whether there was any discussion between the Ukrainians and U.S. officials about the security aid during UNGA?

A  No, because by that point it had been lifted, and so it was all moving, and I think there was a satisfaction that that's behind us.

Q  Do you know why it was lifted, the freeze?

A  I believe that the letter from the Senators, the one that I shared with the defense minister in a text message, I believe that had an impact on the White House.

Q  Are you aware that the freeze was lifted after Congress announced that it was investigating the freeze and the President's efforts to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden?

A  Yeah, I heard -- no, I wasn't aware of that. I heard something different. I heard that there was a threat to withhold funding for other things from Congress if this funding did not go forward. And that may have had an impact.

Q  But to be clear, you don't know the reason why the funding -- the freeze was actually lifted?

A  No, I don't know why it was put in place and I don’t know why it was lifted. We can try to infer about just the President's general attitude, but I believe the reason it was lifted overall was just as I had anticipated from the beginning, everybody who knows Ukraine and knows the policy thinks this is a good idea.

There was also timelines involved, and the Pentagon was very clear in communicating with me, and I assume therefore also communicating with the White House, that they were going to have to move some of this anyway because they were going to comply with the law.

Q  During UNGA, was there any discussion between U.S. officials and Ukrainian officials about a visit to the White House for President Zelensky?

A  Repeat that question again.

Q  During UNGA --

A  During UNGA.

Q  -- during that week or leading up to it, was there any discussion of the visit?

A  Yes. Yes, it's on camera. President Zelensky and President Trump did about the first 30 minutes of their bilateral meeting on camera in order to show that they're sitting there and working together and answering questions.

And President Zelensky made a joke about it. It didn't come across in English as funny as it probably seemed to him in Ukrainian, but I could tell that it was him --

Q  What was the joke?

A  Well, it was that -- thank you for inviting me to the White House. I'm really looking forward to coming, but I think you forgot to tell me the date.

Q  So this date, has the White House visit for President Zelensky been scheduled, to your knowledge?

A  To my knowledge -- well, I shouldn't answer it that way, because I'm now out of the information loop, so I don't know whether one has been scheduled. As of when I resigned, it had not been scheduled.

MR. SWALWELL: You included Dan Hoffman in your production, and I want to know why?

MR. VOLKER: Yeah. Yeah. Dan Hoffman is a former CIA station chief in a couple of different places. The Ukrainians were in the midst of reforming their security structures, and they were concerned about personnel, and they were concerned about getting the structure right.

So I know Dan Hoffman, and so I offered to both Danylyuk, as the head of the National Security Defense Council, and also Yermak, he's going to Ukraine. If you would like to meet with him, I'll put you in touch.

MR. SWALWELL: Do you know if they met?

MR. VOLKER: I don't know actually. I never heard back. I know they got in contact or both of them said they wanted to meet, but then I don't know what the followup was.

MR. SWALWELL: And Mr. Hoffman is a private citizen who sits on the President's Intelligence Advisory Board today. Is that right?

MR. VOLKER: Yes, that's correct.

MR. SWALWELL: Was he involved at all in this discussion with the Ukrainians around Mr. Giuliani?

MR. VOLKER: I have no reason to think that he would have been involved in that at all.

MR. SWALWELL: These text messages, are they your personal phone or are they --

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. SWALWELL: -- government phone?

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. SWALWELL: Your personal phone?

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. SWALWELL: Were you provided with a government phone?

MR. VOLKER: I was provided with a government phone.

MR. SWALWELL: Are there text messages on your government phone as well?

MR. VOLKER: I don't believe so. I couldn't figure out how to do that. The password on the government phone always seemed to drop, and I couldn't get into it.

MR. SWALWELL: Why WhatsApp?

MR. VOLKER: WhatsApp is what the Ukrainians prefer to use, less ability to be listened into by foreign intelligence than WhatsApp.

MR. SWALWELL: I think there may be a few more questions about the phone. I just want to ask, you know, going through your biography and your service to our country and the fact that you stepped up here to serve for free, as you said, sacrifice to your family, sacrifice to the McCain Institute, and you had, I think as Mr. Goldman said, very good intentions as far as executing U.S. policy.

Now that you have the benefit of hindsight and you're able to look at the other track that was being run by Mr. Giuliani and even the President involving Mr. Giuliani, how does it make you feel that you were doing all of this work and you were not read into this other track, which the Ukrainians certainly knew was going on?

[6:11 p.m.]

MR. VOLKER: How did it make me feel?

MR. SWALWELL: I mean, isn't it embarrassing as a diplomat? That you are the diplomat. You have the experience, you're charged with doing this. Mr. Giuliani is not a diplomat. He's not a U.S. Government employee. He doesn't have a security clearance. And he's not sharing with you and the President is not sharing with you this other track.

MR. VOLKER: Yeah. What I would say is it makes me feel that it's very, very unfortunate, because we had done such good work on policy with Ukraine, pushing back Russia, supporting them, democratic transition. Things are going great. And this separate track, as you refer to it, ends up overshadowing the work that we've done and the need to continue that work going forward.

MR. SWALWELL: Thank you. Mr. Goldman.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Ambassador Volker, on that topic, you mentioned earlier that the first 6 months of President Zelensky's Presidency were very important. What did you mean by that?

A  I meant that they won an absolute majority in parliament, 254 out of 450 seats. So they would be able to pass legislation on day one. But that majority is going to erode. He's going to have defectors from his party who are either bought off by corruption or supporting Kolomoisky or unwilling to stick with the legislation. And he also has this dynamic of Mr. Kolomoisky showing up and being quite visible in Ukraine.

And he's got a limited window in which to seize the reins of power, get real legislation passed, and push through a fundamental reform of all the different systems in the country and to fight corruption. And if he doesn't get that through in the first 3 to 6 months, he will probably lose his parliamentary majority and probably be unable to accomplish much after that. So there's a critical window here for him to be successful.

Q  And how important is his success tied to the United States' political or diplomatic support?

A  I believe it's very important that he has that.

Q  Why is that?

A  It is seen by others in Ukraine as validating and will convince them to stick with him if he has U.S. support.

Q  And what is the significance to President Zelensky's reputation and performance in Ukraine of a White House visit?

A  It enhances his stature, that he is accepted, that he is seen at the highest level. The imagery you get from being at the White House is the best in the world, in terms of how it enhances someone's image.

Q  And you've also testified today about the military and security assistance that the United States provides to Ukraine?

A  Right.

Q  How important is that to Ukraine?

A  It's also critically important. It's essential that we continue to provide it for a variety of reasons, for the substantive reason of reforming and improving their defense capabilities, deterring further Russian aggression, a symbol of U.S. support, and strengthening a negotiating position to cause Russia to eventually want to settle the war.

Q  So the success of President Zelensky within his first 3 to 6 months, how much do you think that that depends on the political, diplomatic, and military assistance that the United States provides?

A  I think that it -- how do you want to say this? It is critically important that we do everything we can as quickly as we can. That was my operating assumption, that this is now the moment.

Q  A couple rounds ago, you answered some questions about this Burisma investigation. I just wanted to circle back to it for one second, because I think you testified that it was important to find out what the facts might be about Burisma. Were you referring to the allegations of a few years ago I believe that you described about Burisma's money laundering or some other corrupt or criminal conduct by the company itself?

A  I was referring to that and anything else that might have involved corrupt activity from the company.

Q  And I believe you said that -- you testified earlier that there's no doubt in your mind that Vice President Biden was acting completely on the -- I’m paraphrasing, but on the up and up, in terms of his recommendation to get rid of Prosecutor General Shokin. Is that right?

A  Correct. He was executing U.S. policy at the time and what was widely understood internationally to be the right policy, right.

Q  And so the allegations that there may have been some improper conduct by Vice President Biden at the time have been debunked, correct, and there is actually no evidence that that is the case. Is that your understanding?

A  I'm not sure I follow the question. I'm sorry, I don't mean to be --

Q  No, I just mean you're familiar I think with what you said in your meeting that you had with Mr. Giuliani about how he was explaining to you what Biden, Vice President Biden's role was and Prosecutor General Shokin. You’re not aware of any evidence that Vice President Biden did anything improper in his --

A  Correct.

Q  -- relations with Ukraine; correct?

A  Yes, that's right.

Q  So when Rudy Giuliani, or now, you have the benefit of the call record where President Trump talks about Burisma or Biden, you understand that -- or talks about Burisma, rather, let's just -- Rudy Giuliani talks about Burisma. You understand he doesn't actually care whether the Ukrainian Government investigates a Ukrainian company for corruption, correct?

A  What Rudy said to me once was, all I want is for Ukraine to apply its own laws, and investigate and apply its own laws, no political interference in investigation.

Q  So is it your testimony that you understood that Rudy Giuliani's desire for the Ukrainian Government to investigate Burisma had to do with potential money laundering or other criminal conduct by the company itself, and not in connection to either Joe or Hunter Biden?

A  No. I believe that Giuliani was interested in Biden, Vice President Biden's son Biden, and I had pushed back on that, and I was maintaining that distinction.

Q  So you were maintaining that distinction, because you understood that that whole theory had been debunked and there was no evidence to support it, right?

A  Yes. That it was not --

Q  So if that is the case, yes, that is the case, then if he insists on Ukraine opening an investigation, why is that not manufacturing an investigation when there is no evidence there?

A  Well, I'm not sure that anything ever had been investigated. We did have allegations made by the Prosecutor General in Ukraine, which he later retracted, Lutsenko.

Q  Okay. So he made them and retracted them?

A  So what I think would have been very useful would be for Ukraine to clarify what's all this about, i.e. nothing. Lutsenko said this, he retracted it. There’s nothing there.

Q  But that's not an investigation, right?

A  Well, in order to say that, you would presumably want to investigate.

Q  Okay. But you'd want to investigate something that they had already established there was no evidence to investigate?

A  Right. If there's no evidence, then that’s what you can say.

MR. GOLDMAN: Yeah, Mr. Noble.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Just some quick questions to kind of test your scope of knowledge. Not test. I'm not trying to test you.

Are you aware of a Skype conversation between --

A  I was always did best in geography when it came to Trivial Pursuit.

Q  In spelling Ukrainian.

Are you aware of a Skype conversation between Rudy Giuliani and former Prosecutor General Victor Shokin in late 2018?

A  No.

Q  Are you aware of a meeting in late January 2019 between Rudy Giuliani and then-Prosecutor General, January 2019, Yuriy Lutsenko in New York?

A  I've heard that meeting took place.

Q  Do you have any personal knowledge of that meeting?

A  I have no personal knowledge of the meeting. I just heard that it took place.

Q  How about a meeting between Giuliani and Lutsenko on the sidelines of the Middle East Conference in Warsaw, Poland, in February 2019?

A  I have not heard about that.

Q  Were you aware then in March 2019, the month after he met with Giuliani, Lutsenko announced that he was reopening the investigations into Burisma and Manafort?

A  I think I knew that. I don't know if he did that or not, but I think I heard that he had said that.

Q  How did you hear that?

A  Just press.

Q  You didn't have any conversation with Lutsenko about that?

A  No, no, no.

Q  Did you have any conversations with Ukrainian officials about the reopening of those investigations?

A  No, no.

Q  And then he later closed those investigations in, I believe, May of 2019. Is that correct?

A  I think that's right.

Q  In April of 2019, before the final round of the Ukrainian Presidential election, we understand that Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov traveled to Washington, D.C. Are you aware of that visit?

A  Yes, yes.

Q  What do you know about that visit?

A  I believe I saw him on that visit, and he was distancing himself from Poroshenko and wanted to have a separate set of relationships in Washington different from Poroshenko, probably with a view of wishing that he would be kept in office as well.

Q  Similar to Lutsenko?

A  Similar to Lutsenko.

Q  Do you know who Interior Minister Avakov met with in Washington, D.C.?

A  No, I don't. No.

Q  Following that visit, he essentially switched his allegiance to Zelensky, correct?

A  Yes, yes.

Q  Is he still the Interior Minister?

A  I believe he is.

Q  Have you ever had any conversations with him, Avakov?

A  Once. In that visit that he made to Washington, we had a brief meeting. And the focus that I had in communicating with him was free and fair elections. Make sure that these elections are clean, free, fair, secure. Ukraine has had bad examples of this in the past. And he's in Charge of the police.

Q  Are you aware of any meetings or communications between Rudy Giuliani and Avakov?

A  No.

Q  Are you aware of any meetings or communications between any Member of Congress and Interior Minister Avakov?

A  No.

Q  Are you familiar with the whistleblower complaint, the IC whistleblower complaint?

A  Yes.

Q  After it was made public, did you have any conversations with anyone at the State Department about the allegations in the whistleblower's complaint?

A  I'm trying to think. The allegations being about the Biden phone call?

Q  Yes.

A  Yes.

Q  Among other things.

A  Yeah. I'm trying to think. The only -- the answer I believe is no. It came out -- I didn't have any conversation before it was released. It came out I believe on the 26th of September. Is that correct?

Q  That is correct.

A  And then I resigned on the 27th. So no.

Q  Did you speak to Secretary Pompeo during that meeting we talked about earlier regarding your resignation about the whistleblower's allegation?

A  No. No, I -- it was a 10-minute call and it was about my decision to step down.

Q  Did you ever speak to any U.S. Government officials about the allegations in the whistleblower complaint, anyone at the White House?

A  No, no.

MR. CASTOR: If I may, I think the 45-minute segment is up.

MR. NOBLE: Sure.

MR. CASTOR: Do you need a --

MR. VOLKER: I'm okay for now, if we can --

MR. SWALWELL: We're almost done.

MR. MEADOWS: God bless you.

MR. NOBLE: I'm almost done with mine.

MR. CASTOR: I'm looking down at poor Mr. Meadows and he looks a little bit sad down there.

MR. MEADOWS: Mr. Ambassador, I want to come back to one thing, only because I've been on Foreign Affairs for a long time. And when we talk about foreign aid, and I think the point was made that once it's appropriated, it's a done deal. I happen to know better, and I think you probably know better, having served in the State Department for a long time.

Foreign aid is routinely held up while they're waiting for authorizing committees to be notified for weeks, months. Does that happen on a regular basis?

MR. VOLKER: All the time.

MR. MEADOWS: All the time. So, to suggest that there is some nefarious purpose just because one foreign aid allotment gets held up, you would have nefarious purposes every single year through every appropriation process. Is that correct?

MR. VOLKER: That is correct.

MR. MEADOWS: Because I think it's real important that we put this in the context of what it really is.

MR. VOLKER: Yes.

MR. MEADOWS: It was a delay that you believed was ultimately going to get finished and corrected. You believed and communicated that to the Ukraine officials, not to worry, that we are going to get this done. And, in fact, everyone in your circle believed it would be done, including Mr. Taylor, once you had that conversation. Is that correct?

MR. VOLKER: Yes, yes. I believe I persuaded him don't worry, this is not going to stand.

MR. MEADOWS: And then ultimately, did I hear you earlier say that he took a job, he was up for a job? Did I mishear that?

MR. VOLKER: That conversation I believe relates to his decision to accept being appointed as Charge.

MR. MEADOWS: Right. And so any concerns that he had, obviously --

MR. VOLKER: They were allayed, yeah.

MR. MEADOWS: -- you persuaded him that, indeed, he ought to go ahead and take the job, based on that you've alleviated his concerns.

MR. VOLKER: Yes, and not just me, but also Secretary Pompeo.

MR. MEADOWS: I want to clarify one other thing, because as we've looked at this, one of the things that we continue to look at is this whole Burisma-Biden. To your knowledge, there was never an investigation of that. Is that correct?

MR. VOLKER: Yes. We just went through --

MR. MEADOWS: But he was trying to say that this whole thing has been debunked. It's impossible to have anything debunked if you don't investigate.

MR. VOLKER: I don't believe any -- yes, thank you, Congressman. That's exactly my understanding, is that it has never been investigated. And you have these allegations and then retraction of allegations, and it has never actually been investigated.

MR. MEADOWS: I just think it's important that we look at the clarification of these. And I do appreciate the fact that you've been very strong in believing that Joe Biden didn't do anything inappropriate.

MR. VOLKER: That is correct.

MR. MEADOWS: Do you think it might have been best, knowing that his son was on there, to maybe have recused himself from that decision?

MR. VOLKER: Hindsight.

MR. MEADOWS: In hindsight.

MR. VOLKER: I'm sure he got legal advice.

MR. MEADOWS: Because, I mean, we're talking about recusals. There's a plethora of recommendations on recusals around here.

MR. VOLKER: I don't want to answer what he should or shouldn't have done. I mean, that's not for me to decide.

MR. MEADOWS: You're a career professional, and honestly, over eight hours now, I've been impressed. Not one time have you equivocated or dodged the question. It's rare. I think even the majority would say it's rare. And so we appreciate your candor --

MR. VOLKER: Thank you.

MR. MEADOWS: -- and your honesty in answering in all regards.

I'm disappointed, because I believe that America is being deprived of an unbelievable public servant with knowledge of Ukraine and perhaps what is, maybe with the exception of just the Middle East, one of the most difficult places to actually navigate foreign policy.

I've been impressed not only with your spelling, but with your knowledge here today. And I hope that you look at staying involved as a Ukrainian expert, because that's, indeed, what you are. I've gotten to meet a whole lot of experts in their field, and yet, I'm very rarely impressed and today I was impressed. So I just want to say thank you.

MR. VOLKER: Very kind of you, Congressman. Thank you.

MR. MEADOWS: I want to close by saying this: There's going to be spin that comes out of this particular transcribed interview. There's going to be things that are in the media that you supposedly said. They're going to take, you know, a little sentence and suggest that it means something other than the context of the 8 hours that we've had. I think it's critically important that the message to the American people is very clear. And that message that I heard you very loud and clear today is that there was no quid pro quo at any time ever communicated to you. Is that correct?

MR. VOLKER: Not to me, that is correct.

MR. MEADOWS: In your conversations with the Ukrainian officials, was there ever a time where they communicated to you that they believed that there was a quid pro quo?

MR. VOLKER: No. We went over earlier this thing about a statement and how that would be helpful in getting a White House date, but I think that we eventually dropped that, kept working on the date and saying we are still going forward.

MR. MEADOWS: In fact, the readout, according to your testimony, from Ukraine and the understanding from the State Department, two groups that didn't talk to each other, were very similar in that they felt like the call was a positive call and a positive move going forward. Is that correct?

MR. VOLKER: That is correct.

MR. MEADOWS: And finally, in all of this, I think it's also important to the American people that they understand one critical component of your involvement in all of this. You're a professional. If you were ever asked to do something that was wrong and not in the best interests of the United States, would you do it?

MR. VOLKER: Of course not.

MR. MEADOWS: Okay. Were you ever asked to do something that was wrong by this administration or anybody connected with this administration?

MR. VOLKER: No, I wasn't.

MR. MEADOWS: Including the President of the United States?

MR. VOLKER: Including by the President. I was never asked to do anything that I thought was wrong. And I found myself in a position where I was working to put together the right policies for the administration and using all the friends and network and contacts that you have, Pentagon, State Department, NSC, to stitch that together, and I feel that we were successful at doing that.

MR. MEADOWS: Do you believe it is in the best interest of the United States and Ukraine to have a meeting in the Oval Office with the two leaders, and is that something that Members of Congress should encourage, in spite of everything that's gone on?

MR. VOLKER: Yes, I do. I do. May I add to that, Congressman?

MR. MEADOWS: Yes, please.

MR. VOLKER: Because despite everything that has led to this testimony today, as impossible as it may be to do, if you just put that out of your mind for a moment, we've had a lifting of this hold on security assistance that's going forward. We had a very positive meeting with the President and Zelensky in New York. We have a renewed commitment to there being such a White House visit. And we have momentum in putting a little bit more pressure on Russia in the Minsk process.

Substantively, things are actually okay. They're pretty good right now. This is about as good as you would want -- this is where you would want to be if we didn't have all this other thing going on in the background.

MR. MEADOWS: Well, you have my word that I'm going to encourage -- based on your expertise and your expertise alone, I'm going to encourage that very meeting.

MR. VOLKER: Thank you so much.

MR. CASTOR: I just have one followup. There was some Q&A about whether you would -- after the whistleblower complaint came to light whether, you know, you were talking to Secretary Pompeo and some of the other folks about the contents of the complaint.

And there was a reference to the Biden phone call that, you know, you I think acknowledged in answering one of the questions from our Democratic counterparts the Biden phone call, and that was -- I just want to clarify that to the extent we're referring to President Trump's call with Zelensky and that readout, that wasn't a Biden phone call.

MR. VOLKER: Oh, I understand what you mean. Yes. What I understood the question -- yeah, what I understood the question to be was President Trump's phone call with President Zelensky in which Vice President Biden was mentioned.

MR. CASTOR: Okay, thanks.

MR. VOLKER: Thank you.

MR. SWALWELL: Ambassador, I think we've got about 10 more minutes. I just want to echo what Mr. Meadows said. I'm sorry that you are leaving. You are a career professional and I want to thank you for that.

I do want to put it in the context, though, that I believe that your expertise should have been prioritized over Mr. Giuliani's, and I think that is part of the problem here and I wish that would have occurred.

I also don't want to be naive about the security assistance that has gone through finally and the meeting that may happen at the White House. It did take a whistleblower complaint and an impeachment inquiry. I mean, that has to be a part of the context, that only once those two happened did the security assistance be released. Now, whether they're related or not we may never know, but, I mean, that's an important contextual aspect of this.

And so I think it's probably inaccurate to give credit to the administration that none of that was going on in the background. But, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Goldman or Mr. Noble.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  So I said we weren't going to go back to texts, but I have some more questions on your texts. On page 44, September 22nd, 2019, second line down at 12:04 p.m. Are you there?

A  Yes, I am.

Q  And Ambassador Sondland says: Yes, can you meet with S this afternoon? That's with Secretary Pompeo?

A  Right.

Q  And I believe you may have mentioned this meeting before during your testimony, but can you provide the context for why he was asking you to meet with Secretary Pompeo?

A  Yes. This was to have a meeting, which for me was the phone call on the 22nd of September, to talk with Secretary Pompeo about Giuliani going very public with the statements about our instructing him and that he was representing the State Department and so forth.

Q  Got it. In response to Giuliani's text to you, is that right, that we went through earlier?

A  Yes, his two attempted phone calls, his texts to me, my conversation with Ulrich Brechbuhl, which had gotten to the Secretary. And so this was a followup to that for a conversation with the Secretary.

Q  Okay. And then after the conversation with Secretary Pompeo, it looks like a few hours later, at 7:21, you wrote back to Sondland: Spoke with Rudy per guidance from Secretary.

A  Yes.

Q  What guidance did Secretary Pompeo give you about speaking with Rudy?

A  He said to tell him that we had already said on August 22nd, through the spokesperson of the State Department, that I had connected Yermak to him at Yermak's request, and provide him with that. And I did that.

Q  And then you said: "He," meaning Rudy?

A  Yes.

Q  Said he will use the statement and talk with John Solomon.

A  Right.

Q  What did Rudy tell you during that phone call?

A  He said that that is helpful to have that statement from August 22nd that confirms that I was the one who put Yermak in touch with him, and he was going to then tell that to John Solomon. That's what he said.

Q  And John Solomon is the reporter at The Hill?

A  He's a reporter at The Hill.

Q  Or former reporter, right? He's no longer with The Hill?

A  Is that right?

MR. MEADOWS: One more day.

MR. NOBLE: One more day?

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Why did Rudy want to talk to John Solomon about the statement?

A  I presume John Solomon was writing something, and so he wanted to get this point into the article that Rudy was not acting alone, but -- or that is not the right way to say it. That Rudy was -- he did not initiate the contact with the Ukrainians on his own, that I facilitated that for him.

Q  And then Rudy Giuliani also urged you to talk to John Solomon?

A  He did.

Q  Did you speak with John Solomon?

A  No, I didn't.

Q  Why didn't you talk to John Solomon?

A  Because I didn't want to be engaging in this media cycle with Rudy Giuliani.

Q  Why not?

That's all I have.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  All right. I just have a few closing questions, Ambassador. Thank you for the long day and we do appreciate you. Your stamina is impressive.

I just want to clarify one line of questioning that Mr. Meadows had. I think he was talking about the Burisma/Biden investigation, and I just want to be sure. Your understanding is that neither Hunter nor Joe Biden were ever investigated in connection to Burisma, right?

A  My understanding is that they never were.

Q  Okay. But Burisma itself was being investigated?

A  Burisma had -- I believe there was an investigation into Burisma for a number of things, and Shokin, the former-former Prosecutor General, was not doing enough on that. I believe that the next prosecutor general, Lutsenko, started and stopped.

Q  Okay. You had mentioned earlier this morning, actually, that there was some contact or communication that either you or your attorney had with the White House Counsel's Office.

A  Yes.

Q  Is that within the last week?

A  I had a phone conversation with the White House Counsel's Office. I don't remember the exact date. It was after the telephone transcript came out and the whistleblower report came out. And it was a fact-finding call from them. Who am I, what did I say, what did I do, what -- you know, what is -- there's a reference to me in the whistleblower report. What does that mean? So just trying to give them as much background as possible.

Q  So the whistleblower complaint came out the morning of last Thursday, the 26th of September, and you resigned the evening of the following day. So was your --

A  It was before that. It was before it came out publicly then.

Q  Do you recall when that was, when the conversation was?

A  I don't remember the exact day. It would have been -- it fell kind of jammed together. I was in New York for the UNGA. It was before the bilat meeting. There was an issue about the train. So no, it may have been Thursday, that Thursday, the same day it came out, the 26th, once I got back to D.C.

Q  And who did you speak with?

A  I don't remember the names. The two people from the White House Counsel's Office.

Q  And just you, the three of you?

A  Yes, yes.

Q  And what were they asking you about?

A  Just the facts. Just what is this -- you know, when it says you, you know, were in contact with Rudy Giuliani, what happened? Very much what I testified today. Just getting the basic facts so that they were aware of what's out there.

Q  We've asked you some -- anything else? Did they make any recommendations or suggestions to you?

A  No. That's what I was going to say. They did not ask me to do anything. They did not have any guidance. They were literally in fact-finding mode.

Q  And other than the one call that your attorney had with the acting legal adviser at the State Department, have you had any additional conversations since you resigned --

A  Yes.

Q  -- with any legal counsel for the administration, White House, or State Department?

A  With the State Department legal adviser. I believe I spoke with him on the weekend, and I spoke with him on October 2nd. No. Today is the 3rd. October 1st.

Q  And what was the nature of those conversations?

A  I wanted to find out -- two ways. He called me. He wanted to know what my intentions were about testifying. I told him that I intend to testify. He wanted to make sure that I had seen the Secretary's letter, which I told him that I had, giving reasons why this was an unreasonable request, as the Secretary saw it.

He wanted to make sure that I was making sure the State Department had access to all the things that are here in this -- the text messages and things that you have access to, which they do.

And he wanted to also make sure that if I had any other records and emails or other things that I was -- I would go back and double-check that they were copied to my State Department email address.

That was the rule that I tried to follow and that was approved is I can send things from my personal email, but I must copy my State Department email address. And I tried to follow that religiously, but there may have been examples where I failed to, and to make sure that I went ahead and did that.

Q  We've talked a little bit -- a lot about Rudy Giuliani and his interplay with the State Department today, but I just want to ask you generally, did anyone else at the State Department ever raise any concerns to you about Rudy Giuliani's role in the Ukrainian situation?

A  Yes.

Q  Who?

A  Bill Taylor that we’ve talked about and the Acting Assistant Secretary, Phil Reeker. Both were just very uncomfortable with him being active. As I said in my opening testimony, my view is if it's a fact, we've got to deal with it. You know, it's a problem. Yes, it is, but we've got to deal with it and see if we can fix it.

Q  You said it's a problem. What was problematic?

A  The problem, as I said, was that he was amplifying a negative narrative about Ukraine that was impeding our ability to advance the bilateral relationship the way we wanted.

Q  And then, finally, the one question that we haven't asked you, which I think is worth getting your input on: When you first read the call record from the July 25th call, what was your reaction?

A  I was surprised. I had not heard anything about Biden, Hunter Biden or Joe Biden in this entire time. And I had been very active, as you see. I've been very active in communicating with people, in trying to solve some of these problems, in trying to get the White House visits together, phone calls. And for that to have taken place and my not to know that was quite a surprise.

Q  In addition to being surprised, were you troubled at all by what you read?

A  Yes. This I believe was your question earlier. It creates a problem again where all of the things that we're trying to do to advance the bilateral relationship, strengthen our support for Ukraine, strengthen the positioning against Russia is now getting sucked into a domestic political debate in the U.S., domestic political narrative that overshadows that. And I think that is extremely unfortunate for our policy with Ukraine.

Q  And did you understand that at least some of the discussion in that call was the President asking for Ukraine to do something that would have an impact on the domestic political situation here in the U.S. as well?

A  Well, referring -- asking the President of Ukraine to work together with the Attorney General and to look into this, you can see, as it has now happened, this becomes explosive in our domestic politics.

Q  Well, I think you -- all right. You've said it earlier. I'm not going to belabor the point.

MR. GOLDMAN: Did you want to say something before I finish?

MR. SWALWELL: Ms. Speier from California has joined us.

MS. SPEIER: Thank you. I apologize for not being here to hear all of your testimony, Ambassador.

I have an abiding question about the special prosecutor, Lutsenko. Do you think that he is a good prosecutor?

MR. VOLKER: I believe you're referring to the prosecutor general of Ukraine, Yuriy Lutsenko, who is no longer in office.

MS. SPEIER: That is correct.

MR. VOLKER: And I believe that he was not credible and that he was making things up, frankly, to create a self-serving narrative to make himself look valuable to the United States, in the hopes that we would urge the new President not to remove him from his job.

MS. SPEIER: And there was at one point I believe in the conversation between the President and President Trump in which he was encouraging that Mr. Lutsenko be retained. Is that not correct?

MR. VOLKER: Yes. The phone call here, I think they're talking past each other a little bit on that point. On page 3 of the telephone transcript at the bottom, President Trump says: I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down, and that's really unfair.

I think President Trump here is referring to the former Prosecutor General Shokin. And he says: A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and had some very bad people involved.

This is the one that Vice President Biden was involved in helping to remove from office, because he was widely perceived as not fighting corruption.

Later --

MS. SPEIER: President Zelensky wasn't in power at the time, and it was --

MR. VOLKER: When Shokin was prosecutor general, that is correct. President Poroshenko.

MS. SPEIER: But he did have Lutsenko removed, correct?

MR. VOLKER: Do you mind, ma'am, if I can do this sequentially, because I think it will answer your question?

MS. SPEIER: Of course.

MR. VOLKER: So the President was referring to Shokin and his removal. President Zelensky comes back in the conversation and says: I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor. First of all, I understand and I am knowledgeable about the situation. Since we've won the absolute majority in our parliament, the next Prosecutor General will be 100 percent my person, my candidate, will be approved by the parliament and will start as new prosecutor in September.

So I believe he understood President Trump to be talking about not Shokin but about Prosecutor General Lutsenko --

MS. SPEIER: Right.

MR. VOLKER: -- who at this time was still the Prosecutor General.

MS. SPEIER: Correct.

MR. VOLKER: President Zelensky did not trust Prosecutor General Lutsenko at all. He thought that he was there for his own interests and to protect Poroshenko's interests and was determined to remove him from office.

MS. SPEIER: But you're interpreting President Trump's comments differently than I did. I thought he was being supportive of Mr. Lutsenko, and wasn't it Mr. Lutsenko who put the op-ed in The Hill about the three principles that he thought needed to be reviewed, which included precisely what Rudy Giuliani has been promoting?

MR. VOLKER: Yeah. So I'm not familiar with the op-ed in The Hill. I read the President's comments here as not talking about Lutsenko but talking about Shokin. And, therefore, he's not trying to defend Lutsenko. And Zelensky is not understanding that and talking about he's going to get his own prosecutor general in place and then we will have a reliable prosecutor general.

MS. SPEIER: All right. And then recently, Mr. Lutsenko was interviewed by one of the cable TV channels and said that he had investigated Mr. Biden and Hunter Biden and did not find anything. Is there any credibility to that?

MR. VOLKER: That doesn't sound like what I saw. So maybe he gave a different interview. I saw an interview on Face the Nation on Sunday, and in that interview he said that he did not investigate the Bidens, that he would only investigate Ukrainian citizens. I don't know what he may have said at another interview.

MS. SPEIER: Yeah. This was a CNN interview.

MR. VOLKER: I did not see that.

MS. SPEIER: All right. Thank you.

I yield back.

MR. SWALWELL: Just to clarify, does President Zelensky speak English?

MR. VOLKER: Yes, he does.

MR. SWALWELL: Okay, that's all we have. Ambassador, thank you. Thank you to counsel. Yes.

MS. DAUM: As I think you can all appreciate, the Ambassador has been very open. He's been cooperative with answering all of your questions today and in providing information, documents to the committees today.

I think you can also understand that some of this information is very sensitive from a diplomatic standpoint, particularly his conversations with other diplomats, foreign diplomats as well. This information has been provided to you with the understanding that it's not classified and that this interview transcript and the documents associated with it will not be made public except in accordance with the rules of the committee.

I'd also like to add that, as you can see in the letter from the State Department to me that is now part of the record, the State Department has concerns about the privileges and the classification level of these materials and has stated that it would need to conduct a legal and classification review prior to the release of any of these materials publicly.

I understand that the deposition rules of the committee require Ambassador Volker to have an opportunity to review the transcript before its release. Will we be afforded that privilege?

MR. GOLDMAN: We're not operating under the House Intelligence Committee rules.

MS. DAUM: I know.

MR. GOLDMAN: So this is not in executive session, but you are, of course, welcome to come and review the transcript.

MR. MEADOWS: For the record, what rules are we operating under, because I'm confused? I mean, if we're not operating under Intel rules, what rules are we operating under? If it's House rules, you know, I think they deserve -- I'd like to know. I mean, Mr. Chairman, what rules --

MS. DAUM: As long as you tell me what the --

MR. SWALWELL: So our counsel will follow up with you. Thank you again for coming in today, and we're going to close.

Yes, Ambassador, do you have any final --

MR. VOLKER: I’d like to ask a question, because my attorney mentioned that there are some sensitive things in here. Would it be helpful to you if I explained what I think the most sensitive thing in this entire email string is?

MR. SWALWELL: Sure.

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MR, SWALWELL: Okay. All right. I appreciate that. Ambassador, we'll take that under advisement.

And, with that, we're adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 6:55 p.m., the interview was concluded.]

Bill Taylor Deposition

PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON
INTELLIGENCE, joint with the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
and the
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
WASHINGTON, D.C.

DEPOSITION OF: WILLIAM B. TAYLOR

Tuesday, October 22, 2019
Washington, D.C.

The deposition in the above matter was held in Room HVC-304, Capitol Visitor Center, commencing at 9:50 a.m.

Present: Representatives Schiff, Himes, Sewell, Carson, Speier, Quigley, Swalwel1, Castro, Heck, Welch, Maloney, Demings, Krishnamoorthi, Nunes, Conaway, Wenstrup, Stewart, Stefanik, Hurd, and Ratcliffe.

Also Present: Representatives Clay, Cooper, DeSaulnier, Gomez, Hice, Kelly, Khanna, Krishnamoorthi, Lawrence, Lynch, Maloney, Plaskett, Raskin, Rouda, Sarbanes, Tlaib, Wasserman Schultz, Bass, Bera, Cicilline, Deutch, Espaillat, Keating, Levin, Lieu, Malinowski, Meeks, Omar, Phillips, Titus, Trone, Jordan, Armstrong, Cloud, Gibbs, Grothman, Higgins, Keller, Meadows, Miller, Norman, Roy, McCaul, Buck, Burchett, Curtis, Fitzpatrick, Guest, Mast, Perry, Rooney, Wagner, Watkins, and Zeldin.

Appearances:

For the PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE:

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For the COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM:

SUSANNE SACHSMAN GROOMS, CHIEF COUNSEL

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For the COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS:

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For WILLIAM B. TAYLOR:

JEFFREY H. SMITH

JOHN B. BELLINGER III

ARNOLD & PORTER

601 Massachusetts Avenue, NW

Washington, D.C. 20001-3743

THE CHAIRMAN: All right. Let's come to order.

Good morning, Ambassador Taylor. And welcome to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which along with the Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees is conducting this investigation as part of the official impeachment inquiry of the House of Representatives. Today's deposition is being conducted as part of the impeachment inquiry.

In light of attempts by the State Department and the administration to direct witnesses not to cooperate with the inquiry, including efforts to limit witness testimony, the committee had no choice but to compel your appearance today. We thank you for complying with the duly authorized congressional subpoena.

Ambassador Taylor has served our country as a distinguished diplomat and Ambassador. Prior to returning to Embassy Kyiv as Charge d'affaires in June 2019, Ambassador Taylor served as executive vice president of the U.S. Institute for Peace.

From 2006 to 2009, he served as U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine and also held important positions across the State Department coordinating U.S. assistance efforts, including to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He is also a West Point grad, I believe, and a Vietnam veteran. And we're very grateful for your lifetime of service.

Ambassador Taylor, we will ask you to introduce yourself and your career experience more fully at the outset of today's interview for the benefit of the record and all those present.

Finally, to restate what I and others have emphasized in other interviews, Congress will not tolerate any reprisal, threat of reprisal, or attempt to retaliate against any U.S. Government official for testifying before Congress, including you or any of your colleagues.

It is disturbing that the State Department in coordination with the White House has sought to prohibit Department employees from cooperating with the inquiry and have tried to limit what they can say. This is unacceptable. Thankfully, consummate professionals have demonstrated remarkable courage in coming forward to testify and tell the truth.

Before I turn to committee counsel to begin the interview, I invite Ranking Member Nunes to make any opening remarks.

MR. NUNES: I thank the gentleman.

Once again, we're here for what you're calling an impeachment inquiry, but there are no rules governing an impeachment inquiry. There's been no organization of this impeachment inquiry, and so we're essentially operating under a lawless situation.

We sent a letter last week to the majority requesting a number of things, but that is to be notified with documents to at least all three committees under the structure. Only two of the three committees continue to get the documents for some odd reason that's not explainable.

But in addition to that, now typical customs of this committee in review of the transcripts are now being put under lock so that no one has access to the transcripts. And I want to make a request to the court reporters to ensure that no tapes disappear being that we have no access to these transcripts.

And, with that, I'll yield to Mr. Jordan.

MR. JORDAN: I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I would just too echo the notice that we got yesterday that the minority will not be given access to the transcript, and even members of this committee or these three committees can only view the transcript in the presence of someone from the majority. I don't know that I've seen that happen before. And just when I thought this process couldn't get any more unfair, we find out how the transcripts are going to be treated.

Ambassador, I want to thank you for being here. I also want to thank you for your service to our country.

On September 24th, Speaker Pelosi unilaterally announced that the House was beginning a so-called impeachment inquiry.

On October 2nd, Speaker Pelosi promised that the so-called impeachment inquiry would, quote, treat the President with fairness. However, Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Schiff, and the Democrats are not living up to that basic promise. Instead, Democrats are conducting a rushed, closed-door, and unprecedented impeachment inquiry.

Democrats are ignoring 45 years of bipartisan procedures designed to provide elements of fundamental fairness and due process in past impeachment inquiries: The majority and minority had coequal subpoena authority, the right to require a committee vote on all subpoenas. The President's counsel had a right to attend all depositions and hearings, including those held in executive sessions. The President's counsel had the right to cross-examine witnesses and the right to propose witnesses. The President's counsel had the right to present evidence, object to the admission of evidence, and to review all evidence presented, both favorable and unfavorable.

Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Schiff’s so-called impeachment inquiry has none of these guarantees of fundamental fairness and due process. Most disappointing, Democrats are conducting this so-called impeachment inquiry behind closed doors, and as the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee just suggested, with no access given to the -- no transcripts given to the minority party.

This seems to be nothing more than hiding this work from the American people. If Democrats intend to undo the will of the American people just a year before the next election, they should at least do so transparently and be willing to be accountable for their actions.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. McCaul.

I would only say, because I don't want to get into extended debate, and we can discuss this without taking up the witness' time, that members of three committees have access to the transcripts when the transcripts are completed and they have had a chance to be finalized.

The one transcript that the minority was able to download and print was leaked to the press promptly. That's a problem, and that is part of the reason we have to maintain the security of the transcripts.

Finally, unlike the past impeachments where there was a special counsel doing these proceedings before the grand jury, there is no special counsel here because the Department of Justice declined to even investigate the matter so we have to do that work ourselves.

I'll now turn to committee counsel.

MR. NUNES: Mr. McCaul had an opening statement.

MR. MCCAUL: I'll just be very brief.

To your point, the Foreign Affairs Committee has jurisdiction over the majority of these witnesses. We have a SCIF at the Foreign Affairs Committee that can handle classified information and electronically as well. And I would ask that you reconsider this new rule that you've issued to allow us to have those documents in the Foreign Affairs SCIF and to make it more accessible.

I agree with my colleagues, there's no Flouse rule or resolution authorizing this. I talked to Ken Starr last weekend. There's a way to do this right, and I think we should do it the same way we did the Clinton and Nixon administration. I think, in your words, you'll say that --

[Disruption in hearing room.]

MR. MCCAUL: The committee is not in order -- you will say that there's no special counsel. So I guess my question is, are you the special counsel, slash, prosecutor and the grand jury of this inquiry?

THE CHAIRMAN: Are you finished with your opening remarks?

MR. MCCAUL: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Then let's proceed.

Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a deposition of a --

THE CHAIRMAN: No further remarks will be entertained at this time. Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: This is a deposition of Ambassador William B. Taylor, Jr., conducted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence pursuant to the impeachment inquiry announced by the Speaker of the House on September 24th.

Ambassador Taylor --

MR. ROY: There are members of this committee that are unable to participate --

THE CHAIRMAN: If the gentleman will suspend.

MR. ROY: I'm going to have to be in the Subcommittee -THE CHAIRMAN: The gentleman will --

MR. ROY: -- instead of being in here. And then I've got to schedule access -- to get access as a Member of Congress to transcripts on a committee on which I sit when rules have never been put forward?

THE CHAIRMAN: If the gentleman will suspend.

MR. ROY: What is this?

THE CHAIRMAN: The gentleman is not recognized. You can take your comments outside, sir.

MR. ROY: Take them outside to whom? You're the judge and jury sitting in here deciding who can see this clown show. When can we actually -- when can my colleagues who aren't on this committee see the materials in question?

THE CHAIRMAN: Sir, this witness has come all the way from Ukraine. If you could suspend so we can get to the matter at hand.

MR. ROY: Well, why won't you address the legitimate concerns of this --

VOICES: Out of order.

MR. ROY: This whole hearing is out of order. We've got members of this committee --

MRS. DEMINGS: You really don't want to hear from this witness, do you?

MR. ROY: I would like the entire Congress to hear from this witness.

THE CHAIRMAN: Members will suspend. Members will suspend.

Mr. Goldman, you're recognized.

MR. ROY: What rules are we even operating under?

MR. GOLDMAN: Ambassador Taylor, could you please state your full name and spell your last name for the record?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: William Brochenbrough Taylor, Jr., T-a-y-l-o-r.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you.

Now, along with other proceedings in furtherance of the inquiry, this deposition is part of a joint investigation led by the Intelligence Committee in coordination with the Committees on Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform.

In the room today are majority staff and minority staff from both the Foreign Affairs Committee and Oversight Committee, as well as majority and minority staff from the Intelligence Committee. This is a staff-led deposition, but members, of course, may ask questions during their allotted time, as has been the case for every deposition and interview since the inception of this investigation.

My name is Daniel Goldman. I'm the director of investigations for the HPSCI majority staff, and I want to thank you very much for traveling from Ukraine to appear for this deposition today.

I would like to do some brief introductions. To my right is Daniel Noble, senior investigative counsel for HPSCI. Mr. Noble and I will be conducting most of the interview for the majority.

And I will now let my counterparts from the minority staff introduce themselves who will be conducting the interview for the minority.

MR. CASTOR: Morning, Ambassador. Steve Castor with the Republican staff of the Oversight Committee.

MS. CASULLI: Good morning. Laura Casulli, deputy general counsel, minority on the HPSCI.

MR. KOREN: Michael Koren, House Oversight, Republican committee staff.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you.

This deposition will be conducted entirely at the unclassified level. However, the deposition is being conducted in HPSCI's secure spaces and in the presence of staff with appropriate security clearances. We also understand that your attorneys have the appropriate security clearances as well. Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That is correct.

MR. GOLDMAN: Okay. It is the committee's expectation, however, that neither the questions asked of you nor the answers provided by you will require discussion of any information that is currently or at any point could be properly classified under Executive Order 13526.

You are reminded that E.O. 13526 states that, quote, in no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified, unquote, for the purpose of concealing any violations of law or preventing embarrassment of any person or entity.

If any of our questions can only be answered with classified information, please inform us of that before you answer the question and we will adjust accordingly.

Today's deposition is not being taken in executive session, but because of the sensitive and confidential nature of some of the topics and materials that will be discussed access to the transcript of the deposition will be limited to the three committees in attendance, which we have mentioned before.

Under the House deposition rules, no Member of Congress nor any staff member can discuss the substance of the testimony you provide today with the public or the media.

You and your attorney will have an opportunity to review the transcript if we can figure out an arrangement, given that you are in post in Ukraine.

Before we begin, I'd like to go over some of the ground rules for this deposition. We will be following the House regulations for depositions, which we have previously provided to your counsel.

The deposition will proceed as follows: The majority will be given 1 hour to ask questions, and then the minority will be given 1 hour to ask questions. Thereafter, we will alternate back and forth between majority and minority in 45-minute rounds until questioning is complete.

We will take periodic breaks, but if you need a break at any time, please do let us know.

Under the House deposition rules, counsel for other persons or government agencies may not attend. You are allowed to have an attorney present of your own during this deposition, and I see that you have brought two. Would counsel please now state their appearance for the record?

MR. SMITH: Jeffrey Smith, Arnold & Porter.

MR. BELLINGER: John Bellinger, Arnold & Porter.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you.

There is a stenographer to your left taking down everything that is said in this deposition in order to make a written record. For that record to be clear, please wait until each question is completed before you begin your answer, and we will wait until you finish your response before asking you the next question.

The stenographer cannot record nonverbal answers, such as a shaking of your head, so it is important that you answer each question with an audible, verbal answer.

We ask that you give complete replies to questions based on your best recollection. If a question is unclear or you are uncertain in your response, please let us know. And if you do not know the answer to a question or cannot remember, simply say so.

You may only refuse to answer a question to preserve a privilege that is recognized by the committee. If you refuse to answer a question on the basis of privilege, staff may either proceed with the deposition or seek a ruling from the chairman on any objection in person or by telephone during the deposition at a time of the majority staff's choosing. If the chair overrules any such objection, you are required to answer the question.

And, finally, you are reminded that it is unlawful to deliberately provide false information to Members of Congress or staff. It is imperative that you not only answer our questions truthfully but that you give full and complete answers to all questions asked of you. Omissions may also be considered as false statements.

As this deposition is under oath, Ambassador Taylor, would you please stand and raise your right hand to be sworn. Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give is the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I do.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you. Let the record reflect that the witness has been sworn.

And, with that, Ambassador Taylor, if you have any opening remarks to make, now is the time.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, members, I appreciate the opportunity to appear here today to provide my perspective on the events that are the subject of the committees' inquiry. My sole purpose is to provide the committees with my views about the strategic importance of Ukraine to the United States, as well as additional information about the incidents in question.

I have dedicated my life to serving U.S. interests at home and abroad, in both military and civilian roles. My background and experience are nonpartisan, and I have been honored to serve under every administration, Republican and Democratic, since 1985.

For 50 years, I’ve served the country starting as a cadet at West Point; then as an infantry officer for 6 years, including with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam; then at the Department of Energy; then as a member of a Senate staff; then at NATO; then with the State Department here and abroad in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jerusalem, and Ukraine; and, more recently, as executive vice president of the nonpartisan United States Institute of Peace.

While I have served in many places and in different capacities, I have a particular interest in and respect for the importance of our country's relationship with Ukraine.

Our national security demands that this relationship remain strong.

However, in August and September of this year, I became increasingly concerned that our relationship with Ukraine was being fundamentally undermined by an irregular, informal channel of U.S. policymaking and by the withholding of vital security assistance for domestic political reasons. I hope my remarks today will help the committees understand why I believed that to be the case.

At the outset, I would like to convey several key points: First, Ukraine is a strategic partner of the United States, important for the security of our country as well as Europe; second, Ukraine is, right at this moment, while we sit in this room, and for the last 5 years, under armed attack from Russia; third, the security assistance we provide is crucial to Ukraine's defense against Russian aggression, and, more importantly, sends a signal to Ukrainians and Russians that we are Ukraine's reliable strategic partner; and, finally, as the committees are now aware, I said on September 9th, in a message to Ambassador Gordon Sondland, that withholding security assistance in exchange for help with a domestic political campaign in the United States would be crazy. I believed that then, and I still believe that.

Let me now provide the committees a chronology of the events that led to my concern. On May 28th of this year, I met with Secretary Mike Pompeo who asked me to return to Kyiv to lead our Embassy in Ukraine. It was and is a critical time in the U.S.-Ukraine relations.

Volodymyr Zelensky had just been elected President, and Ukraine remained at war with Russia. As the summer approached, a new Ukrainian Government would be seated, parliamentary elections were imminent, and the Ukrainian political trajectory would be set for the next several years.

I had served as Ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009, having been nominated by George W. Bush. And in the intervening 10 years, I have stayed engaged with Ukraine visiting frequently since 2013 as a board member of a small Ukrainian, nongovernmental organization supporting good governance and reform.

Across the responsibilities I have had in public service, Ukraine is special for me, and Secretary Pompeo's offer to return as chief of mission was compelling. I am convinced of the profound importance of Ukraine to the security of the United States and Europe for two related reasons: First, if Ukraine succeeds in breaking free of

Russian influence, it is possible for Europe to be whole, free, democratic, and at peace. In contrast, if Russia dominates Ukraine, Russia will again become an empire, oppressing its people, and threatening its neighbors and the rest of the world.

Second, with the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the continued aggression in Donbas, Russia violated countless treaties, ignored all commitments, dismissed all the principles that have kept the peace and contributed to prosperity in Europe since World War II. To restore Ukraine's independence, Russia must leave Ukraine. This has been and should continue to be a bipartisan U.S. foreign policy goal.

When I was serving outside of government during the Obama administration and after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, I joined two other former Ambassadors to Ukraine in urging Obama administration officials at the State Department, Defense Department, and other agencies to provide lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine in order to deter further Russian aggression. I also supported much stronger sanctions against Russia.

All to say I cared about Ukraine's future and the important U.S. interests there. So, when Secretary Pompeo asked me to go back to Kyiv, I wanted to say yes. But it was not an easy decision. The former Ambassador, Masha Yovanovitch, had been treated poorly, caught in a web of political machinations, both in Kyiv and in Washington. I feared that those problems were still present. When I talked to her about accepting the offer, however, she urged me to go for both policy reasons and for the morale of the Embassy.

Before answering the Secretary, I consulted both my wife and a respected former senior Republican official who has been a mentor to me. I will tell you, my wife, in no uncertain terms, strongly opposed the idea. The mentor counseled: If your country asks you to do something, you do it -- if you can be effective.

I could be effective only if the U.S. policy of strong support for Ukraine, strong diplomatic support, along with robust security, economic, and technical assistance were to continue, and if I had the backing of the Secretary of State to implement that policy. I worried about what I had heard concerning the role of Rudolph Giuliani, who had made several high-profile statements about Ukraine and U.S. policy toward the country.

So, during my meeting with Secretary Pompeo, on May 28th, I made clear to him and the others present that if U.S. policy toward Ukraine changed, he would not want me posted there and I could not stay. He assured me that the policy of strong support for Ukraine would continue and that he would support me in defending that policy.

With that understanding, I agreed to go back to Kyiv. Because I was appointed by the Secretary but not reconfirmed by the Senate, my official position was Charge d'affaires ad interim. I returned to Kyiv on June 17th carrying the original copy of a letter President Trump signed the day after I met with the Secretary.

In that letter, President Trump congratulated President Zelensky on his election victory and invited him to a meeting in the Oval Office. I also brought with me a framed copy of the Secretary's declaration that the United States would never recognize the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea.

But once I arrived in Kyiv, I discovered a weird combination of encouraging, confusing, and ultimately alarming circumstances. First, encouraging: President Zelensky was taking over Ukraine in a hurry. He had appointed reformist ministers and supported long-stalled anti corruption legislation. He took quick executive action, including opening Ukraine's High Anti-Corruption Court, which was established under previous Presidential administration but was never allowed to operate.

He called snap parliamentary elections -- his party was so new it had no representation in the Rada -- and later won an overwhelming mandate controlling 60 percent of the seats. With his new parliamentary majority, President Zelensky changed the Ukrainian constitution to remove absolute immunity from Rada deputies, which had been the source of raw corruption for decades. There was much excitement in Kyiv that this time things could be different. A new Ukraine might finally be breaking from its corrupt, post-Soviet past.

And, yet, I found a confusing and unusual arrangement for making U.S. policy towards Ukraine. There appeared to be two channels of U.S. policymaking and implementation, one regular and one highly irregular.

As the chief of mission, I had authority over the regular, formal diplomatic processes, including the bulk of the U.S. effort to support Ukraine against the Russian invasion and to help it defeat corruption.

This regular channel of U.S. policymaking has consistently had strong bipartisan support, both in Congress and in all administrations since Ukraine's independence from Russia in 1991.

At the same time, however, there was an irregular, informal channel of U.S. policymaking with respect to Ukraine, one which included then-Special Envoy Kurt Volker, Ambassador Sondland, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, and as I subsequently learned, Mr. Giuliani. I was clearly in the regular channel, but I was also in the irregular one to the extent that Ambassadors Volker and Sondland included me in certain conversations.

Although this irregular channel was well connected in Washington, it operated mostly outside of official State Department channels. This irregular channel began when Ambassador Volker, Ambassador Sondland, Secretary Perry, and Senator Ron Johnson briefed President Trump on May 23rd upon their return from President Zelensky's inauguration.

The delegation returned to Washington enthusiastic about the new Ukrainian President and urged President Trump to meet with him early on to cement the U.S. Ukraine relationship. But from what I understood, President Trump did not share their enthusiasm for a meeting with Mr. Zelensky.

When I first arrived in Kyiv in June and July, the actions of both the regular and irregular channels of foreign policy served the same goal, a strong U.S.-Ukraine partnership, but it became clear to me by August that the channels had diverged in their objectives. As this occurred, I became increasingly concerned.

In late June, one of the goals of both channels was to facilitate a visit by President Zelensky to the White House for a meeting with President Trump, which President Trump had promised in his congratulatory letter of May 29th. Ukrainians were clearly eager for the meeting to happen.

During a conference call with Ambassador Volker, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Phil Reeker, Secretary Perry, Ambassador Sondland, and Counselor of the U.S. Department of State Ulrich Brechbuhl on June 18th, it was clear that a meeting between the two Presidents was an agreed-on -- agreed-upon goal.

But during my subsequent communications with Ambassadors Volker and Sondland, they relayed to me that the President wanted to hear from Zelensky before scheduling the meeting in the Oval Office. It was not clear to me what this meant.

On June 27th, Ambassador Sondland told me during a phone conversation that President Zelensky needed to make clear to President Trump that he, President Zelensky, was not standing in the way of investigations.

I sensed something odd when Ambassador Sondland told me on June 28th that he did not wish to include most of the regular interagency participants in a call planned with President Zelensky later that day.

Ambassador Sondland, Ambassador Volker, Secretary Perry, and I were on this call dialing in from different locations. However, Ambassador Sondland said that he wanted to make sure no one was transcribing or monitoring as they added President Zelensky to the call.

Also, before President Zelensky joined the call, Ambassador Volker separately told the U.S. participants that he, Ambassador Volker, planned to be explicit with President Zelensky in a one-on-one meeting in Toronto on July 2nd about what President Zelensky should do to get the meeting in the White House.

Again, it was not clear to me on that call what this meant, but Ambassador Volker noted that he would relay that President Trump wanted to see rule of law, transparency, but also, specifically, cooperation on investigations to get to the bottom of things.

Once President Zelensky joined the call, the conversation was focused on energy policy and the Stanystsia-Luhanska bridge in Donbas. President Zelensky also said that he looked forward to the White House visit President Trump had offered in his May 29th letter.

I reported on this call to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent who had responsibility for Ukraine, and I wrote a memo for the record, dated June 30th, that summarized our conversation with President Zelensky.

By mid-July, it was becoming clear to me that the meeting President Zelensky wanted was conditioned on investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian influence in the 2016 elections. It was also clear that this condition was driven by the irregular policy channel I had come to understand was guided by Mr. Giuliani.

On July 10, Ukrainian officials Alexander Danyliuk, the Ukrainian National Security Advisor; Andrey Yermak, an assistant to President Zelensky; and Secretary Perry; then-National Security Advisor John Bolton; Ambassador Volker; and Ambassador Sondland met at the White House. I did not participate in the meeting and did not receive a readout of it until speaking with the National Security Council's then-senior director for European and Russian affairs, Fiona Hill, and the NSC's director for European affairs, Alex Vindman, on July 19th.

On July 10, in Kyiv, I met with President Zelensky's Chief of Staff, Andrei Bohdan, and then-foreign policy adviser to the President and now Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko, who told me that they had heard from Mr. Giuliani that the phone call between the two Presidents was unlikely to happen and that they were alarmed and disappointed. I relayed their concerns to Counselor Brechbuhl.

In a regular, NSC secure video conference call on July 18th, I heard a staff person from the Office of Management and Budget say that there was a hold on security assistance to Ukraine but could not say why. Toward the end of this otherwise normal meeting, a voice on the call, the person who was off screen, said that she was from OMB and her boss had instructed her not to approve any additional spending of security assistance for Ukraine until further notice.

I and the others on the call sat in astonishment. The Ukrainians were fighting the Russians and counted on not only the training and weapons but also the assurance of U.S. support. All that the OMB staff person said was that the directive had come from the President to the Chief of Staff to OMB. In an instant, I realized that one of the key pillars of our strong support for Ukraine was threatened.

The irregular policy channel was running contrary to the goals of longstanding U.S. policy. There followed a series of NSC-led interagency meetings starting at the staff level and quickly reaching the level of Cabinet Secretaries. At every meeting, the unanimous conclusion was that the security assistance should be reassumed, the hold lifted.

At one point the Defense Department was asked to perform an analysis of the effectiveness of the assistance. Within a day, the Defense Department came back with the determination that the assistance was effective and should be resumed.

My understanding was that the Secretaries of Defense and State, the CIA Director, and the National Security Advisor, sought a joint meeting with the President to convince him to release the hold, but such meeting was hard to schedule, and the hold lasted well into September.

The next day on the phone, Dr. Hill and Mr. Vindman tried to reassure me that they were not aware of any official change in U.S. policy toward Ukraine, OMB's announcement notwithstanding. They did confirm that the hold on security assistance for Ukraine came from Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and that the Chief of Staff maintained a skeptical view of Ukraine.

In the same July 19th phone call, they gave me an account of the July 10th meeting with the Ukrainian officials at the White House. Specifically, they told me that Ambassador Sondland had connected investigations with an Oval Office meeting for President Zelensky, which so irritated Ambassador Bolton that he abruptly ended the meeting, telling Dr. Hill and Mr. Vindman that they should have nothing to do with domestic politics.

He also directed Dr. Hill to brief the lawyers. Dr. Hill said that Ambassador Bolton referred to this as a drug deal after the July 10th meeting. Ambassador Bolton opposed a call between President Zelensky and President Trump out of concern that it would be a disaster.

Needless to say, the two Ukrainians in the meetings were confused. Ambassador Bolton, in the regular Ukraine policy decisionmaking channel, wanted to talk about security, energy, and reform. Ambassador Sondland, a participant in the irregular channel, wanted to talk about the connection between a White House meeting and Ukrainian investigations.

Also, during our July 19th call, Dr. Hill informed me that Ambassador Volker had met with Mr. Giuliani to discuss Ukraine. This caught me by surprise. The next day, I asked Ambassador Volker about that meeting but received no response. I began to sense that the two decisionmaking channels, regular and irregular, were separate and at odds.

Later on July 19th and in the early morning of July 20th, Kyiv time, I received text messages on a three-way WhatsApp text conversation with Ambassadors Volker and Sondland, a record of which I understand has already been provided to the committees by Ambassador Volker.

Ambassador Sondland said that a call between President Trump and President Zelensky would take place soon. Ambassador Volker said that it was most important for Zelensky to say that he will help investigation and address any specific personnel issues, if there are any.

Later on July 20th, I had a phone conversation with Ambassador Sondland while he was on a train from Paris to London. Ambassador Sondland told me that he had recommended to President Zelensky that he use the phrase, "I will leave no stone unturned" with regard to investigations when President Zelensky spoke with President Trump.

Also, on July 20th, I had a phone conversation with Mr. Danyliuk, during which he conveyed to me that President Zelensky did not want to be used as a pawn in a U.S. reelection campaign. The next day, I texted both Ambassadors Volker and Sondland about President Zelensky's concern.

On July 25th, President Trump and President Zelensky had the long-awaited phone conversation. Strangely, even though I was chief of mission and was scheduled to meet with President Zelensky along with Ambassador Volker the following day, I received no readout of the call from the White House. The Ukrainian Government issued a short, cryptic summary.

During a previously planned July 26th meeting, President Zelensky told Ambassador Volker and me that he was happy with the call, but he did not elaborate. President Zelensky then asked me about the face-to-face meeting in the Oval Office as promised in the May 29th letter from President Trump.

After our meeting with President Zelensky, Ambassador Volker and I traveled to the frontline in northern Donbas to receive a briefing from the commander of the forces on the line of contact. Arriving for the briefing in the military headquarters, the commander thanked us for security assistance, but I was aware that this assistance was on hold, which made me uncomfortable.

Ambassador Volker and I could see the armed and hostile Russian-led forces on the other side of the damaged bridge across the line of contact. Over 13,000 Ukrainians had been killed in the war, one or two a week. To this day, that continues. More Ukrainians would undoubtedly die without U.S. assistance.

Although I spent the morning of July 26th with President Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials, the first summary of the Trump-Zelensky call that I heard from anybody inside the U.S. Government was during a phone call I had with Tim Morrison, Dr. Hill's recent replacement at the NSC, on July 28th. Mr. Morrison told me that the call could have been better and that President Trump had suggested that President Zelensky or his staff meet with Mr. Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr. I did not see any official readout of the call until it was publicly released on September 25th.

On August 16, I exchanged text messages with Ambassador Volker, in which I learned that Mr. Yermak had asked that the United States submit an official request for an investigation into Burisma's alleged violations of Ukrainian law, if that's what the United States desired.

A  formal U.S. request to the Ukrainians to conduct an investigation based on violations of their own law struck me as improper, and I recommended to Ambassador Volker that we stay clear. To find out the legal aspects of the question, however, I gave him the name of a Deputy Assistant Attorney General whom I thought would be the proper point of contact for seeking a U.S. referral for a foreign investigation.

By mid-August, because the security assistance had been held for over a month for no reason that I could discern, I was beginning to fear that the longstanding U.S. policy of strong support for Ukraine was shifting. I called Counselor Brechbuhl to discuss this on August 21st. He said that he was not aware of a change of U.S. policy but would check on the status of the security assistance.

My concern deepened the next day, on August 22nd, during a phone call with Mr. Morrison. I asked him if there had been a change in policy of strong support for Ukraine, to which he responded: It remains to be seen.

He also told me during this call that the President doesn't want to provide any assistance at all. That was extremely troubling to me. As I had told Secretary Pompeo in May, if the policy of strong support for Ukraine were to change, I would have to resign. Based on my call with Mr. Morrison, I was preparing to do so.

Just days later, on August 27th, Ambassador Bolton arrived in Kyiv and met with President Zelensky. During their meeting, security assistance was not discussed. Amazingly, news of the hold on security assistance did not leak out until August 29th. I, on the other hand, was all too aware of and still troubled by the hold.

Near the end of Ambassador Bolton's visit, I asked to meet him privately, during which I expressed to him my serious concern about the withholding of military assistance to Ukraine while the Ukrainians were defending their country from Russian aggression.

Ambassador Bolton recommended that I send a first-person cable to Secretary Pompeo directly, relaying my concerns. I wrote and transmitted such a cable on August 29th describing the folly I saw in withholding military aid to Ukraine at a time when hostilities were still active in the east and when Russia was watching closely to gauge the level of American support for the Ukrainian Government.

I told the Secretary that I could not and would not defend such a policy. Although I received no specific response, I heard that, soon thereafter, the Secretary carried the cable with him to a meeting at the White House focused on security assistance for Ukraine.

The same day that I sent my cable to the Secretary, August 29, Mr. Yermak contacted me and was very concerned, asking about the withheld security assistance. The hold that the White House had placed on the assistance had just been made public that day in a political story. At that point, I was embarrassed that I could not give him any explanation for why it was withheld.

It had still not occurred to me that the hold on security assistance could be related to the investigations. That, however, would change.

On September 1st, just 3 days after my cable to Secretary Pompeo, President Zelensky met Vice President Pence at a bilateral meeting in Warsaw. President Trump had planned to travel to Warsaw but at the last minute had canceled because of Hurricane Dorian.

Just hours before the Pence-Zelensky meeting, I contacted Mr. Danyliuk to let him know that the delay of U.S. security assistance was an all-or-nothing proposition, in the sense that if the White House did not lift the hold prior to the end of the fiscal year, September 30th, the funds would expire and Ukraine would receive nothing.

I was hopeful that, at the bilateral meeting or shortly thereafter, the White House would lift the hold, but this was not to be. Indeed, I received a readout of the Pence-Zelensky meeting over the phone for Mr. Morrison, during which he told me President Zelensky had opened the meeting by asking the Vice President about security cooperation.

The Vice President did not respond substantively but said he would talk to President Trump that night. The Vice President did say that President Trump wanted the Europeans to do more to support Ukraine and that he wanted Ukrainians to do more to fight corruption.

During this same phone call I had with Mr. Morrison, he went on to describe a conversation Ambassador Sondland had with Mr. Yermak at Warsaw. Ambassador Sondland told Mr. Yermak that the security assistance money would not come until President Zelensky committed to pursue the Burisma investigation.

I was alarmed by what Mr. Morrison told me about the Sondland-Yermak conversation. This was the first time I had heard that security assistance, not just the White House meeting, was conditioned on the investigations.

Very concerned, on that same day, I sent Ambassador Sondland a text message asking if we are now saying that security assistance and a White House meeting are conditioned on investigations. Ambassador Sondland responded asking me to call him, which I did.

During that phone call, Ambassador Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelensky to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

Ambassador Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelensky was dependent on a public announcement of investigations. In fact, Ambassador Sondland said everything was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance. He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky in a box by making public statement about ordering such investigations.

In the same September 1st call, I told Ambassador Sondland that President Trump should have more respect for another head of state and that what he described was not in the interest of either President Trump or President Zelensky. At that point, I asked Ambassador Sondland to push back on President Trump's demand. Ambassador Sondland pledged to try.

We also discussed the possibility that Ukrainian prosecutor general, rather than President Zelensky, would make a statement about investigations, potentially in coordination with Attorney General Barr's probe into the investigation of interference in the 2016 elections.

The next day, September 2nd, Mr. Morrison called to inform me that Mr. Danyliuk had asked him to come to his hotel room in Warsaw where Mr. Danyliuk expressed concern about the possible loss of U.S. support for Ukraine.

In particular, Mr. Morrison relayed to me that the inability of any U.S. officials to respond to Ukraine's explicit questions about security assistance was troubling them. I was experiencing the same tension in my dealings with the Ukrainians, including a meeting that I had had with Defense Minister Andriy Zagordnyuk that day.

During my call with Mr. Morrison on September 2nd, I also briefed Mr. Morrison on what Ambassador Sondland had told me during our call the day prior.

On September 5th, I hosted Senators Johnson and Murphy for a visit to Kyiv. During their visit, we met with President Zelensky. His first question to the Senators was about the withheld security assistance. My recollection of the meeting is that both Senators stressed that bipartisan support for Ukraine in Washington was Ukraine's most important strategic asset and that President Zelensky should not jeopardize that bipartisan support by getting drawn into U.S. domestic politics.

I had been making, and continue to make, this point to all of my Ukrainian official contacts. But the push to make President Zelensky publicly commit to investigations of Burisma and alleged interference in the 201G elections showed how the official foreign policy of the United States was undercut by the irregular efforts led by Mr. Giuliani.

Two days later, on September 7th, I had a conversation with Mr. Morrison in which he described a phone conversation earlier that day between Ambassadors Sondland and President Trump. Mr. Morrison said that he had a sinking feeling after learning about this conversation from Ambassador Sondland.

According to Mr. Morrison, President Trump told Ambassador Sondland that he was not asking for a quid pro quo. But President Trump did insist that President Zelensky go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference, and that President Zelensky should want to do this himself. Mr. Morrison said that he told Ambassador Bolton and the NSC lawyers of this phone call between President Trump and Ambassador Sondland.

The following day, on September 8th, Ambassador Sondland and I spoke on the phone. He said he had talked to President Trump, as I had suggested a week earlier, but that President Trump was adamant that President Zelensky himself had to clear things up and do it in public. President Trump said it was not a quid pro quo.

Ambassador Sondland said that he had talked to President Zelensky and Mr. Yermak and told them that, although this was not a quid pro quo, if President Zelensky did not clear things up in public, we would be at a stalemate. I understood a stalemate to mean that Ukraine would not receive the much-needed military assistance. Ambassador Sondland said that this conversation concluded with President Zelensky agreeing to make a public statement in an interview with CNN.

After the call with Ambassador Sondland on September 8th, I expressed my strong reservations in a text message to Ambassador Sondland stating: My nightmare is that the Ukrainians give the interview and don't get the security assistance. The Russians love it. And I quit.

I was serious.

The next day I said to Ambassadors Sondland and Volker that the message to the Ukrainians and Russians we send with the decision on security assistance is key. With the hold, we have already shaken their faith in us. I also said, I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.

Ambassador Sondland responded about 5 hours later that I was incorrect about President Trump's intentions. The President has been crystal clear: No quid pro quos of any kind.

Before these text messages, during our call on September 8th, Ambassador Sondland tried to explain to me that President Trump is a businessman. When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check.

Ambassador Volker used the same terms several days later when we were together at the Yalta European Strategy Conference in Kyiv. I argued to both that the explanation made no sense. The Ukrainians did not owe President Trump anything, and holding up security assistance for domestic political gain was crazy, as I had said in my text message to Ambassador Sondland and Volker on September 9th.

Finally, I learned on September 11th that the hold had been lifted and security assistance would be provided. After I learned that the security assistance was released on September 11th, I personally conveyed the news to President Zelensky and Foreign Minister Prystaiko. And I again reminded Mr. Yermak of the high strategic value of bipartisan support for Ukraine and the importance of not getting involved in other countries' elections.

My fear at the time was that, since Ambassador Sondland had told me President Zelensky had already agreed to do a CNN interview, President Zelensky would make a statement regarding investigations that would have played into domestic U.S. politics. I sought to confirm through Mr. Danyliuk that President Zelensky was not planning to give such an interview to the media.

While Mr. Danyliuk initially confirmed that on September 12th, I noticed during a meeting on the morning of September 13th, at President Zelensky's office, that Mr. Yermak looked uncomfortable in response to the question. Again, I asked Mr. Danyliuk to confirm that there would be no CNN interview, which he did.

On September 25th, at the U.N. General Assembly session in New York City, President Trump met President Zelensky face-to-face. He also released a transcript of the July 25th call. The United States gave the Ukrainians virtually no notice of the release, and they were livid.

Although this was the first time I had seen the details of President Trump's July 25th call with President Zelensky in which he mentioned Vice President Biden, I had come to understand well before then that "investigations" was a term Ambassadors Volker and Sondland used to mean matters related to the 2016 elections and to investigations of Burisma and the Bidens.

Mr. Chairman, I recognize this is a rather lengthy recitation of the events of the past few months, told from my vantage point in Kyiv. But I also recognize the importance of the matters your committees are investigating, and I hope that this chronology will provide some framework for your questions.

I wish to conclude by returning to the points I made at the outset: Ukraine is important to the security of the United States. It has been attacked by Russia, which continues its aggression against Ukraine. If we believe in the principle of sovereignty of nations on which our security and the security of our friends and allies depends, we must support Ukraine in its fight against its bullying neighbor. Russian aggression cannot stand.

There are two Ukraine stories today, Mr. Chairman. The first is the one we are discussing this morning and that you have been hearing for the past 2 weeks. It's a rancorous story about whistleblowers, Mr. Giuliani, side channels, quid pro quos, corruption, interference in elections. In this story Ukraine is an object.

But there's another Ukraine story, a positive, bipartisan one. In this second story, Ukraine is the subject. This one is about young people in a young nation struggling to break free of its past, hopeful their new government will finally usher in a new Ukraine, proud of its independence from Russia, eager to join Western institutions and enjoy a more secure and prosperous life.

This story describes a Nation developing an inclusive, democratic nationalism, not unlike what we in America, in our best moments, feel about our diverse country -- less concerned about what language we speak; what religion, if any, we practice; where our parents and grandparents came from -- more concerned about building a new country.

Because of the strategic importance of Ukraine and our effort to create a whole, free Europe, we, through Republican and Democratic administrations over three decades, have supported Ukraine. Congress has been very generous over the years with assistance funding, both civilian and military, and political support.

With overwhelming bipartisan majorities, Congress has supported Ukraine with harsh sanctions on Russia for invading and occupying Ukraine. We can be proud of that support and that we have stood up to a dictator's aggression against a democratic neighbor.

This second story, Mr. Chairman, is the one I would like to leave you with today. And I'm glad to answer your questions.

[The information follows:]

******** INSERT 1-1 ********

THE CHAIRMAN: Ambassador, thank you. We're just trying to process what you said. Thank you for your detailed opening statement.

I recognize Mr. Goldman now for an hour of questions by the majority to be followed by an hour of questions from the minority.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Thank you, Ambassador Taylor. Thank you for the detailed opening statement. We obviously just received it, and we'll do our best not to be too repetitive.

It is incredibly detailed, and I note that you mention that you wrote a memo to file on June 30th and that you sent a cable to Secretary Pompeo on August 27. Can you tell us whether there were any other documents that you relied upon in putting together this opening statement today?

A  Yes. Three sources, I guess. One you are familiar with are the texts of WhatsApp messages that Ambassador Volker, Ambassador Sondland, and I exchanged. There were other WhatsApp messages that I exchanged with Ukrainian officials and other American officials, all of which, like Ambassador Volker's package, I have provided to the State Department. That's number one.

Number two, I've always kept careful notes, and I keep a little notebook where I take notes on conversations, in particular when I'm not in the office. So, in meetings with Ukrainian officials or when I'm out and I get a phone call and I can -- I keep notes.

The third documents are handwritten notes that I take on a small, little spiral notebook in my office of phone calls that take place in my office. So those, I think, are the three sources of information that you see here. You will see some quotes and those are quotes from either the WhatsApp texts or from my notes.

Q  And have you provided all of those documents to the State Department?

A  I have.

Q  At their request. Is that right?

A  At their request. I think in response to your subpoena to the State Department, they did a document search which came, of course, to Embassy Kyiv, applied to the State Department. We did a search of all of our documents, including the ones I just mentioned, and sent them into the State Department.

Q  Okay. And I assume that you are aware that, other than the WhatsApp messages that Ambassador Volker provided to the committees, the committees have not received any of these documents from the State Department?

A  I assumed that, but I didn't know that until you confirmed it.

Q  Okay. But you remain in possession of your personal documents?

A  I do.

Q  Okay. Prior to your testimony here today, did you have any discussions with anyone at the State Department about your testimony?

A  No.

Q  Did you receive any instructions from the State Department about your testimony?

A  Yes. Let me be clear, I had no substantive conversations with anyone about testimony. I have been in touch. As soon as I got your invitation, I, as instructed, talked to our congressional liaison and in turn our legal office, which John Bellinger knows something about. And they gave me instructions on how I was to proceed. So I've had those conversations with them, with what we call H and L. People in the room are probably familiar with both.

Q  Right. But you did not show this opening statement to anyone at the State Department?

A  That's correct.

Q  And you did not receive any guidance about what you could testify about here today?

A  The guidance I got was to be sure not to talk about classified material or anything having to do with privilege, and I think I've abided by those. I'm not sure exactly what the privilege constraint is. I don't think I have violated that, and I've certainly not violated anything else.

[Discussion off the record.]

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Ah, good point. I was also instructed not to appear. That's an important instruction.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Okay.

A  And in that message, that letter, it said not to appear under current circumstances. My interpretation of that is, when I got a subpoena, that those were different circumstances.

Q  Right. A subpoena compels your testimony, correct, and that's why you're here today?

A  Yes, sir.

Q  You indicated that you struggled a little bit over the decision whether or not to take the offer to be the Charge to the mission in Kyiv. Can you describe in a little bit more detail why you struggled with that decision?

A  Yes. A couple of reasons. So I was approached with the idea of going back out to Kyiv by Ambassador Volker and then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent about the time, this would have been like April, May, when it was possible that Ambassador Yovanovitch would be coming back before the regular end of her term.

I, of course, was following events in Ukraine, not as closely then as I do now, but was certainly -- as I mentioned in my statement, I cared a lot about the place. I had seen press reports of the intent of Mr. Giuliani to travel to Ukraine, to pursue these investigations that I've mentioned a couple times in my opening statement, with the intent of using that information in political campaigns.

I knew of the -- I knew the people that Giuliani had been talking to in Ukraine. I knew the prosecutor general, Mr. Lutsenko. I knew that Mr. Lutsenko had given interviews to American media which were pretty negative about both United States and about the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, in particular the Ambassador and the deputy chief of mission.

So I knew that they were -- I put it -- I knew there were problems in Kyiv, and I knew there were problems in Washington. I knew that Secretary Pompeo had received a letter from a Member of Congress or maybe a former Member of Congress -- he's certainly a former Member of Congress now -saying that Masha Yovanovitch, Ambassador Yovanovitch, should be removed. All to say that I was concerned that there was -- I think I put it -- a snake pit in Kyiv and a snake pit here, and I was not sure that I could usefully serve in that context.

[10:53 a.m.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  That letter you referenced is from former Representative Pete Sessions? Is that what you're talking about?

A  Correct.

Q  In May of 2018?

A  Correct.

Q  How did you know about that?

A  I suppose I had heard that from the State Department -- from Mr. Kent. I don't know that.

Q  What did you know about the circumstances surrounding Ambassador Yovanovitch's removal?

A  So I met Ambassador Yovanovitch in Kyiv on several occasions that spring, last spring. From my position at the United States Institute of Peace, I was an election observer, an international election observer, for the two rounds of the Presidential election. And on both those visits to Kyiv, those were separated by 3 weeks. So both of those visits I would check in of course with the embassy and sat down with Masha Yovanovitch, with Ambassador Yovanovitch.

We talked in Kyiv about what was going on there and this was disturbing to her. When I came back from those trips, I didn’t think much more about that until I got a phone call from George Kent, Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent, asking hypothetically, he said, would I be willing to go back out to Ukraine, which was odd because we have an Ambassador out there and this gave me some sense that something was going on here. Shortly thereafter, he called up and said, it's not hypothetical anymore. Will you go back out? And that prompted me to do some checking and this kind of business.

When Ambassador Yovanovitch came back in what, late May, I think that's right, I talked to her about this and she described the circumstances under which she came back.

Q  Did you have any understanding as to whether the allegations that were levied against her had any basis in fact?

A  No, because I don't think there were allegations -- well, as she's testified, she was told by the deputy secretary of State that she had done nothing wrong. So there were no allegations of -- as far as any official channel that she had done anything wrong.

Q  Were you aware of allegations in the media against her?

A  The allegations in the media were that she was tough on corruption. Now, that doesn't sound so bad, that's what an Ambassador out there has do. She was very frank, she was very direct. She made points very clearly, and she was indeed tough on corruption, and she named names and that sometimes is controversial out there, but she's a strong person and made those charges.

Q  When you say name names, did she generally name names of people or entities to prosecute or not to prosecute?

A  No, neither. She named Ukrainians who were standing in the way of reform of the judiciary in particular.

Q  I want to show you a -- what's been marked as Exhibit 1, which is a May 9th, New York Times article.

[Taylor Exhibit No. 1
Was marked for identification.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  You just testified a second ago that you were aware of efforts by Mr. Giuliani to go to Ukraine to push for investigations. Do you recognize this article?

A  Ido.

Q  Okay. Was this what you were referring to?

A  It was.

Q  All right. And if you could just read for us the highlighted paragraph, the second paragraph?

A  Mr. Giuliani said he plans to travel to Kyiv, the

Ukrainian capital, in the coming days and wants to meet with the nation's President-elect to urge him to pursue inquiries that allies of the White House contend could yield new information about two matters of intense interest to Mr.Trump.

Q  Continue, please.

A  One is the origin of the Special Counsel's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The other is the involvement of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.'s son and a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch.

Q  And then if you could read the quotation from Mr. Giuliani, two paragraphs down?

A  We're not meddling in an election, we're meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do, Mr. Giuliani said.

Q  All right. And then if you go to the next page and just read the two lines that are highlighted?

A  He said that his efforts in Ukraine have the full support of Mr. Trump. He declined to say specifically whether he had briefed him on the planned meeting with Mr. Zelensky but added he basically knows what I'm doing, sure, as his lawyer.

Q  And then if you could go to the last page and the last line and just read that.

A  My only client is the President of the United States, he said. He's the one I have an obligation to report to, tell him what happened.

Q  So this article is dated May 9th, which as I understand it was during the period that you were considering whether or not to return to Kyiv?

A  That's correct.

Q  Okay. And what was your reaction to seeing this article?

A  This was one of the several concerns I had when -- considering whether to accept the offer to go back out to Kyiv. This was part of the -- one of the two snake pits, this is the Washington snake pit that I was concerned I would be stepping into if I were to accept the offer. So this made me less interested, this made me concerned, it troubled me that this is what was affecting U.S. policy towards Ukraine.

Q  Did you have any conversations with anyone, any executives or senior officials at the State Department about your multifaceted concerns?

A  I did. I had a conversation with the Counselor Ulrich Brechbuhl and then a conversation with Secretary Pompeo. And they were -- they were similar in both -- in both meetings I let them know up front going into the meeting that I had not decided whether to accept the offer to go back out to Kyiv because I was troubled by what I was hearing, not just this Giuliani article, but I was troubled by other things as well and I made this clear to both, both Mr. Brechbuhl and Secretary Pompeo.

And the concern was that the strong support, the policy of strong support for Ukraine, that as I said in my statement, bipartisan, House, Senate, Republicans, Democrats administrations Republicans, Democrats all the way through, that strong support I was worried could change. And if it did change, I told them both, I couldn't serve. The counsel, I mentioned that I'd consulted with a mentor, and he said, Bill, if your country asks you to do something you could do it, if you can be effective. And the if you can be effective clause is really important.

And I could not be effective if our strong support for Ukraine policy were to change and if we were -- if for some reason, I couldn't imagine this would happen, but I was worried that there could be some dramatic change where we would agree with the Russians, that well maybe Crimea is Russian after all, you know, or something like that. And if that were to happen, and I made this clear to the Secretary and others in the room, I would have to come back, I would have to resign, I would have to leave post.

Q  And what did Secretary Pompeo say in response to your expression of these concerns?

A  He said that he supported the strong U.S. policy and that he would continue to support that strong U.S. policy, and that he would make this case to President Trump.

Q  What, if anything, did he say about the snake pit in Washington that you described?

A  He said that I should, as the Ambassador, as the Charge out there, that I should follow the guidance and pursue the foreign policy of the U.S. -- of the administration, of the government, well established. And he said, and that policy is strong support, economic support, military support, political support, Democratic support and -- and that he would do his best to keep that strong support.

Q  Did he in any way mention Mr. Giuliani?

A  He didn't.

Q  What did Counselor Brechbuhl say to you in response to these concerns?

A  Same thing. Well, he said you need to -- I saw him about 3 days, the Thursday before the Monday meeting with Secretary Pompeo, he said, you'll have an opportunity to ask the Secretary about that.

Q  What was Mr. Brechbuhl's view, personally?

A  He agreed, he's is not directly in the Ukraine policymaking channel. He was more in the executive personnel, which is why I was having my -- an interview with him, a meeting with him before seeing the Secretary.

Q  Did you specifically mention Mr. Giuliani to either Counselor Brechbuhl or Secretary Pompeo?

A  Mr. Goldman, I don't remember if I did, I don't remember if I did or not.

Q  Okay.

A  Not that I remember.

Q  What ultimately led you to take the job?

A  The Secretary's assurance that he would continue that strong support and that he would continue to push that strong support within the government. And frankly one of my concerns had been that there had not been a letter to President Zelensky congratulating him on his victory. And Secretary Pompeo looked over at Counselor Brechbuhl and said, what, no letter? And within 48 hours there was a letter.

Now -- and it was a good letter -- it's the letter I mentioned in my statement that congratulated President Zelensky and invited him to a meeting in Washington.

Q  Okay. That was the May 29th letter that you referenced?

A  Correct, correct. That's right, because I saw Secretary Pompeo on the 28th.

Q  By the time you had seen Secretary Pompeo, were you aware that there was a meeting related to Ukraine with the President in the Oval Office on May 23rd?

A  Yes. I think I had heard that. I know I've heard about that -- I have -- I've gotten reports of that meeting. This was the -- this is the meeting of the delegation that went -- the U.S. delegation that went to the inauguration in Kyiv and they came back to brief President Trump, that's the one you're talking about.

Q  Yes.

A  Yeah. So your question is whether or not I knew of that meeting when I saw the Secretary on the 28th. I don't know when I heard -- I can't remember. I heard several reports of, descriptions of that May 23rd meeting, but they might -- may have come after my meeting with Secretary Pompeo.

Q  Who did you get reports of that meeting from?

THE CHAIRMAN: If I could just interrupt. And I don't know all the Members so I apologize. Only members of three committees and their staff and committee staff are authorized to be present. If there is any Member here who is not a member of the three committees, they need to absent themselves.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: So who did I hear from --

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  -- Yeah.

A  -- about the May 23rd meeting, yes?

Q  Right.

A  I'm sure Kurt Volker -- I imagine -- we had several conversations about this, this is an important meeting. And okay -- and Ambassador Sondland, because it was at that meeting that Ambassador Sondland, Volker and Secretary of Energy Perry, Rick Perry were given some responsibilities by the President to work on Ukraine policy.

So I'm sure in answer your question, Mr. Goldman, I'm sure I heard it from Kurt and Gordon, Kurt Volker and Gordon Sondland.

Q  And in addition to the fact that the President had asked the three of them to work on Ukraine policy, did you learn anything else about the conversation at that meeting --

A  I --

Q  -- from either Ambassador Volker or Ambassador Sondland?

A  I did. So they described how enthusiastic they were coming back from Kyiv, from the inauguration, how enthusiastic they were about the new President, President Zelensky. And they described their attempts or their attempts to pass on this enthusiasm to President Trump.

President Trump, I think I mentioned in my statement, was sceptical of Ukraine in general, but -- of the new Ukrainian administration. And when Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker, and Ambassador Sondland suggested that it would be a good idea for the two Presidents, President Trump and President Zelensky to get together in a meeting. This now is before the letter was signed. Right, but so the idea to get together for a meeting was a good idea so that President Trump could see himself, what they had seen when they were in Kyiv, and what they had seen in their meetings with President Zelensky.

President Trump didn't agree, but what he did say was work with Rudy Giuliani, he told the three of them to work with Rudy Giuliani.

Q  Did he say what he wanted them to work with Rudy Giuliani about from your readouts?

A  No, not that I recall.

Q  By this point you understood that in part based on that article, but you indicate in your opening statement other press statements, did you understand what Rudy Giuliani was pushing for in Ukraine?

A  This article that we just talked about was probably the best description and it -- it may have been the only direct description of what Mr. Giuliani was interested in.

Q  And were you familiar with Burisma or the Ukrainian role at all in the 2016 --

A  I became familiar, but I -- I think at that time I was not. In the past several months since seeing this and hearing how it piped up I became more familiar with it so now I'm pretty familiar. At the time, it is hard to say, exactly what you knew at a particular time. I don't think so. I -I don't think I understood other than you know, that Giuliani was out doing some things along these lines that this was what he was after.

Q  And what was your reaction to hearing that the President had directed the Ambassador to the European Union, the Special Envoy to the Ukraine conflict, and the Secretary of Energy to take a role in Ukraine policy and to speak to his personal lawyer?

A  Actually, I wasn't disturbed by that. It's not unusual to ask people outside the government to play a role. In some sense Kurt Volker was kind of outside the government and he was playing a very important role. He kind of came into the government, a very important role in the negotiations. There have been examples, we've heard about them recently of other civilians doing work for the State Department. And as long as the people pulled in from the outside, consulted from the outside, giving advice or ideas on policy, that's -- we see that all the time. We all have seen that, and that's okay, as long as it's consistent with and supports the main thrust of U.S. foreign policy.

And so at the time I didn't think that that was a problem.

Q  Over time, did your view of that change?

A  It did.

Q  And we'll get into that a little bit later. Did you come to understand whether any of those three individuals spoke to Mr. Giuliani after the President directed them to do so on May 23rd?

A  I know Kurt, Ambassador Volker, spoke to him on the phone a couple of times, I think had a breakfast with him during the summer. And as we know, put Rudy Giuliani in touch with Andrey Yermak, the assistant to President Zelensky.

So I know that Ambassador Volker had some -- did follow up. And I'm pretty sure that Ambassador Sondland had some contact with Rudy Giuliani as well.

Q  And what about Secretary Perry?

A  I don't know. I've had almost no dealings -- let me see if it’s even -- no dealings with Secretary Perry.

Q  You testified that you returned to Kyiv on June 17th?

A  Yes.

Q  And you described in your opening remarks a phone conversation that you had 10 days later on June 27th with Ambassador Sondland about Ukraine matters. Do you recall anything more about that phone conversation with Ambassador Sondland?

A  This phone call, Mr. Goldman, was in preparation for a larger phone call the following day on June 28th. And I can -- I'd be happy to check my notes on anything else. When preparing this statement, I did check my notes and, as I said in my statement, Ambassador Sondland told me during a phone conversations President Zelensky, needed to make clear to President Trump that he, President Zelensky, was not standing in the way of investigations, there could have been other parts of the conversation. That was the one piece that stuck out -- sticks out to me that I included here.

Q  And did you know at that time what investigations Ambassador Sondland was referring to?

A  I did not. I didn't, you know, I knew that these were -- that Mr. Giuliani was pursuing some investigations and I hadn't -- again, this was 10 days after arriving there I hadn't put this together. So no I wasn't sure what he was talking about, nor was I sure the next day, in this larger phone call, what people were referring to when they talked about investigations.

Q  And I believe you testified in your opening statement that the call the next day there was a reference to investigations to, quote, "Get to the bottom of things." unquote.

A  That's correct. And that was -- Ambassador Volker intended to say to President Zelensky when Ambassador Volker sat down with President Zelensky in Toronto at an assistance conference, at a reform conference that was coming up the following week. And yes, it was -- and again, from my notes in preparing this -- from my notes preparing this, this actually was in the little spiral notebook by my desk in the office where I had that meeting -- had that phone call is where I have that quote.

Q  Was the reference to investigations by Ambassador Sondland on June 27th the earliest date or time that you can recall any discussion of investigations?

A  And again, before I came out there, we'd had some conversations -- I'm sure that I had conversation with Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent about the Giuliani role, which made me concerned and the role was an investigation so I wanted to be careful about how I answer your question.

When I got out there in the first 10 days -- let me see, I did have a meeting -- I had a phone call the day after I got there, which was on -- I got there on the 17th. And on the 18th we had a phone call -- yeah, but it was about -- it was about the meeting, it was about the meeting that the Ukrainians wanted with -- that President Zelensky wanted with President Trump. And I don't recall any discussion on that day, on the 18th, which is again the day after I arrived of investigations and I show nothing else in my notes about that. So I think that's the answer.

Q  Okay. And you do reference specifically in your opening remarks that President Zelensky needed to make it clear to President Trump that he was not standing in the way of investigations. And that was a preview to the call that you had with President Zelensky the day after?

A  Right. On June 27th, correct.

Q  And do you recall whether or not that message was conveyed to President Zelensky on the call on the 28th?

A  It was not. And -- and Ambassador Volker intended to pass that message in Toronto several days later.

Q  Okay. And did you speak to Ambassador Volker after he went to Toronto in early July?

A  Many times. But about that?

Q  Specifically about a conversation that he had with President Zelensky?

A  Yes.

Q  And what did he tell you about that conversation?

A  He said that he had been in a broader conversation, a larger conversation with many officials on both sides. And then he had an opportunity to have a smaller conversation with President Zelensky and President Zelensky's Chief of Staff, Andriy Bohdan, where Kurt said that he had -- Kurt told me that he had discussed how President Zelensky could prepare for the phone call with President Trump. And without going into -- without providing me any details about the specific words, did talk about investigations in that conversation with -- in Toronto with Zelensky and Bohdan.

Q  In what context did he tell you that he spoke about investigations?

A  So when did he tell me --

Q  No, in what context did the issue or topic of investigations come up? Was it in connection with an interaction between President Zelensky and President Trump?

A  Yes, it was specifically in preparation for the phone call and Kurt suggested to President Zelensky that President Trump would like to hear about the investigations.

Q  Okay. And at that point did you know what investigations he was talking about?

A  No.

Q  It was -- it was just described as investigations?

A  Correct.

Q  Understood. You just --

THE CHAIRMAN: Is there anything more you could tell us about that conversation when he -- when Ambassador Volker said that he discussed investigations with Zelensky's Chief of Staff. Did you ask him what about that, what are you talking about, you were aware at that time of what Giuliani had said, did it come up in that conversation?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, the conversation I had with Ambassador Volker about that -- about the Toronto conversation took place probably -- let's see, so it was -- July 2nd was the Toronto conversation. Kurt arrived, he and I talked a lot, and he also visited a couple of times in this timeframe. And it was during those conversations and visits that we had this conversation. So nothing specific came out of those conversations describing this.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  On July 10th you testified that you had a meeting in Kyiv with President Zelensky's Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan who had indicated to you that he had heard from Mr. Giuliani that the phone call between the two Presidents was unlikely to happen and that they I think you said were alarmed and disappointed. Oh, and the meeting also was the Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko?

A  Yeah.

Q  Did they indicate to you who had heard from Mr. Giuliani and how that message had been relayed?

A  You know, I was going over my notes last night.Yes, it was relayed through the then prosecutor general, this fellow I mentioned earlier, Lutsenko and it was -- and as we know, Giuliani and Lutsenko talked a lot. And so Prystaiko and Bohdan had heard from Giuliani through Lutsenko.

Q  What do you know about Mr. Lutsenko?

A  When I was in Kyiv 2006 to 2009, Yuriy Lutsenko was the Minister of Interior so he headed up all the police. And frankly he did a pretty good job at the time. He was a controversial choice for President Poroshenko as the Prosecutor General because he -- he had law enforcement with police but had no legal training. So he was an unusual choice.

Mr. Lutsenko was loyal to President Poroshenko and so kept his job there. But was a very kind of a person who listened carefully to what was going on in Washington, what was going on in Kyiv, the politics. He wanted to stay in the job and of course this is 2016 when he is the Prosecutor General and no one knows about the outcome of the election. So I mean a lot of Ukrainians, probably a lot of internationals around the world were trying to figure out American politics at the time, but Lutsenko was also tuned into those.

Q  But clearly the senior officials for President Zelensky were interested in anything that Mr. Giuliani had to say. Is that accurate?

A  That's accurate, because they understood, as did Kurt and -- Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Sondland, that at President Trump's direction, Rudy Giuliani was influential, was influential with that team. And they were sure, and I think Lutsenko had the same view that in order to have this meeting, get this meeting between the two Presidents that Mr. Giuliani was going to be an important player.

Q  Did they understand why Mr. Giuliani had indicated that there would -- the phone call was unlikely to happen?

A  I don’t know.

Q  Okay. And you said that you relayed these concerns to Counselor Brechbuhl?

A  I did.

Q  And what did he say to you?

A  He -- first he'd heard -- I was hoping I could find out something from Washington that indicated whether or not this phone call was going to happen and he didn't know.

Q  Did he get back to you?

A  No.

Q  You describe a phone conversation that you had with Fiona Hill and Alex Vindman on July 19th at some length in your opening statement.

A  Yes.

Q  And you refer back to a meeting that occurred on July 10th, while you were in Kyiv, so you were not there. Is that right?

A  That's correct.

Q  And based on the phone -- well, let me ask this, did you hear about that meeting from anyone other than Dr. Hill and Mr. Vindman on the 19th?

A  Yes. Let's see, so at that meeting -- that meeting included Mr. Danyliuk, as well as Mr. Yermak. And I think Ambassador Sondland, and it might have been Secretary Perry, and of course Ambassador Bolton were in that meeting. I will find that there -- yeah. Yes.

So, Oleksandr Danyliuk is the National Security Advisor so he is Ambassador Bolton's counterpart. And they had a good meeting there. So your question was had -- did I hear from other people? The answer is certainly yes, again with -- back and forth with Kurt Volker so at least those three recounting of that meeting.

Q  Did you have any discussions with any Ukrainian officials about that meeting?

A  Yes. When are -- when Oleksandr Danyliuk got back I'm sure we had conversations about it. I had also had set him up again as the National Security Advisor for Ukraine. I also set him up to see in Washington Steve Hadley who had of course had that job earlier, and they had a good meeting as well.

So I did have a conversation with Danyliuk when he got back about with meetings with Hadley and -- but not in great detail about the meeting with Ambassador Bolton and team.

Q  Okay. So you outlined in some detail what Dr. Hill and Mr. Vindman describe to you about that meeting. Is there anything else that you recall that they said about that meeting that comes to mind?

A  No.

Q  What was your reaction when you heard their description of how Ambassador Sondland had connected investigations with the Oval Office meeting and that Ambassador Bolton had directed Dr. Hill to brief the lawyers and Ambassador Bolton's reference to a drug deal? What was your reaction?

A  My reaction was that the opportunity for Oleksandr Danyliuk and John Bolton to have a good conversation was important for Danyliuk. For him to understand how NSCs work, number one. And two, what the substantive policy issues in particular the war in the East, and energy security, probably economic reform, the substance -- and they apparently were having a good conversation Bolton and Danyliuk were having a good conversation along these lines.

Maybe toward the end, but certainly after they'd had part of that -- a good amount of that conversation, programmatic conversation, substantive conversation, what I call the regular channel conversation, Fiona Hill and Alex Vindman describe how Ambassador Sondland in that meeting with John Bolton mentioned investigations.

And John Bolton understood what the reference was and walked out of the meeting, ended the meeting abruptly. Not wanting to have that kind of -- he understood, more than I, I guess at the time, that this was -- this could lead to interference in U.S.- political life and he wanted nothing of it.

Q  And that was the description that you had received from Dr. Hill and Lieutenant Colonel Vindman?

A  That's correct.

Q  So at this point thin then did you have a better understanding as to what these investigations were that President Trump and Rudy Giuliani wanted in connection with an Oval Office meeting?

A  So this is getting into July -- this is, yeah, July 10th -- yes, I'm beginning to understand that there -- that the investigations, again I'm not sure if there's a crystal time, a specific time, but I'm beginning to understand that these investigations of Burisma and the 2016 elections are what the term investigations refer to.

Q  And what did you know about the Burisma investigation?

A  So Burisma, a London based company that -- energy company that invests a lot and has dealings in Ukraine, in I think mainly -- it's in energy, I'm not sure if it's got gas -- had Hunter Biden on its board at an earlier time, maybe back in 2016. I am not an expert on this but this is you asked what I know, this is what I know.

This of course is the time that Vice President Biden was pushing the Ukrainians very hard on corruption and the allegation -- you know the allegation. The allegation is that the Vice President wanted to get a Prosecutor General fired in order, the allegation was, to stop the investigation of the Burisma -- the Burisma was a bit of a shady organization I'm told. Again, I'm not an expert on this. But it had been accused of money laundering and those kinds of things so there were some investigations of it. I think they may have been closed, the investigation may have been closed under one or the other of the Prosecutors General in the previous time.

Q  Did you understand whether the investigation desired by Mr. Giuliani related to Burisma was connected to the Bidens role in Ukraine and that company in particular?

A  It became clear to me with press reports or other discussions, but that emerged, yes.

Q  Okay. I want to give you what we've marked as Exhibit 2, which is a stack of the WhatsApp messages that Mr. Volker had provided to us.

[Taylor Exhibit No. 2
Was marked for identification.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  And I would ask you to go to 37, page 37, if you could. And if you go to 7/21 at 1:45 a.m., which is Eastern time.

A  7/21.

Q  1:45:54 a.m., right sort of in the middle page. Do you see it?

A  Yes, yes.

Q  And if you could read. This is a text from you on a chain with Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker and you're writing here can you read it?

A  And I'm writing, right -- Gordon, one thing Kurt and I talked about yesterday was Sasha Danyliuk's point that President Zelensky is sensitive about Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington domestic reelection politics.

Q  Okay. And when you had that conversation with Mr. Danyliuk, what did you understand him to be referring to, when you say Washington domestic reelection politics?

A  I'm sure that was a reference to the investigations that Mr. Giuliani wanted to pursue.

Q  What was your view of the potential telephone call between President Zelensky and President Trump?

A  Initially, as I said in late like June when I first arrived, this sounded like a good idea. A good idea to have the two Presidents talk. In particular if President Trump were skeptical about Ukraine in general and President Zelensky in particular, I thought that would be a good idea.

President Zelensky is a smart man, a good politician. I would even say charming and he could have a good conversation with President Trump so I thought it was a good idea to have that.

As the month of July went on and some of these suggest this, I was less convinced. I became less convinced that that meeting was worth what Giuliani was asking. Yes, it would be fine to have the two Presidents talk, but if President Zelensky, in order to get that meeting were going to have to intervene in U.S. domestic policy or politics by investigated -- by announcing an investigation that would benefit someone in the United States, then it's not -- it wasn't clear to me that that would be worth it. That the meeting would be worth it.

Q  Ambassador Sondland then responds to your text 3 hours later. Can you read what he reads?

A  Yes, he writes, absolutely. But we need to get the conversation started and the relationship built irrespective of the pretext. I am worried about the alternative.

Q  What did you understand him to mean by the pretext?

A  I thought about -- I'm not sure I understood, but my -- my guess looking back on it is the pretext for the phone call, that is Gordon wanted -- he thought that the phone call would be a good idea and wanted it to happen. And if the discussion of the investigations was what it took, then it's -- this suggests that that's what he had in mind.

Q  And when he says, I'm worried about the alternative. What did you understand --

A  I guess -- again, I'm not sure what is in Gordon's mind, but I guess he was worried that if they didn't have the meeting it would not be good for the relationship between the two countries.

Q  And is this in reference to the meeting or the phone call?

A  Phone call. I'm sorry, phone call.

Q  And that was what was at stake at this point?

A  It was at stake at this point. And the idea was that the phone call would be a step toward the meeting.

Q  All right. Now this is 2 months after -- almost 2 months after the letter inviting President Zelensky to the White House. Is that right?

A  That's correct. The letter from -- it was May 29th and this is July 21st.

Q  And as the Charge de mission, you're meeting with a number of Ukrainian officials, did you get the sense of whether or not they were getting a little worried or nervous or what was their reaction to the delay in time?

A  Yes, they were eager for this meeting. They wanted the meeting. They wanted the invitation to the White House. And when it was suggested that a phone call would be a good step toward that, they were willing to do that. But in answer to your question, they were very eager to have this meeting. That was high on their list.

Q  Why were they so eager?

A  A meeting -- people in this room will know as well as I, a meeting with the head of state with a U.S. President in the Oval Office suggests a relationship. It suggests a relationship between the two countries that the Ukrainians wanted. The Ukrainians value, valued and they value a relationship with the United States as their main strategic partner, as their mainstream partner.

So a meeting with President Trump or any President for that matter, but President Trump in the Oval Office doesn't happen regularly -- doesn't happen to very many heads of state. And if you get that, you can be sure or you can think or people might be able to believe that you've got a good relationship between the two countries and I think that's what they were looking for.

Q  If I could direct your attention to page 42 now. On July 22nd, near the top at 4:27. This is a text exchange between Kurt Volker and Gordon Sondland. You are not on this. Volker writes to Sondland, orchestrated a great phone call with Rudy and Yermak. They are going to get together when Rudy goes to Madrid in a couple of weeks. In the meantime Rudy is now advocating for a phone call. And Volker explains how he's also advocating for the phone call and then Gordon Sondland responds I talked to Tim Morrison, Fiona's replacement he is pushing, but feel free as well.

Volker had said, but I can tell Bolton and you can tell Mick that Rudy agrees on a call, if that happens. I assume that means Mick Mulvaney. Right?

A  Yes.

Q  Were you aware that Ambassador Volker had connected Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Yermak?

A  Not at that point. I was made aware later.

Q  Do you recall when you were made aware?

A  No.

Q  Did you learn that they had a meeting in Madrid?

A  Later.

Q  After their meeting?

A  Well after.

Q  Well after their meeting?

A  Yeah.

Q  Okay. And then if we go to page 19 on 7/25 at 8:36 in the morning. This is a text exchange between Volker and Yermak. Volker writes to Yermak, good lunch, thanks. Heard from White House. Assuming President Z convinces Trump he will investigate/ quote, "get to the bottom of what happened" unquote, in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington. Good luck see you tomorrow. Kurt.

Have you seen this text before?

A  Yes. I think I've seen it in the paper.

Q  As part of this investigation?

A  Right, right. I wasn't on it.

Q  So you were not on this one?

A  Correct.

Q  But were you aware that this message, that Volker texted to Yermak, were you aware that that message was relayed to the senior Ukrainian officials in advance of the phone call?

A  Yes. This is the basic message that Kurt that Ambassador Volker provided to President Zelensky and Bohdan in Toronto on the 2nd of July, it's very consistent.

Q  And is it your view that by this point the White House meeting between President Zelensky and President Trump was conditioned on the initiation of these investigations by Ukraine?

A  I am sure that happened based on all the things I said. So Mr. Goldman, you asked me did I know it at that point or on 7/25?

Q  Right.

A  The answer must be yes, yeah. I knew it in July it became clearer and clearer.

Q  Okay. And you did not -- you said it was I think somewhat strange that you did not get a readout of the July 25th call. Is that right?

A  That's correct. It's a little strange, it's not a lot strange. We didn't get very many readouts, but --

Q  And I believe you were in Kyiv and so was Ambassador Volker and Sondland?

A  Correct.

Q  At this time?

A  That's correct.

Q  Did any Ukrainian official whether it was Zelensky or any of their senior officials say anything to you during their visit, perhaps at a dinner that you had with Mr. Danyliuk about these investigations, was that on their mind at that point?

A  We did have dinner with Gordon Sondland, and Danyliuk, and Kurt the night before the discussion -- so yeah, that -- the night before the discussion, so on the 25th, yes. But the brief conversation that we had with Danyliuk about that was that they seemed to think that the call went fine, the call went well. He wasn't disturbed by anything. He wasn't disturbed that he told us about the phone call.

THE CHAIRMAN: Ambassador, our time has expired. It's my intention after the minority has their 1 hour to take a brief lunch break. Would you like a rest room break now before we begin?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I'm fine, I'm fine. I appreciate the offer.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Thank you. 1 hour to the minority, sir.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Thank you, Ambassador. Thank you for your service 50 years of faithful service to the United States. We truly appreciate that. To the extent any of our questions here today you belie that, let me just state at the outset we appreciate your service.

A  Thank you, Mr. Castor.

Q  I also want to express condolences to Mr. Cummings' staff, they rejoined us today, Susanne Grooms, Peter Kenny. Mr. Cummings treated his staff like family and his staff treated him like family as well. So they are hurting and we are glad they are back today.

You're here today under subpoena. Is that correct?

A  Yes, sir.

Q  Would we be able to have a copy of the subpoena? We've never seen it. A lot of these subpoenas -- some of them we have seen, others we have not.

MR. GOLDMAN: The HPSCI minority saw the subpoena before it was --

MR. CASTOR: Could we make it like an exhibit? Usually when a witness is appearing per subpoena, you make it an exhibit. Can we do that?

MR. GOLDMAN: We'll consider that and get back to you.

MR. CASTOR: So the answer is no?

MR. GOLDMAN: No, I said we'll consider that and get back to you.

MR. CASTOR: So -- okay.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  When did you first learn the subpoena was coming?

A  This morning.

Q  Okay. What time?

A  8:30? 8:30.

Q  Was it your understanding all along that a subpoena was likely to --

A  I'd seen the pattern of other witnesses who were under the same instruction I was and presumably we were under the same constraint and that when they received the subpoena right before they appeared, so I was anticipating the same thing.

Q  And a handful of State Department officials have come in so far, Ambassador Yovanovitch, Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent, Ambassador McKinley. Although I don't think

A  Ambassador Sondland.

Q  Ambassador Sondland. And they all had subpoenas, correct?

A  Correct, that's my understand.

Q  Not Ambassador McKinley. So the State Department is well aware of this pattern?

A  Very well aware.

Q  Okay. You mentioned the circumstances. If the circumstances changed, you believe you would be allowed to testify pursuant to the subpoena. They weren't ordering you not to appear over the subpoena, were they?

A  No.

Q  Okay. Did anyone at the State Department reach out to you either in H or L when it became a foregone conclusion that these subpoenas are coming? Did anybody reach out to you to communicate that should a subpoena be issued, you should not testify?

A  Can I ask counsel to answer that, because they had interaction with the State Department lawyers.

MR. CASTOR: Okay.

MR. BELLINGER: After his initial conversations with H, then all further conversations were from the L lawyer to me. They sent us the directive that said that he should not appear under I think the quote is under the present circumstances. We told the majority that we could not appear; he'd been instructed not to. We saw the pattern.

The L said to us, if you get a subpoena, we're not prohibiting you from appearing, but if you do appear, ultimately under a subpoena then you have to protect classified information and other information. So that was the back and forth with the lawyers at the State Department.

MR. CASTOR: Okay, thank you.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  I apologize for asking you some of these details a lot of those, on the Republican side of things, we're in the dark about many of these blow by blow when the subpoena, is the subpoena going to go. And that leads to mistrust. Some of the other machinations about you can't -- we can't have copies of the transcript, we're only allowed two staffers in the room from the Oversight Committee, leads to questions of this sort. So that's why I ask. So I appreciate that.

You mentioned that the company Burisma was a bit of a shady organization?

A  Mr. Castor, I don't want to say more than I know. And again, as I mentioned to Mr. Goldman, I learned about Burisma -- I don't think I knew about Burisma before spring, before this past spring when I was thinking about coming back out to Kyiv. So what I know about Burisma is recent and you and I have probably read the same thing.

Q  Okay. So you're aware that after you left your first tour as Ambassador, I think it's in 2014 this former ecology minister Zlochevsky, it's alleged that he improperly obtained certain licenses.

A  I've heard that.

Q  Okay. And there are a number of allegations surrounding the company since 2014 relating Zlochevsky, you're familiar with those?

A  Not in any detai1.

Q  Do you have any reason to dispute that these things occurred?

A  I have no reason.

Q  When you arrived at the embassy did your staff brief you about about some of the oligarchs and the environment of corruption?

A  In general certainly. I don't recall a specific briefing on Burisma.

Q  Okay. Was the name everybody mentioned in any of those briefings?

A  It has certainly been mentioned since, you know, and over the past couple of months when it has shown up in the papers.

[11:53 a.m.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  And what you can you tell us about other oligarchs that might allegedly be involved with corruption in Ukraine?

A  A general question, okay.

Q  Is it an issue?

A  It's a big issue. It's a big issue. And it's particularly a big issue today with this new administration. The one problem, the one concern, the one issue that we have, the U.S. Government and the international community more broadly, with this administration, with the Zelensky administration, is the influence of oligarchs.

Now, the influence of one particular oligarch over Mr. Zelensky is of particular concern, and that's this fellow Kolomoisky, so -- and Kolomoisky has growing influence. And this is one of the concerns that I have expressed to President Zelensky and his team on several occasions very explicitly, saying that, you know, Mr. President, Kolomoisky was not elected. You were elected and he, Mr. Kolomoisky, is increasing his influence in your government, which could cause you to fail. So I’ve had that conversation with him a couple of times.

Q  And you're aware from -- at various points in time some these oligarchs, some of these companies have been under investigation?

A  Yes.

Q  For various reasons?

A  Yes.

Q  We understand Burisma, from additional witness testimony, has been -- either Burisma or Zlochevsky has been under investigation for money laundering, for tax evasion, among other things. And you're familiar with that generally?

A  I am familiar with that generally.

Q  What can you say about the integrity of the criminal justice system in Ukraine?

A  Flawed.

Q  So is it fair to say that if some of these

companies, some of these oligarchs had been under investigation at some point in time that the investigation may have been closed for improper purposes?

A  Yes. It could have been closed for payments, yes.

Q  So, inherently, the interest of somebody in the

United States of wanting to -- wanting Ukraine to get to the bottom of corruption is not a problem, right?

A  We have long made it, over -- certainly while I was there in 2006-2009 and subsequently, have long made it clear to the Ukrainian Governments over time that their ability to integrate into Europe and succeed in that goal was challenged by, was threatened by, a lack of credible rule of law, which included courts, investigations.

So yes, that's been a constant theme of U.S. policy towards

Ukraine.

Q  Okay. So, to the extent somebody in the United States, whether it be at the State Department or the National Security Council or even the White House, has questions about whether investigations were properly closed and ought to be reopened is something that is a product of the environment, correct?

A  We look very carefully at the operation and the implementation of the justice system in Ukraine, again, because of its importance for investment, because of its importance for trust in the government, because of the importance of having confidence that an objective rule of law system, a judiciary system, was so important for it.

So that, in general -- now, you know -- yeah, that, in general, has been our policy.

Q  But if Zlochevsky or Burisma is under investigation for money laundering, tax evasion, and those cases are closed, as you suggest, because they were paid off, the prosecutors were paid off, then certainly it's okay to want those cases to be reopened?

A  The policy that I've been aware of has been a general policy of the importance of honest judges, of the selection process for judges, the selection process for prosecutors, the institutions. It has been less a focus on individual cases. Individual cases, in my view, is not what U.S. -- what U.S. foreign policy. What we need to press on is strengthening the institutions in Ukraine, but in other countries as well, so that the population, the society has confidence in it. So it's more the institution than the specific case.

Q  Are you aware of the effort of Burisma in 2014 to, you know, assemble a high-profile board of directors?

A  So 2014, I was not paying great attention to that aspect. So what I know, probably what we all know is that they put some very high-profile people on their board.

Again, I've only come to know that over the past couple of months because of all the attention. So I know this -- I didn't know it in 2014 because I was at the Institute of Peace trying to do Iraq or Afghanistan, whatever.

Q  And one of the folks they put on the board was Hunter Biden, right?

A  That's my understanding.

Q  Do you know if he has any experience in corporate governance?

A  I don't know. I don't know Hunter Biden. I don't know what he --

Q  Do you think it's possible that he was tapped for the board because his dad was the Vice President?

A  So, Mr. Castor, I'm here as a fact witness. I don't have any facts on that. I don't have an opinion on that, and you don't want me -- my --

Q  But a reasonable person could say there are perceived conflicts of interest there, right?

A  Sure.

Q  In your time as Ambassador, the first stint '06 to

'09 and then again, have any -- has anyone asked the Embassy whether you had an issue about putting certain officials on their board?

A  Recently, there have been questions about -- well, recently there have been questions about boards of Naftogaz. So the answer is yes, in that case.

Another set of issues are the corporate boards of the state-owned banks. And decisions about who is appointed to the state-owned bank boards has been an issue for the -- for the independence of the National Bank of Ukraine, the NBU, in conflict with the administration.

So the short answer is yes, the board membership has been an issue that we've paid some attention to.

Q  Okay. And what's the Embassy's ordinary posture when it comes to that?

A  The --

Q  Do you --

A  The selection process -- so what -- again, the examples I just gave you, the Naftogaz and the state-owned banks, our policy on those, being -- both being state-owned, all of those being state-owned banks and Naftogaz, the selection process, open, competitive, transparent.

I don't know that that -- I don't remember seeing any specific of privately owned companies that -- or the boards on privately owned companies. So the interest in board membership is of -- that I'm familiar with is state-owned companies, the ones I've mentioned.

[Discussion off the record.]

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No, it's actually -- the open competition is for contracts as well as an open competitive selection process for board members.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  You mentioned in your opener that you're on the board of a small Ukrainian --

A  I was. I'm not on, but I was, yeah. It's called the East Europe Foundation. Yeah.

Q  Okay. Any other board memberships for you?

A  I was, again, on the board of the American Councils, both nongovernmental organizations here in Washington.

Q  Okay. Any of these boards pay you $50,000 a month for your service?

A  No. They pay nothing.

MR. CASTOR: I want to mark as exhibit 3 a Politico article from January.

[Minority Exhibit No. 3
was marked for identification.]

MR. CASTOR: Anybody need copies of this? We try to bring enough copies for at least four or five people, and so to the extent you guys could reciprocate, we'd appreciate that. You've been handing us one copy, and I have to share it with our members, and it gets tricky.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  This is a Politico article dated January 2017. Can you identify the article -- or the author for the record?

A  Mr. Castor, I don't know the two authors.

Q  Yes, could you just say their name?

A  Oh, sorry. Kenneth Vogel and David Stern.

Q  Going back to exhibit 1, the New York Times story.

A  Yes.

Q  Who wrote that one?

A  Kenneth Vogel.

Q  Would you mind reading the highlighted paragraph?

A  "Ukrainian Government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested that they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election, and they helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found."

Q  Now, you weren't in the Ukraine in 2017. Had you been aware of any of these issues --

A  No.

Q  -- from your post at --

A  At the Institute, no.

Q  Are you aware of the allegation that a DNC-connected consultant was communicating with the Ukrainian Embassy here in D.C.?

A  I have recently heard that.

Q  And have you ever heard the name words redacted

words redacted                          ?

A  Again, I think in that same connection where I've recently heard that issue that you -- the connection that you just described, I think that's the name. That's about the limit of my knowledge on that.

Q  Fair enough. When you arrived at post, did anybody give you briefings about --

A  They didn't.

Q  -- words redacted                          or --

A  They didn't.

Q  -- efforts of the DNC to influence Ukrainians in the U.S.?.

A  They didn't.

Q  Okay. So your sum total of knowledge of that comes from news accounts?

A  I think that's right. It's -- I think that’s right. It’s -- I could have also had a conversation with somebody about that, but that was also based on news accounts.

Q  Were you aware that the Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S., Chaly, had entered the fray, the political fray, and wrote an op-ed in opposition to then-candidate Trump?

A  I was not aware.

Q  Is that ordinary or --

A  It's not. Ambassadors do not -- are not supposed to and should not interfere in or participate in domestic elections, the host country elections.

Q  Did anyone at the Embassy ever call to your attention the issue with Ambassador Chaly?

A  In this context, no. In other contexts, in particular the Zelensky administration, the new administration was looking to replace him as soon as they could once they came into office. This, of course, was this past summer.

Q  Okay. And is that common? Had Chaly served for a couple Presidents or was he linked to Poroshenko?

A  He -- I think he only served under Poroshenko. He was a professional Foreign Service officer, so he undoubtedly had earlier in his career in other things, but in terms of that Ambassadorship.

Q  On page 11 of this story, there's a reference to a Ukrainian investigative journalist and, at the time, a Parliamentarian named Serhiy Leschenko. What do you know about Mr. Leschenko?

A  So Mr. Leschenko is a known reformer journalist who, in 2014, when the so-called Revolution of Dignity, decided to join the government -- well, run for office and was elected to the Rada, to the Parliament, where he continued to be associated with a group of reformers.

Q  And is he still in the Parliament?

A  Is he in the Parliament? I think he's not.

Q  Do you know if he's ever been investigated or prosecuted?

A  He has been. He has been investigated. Again, this is not my -- this is before I arrived.

Q  If you know.

A  Yeah. He has been investigated, and a court -- I

don't remember which court -- dismissed the charge.

Q  Okay. Are you aware of the allegations relating to Leschenko and the Manafort ledgers?

A  Yes.

Q  And what do you know about that?

A  As I understand it, he was the one who -- Serhiy Leschenko was the one who either found or identified the ledger, and either he or someone in law enforcement turned that ledger over to the Anti corruption Bureau. That's what I remember.

Q  On page 11, there's a paragraph that begins, "The scrutiny around the ledgers" --

A  Yes.

Q  -- "combined with that from other stories about his Ukraine work -- proved too much, and he stepped down from the Trump campaign less than a week after the Times story." And that's relating to Manafort.

A  Yes.

Q  "At the time, Leschenko suggested that his motivation was partly to undermine Trump."

Was it well-known that Leschenko was, indeed, trying to undermine candidate Trump at the time?

A  So this would have been what year? Not to me. Yeah, it was a 2017 article, but I don't know when they were talking about here.

Q  These things were occurring during the 2016 election.

A  2016 election, right. Not known to me.

Q  Okay. When you arrived at post, did your political adviser there or anybody give you a briefing on some of the issues relating to Leschenko?

A  One of the questions was -- so I mentioned he was a reformer. One of the -- and he had supported Zelensky, President Zelensky, and had given him, had given Zelensky some credibility as a reformer. The other reformer, by the way, we've already talked about is a man named Alexander Danyliuk. And so those two people joined Zelensky's team early as reformers.

What I was told, in answer to your question, Mr. Counselor, was that Leschenko took himself off of the Zelensky team because of these -- this controversy.

Q  Okay. At the bottom of page 11, the report, the Politico report notes that Leschenko told the Financial Times, you know, about 2 weeks after the news conference that he was trying to undermine candidate Trump.

The newspaper goes on to note, the Financial Times, that Trump's candidacy had spurred Kyiv's wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before, intervene, however indirectly, in a U.S. election.

What do you know about attempts of the Ukrainian Government or Ukrainians to intervene in the 2016 election?

A  Mr. Castor, I don't know about those attempts.

Q  Okay. And has that been part of any briefings that you received once you arrived at post?

A  No.

Q  Okay. And so that's not a concern that's been communicated to you as you've settled in?

A  Correct.

Q  Flipping over to page 14, the paragraph begins "Ukraine's Minister of Internal Affairs, Arsen Avakov." You with me?

A  Fourteen. Yes. Yep.

Q  Okay -- piled on, trashing Trump on Twitter as a clown and asserting that Trump is an even bigger danger to the U.S. than terrorism.

The Politico story goes on to report that Avakov also disparaged the President in Facebook posts.

What do you know about Avakov?

A  So he is the Minister of Internal Affairs and was the Minister of Internal Affairs under President Poroshenko as one of only two carryovers from the Poroshenko Cabinet to the Zelensky Cabinet. He, as I think I mentioned earlier when we were talking about Lutsenko, the Minister of Interior, which Avakov is now, controls the police, which gives him significant influence in the government.

Q  Avakov, he's a relatively influential Minister. Is that right?

A  That is correct.

Q  Does it concern you that at one time he was being highly critical of candidate Trump?

A  It does.

Q  And did you ever have any awareness of that before I called your attention to this?

A  I haven't. This is surprising. Disappointing, but --

Q  Flipping to page 15, the paragraph that begins with "Andriy Artemenko."

A  At the top, yeah.

Q  Ukrainian Parliamentarian associated with conservative opposition, you know, met with Trump's team during the campaign. And he was quoted saying: It was clear they were supporting Hillary Clinton's candidacy. They did everything from organizing meetings with the Clinton team to publicly supporting her to criticizing Trump. I think they simply didn't meet because they thought Hillary would win.

This is yet another Ukrainian Parliamentarian, you know, going on the record in a news account asserting that the Ukrainian Government establishment was, in fact, supporting Hillary Clinton.

Is this a new fact for you?

A  This is a new fact for me. I've not read this article. So this was a 2017 article. So I didn't know that -- I don't know Artemenko, so I haven't had a chance to deal with him. And the answer is yes, new fact.

Q  Does it concern you?

A  Yes. Same thing, for the same reason.

Q  Now, is it reasonable for someone in the Trump administration to conclude that if Artemenko -- and I apologize if --

A  No, you're doing fine.

Q  -- any of my pronunciations are --

A  You're doing fine.

Q  If Artemenko, Chaly, Avakov, Leschenko were engaged -- these are all legitimate people in the Ukraine, right?

A  I don't know how legitimate Artemenko is, but --

Q  He's an elected member of the Parliament?

A  He's an elected member of the Parliament, which means -- which may mean that he could -- you can buy your way into the Parliament.

Q  Okay. But certainly a government official?

A  Certainly a -- a deputy, a Rada deputy, yeah.

Q  Avakov is a legitimate power player in Ukraine?

A  At least a power player, that's right. That's right.

Q  And Chaly is the Ambassador to the U.S.?

A  Chaly is the Ambassador.

Q  Okay. And Leschenko was a man of some significance, right?

A  Leschenko was a well-known reformer and a well -- and a good journalist beforehand, so yes, well-recognized.

Q  So isn't it possible that Trump administration officials might have a good-founded belief, whether true or untrue, that there were forces in the Ukraine that were operating against them?

A  Mr. Castor, based on this Politico article, which, again, surprises me, disappoints me because I think it's a mistake for any diplomat or any government official in one country to interfere in the political life of another country. That's disappointing.

Q  So the question is, isn't it fair to say that, if you're aligned with the Trump administration, isn't it legitimate to have a good-faith belief that Ukrainians were operating against you in the 2016 election?

A  That's certainly the thrust of this article.

Q  And this isn't an opinion piece. I mean, this is not an opinion piece. This is a journalist --

A  This is a journalist. And, as you pointed out, it's Kenneth Vogel, who also writes for The New York Times.

Q  So it's not a fringe, you know, journalist. I mean, this is a mainstream journalist for Politico and now the New York Times, not an opinion piece. And to the extent he's reporting and documenting these facts, I mean, isn't it fair to say that if you're aligned with the Trump administration, you might have a good-faith belief that the Ukrainians were supporting Hillary Clinton and trying to undermine him?

A  You could have that opinion, that some were. If this reporting is correct, you could certainly have the opinion that some Ukrainians were.

Q  Okay. And do you have any -- since you've arrived at post, has anyone briefed you to try to debunk any of these allegations?

A  No.

Q  Okay. So nobody at the Embassy has sat you down in briefings and said, "Ambassador, there are allegations out there that the Ukrainians were working for Clinton and against Trump, but I want to tell you that didn't happen"; nobody came and briefed you on that?

A  Correct.

Q  Since your time considering the post, which I think you I think you mentioned was the end of May, and then you arrived relatively quickly, to your credit, in June, did you get any background on some of the concerns that the folks aligned with the President had about the Ukrainians interfering with the election, or allegedly?

A  No. Mr. Giuliani and his -- who is influential with the President, and his efforts were known. I wouldn't say -- I wouldn't say "briefed." What the Embassy tries to do, as a general rule, is stay out of either our domestic or Ukraine internal politics. So we have not -- we have tried to avoid dealing certainly with Mr. Giuliani and the kind of efforts that he was interested in. So that's, again, for -- we don't get involved in election campaigns on either side.

Q  But you describe a difficult environment leading up to Ambassador Yovanovitch's recall, and you testified about some of the concerns you had before accepting the post.

Did anyone give you any additional background about what the issues are that concerned the President or was motivating Mr. Giuliani?

A  No.

Q  Okay. Did you have a general understanding of what Giuliani's concerns were?

A  Again, our focus has -- we've attempted to keep the focus on our bilateral relations and away from domestic politics or Ukrainian internal politics, to the degree we can. So --

Q  Just forgive me. If there was a concern about the 2016 election and concern about investigations, did you ever try to do some due diligence and find out exactly what the concerns were before you arrived at post?

A  No.

Q  Did you have any conversations with Yovanovitch about this?

A  About --

Q  The environment, the snake pit I think you called it.

A  Certainly, we had -- I had a conversation with her in Kyiv and then again in Washington about the -- about that environment, about how the domestic, our domestic politics had gotten into the -- into affecting her career.

Q  Okay. But did you ever have a discussion about what, you know, when you're -- did you ever try to get into the -- what was the genuine concern from Giuliani, other than --

A  No.

Q  Okay. You met with Yovanovitch a couple times, you said --

A  Yes.

Q  -- when you were over there as an election observer.

A  Yes.

Q  And then you met with her again after she came home --

A  Correct.

Q  -- before you went out?

A  Correct.

Q  So is that roughly three conversations?

A  Three conversations, at least, yeah.

Q  And what do you recall her telling you?

A  I recall in particular the last conversation, which was in my office at the Institute of Peace. She was very emotional about having been pulled out early. As she has indicated, she didn't think she had made mistakes or done something wrong. She felt like someone had -- she felt that someone or some people may have had other motives for wanting her not to be there.

And I think she's indicated that maybe in her testimony or the papers or something that has described her testimony. She made that same point to me in May.

Q  Did she say who?

A  I don't recall her mentioning any specific names. I'm not even sure she knew the people. She had a sense that there were people who wanted to invest in Ukraine or wanted to sell things to Ukraine that thought that her anticorruption stance was getting in their way. I don't remember -- if she mentioned any names, I don't remember them.

Q  Okay. Did you have any discussions -- how many discussions did you have with Brechbuhl before taking the post?

A  Two.

Q  And during those two discussions, did you have any dialogue with him about what was going on over there?

A  Again, he -- with Counselor Brechbuhl, it was more -- the two conversations were on like the 23rd of May and the 28th of May, and the second with the Secretary. And they were focused more on my interest, my qualifications, rather than anything about Ukraine policy.

Q  Did they ever tell you they'd have your back?

A  Secretary Pompeo did say that he'd support me on this strong Ukraine policy. That was my condition for going out, and he said he would.

Q  And did you have a relatively open communication with both Counselor Brechbuhl and the Secretary?

A  Yes.

Q  So, if you needed them, they would engage with you, right?

A  They would. And I didn't -- and the Secretary said any time. I didn't abuse that and I only -- but I did call the counselor a couple of times, you know, and -- from Kyiv. So I met with him twice while I was -- before I left, called him a couple times to check in when I started to get concerned about the security assistance, for example. But yes, he was available and responsive.

Q  Okay. Did you ever have any discussions with the Secretary or the counselor about the circumstances of Ambassador Yovanovitch being recalled?

A  That was a concern I had before I agreed with them to take the job. So it may -- it could have been part of that conversation, Mr. Castor. I don't recall specifically talking to them about Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Q  Did they ever give you any assurances that this won't happen again and --

A  No, no. I didn't ask for and didn't receive any.

Q  Okay. The issues that motivated her recall, did they give you any indication that they were still viable issues that made the environment tricky?

A  They didn't.

Q  But you expected it would be?

A  I expected it would be.

Q  Did you ever have any communications with Mr. Giuliani --

A  None.

Q  -- directly?

A  No. He visited Kyiv in 2008 or ’07, while I was there. 2008, I think. And I remember shaking his hand. He was America's mayor. But otherwise, not.

Q  But for times relevant, May 28th on, you've never spoken to Mr. Giuliani?

A  No, no.

Q  Has anyone ever asked you to speak to Mr. Giuliani?

A  No.

Q  And if I may, have you spoken to the President of the United States?

A  I have not.

Q  Okay. You had no communications with the President of the United States?

A  Correct.

Q  Have you had any communications with Acting Chief of Staff Mulvaney?

A  None.

Q  The White House officials you have had discussions with, have you identified them for the most part in your statement?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. So it's Ambassador Bolton, Fiona Hill, Dr. Hill, Mr. Vindman, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman?

A  Vindman, right.

Q  Any others that were --

A  Tim Morrison took --

Q  Tim Morrison.

A  -- Fiona's place.

Q  Okay.

A  Yeah, I think those are the ones.

Q  And once you arrived at post, did you have any occasion to engage the Secretary on any of these issues, ask the Secretary for his assistance in pushing back on the irregular part of the policy?

A  So I went to the Secretary at the end of August in a -- in a cable expressing my concern about -- August 29th, my concern about the hold on security assistance.

Q  Okay. Was that the first time you engaged the Secretary on this?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. In your statement, you walk us through what was a regular, formal, diplomatic process that you were the point person for, and then there was an irregular, informal channel, and that was concerning to you. Is that fair?

A  Not at the beginning.

Q  Okay.

A  At the beginning, as I said, I felt the goals were aligned. I thought the goals of having -- the overall goal of having strong U.S.-Ukraine relations was supported by -- certainly by -- I knew by Ambassadors Sondland and Volker.

I didn't -- I never, as I said, haven't had much dealings with Secretary Perry, but everything leads me to believe that he also supported that. And so that irregular is not necessarily bad.

Q  Okay.

A  And it wasn't -- I didn't think it was bad. I didn't think it was a problem in the beginning. And, actually, it could have been helpful, because Ambassador Sondland is able -- is able to call the President, and that's a valuable thing if you want to try to move our U.S.-Ukraine relations along. So, at the beginning, it was not a problem.

Q  How long have you known Ambassador Volker for?

A  So probably 20 years. A long time.

Q  And is he a man of integrity?

A  He is a man of integrity.

Q  And he is somebody that's always, to the best of your knowledge, acted in the best interests of the United States?

A  He -- when he got involved with Mr. Giuliani, I think that that pulled him away from or it diverted him from being focused on what I thought needed to be focused on, that is -- yeah. So, in general, yes, but the Giuliani factor I think affected Ambassador Volker.

Q  But as a man of integrity, if he genuinely believed it was in the best interests of the United States to engage with Giuliani, do you agree that that's -- he was acting in the best interests of the United States when he did that?

A  I think he thought he was.

Q  There's this May 23rd briefing in the Oval Office --

A  Yes.

Q  where the delegation that went to the inaugural --

A  Yes.

Q  -- communicated with the President.

A  Yes.

Q  We've had some accounts of that meeting.

A  I'm sure.

Q  And Ambassador Volker was there. Obviously, we've talked to him at some length. Ambassador Sondland. And characterizations of that meeting have differed sometimes between the actual participants and those reporting on what they think had occurred.

For example, it's been -- you know, the President has been characterized or has been quoted as saying, "Work with Rudy." Is that something you heard?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. And then it's also been related to us that the President said, "Talk to Rudy," and it's in a dismissive sort of way. You know, the President had his concerns about corruption in Ukraine and, you know, a laundry list of reasons, including the fact that the President believed that there were Ukrainians trying to work against him in the election, right?

A  As we established, some Ukrainians, a couple of Ukrainians. And the important point here is none of those, with the exception of Avakov, who is still -- none of those were in or are in the Zelensky administration.

So that's what -- as I understand it, that's what Ambassador Volker, Sondland, Perry were coming back to tell President Trump, that, you know, we just met President Zelensky, and he supports what you support. I've heard several people said -- made -- tried to make that point.

Q  And the participants of the meeting have told us that they briefed the President, and the President wasn't having it.

A  Right.

Q  He said negative things about the country of Ukraine.

A  I've heard that.

Q  And he didn't, you know, get into specifics. He simply said: It's been related to us, talk to Rudy. If you think Ukraine is doing such -- you know, they've turned the corner and Zelensky is the reformer he says he's going to be, you know, talk to Rudy.

Is that fair?

THE CHAIRMAN: If I could just interject, and I have to make this advisory periodically. What counsel represents prior witnesses may have said or not said, we cannot vouch for the accuracy.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Okay.

THE CHAIRMAN: Unless you are a percipient witness, you should not assume facts that are not in evidence before you.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  You know, there’s nuances that we aren't aware of, you know, that occur in these meetings. There's ambiguities, and in the, you know, ambiguity a lot of times people jump to conclusions. And so the question is, is there a difference between talk to Rudy and work with Rudy?

A  I don't know.

Q  Okay.

A  I don't know.

Q  And was that related to you by Ambassador Sondland or Volker?

A  The difference between those two?

Q  Yes.

A  No.

Q  Or what had to be effectuated with Mr. Giuliani?

A  Here's what I understood from Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Sondland. In order to get President Zelensky and President Trump in a meeting in the Oval Office, they took from that May 23rd meeting that they needed to work with Rudy Giuliani, so -- and so they did.

Q  What did Volker relate to you about next steps then? You said you talk with Volker a lot, right?

A  I do.

Q  And what did he -- do you remember some of the blow by blow, the play by --

A  Well, no, actually, he didn't tell me anything about him reaching out to Giuliani. And about the same time he had his breakfast with Giuliani, he mentioned that I think in a text to me and Gordon. And about that same time, Fiona Hill, Dr. Hill mentioned that same thing, that she had heard that Kurt had been in touch with or met with Rudy Giuliani. That was -- I think that was the first time I was aware that Kurt had been in touch with Giuliani along these lines.

Q  Did Ambassador Volker give you any readout of his conversations or what he was doing?

A  He didn't.

Q  Okay. So he didn't tell you that he told Mr. Giuliani that there was no good-faith basis to investigate the Bidens?

A  He didn't tell me anything about his conversation with Giuliani.

Q  Did you ever come to learn from Sondland or other players that that was the case?

A  No. That was the case between Volker and Giuliani?

Q  Correct.

A  No.

Q  Would that surprise you if Volker had communicated that to Giuliani?

A  Communicated what?

Q  That there is no good faith basis to investigate the Bidens.

A  No knowledge. I can't answer.

MR. CASTOR: I have about 8 or 9 minutes left and I promised our members we would pivot to them at the end of the -- at the end of our round, so I would like to do that.

MR. NUNES: Thank you, Mr. Castor.

Ambassador, welcome. You're aware that this committee had an investigation into the 2016 elections, the House Intelligence Committee?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Am I aware that there is one? Yes.

MR. NUNES: Yes, that there was one that completed, and now those investigations have even continued.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don't know much about it, Mr. Chairman, but -- Mr. Nunes, but --

MR. NUNES: You're also aware that -- you're aware of the Bob Mueller special counsel investigation --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I am aware.

MR. NUNES: -- of the 2016 elections.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I am.

MR. NUNES: You may not be aware, but at least the Republicans on this committee were very concerned by Ukraine's actions during the 2016 election, and they have long been a target of our investigation and have continued today to try to get to the bottom of what they were up to in the 2016 election between the Ambassador's comments here and between other incidents that are out there.

Most notably, are you familiar with -- well, I know you're familiar because you talked about Leschenko earlier -- former journalist turned politician --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Leschenko, yes.

MR. NUNES: Do you have any current involvement with Leschenko? Do you run into him now or you’re just familiar with him?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I'm familiar with him. I think I met him in my -- in the 2006-2009 time period, or maybe it was an earlier visit in like 2014. But he's not in the government now, and he's not in the Parliament now, I'm pretty sure.

MR. NUNES: Okay. So he's of particular interest to at least the Republicans in Congress. Are you aware that he was a source for the Democrats and the Clinton campaign's dirt that they dug up on the President and fed to the FBI?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I am not aware.

MR. NUNES: Okay. So I didn't think you were aware of that, but I wanted to make sure you knew that he is -- by witnesses who have testified before this committee, he's the source of that dirt that was then used -- you're familiar with -- you've heard of the Steele dossier, I assume?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I have.

MR. NUNES: Okay. So that is our real concern in Ukraine over the 2016 election. So I understand that you, as an Ambassador, you don't like to get involved in politics, but the fact of the matter is the Ukrainians decided to get involved in politics and be, in almost all cases, supportive of the Democrats and helped to deliver dirt that was then used by the --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Mr. Nunes, the only comment I would make on that is that, again, according to this Politico document, which is similar to what you're describing, there were a couple of Ukrainians who did what you said.

When you say "Ukrainians," that paints a broad brush. And President -- the reason I raise this is that President Zelensky wants to make it very clear to us and to President Trump that it wasn't him and it wasn't his people.

MR. NUNES: Right. But at the time of the -- at the time when Mr. Giuliani and Republicans in Congress are raising these concerns about what was happening in Ukraine, you know, that's when the Mueller investigation is still ongoing, our probe is still ongoing, looking into getting to the bottom of FISA abuse and other matters.

So I know you don't want to get involved in politics, but those are still just ongoing concerns of the Congress. Thank you for your attendance today.

I'll yield to Mr. Jordan.

MR. JORDAN: Real quick if I could, Ambassador, on that last point. President Zelensky does want to clean up corruption. You know, he's been viewed as a reformer, but I think you said earlier to Mr. Castor's questions that Mr. Avakov is still in the government. Is that right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That is correct.

MR. JORDAN: And he has a pretty important position?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: He does.

MR. JORDAN: And he's the guy who said that President Trump, during the 2016 campaign, was -- I think he referred to him in social media postings as a clown and as worse than a terrorist. Is that accurate?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Is that what -- is that the quote out of this Politico document?

MR. JORDAN: It is.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: And he's currently in the government, Minister of Interior, in charge of the police in Ukraine. Is that right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: He is. He is. I suspect he would not say the same thing today that he said then.

MR. JORDAN: No, I understand that, but I just want to be clear.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: But 2016.

MR. JORDAN: All right. Thank you.

Mr. Ratcliffe has a couple.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Ambassador Taylor, my name is John Ratcliffe.

I want to read from -- direct you to your opening statement this morning, page 9, the bottom paragraph, and it reads: "Just days later, on August 27, Ambassador Bolton arrived in Kyiv and met with President Zelensky. During their meeting" --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Congressman, can I get you to hold on? I'm looking at a different one. Yeah, thank you.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Last paragraph, page 9.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, got it. Okay, met with. Yes.

MR. RATCLIFFE: "During their meeting, security assistance was not discussed -- amazingly, news of the hold did not leak out until August 29. I, on the other hand, was all too aware of and still troubled by the hold."

Have I read that correctly?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, sir.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. It sounds like, from your statement today, that you were aware of the hold and troubled by it but that President Zelensky was not aware of it at that point in time.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That is correct.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. So, based on your knowledge, nobody in the Ukrainian Government became aware of a hold on military aid until 2 days later, on August 29th.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That's my understanding.

MR. RATCLIFFE: That's your understanding. And that would have been well over a month after the July 25th call between President Trump and President Zelensky.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct.

MR. RATCLIFFE: So you're not a lawyer, are you, Ambassador Taylor?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I am not.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. So the idea of a quid pro quo is it's a concept where there is a demand for action or an attempt to influence action in exchange for something else. And in this case, when people are talking about a quid pro quo, that something else is military aid.

So, if nobody in the Ukrainian Government is aware of a military hold at the time of the Trump-Zelensky call, then, as a matter of law and as a matter of fact, there can be no quid pro quo, based on military aid. I just want to be real clear that, again, as of July 25th, you have no knowledge of a quid pro quo involving military aid.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: July 25th is a week after the hold was put on the security assistance. And July 25th, they had a conversation between the two Presidents, where it was not discussed.

MR. RATCLIFFE: And to your knowledge, nobody in the Ukrainian Government was aware of the hold?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That is correct.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Great. Thank you for clarifying.

I yield back.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. The time of the minority has expired.

Let's break for lunch until 1:30. I want to remind members they are not to discuss the substance of the Ambassador's testimony. And we will resume at 1:30. [Recess.]

[1:56 p.m.]

THE CHAIRMAN: We're back on the record.

Ambassador, I wanted to just ask you a few followup questions to the questions you received from the minority, and then I want to go through some of your opening statement. Then I'll hand it over to Mr. Noble, who will go much more methodically than I will through your testimony and the timeline.

You were asked by my colleagues in the minority doesn't the U.S. have a legitimate interest in fighting corruption, and I think you would agree that we do. Is that right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That is correct, Chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN: And in fact, Ambassador Yovanovitch was doing exactly that. She was urging the Ukrainians at every opportunity to fight corruption that had plagued Ukraine.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, sir.

THE CHAIRMAN: And it came to your attention that part of the reason why people in Ukraine and maybe some in the hornets' nest or vipers' nest in the United States wanted her out was that her efforts to fight corruption were getting in the way of some potentially corrupt business deals they wanted to make happen. Is that a fair summary?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That could be the case. I don't know the direct links there, but there were people who were concerned that she was so tough on -- it would be hard for them to do the kinds of deals that they wanted to do.

THE CHAIRMAN: Because she was fighting corruption in Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, yes, and supporting reformers or other people in the government who were fighting corruption in Ukraine.

THE CHAIRMAN: And you can distinguish, can't you, between a legitimate interest in getting a country to fight corruption and an illegitimate interest in getting a foreign government to interfere in U.S. Presidential elections?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: There is a difference.

THE CHAIRMAN: And wouldn't you say that trying to get a foreign country to intervene in a U.S. Presidential election is not fighting corruption, it is in itself corruption?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, you're taking me beyond my area of expertise. Just the facts are what I can attest to, but the -- what I said earlier about institutions I think is -- the way to fight corruption is to fix the courts and fix the judges.

So it's an institutional rather than, as you point out, rather than individual cases, which may or may not get us to a reformed, less corrupt system.

THE CHAIRMAN: And one of the concerns you had, though, was that there were efforts being made through this irregular channel to get Ukraine to interfere in U.S. politics and the next election, is that right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: The irregular channel seemed to focus on specific issues, specific cases, rather than the regular channel's focus on institution building. So the irregular channel, I think under the influence of Mr. Giuliani, wanted to focus on one or two specific cases, irrespective of whether it helped solve the corruption problem, fight the corruption problem.

THE CHAIRMAN: And those two cases you mentioned, the Burisma and the Bidens and the 2016 election, those were both individual investigations that were sought by Mr. Giuliani because he believed it would help his client, the President of the United States, right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That's my understanding.

THE CHAIRMAN: Let me go through -- I want to ask you about the Politico article which minority counsel spent about a third of their time asking you about this article. Prior to today, had you ever read this article?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I had not.

THE CHAIRMAN: Are you able to confirm in any way any of the allegations in the article?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, as I mentioned to Mr. Castor, I was surprised and disappointed to read what these Ukrainians were reported to have said and done.

THE CHAIRMAN: But you're not in a position to confirm or deny whether the article is right, not right, half right, or anything of the sort?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No, sir.

THE CHAIRMAN: And this article didn't affect your decision-making at any time, because you were unaware of it?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I was unaware of it. It was 2 years ago.

THE CHAIRMAN: There are at least a couple issues that have been raised by your testimony. The first involves conditionality surrounding the desperately sought meeting between the two Presidents, desperately sought by the Ukrainians, that is.

And the second involves conditionality around military aid. So let me go through your testimony, if I could, and ask you about a few of those -- both of those issues.

On page 5 of your testimony, in the third paragraph, you say "But during my subsequent communications with Ambassador Volker and Sondland, they relayed to me that the President, quote, "wanted to hear from Zelensky," unquote, before scheduling the meeting in the Oval Office. It was not clear to me what this meant.

Now, I take it, Ambassador, you used that word "before" deliberately, that is, they wanted to hear from Zelensky before they would schedule this meeting. Is that right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That is correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, at the time I think you said it wasn't clear to you what this meant.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That is also correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And in the two paragraphs below, you say: "I sensed something odd when Ambassador Sondland told me on June 28 that he did not wish to include most of the regular interagency participants in the call planned with President Zelensky later that day."

Why did you sense something odd about that?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: He and I were on the phone talking about the timing of this call. This call had been set up. Obviously, when you're trying to get the head of state on a call, get President Zelensky on a call, you had to work through the timing. Was it convenient? Could he -- there may have had to be interpreters present. He had to be at the right phone. So we were working on when the meeting would happen.

On the phone, Ambassador Sondland told me that the timing was going to change, that the time of the phone call was going to change. And I asked him something like, shouldn't we let everybody else know who's supposed to be on this call? And the answer was, don't worry about it. Even his staff, I think, were not aware that the time had changed.

[2:02 p.m.]

THE CHAIRMAN: And what was odd to you about that?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: This suggested to me that there were the two channels. This suggested to me that the normal channel, where you would have staff on the phone call, was being cut out, and the other channel, of people who were working, again, toward a goal which I supported, which was having a meeting to further U.S.-Ukrainian relations, I supported, but that irregular channel didn't have a respect for or an interest in having the normal staff participate in this call with the head of state.

THE CHAIRMAN: So was this an early indication to you that these two channels were diverging?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It was.

THE CHAIRMAN: And the interests of the irregular channel, represented by Mr. Giuliani, may not be the same interests as the State Department and what was in the best interest of the United States?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That second part I came to believe. I'm not sure it was at this point. This is within a week, a week and a half, of me -- 10 days of me arriving there. And so I was still, maybe naively, but I was still of the view that I was on -- I was part of a team that might have several parts but we were moving in the same direction.

So it was not -- I think, Mr. Chairman, it was not yet. That would come.

THE CHAIRMAN: But Ambassador Sondland made it clear not only that he didn't wish to include most of the regular interagency participants but also that no one was transcribing or monitoring the call as they added President Zelensky. What struck you as odd about that?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Same concern. That is, in the normal, regular channel, the State Department operations center that was putting the call together would stay on the line, in particular when you were having a conversation with the head of state, they would stay on the line, transcribe, take notes so that there could be a record of the discussion with this head of state. It is an official discussion.

When he wanted to be sure that there was not, the State Department operations center agreed. And they told us, they said -- in response to his request, they said, we won't monitor and will not -- and we certainly won't transcribe because we're going to sign off.

THE CHAIRMAN: On the following page of your testimony, page 6, second paragraph, you testified: "By mid-July it was becoming clear to me that the meeting President Zelensky wanted was conditioned on the investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. It was also clear that this condition was driven by the irregular policy channel I had come to understand was guided by Mr. Giuliani."

How had that become clear to you by mid-July?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: In the subsequent paragraphs, Mr. Chairman, I tried to walk through that conclusion, how I came to that conclusion.

THE CHAIRMAN: And when you -- I'll go through that with you. But when you say "conditioned on the investigations," I take it by that you mean, unless President Zelensky would agree to do these investigations of Burisma, meaning the Bidens, and Ukrainian interference in 2016, he wasn't going to get the White House meeting. Is that right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That is correct. Mr. Yermak, President Zelensky's assistant, came back at one point -- I think I talk about it in here -- and asked to nail down a date first and then he would make the statement -- he would make the statement of the investigations.

You know, Kurt and Ambassador Sondland did not -- weren't able to make that offer, weren't able to nail down the date. But the point is, that was -- they saw that that was the condition.

THE CHAIRMAN: And, in fact, later on, they would insist that President Zelensky speak first. That is, until you say publicly you're going to do these two investigations we want for the President, you're not going to get that meeting. That was essentially the position that this irregular channel took.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, my colleague in the minority asked you about "quid pro quo." And are you a lawyer?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I am not. I am not, Mr. Chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN: Because he asked you about the legal definition of "quid pro quo." So you're not in a position to talk about legal definitions?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I am definitely not in the position.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don't speak Latin.

THE CHAIRMAN: And, of course, whether it meets a legal definition of "quid pro quo" or it doesn't is really irrelevant to what we're focused on here.

But it is your testimony that, hey, you don't make these public statements about these two political investigations we want, you're not getting this meeting -- you make these statements, you'll get the meeting: you don't make these statements, you won't. Was that your understanding of the state of affairs in July of 2019?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Further down on page 6 of your testimony, second-to-last paragraph, at the end of that paragraph, you state: "All that the 0MB staff person" -- now we’re talking about the military assistance.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Right.

THE CHAIRMAN: "All that the OMB staff person said was that the directive had come from the President to the Chief of Staff to OMB."

That is the directive not to provide the military assistance, or to hold it up. Is that right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: "In an instant, I realized that one of the key pillars of our strong support for Ukraine was threatened. The irregular policy channel was running contrary to the goals of longstanding U.S. policy."

What did you mean by that?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Longstanding goal of U.S. policy would be to support Ukraine in its attempt to defend itself against the Russians. Part of that was security assistance. Security assistance had been very effective. It was weapons, it was training, it was the communications equipment, it was sustainables. It allowed Ukrainian soldiers to actually defend themselves.

That was longstanding U.S. policy. Even in the previous administration, the previous administration did not provide lethal weapons, but they did provide all this other -- so that was longstanding policy. To stop it, to hold it, for no apparent reason that I could see, was undercutting the longstanding U.S. policy.

THE CHAIRMAN: In the last paragraph on page 6, you say:

"There followed a series of NSC-led interagency meetings, starting at the staff level and quickly reaching the level of Cabinet secretaries. At every meeting, the unanimous conclusion was that the security assistance should be resumed, the hold lifted."

I take it by that there was no dissent, no disagreement with that. Everyone thought that, from the point of view of U.S. national security and our ally fighting the Russians, that security assistance should be resumed without delay.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Unanimous opinion of every level of interagency discussion.

THE CHAIRMAN: Was that it should resume without delay?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Without delay.

THE CHAIRMAN: And you go on in that paragraph to say: "My understanding was that the Secretaries of Defense and State, the CIA Director, and the National Security Advisor sought a joint meeting with the President to convince him to release the hold, but such a meeting was hard to schedule."

What do you deduce from that, that our ally is fighting with the Russians, but all of these agencies that support this can't get a meeting with the President to discuss it?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It turns out, Mr. Chairman, that those principals, as we call them, were on different trips at different times. I think this was also about the time of the Greenland question, about purchasing Greenland, which took up a lot of energy in the NSC.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. That's disturbing for a whole different reason.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Different story. Different story.

But, no, the general point was, it was a scheduling issue, because they really wanted Secretary Esper to be there, for obvious reasons. Most of this assistance came through the Defense Department, and they wanted him to be there. He was traveling. There may have been an Afghanistan trip. I can't remember whether -- but the problem was getting the right people in the room at the same time.

There actually was a meeting on Afghanistan where all of the principals hoped to raise the Ukraine issue at the end of the Afghanistan meeting. Didn't happen.

All to say that there was a strong interest in having this meeting with the President to try to change the position.

THE CHAIRMAN: You go on to say, a couple paragraphs later, "In the same July 19 phone call, they gave me an account of the July 10 meeting with the Ukrainian officials at the White House. Specifically, they told me" -- and you're referring to Dr. Hill and Mr. Vindman, I believe --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- "that Ambassador Sondland had connected 'investigations' with an Oval Office meeting for President Zelensky, which so irritated Ambassador Bolton that he abruptly ended the meeting, telling Dr. Hill and Mr. Vindman that they should have nothing to do with domestic politics."

Again, is this going to the conditionality of Ukraine having to do these investigations if they wanted the Oval Office meeting?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That was the implication of that connection, of the connection between the meeting and investigations.

THE CHAIRMAN: You go on to say, in the second-to-last paragraph, "Also during our July 19 call, Dr. Hill informed me that Ambassador Volker had met with Mr. Giuliani to discuss Ukraine. This caught me by surprise. The next day I asked Ambassador Volker about that meeting, but received no response."

How did you ask him about the meeting?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: By text message.

THE CHAIRMAN: And had he been pretty good about replying to you in the past?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Pretty good, but, again, he's also on the road a lot. And sometimes he's in an airplane. Sometimes I'll get a message back. Most times I get a message back, but not all the time.

THE CHAIRMAN: In this case, you got no reply at all, no matter when he got off an airplane or whatever took place thereafter?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don't remember getting a response.

I think, at the same time, that was when I heard from Dr. Hill that Ambassador Volker had had a meeting with Mr. Giuliani, so that I got both bits of information the same time on, I think, the same meeting.

THE CHAIRMAN: Turning to page 8 of your testimony: "Also on July 20, I had a phone conversation with Mr. Danyliuk, during which he conveyed to me that President Zelensky did not want to be used as a pawn in a U.S. re-election campaign."

Do you remember what Mr. Danyliuk said and why he was concerned he was being used as a pawn or why President Zelensky was concerned he was being used as a pawn in a U.S. reelection campaign?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes. I think it was becoming clear to the Ukrainians that, in order to get this meeting that they wanted, they would have to commit to pursuing these investigations. And Mr. Danyliuk, at least, understood -- and I'm sure that he briefed President Zelensky, I'm sure they had this conversation -- believed that opening those investigations, in particular on Burisma, would have involved Ukraine in the 2020 election campaign. He did not want to do that.

THE CHAIRMAN: Turning to page 9 of your testimony, second paragraph, about midway through: "A formal U.S. request to the Ukrainians to conduct an investigation based on violations of their own law struck me as improper, and I recommended to Ambassador Volker that we 'stay clear.'"

What struck you as improper about it?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It struck me as improper that the United States would be asking -- if the United States were to ask Ukraine to investigate an apparent violation of Ukrainian law, that would be improper.

If, on the other hand -- what is proper and what happens frequently is the United States goes to Ukraine and asks for their help to pursue an investigation of violations of American law, of U.S. law. That's what we have a mutual legal assistance treaty, an MLAT, for.

But this is different. This would be -- what Kurt was asking for was examples or precedent for asking the Ukrainians to investigate a violation of their own law.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, there were two things that were improper about this, weren't there? There was the one you're mentioning now, which is that it wasn't appropriate to ask Ukraine to investigate a violation of Ukrainian law, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: But it was also improper because the goal of those investigations was to influence the U.S. election. Isn't that also the case?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: If you could turn to page 10 of your written testimony.

One of my colleagues in the minority asked you about, well, how could it be a quid pro quo if the Ukrainians didn't know that security assistance was withheld. But Ukraine found out it was being withheld, did they not?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: They did.

THE CHAIRMAN: And once they found out it was being withheld -- in the second paragraph of page 10 of your testimony, you state: "The same day that I sent my cable to the Secretary, August 29, Mr. Yermak contacted me and was very concerned, asking about the withheld security assistance. The hold that the White House had placed on the assistance had just been made public that day in a Politico story. At that point, I was embarrassed that I could give him no explanation for why it was withheld."

Why were you embarrassed by that?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I was embarrassed because the United States, as the principal ally, the principal supporter for Ukraine, in general, but in particular in its fight with the Russians, was seen to be -- they found out that we had put a hold on the assistance that would help them fight the Russians. And, at that point, I had nothing to tell them.

I mean, the obvious question was, "Why?" So Mr. Yermak and others were trying to figure out why this was, and they thought maybe, if they were to travel, if Mr. Yermak were to go to Washington to talk to someone here or -- the Defense Minister also contacted me later on. He wanted the same thing.

They thought that there must be some rational reason for this being held up, and they just didn't -- and maybe in Washington they didn't understand how important this assistance was to their fight and to their armed forces. And so maybe they could figure -- so they were just desperate. And I couldn't tell them. I didn't know and I didn't tell them, because we hadn't -- we hadn't -- there'd been no guidance that I could give them.

THE CHAIRMAN: And was it your suspicion at this point already that the assistance was being withheld potentially because of this help they wanted to get from the Ukrainians first?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: You know, Mr. Chairman, same kind of question about how it dawns on you. My next paragraph said it had not occurred to me that the hold on security assistance could be related to the investigations. As of that time, it hadn't. I hadn't put those dots together. I hadn't connected those dots.

The next couple -- the next week, from the discussion on September 1st through about September 7th, it became clearer.

THE CHAIRMAN: So when you're asked about this by Mr. Yermak on August 29th, you're embarrassed because you hadn't been able to get an answer as to why the aid was withheld and you felt it desperately ought to be provided.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I'm a representative of the United States Government out there, and he asked me a perfectly legitimate question, why are you holding up this assistance, and I couldn't tell him.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, at this point, when you couldn't tell them, they were aware of other asks the President had made in that call, right? You know that now, although you didn't at the time.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: On -- correct, on the meeting.

THE CHAIRMAN: And even though the Ukrainians learned on August 29th that there had been a hold placed, they certainly knew up through this whole period of June, July, August that they hadn't yet received the aid, right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: The aid -- so, right. The aid had, by and large, not been put out to contract.

It's 1-year money, by the way. If we can make it 2-year money, that would be great. This is a little plug here for 2-year money.

But it was 1-year money. It expired on the 30th of September. And it was late in coming in the fiscal year, and so it had not been obligated. It hadn't been put into contracts yet. So, right, they -- I don't think they suspected anything during that time.

THE CHAIRMAN: Yeah. But you said, in the middle of page 10, "It had still not occurred to me that the hold on security assistance could be related to the 'investigations.' That, however, would soon change."

So let me ask you about when that began to change.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yeah.

THE CHAIRMAN: In the middle of the following paragraph, you testify, "Indeed, I received a readout of the Pence-Zelensky meeting" -- that would be the meeting in Poland.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: On the 1st of September.

THE CHAIRMAN: On the 1st of September. You received a readout "over the phone from Mr. Morrison, during which he told me President Zelensky had opened the meeting by asking the Vice President about security cooperation."

So this was -- if he opened the meeting with this, this was foremost on President Zelensky's mind?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, sir.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, the final paragraph on page 10: "During this same phone call I had with Mr. Morrison, he went on to describe a conversation Ambassador Sondland had with Mr. Yermak at Warsaw. Ambassador Sondland told Mr. Yermak that the security assistance money would not come until President Zelensky committed to pursue the Burisma investigation." And the Burisma investigation, again, is the one involving the Bidens.

Now, again, I want to ask you about conditionality. If Mr. Morrison told you that, according to Mr. Sondland, that Mr. Sondland had communicated to the Ukrainians, to Mr. Yermak, security assistance money would not come until President Zelensky committed to pursue the Burisma investigation, the one is being conditioned on the other, is it not?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, sir.

THE CHAIRMAN: You go on, at the end of that paragraph, top of page 11: "This was the first time I had heard that the security assistance -- not just the White House meeting -- was conditioned on the investigations."

So both of these things you now had learned were conditioned on these two political investigations, right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That's correct, sir.

THE CHAIRMAN: That is, but for the Ukrainians' willingness to do these two investigations, they were not only not going to get the White House meeting, they were also not going to get the military assistance.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That is what Mr. Sondland told Mr. Yermak.

THE CHAIRMAN: So that is what's communicated by the U.S. Ambassador to the EU, charged with a Ukrainian responsibility to the Ukrainians, about what they have to do if they want to get the White House meeting and U.S. military assistance.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: The only qualification I would put on that is that Ambassador Sondland was not the principal United States representative to Ukraine. Ukraine's not in the EU. He had this irregular, informal commission from President Trump based on May 23rd.

THE CHAIRMAN: But this is someone, ambassador --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Ambassador.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- high rank --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- having direct communicate on with the President --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: He had direct communication with the President, yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- and he is communicating to the Ukrainians that if they don't do these political investigations that would help Mr. Trump in the next election, they won't get the meeting with the President and they won't get military assistance. Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: If I can go to the second full paragraph on page 11 of your testimony.

"Ambassador Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelensky was dependent on a public announcement of investigations -- in fact, Ambassador Sondland said, 'everything' was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance."

Meaning that he had understated the matter before. Am I right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: He thought it would -- he realized that it had been a mistake to condition it only on the meeting.

THE CHAIRMAN: That it was also -- the military assistance was also going to be conditioned on the commitment by Ukraine to do these two political investigations.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: You go on to say in that paragraph, "He said" -- he, Ambassador Sondland -- "said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky 'in a public box' by making a public statement about ordering such investigations."

By that, do you mean, Ambassador, that President Trump wanted Zelensky to have to make a public commitment, to get into a public box -- that is, commit publicly to these two investigations -- before he was going to get either the meeting or the assistance?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That's what Ambassador Sondland told me.

THE CHAIRMAN: So it wasn't even enough that they make a private commitment; Ambassador Sondland was saying that Ukraine and President Zelensky needed to make a public statement for the President.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: In the next paragraph, you say, "In the same September 1 call, I told Ambassador Sondland that President Trump should have more respect for another head of state and that what he described was not in the interest of either President Trump or President Zelensky."

What did you mean that he should have more respect for another head of state?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: What Ambassador Sondland was telling me that President Trump wanted, and, again, presumably based on a phone call between Ambassador Sondland and President Trump, was that President Trump wanted a public statement from President Zelensky. And that struck me to be bad for both, that it would not turn out well for both.

But, in answer to your question, Mr. Chairman, that would show disrespect to another head of state. If President Trump is telling you, I want you to go out and publicly say you're going to do this, that was disrespectful, in my view, to another head of state.

THE CHAIRMAN: Disrespectful in the sense that he not only wanted this illicit bargain but he wanted him to make it public that he was going to -- in other words, that he couldn't trust the Ukrainian President to honor a private commitment to do these two political investigations, he needed it to be public?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, I didn't go that far.

THE CHAIRMAN: Yeah.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I mean, that was not in my mind, about public/private. It was more the direction from one President to another President. Two sovereign states having a conversation, a respectful conversation, you would not have one telling the other to go out and make a public --

THE CHAIRMAN: In the next paragraph -- well, let me turn to the following page, page 12, of your testimony.

The second-to-last paragraph, in the middle of the paragraph, you testify: "Ambassador Sondland said that he talked to President Zelensky and Mr. Yermak and told them that, although this was not a quid pro quo, if President Zelensky did not 'clear things up' in public, we would be at a 'stalemate'. I understood a 'stalemate' to mean that Ukraine would not receive the much-needed military assistance."

So you understood that, unless President Zelensky made this public statement, they weren't going to get the military assistance.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: On page 13, the middle paragraph, you're talking about the text messages, and you testified: "Before these text messages, during our call on September 8, Ambassador Sondland tried to explain to me that President Trump is a businessman. When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check."

Now, when Ambassador Sondland described to you this signing of the check, did you take it by that he was referring to signing the check for the military assistance?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: You go on in the next sentence to say, "Ambassador Volker used the same terms several days later when we were together at the Yalta European Strategy Conference."

Did he use the same "signing the check" term?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Did that strike you as remarkable, that that same analogy was used by both ambassadors?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No. It struck me -- I concluded that they had had a conversation.

THE CHAIRMAN: And that they both understood that if President Trump was going to sign the check for military assistance then they needed to pay up first and that pay-up was a public declaration of these two political investigations?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That was the parallel.

THE CHAIRMAN: You go on to say, "I argued to both that the explanation made no sense: the Ukrainians did not 'owe' President Trump anything, and holding up security assistance for domestic political gain was 'crazy,' as I had said in my text message."

Well, I think that's self-explanatory.

I'm going to hand it over to Mr. Noble.

Oh, I'm sorry. Oh. Yeah. Okay.

Well, actually, I'm happy to go to members, if they would like to ask some questions.

Mr. Quigley.

MR. QUIGLEY: Ambassador, at any time did anyone detail what Mr. Giuliani's role was in Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No, sir.

MR. QUIGLEY: How did you keep aware of his activities? Did anyone report to you? Did anyone at all tell you what he was doing? The Ukrainians, for example?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No, sir. The work on these investigations, to make commitments to pursue these investigations, was done by Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Sondland. What I knew was that Ambassador -- that they both, to a greater and lesser degree, extent, had conversations with Mr. Giuliani. I don't know the nature of those conversations.

MR. QUIGLEY: You described, I believe, that there were divergent functions taking place, official and unofficial, and the Giuliani roles were unofficial. Had you ever seen, in all your years working in the field that you do, someone operate in this manner?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Congressman, I have seen constructive input coming from outside the government into the government decisionmaking process. In particular -- in every case, that was to push forward, on trying to find ideas coming from the outside, to push forward an agreed policy goal or objective.

MR. QUIGLEY: Did they typically work together with the officials?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: They typically worked together. That's why you -- yeah.

MR. QUIGLEY: They were aware of what each other was doing --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Absolutely.

MR. QUIGLEY: -- and they knew each other's role?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Absolutely. And they can be -- often can be. I mean, there's things called -- at the Institute of Peace, we do some what we call track two, which is the unofficial -- track one is the official dialogue between governments. Track two is unofficial, where you have former members of the government talking to former members of another government. And they come up with ideas that they feed into the track one, to the formal, and they push that forward. That's common practice.

MR. QUIGLEY: And, finally, did the Ukrainians ever ask you about his role and what he was doing, or did --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No, sir. About Giuliani's role?

MR. QUIGLEY: Right.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No, sir.

MR. QUIGLEY: They never talked to you about it?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Not that I recall.

MR. QUIGLEY: Very good. Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: I take it from your testimony, Ambassador, that while there are appropriate cases to have that second track, where the second track is ultimately coordinated with the first track, that's not really what happened here.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, it's unusual. There was some coordination. Occasionally I would be included in some of these discussions. I was in the first track, in the regular track, and as you could see from the emails, or the texts, I was included on some of those. So there was some coordination among that.

THE CHAIRMAN: You know, I guess the more accurate way to ask the question is, in this actual case, not like prior track two discussions, the irregular channel came to co-opt the regular channel in pursuit of an objective that was not in U.S. interests. Is that fair to say?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: In one aspect of the regular channel -- that is, in the security assistance component of the regular channel. The regular channel is all of our interactions with Ukraine, and one of the very important components of that interaction with Ukraine is the security assistance. And the security assistance got blocked by this second channel.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, not just the one, because it was also the meeting, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: The meeting as well. Yes, sir. The meeting as well.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Swalwell.

MR. SWALWELL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And thank you, Ambassador.

Do you have any reason to believe, Ambassador, that anytime during your communications with Ambassador Sondland that Ambassador Sondland misrepresented the directives or intentions of President Trump?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No.

MR. SWALWELL: How would you assess the character of Ambassador Sondland? You've assessed Mr. Volker's earlier. Can you make the same assessment for Ambassador Sondland?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I can do facts, you know.

MR. SWALWELL: Based on your facts, how would you assess his integrity in this irregular process that you engaged in?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I have no reason to believe that he was not acting with integrity.

MR. SWALWELL: What was your concern?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: My concern about the whole second track was that, apparently at the instigation of Mr. Giuliani, Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Volker were conditioning an important component of our assistance on what would ultimately be a political action.

MR. SWALWELL: And, Ambassador, you were asked earlier about President Trump characterizing this to Ambassador Sondland as "no quid pro quo no quid pro quo." But as you described this here, the conditions that were laid out to you, at least through Ambassador Sondland relaying President Trump's wishes, you're familiar with the phrase, if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck, you can say it's not a duck, but it’s a duck?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Congressman, I can just tell you the facts. You've stated them. That is, apparently, President -- well, Ambassador Sondland told me many times that President Trump said it was not a quid pro quo. I observed that, in order to move forward on the security assistance, the Ukrainians were told by Ambassador Sondland that they had to pursue these investigations.

MR. SWALWELL: I was moved by page 8's description of your trip to Donbas, and I think you included that for a reason, because you also expressed the concern that 13,000 Ukrainians have been killed in the war.

Can you just talk about the human element here and what it means to Ukrainians every single day that goes by where we have authorized aid, they don't see it in their bank account, and Ukrainians continue to lose their lives, and what that means for our security and just their livelihood?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Congressman, the Ukrainians are remarkably focused on the casualties in the east.

When Senator Johnson and Senator Murphy visited, about this time, we had a meeting with the Defense Minister. And it was the first meeting of the day. We went over there. They invited us to a ceremony that they have in front of their ministry every day. Every day, they have this ceremony. And it's about a half-an-hour ceremony where soldiers in formation, the Defense Minister, families of soldiers who have been killed are there.

And the selection of which soldiers are honored, which soldiers who had been killed are honored, is on the date of it. So whatever today's date is, you know, if we were there today, on the 22nd of October, the families of those soldiers who were killed on any 22nd of October in the previous 5 years would be there. And --

MR. SWALWELL: Is it fair to say that the sooner they would have received the aid from the United States, the fewer the casualties would've been?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: So here's what we could say. This is -- I don't want to overstate this. Because it wasn't that the holdup of this particular set of equipment and weapons and radar and communications and vehicles, that that led to, the week that I was there or even any particular -- we can't make that connection.

What we can say is that that radar and weapons and sniper rifles, communication, that saves lives. It makes the Ukrainians more effective. It might even shorten the war. That's what our hope is, to show that the Ukrainians can defend themselves and the Russians, in the end, will say, "Okay, we're going to stop." It's that saving of life. That's how we would save lives.

MR. SWALWELL: Thank you.

Yield back.

THE CHAIRMAN: Our time has expired. Forty-five minutes to the minority.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  In your statement, on page 2, you mention that, when you were serving outside of government during the Obama administration, after the Russian invasion, you joined two other former Ambassadors to Ukraine in urging the Obama administration officials at the State Department, Defense Department, and other agencies to provide lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine in order to deter further Russian aggression?

A  Yes.

Q  Who were the two other officials?

A  Ambassador John Herbst and Ambassador Steve Pifer.

Q  What was the objection to providing lethal defensive weapons at the time?

A  The objection was that it might provoke the Russians.

Q  But you didn't think that was a good argument?

A  I didn't. I thought that the Russians had already been provoked and they had invaded Ukraine.

Q  Uh-huh.

Overall, once you joined, you know, the administration in Kyiv, were you happy with the package of aid?

A  I was happy that we were providing aid. It could always be more. But I was glad it was coming. I would’ve been very unhappy if it didn't come.

Q  But the Trump administration had a package of aid to the Ukraine --

A  Yes.

Q  -- including lethal defensive weapons --

A  Yes.

Q  -- financial assistance --

A  I was very happy about that.

Q  Okay.

A  Yes.

Q  And that was an improvement of years prior?

A  It was.

Q  Was it a substantial improvement?

A  It was a substantial improvement, in that this administration provided Javelin antitank weapons. These are defensive weapons, and they deter, and I believe successfully deter, Russians from trying to grab more territory, to push forward any further tank attack, number one. So there was a military capability.

There was also a very strong political message that said that the Americans are willing to provide more than blankets. I mean, that was the previous. And these weapons are serious weapons. They will kill Russian tanks. So these were serious weapons. It was a demonstration that we support Ukraine.

Q  Uh-huh. And "the Americans are willing to provide more than blankets," was that a characterization of the aid in the prior administration?

A  The prior administration had been willing to give aid, but "blankets" was just kind of the more derogatory version of it, but it was nonlethal weapons. So there was communications equipment, there were vehicles, there were maybe some rations, there were blankets, there were night-vision goggles. So it was a significant package, but it stopped short of weapons.

Q  On page 5 of your statement, right around the June 27th-28th timeframe --

A  Yes, sir.

Q  -- you stated that you sensed something odd when Ambassador Sondland told me that he did not wish to include most of the regular interagency participants on the upcoming call with President Zelensky.

A  Correct.

Q  Who was excluded from that call?

A  At a minimum, his staff in Brussels. It may have also included people on the Department of Energy staff, because Secretary Perry was on the call. I don't know which -- I don't think the State Department -- I don't know. I don't think State Department was even planning to be on the call, but I -- which is another question, why would that not be, but that's --

Q  Okay. Was the National Security Council staff on that call?

A  No.

Q  Would they ordinarily be on such a call?

A  Not necessarily.

Q  Okay.

You state that, before President Zelensky joined the call, Ambassador Volker advised that he planned to meet with President Zelensky in Toronto on July 2nd and discuss with President Zelensky, you know, how to position Ukraine for this White House meeting?

A  It was to prepare President Zelensky for the phone call, which we were trying to schedule, which, in turn, would've been a step for the meeting -- would’ve been a step towards --

Q  Okay.

A  -- the scheduling of the meeting. Yes.

Q  And did you have a concern about that?

A  I didn't.

Q  About what Ambassador Volker would say in Canada?

A  I didn't have a concern. As I think I've mentioned, I didn't, at that time, understand what the code was for investigations.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  And I don't even think, at that point -- I don't think Kurt said anything about investigations on that call or even on the prep call. So that call, that day, there were two parts; one was Americans only, and then they introduced President Zelensky. And it was in the preparatory call with Americans only that Kurt said he was going to have this conversation with President Zelensky.

Q  Right. But Ambassador --

A  And --

Q  Oh, I'm sorry.

A  No, go ahead.

Q  "But Ambassador Volker noted that he would relay that President Trump wanted to see rule of law, transparency, but also, specifically, cooperation on investigations to 'get to the bottom of things.'"

A  Good point. You're exactly right. So I stand corrected. He did mention investigations --

Q  Okay.

A  -- in that prep part.

Q  And he indicated that this would be a topic in Toronto in a couple days. Is that correct?

A  In about 3 days, yes.

Q  And did you have any concerns about that?

A  I didn't. As I say, I didn't know what "investigations" referred to at this point.

Q  Okay.

A  You know, I was starting to get suspicious.

Q  Okay. But once President Zelensky joined the call, there was no discussion of that?

A  There was not.

Q  At the top of page 6, you state you reported on this call to Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent and you wrote a memo for the record dated June 30th that summarized the Zelensky call?

A  Yes.

Q  Did the memo you prepared have anything in it about the pre-call?

A  No.

Q  Okay. Did you communicate with Kent anything about the pre-call?

A  I don't think so. I don't think so. I'm not 100 percent sure.

Q  Now, did he ask you to write the memo or --

A  He suggested that I write the memo.

So this is on the 30th of June. I got there on the 17th of June. I'd had a previous call on the 18th of June when I first arrived, and then there was this.

So I was, as I said in the testimony, realizing that there are these two channels. At the time, I thought it was beneficial -- benign or even beneficial to have these two, because they could reinforce each other, or one could at least support the other.

But I thought it was -- it struck me -- the reason I wanted to be sure that Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent knew about it was he's clearly and solely in the official channel, the normal channel.

It wasn't at all clear to me from that phone call that anyone from the State Department, the normal channel, as you just pointed out -- no State, no NSC -- was on the call. I just wanted to be sure that they knew that this other one was going on. It could still be benign or even beneficial, but it just seemed to me that there ought to be knowledge of the two.

Q  Okay. And so you discussed that with Kent?

A  I did.

Q  Do you remember what he said to you?

A  I just remember him saying two things. One is, you better write it down --

Q  Okay.

A  -- which I did. And two, he said, Bill, I'm glad you're out there, I'm glad that you're there, that you can be the link between these two what we're now calling channels.

Q  Okay.

So did you write the memo about the call but also the pre-call?

A  I wrote the memo about the call. I'll have to go back and look at --

Q  Okay.

A  So the memo is in the documents that I submitted to the State Department, so they will be available sooner or later to you.

Q  Possibly later.

A  This is up to Secretary Pompeo.

THE CHAIRMAN: We're hoping sooner.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  By mid-July, you write, it was becoming clear that the meeting with Zelensky was conditioned on the investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 elections.

MR. SMITH: Which page, again, was that?

MR. CASTOR: It's the very next paragraph.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yeah. Yeah.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  And so my question is, what happened in between that time period?

A  So, actually, what I meant to imply -- what I meant to suggest was that, right after -- by mid-July, it was becoming clear. And so, on the two paragraphs to follow that, Mr. Castor, I tried to describe what led me to make it -- why it was becoming clear to me that that was the case.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  And that is the -- oh, I'm sorry. I've gone now to page --

Q  We're on page 6.

A  You're on page 6, but I've jumped in order to answer that question about why mid-July. It's on the 19th. You have to skip ahead until we get to the paragraph that starts, "In the same July 19 phone call," which on yours is on page 7 in the middle.

This is a readout of the July 10th meeting, where you had Danyliuk and Yermak, Bolton, Sondland, Volker.

Q  Right.

A  And it's at that one where Sondland connected investigations to an Oval Office meeting, Bolton walked out.

Q  And you learned that from Fiona Hill?

A  And Alex Vindman, yes.

Q  Okay. How frequently did you speak with Hill and Vindman? Was it on an as-needed basis --

A  Yes.

Q  -- or was it a regular schedule?

A  No. As needed.

Q  Okay. Any idea why it took so long for the time period between the 10th and the 19th?

A  The reason -- I remember it well about the 19th. The 18th was the NSC meeting where the hold on security assistance was first --

Q  Okay.

A  -- broached. Troubling. I called these two NSC people the next day. And on that one, they gave me the readout of the July 10th.

Q  Had you received a readout from Volker about the meeting?

A  About the July 10th meeting?

Q  Yeah.

A  I don't think so.

Q  Okay.

A  Yeah. I'll have to check my notes.

Q  Have you ever had a readout from Volker about what happened in the July 10 meeting? Or is your only information coming from Dr. Hill and Lieutenant Colonel Vindman?

A  It might just be from that source of information. I don't remember having a conversation --

Q  Okay.

A  -- about these other ones. Danyliuk was, obviously, in that meeting. Yermak was in that meeting. And I've had multiple conversations with them, more often than, actually, with --

Q  Did anyone relate to you that Danyliuk was getting way into the weeds with Ambassador Bolton and it was not a long meeting in --

A  No, no. Actually, it was -- no. What I heard from Vindman and Hill was that the first part of that meeting went well. Substantive discussions: security, national security, both sides, energy security.

And, apparently, according to them, their boss, John Bolton was appreciating the substance of that meeting. And, in their description, when Ambassador Sondland raised investigations in the meeting, that triggered Ambassador Bolton's antenna, political antenna, and he said, we don't do politics here.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  And so he ended the meeting.

Q  Okay. Did anyone provide you a readout that Danyliuk was talking about establishing new types of institutions in the Ukrainian Government?

A  I don't remember that.

Q  Okay.

A  No.

Q  And so no one related to you that Danyliuk was getting into the weeds with Bolton?

A  No.

Q  On July 10th -- going back to the paragraph on page 6 beginning with, "On July 10" --

A  Yes.

Q  -- you met with Zelensky's Chief of Staff and then-foreign policy advisor, who had advised you they had heard from Mr. Giuliani?

A  Ah. Yes. This is the one where I mentioned that they had heard this via -- they had heard from Giuliani via the Prosecutor General Lutsenko.

Q  Okay. And you relayed your concerns to Counselor Brechbuhl?

A  Brechbuhl. That's correct.

Q  What was his feedback?

A  Again, the Counselor to the Secretary is focused a lot -- I won't say mainly, but focused a lot -- on personnel issues. And yet it was he who -- I had two meetings with him, one just before the one with the Secretary in May. And it was he who said, "Look, Bill, call me anytime if you've got questions or problems. I can check with the Secretary and" -- so that's why I called him.

Q  So he is someone who had great influence with the Secretary, right?

A  He is very close -- he and the Secretary go back a long ways.

Q  Okay. So if you, you know, communicated your concerns to Brechbuhl --

A  Yes.

Q  -- on July 10th --

A  Yes.

Q  -- wasn't that, in effect, a signal that your concerns before you took the post were coming to fruition?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. And did Brechbuhl have a -- did he recognize that? And did he realize that this was part of having your back and --

A  He did. He did.

Q  -- the other commitments that were made to you?

A  And I think I talked to him a couple of times along these lines. And, again, it comes up when we talk about the security assistance. You know, I called him that time as well. He said he would check. So he was responsive. It wasn’t in his area of -- he didn't do this day-to-day. So he had to talk to other people about -- other people in the State Department about this.

Q  And then the next event --

MR. JORDAN: Can I jump in for just a second?

MR. CASTOR: Sure.

MR. JORDAN: I want to go back to the July 19th call you had with Dr. Hill and Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. You said, Ambassador, you initiated that call?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Congressman, I think so. I know it was on my -- I remember seeing it on the schedule. So, again, the troubling NSC meeting was the 18th.

MR. JORDAN: Understood.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: And the 19th, it may have been a prescheduled call. I can't remember if I initiated it or not. Was that the question?

MR. JORDAN: If it was prescheduled with the NSC, would Dr. Hill or Mr. Vindman have scheduled that call with you? Who would've scheduled that?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I can't remember who did it.

MR. JORDAN: You get to Ukraine on June 17th. Is that right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, sir.

MR. JORDAN: All right. So you're there 1 month. June 17th and July 19th, how many conversations did you have with Dr. Hill and/or Lieutenant Colonel Vindman in that month time period?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: This might have been the first one.

MR. JORDAN: This is the first one?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: This could have been the first one.

MR. JORDAN: And you don't know who initiated it?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: The only reason I'm hesitating -- I know that I was concerned about the 18th call.

MR. JORDAN: I understand.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: And they were on that.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: And I know that it was actually on my schedule. Sometimes -- well, I remember seeing it on the schedule. So sometimes when there's kind of a spur-of-the-moment call it doesn't show up on my schedule. But this was on my schedule. So it was scheduled to happen the following day. I can't remember if it had been previously scheduled and I just took advantage of it or if I scheduled it right then because I wanted to talk about the 18th meeting.

MR. JORDAN: If it had been previously scheduled, do you know why it would've been previously scheduled?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don't.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. So would you guess it originated with the NSC calling you?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I can't speculate. I can't remember.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. But this is the only call you've had with him in the month that you've been there as Ambassador?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I think that's correct.

MR. JORDAN: And just to go back where our counselor was, it was both about your concerns that you had learned the day before, relative to security assistance dollars --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: -- and then they volunteered to tell you about their July 10th meeting, right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: And did you talk to them about your July 10th meeting in Ukraine with the individuals you had met with, Mr. Zelensky's Chief of Staff? Did you fill him in on that as well?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don't think I did.

MR. JORDAN: Is it fair to say the bulk of the conversation was Dr. Hill and Lieutenant Colonel Vindman relating to you what happened at the July 10th meeting here in the United States?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: The first part of the conversation was about what we had all heard the day before --

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: -- about this security assistance being held up. And none of the three of us had any idea why.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: And then they went into this other discussion about the July 10th meeting.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. Any idea which took the bulk of the time of the phone call?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I'm sure the July 10th -- discussion of the July 10th meeting took the bulk of the call.

MR. JORDAN: The bulk of the time was on this meeting that took place at the White House.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

Steve, thank you.

[3:05 p.m.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  During this time period, did Volker ever talk to you about his view of whether the aid would be released?

A  Yes, I can't remember specific conversations, but I remember we had conversations, and we all agreed that it would be released. We were all sure it would be released. The fact is we want -- we were hoping that it would be resolved, released, decided, reversed, lifted, whatever the verb is, before the Ukrainians heard about it because we didn't want to be in the position I found myself later on being embarrassed and not be able to say. So we hoped that it would be fixed, and they would never hear about it, and we wouldn't have to explain.

Q  And from time to time, this happens with aid. It gets held up, right?

A  Sometimes aid gets held up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Q  For whatever reason?

A  Mr. Castor, I don't know. So I've been in the aid business for a long time.

Q  I mean, you know you can snicker about this, but --

A  No, no, no, I'm not.

Q  You're not snickering at this. Let me be clear, you're not snickering. But it's been related to us that this happens from time to time. Aid gets held up for whatever reason --

A  So I'm trying to -- Mr. Castor, I've done a bunch of aid stuff as I mentioned here. Aid can be held up when, you know, if there is a CR or something, you know, if there's a congressional -- it could be a congressional hold. Yes, so there are instances that aid gets held up.

Q  Okay. But in this instance, everyone was aligned you thought that we ought to work through this and the aid will be lift -- the hold will be lifted.

A  Because I was convinced, and all indications were that everyone in the interagency community that had anything to do with this aid was in support of that aid flowing.

Q  And bipartisan Members of Congress?

A  And bipartisan Members of Congress.

Q  And, ultimately, the hold was lifted, right?

A  And, ultimately, the hold was lifted on the 11th of September.

Q  In total, the Ukrainians knew about this for what about 10 days?

A  They knew that there was a hold on the 29th, and they knew it was lifted on the 11th of September.

Q  Twelve days?

A  [Nonverbal response.]

During that time, I got a lot of questions about it.

Q  Fair enough. During the July 19th call, was it discussed the status of the upcoming call between the Presidents? There was a July 25th call between President Trump and Zelensky that's attracted some attention?

A  You're talking about with Fiona Hill and Alex Vindman?

Q  Right.

A  I don't recall. I don't think so. I think actually I could check my text messages. Scheduling that call was a challenge.

Q  Okay.

A  And it went back and forth in terms of time. So I don't think I had a conversation with Vindman and Hill about that at that point.

Q  What was NSC's position on the call?

A  They opposed it.

Q  Okay. And so Dr. Hill opposed it?

A  Certainly her boss opposed it.

Q  So Ambassador Bolton opposed the call?

A  He did.

Q  Okay?

A  And that was clear from the July 10th meeting.

Q  So whoever set up the call --

A  Yes.

Q  -- it wasn't Ambassador Bolton, right?

A  I think that’s right.

Q  So you didn't know anything about the call on the 19th, and then it was scheduled on the 25th?

A  You say I didn't know about the call? I--

Q  You were talking to Fiona Hill. I'm going back to the 19th?

A  Yeah, yeah.

Q  You're on the phone with Dr. Hill and Lieutenant Colonel Vindman?

A  And we were talking about two things.

Q  Two things.

A  We were talking about why this assistance was put on the day before, and we're talking about -- and they are relating the discussion of July 10th with Danyliuk and Bolton.

Q  Right.

A  And the call was not yet locked in, scheduled.

Q  Okay.

A  And it was going back and forth -- there was some talk. There was some -- as I recall, there was, you know -- it was on and off, the call's on, the call's off. It is scheduled for here. Not going to happen. I could go back through the records if you want.

Q  Okay. To the extent that you can recall --

A  Yes.

Q  -- when did you then learn that this July 25th call would be scheduled?

A  I -- well, we were trying to schedule it for about a week in advance, that whole week. As I say, back and forth, yes, no, this time, that time. So that was -- I was doing it on the Ukrainian side and trying to go back to the -- trying to keep the NSC advised as to what was going on. And I think it was kind of -- it may have been about the day before that it was actually locked down, so about the 24th.

Q  Okay. And did you find out why --

A  Why?

Q  -- the change.

A  No. As you just made the point, Ambassador Bolton was not interested in having -- did not want to have the call because he thought it was going to be a disaster. He thought that there could be some talk of investigations or worse on the call. Turned out he was right. So he didn't want to have the call. I think it was the Chief of Staff who helped schedule that call.

Q  Mr. Mulvaney?

A  Mr. Mulvaney.

Q  Okay. Do you remember when you finally found out that the call was happening and you had to go alert the Ukrainians?

A  We were alerting the Ukrainians back and forth. We had given them a couple of head fakes all the way through about this is going to happen; this is not going to happen. And probably the day before. Now the other thing is the White House situation room can work directly with the Ukrainians as well. Most of the time, they would come through me, and I would kind of set the stage. But when it gets to the actual final hours of its schedule, they will -- they can call directly to the Ukrainians.

Q  Okay. Also, on the July 19th call, Dr. Hill informed you that Volker had met with Giuliani to discuss Ukraine?

A  Yes.

Q  Was that the first time that you knew Volker and Giuliani were talking about?

A  You know, Mr. Castor it was about that time -- I was looking at my notes last night or the night before -- it was about that time that I heard from Dr. Hill that Kurt mentioned -- Kurt sends a text that I have to check to see if I was on, but in some text that Kurt sent about this time, he said: I had a good breakfast with Mr. Giuliani. Maybe you have already pointed this out earlier today. Was that right? It was in one of your test --

Q  I don't think I pointed that out, but fair enough.

A  So, so here's what I know. Ambassador Volker sent that text to at least Ambassador Sondland and maybe -- maybe the three-way -- I can't remember.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  But he said, had a good breakfast with Mr. Giuliani. And oh, then he also -- I think I was not on this one, but I've seen it in some document that says that had Kurt's note back to Rudy Giuliani saying: Thanks for the good breakfast and had a good time.

So it was about that same time. And I think that's the same contact that Fiona Hill was talking about, about the same time.

Q  Okay. Did you have any direct conversations with Volker about that or just the text?

A  The text that I think I was asked and I didn't get a response.

Q  Okay. So you never had any idea what Volker was communicating to Giuliani?

A  Correct.

Q  Also, on July 20th, which is the next day, you sent or you had a phone conversation with Danyliuk where the discussion of being a pawn had come up.

A  Yes.

Q  Did you communicate that concern to anybody, such as Brechbuhl or Kent?

A  I did it -- I expressed the concern to Volker and Sondland, as I said here. I don't recall going to Brechbuhl or Kent.

Q  Okay. But that would have been another fact -- if you had gone to Brechbuhl, that would have been another fact that pointed to the concerns that you discussed before you took the post?

A  Yeah. The whole thrust of this irregular channel was to get these investigations, which Danyliuk and presumably Zelensky were resisting because they didn't want to be seen to be interfering but also to be a pawn.

Q  Right.

A  Right.

Q  But you said the irregular channel is -- it happens.

A  It does.

Q  And it can be okay?

A  It can be okay. It can be helpful. In this case -- yeah.

Q  But at some point, the irregular channel in your view became a problem?

A  It did.

Q  And you had the facts from Fiona Hill and Volker and that side, and then now you're getting the facts from the Ukraine side?

A  Correct.

Q  And I'm wondering, at this point, did it crystalize to you that the irregular path was going to be more of a concern than you anticipated?

A  Yes. The general way I have described it is, during the month of July, it began to be clear --

Q  Okay.

A  -- that this was a problem.

Q  Did you -- I know you sent the cable on the 29th after you spoke with Ambassador Bolton, but at any point in time between the 20th and learning that, did you have any official State Department higher up discussions?

MR. GOLDMAN: Can you clarify 20th and 29th, which?

MR. CASTOR: July. Do you follow?

MR. GOLDMAN: I don't think there was a cable on July 29th.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: August 29th.

MR. CASTOR: August 29th.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Which makes your point?

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  So this is what I'm getting to, is, what did you do between now and the 29th to alert Mr. -- Counselor Brechbuhl or Kent or somebody that this is becoming a problem, this is irregular?

A  So before the cable -- so August when it was becoming -- July, I started to identify the problem of the second channel, in particular with regard to the meeting. So then the assistance gets put on hold, and that gets to be -- goes a month, goes from July 18th into the middle of August and still is not resolved. It is attempting to be resolved, and there were descriptions to me from Tim Morrison of how they tried to get the principals in the same room, couldn't do it, schedules, et cetera. I then -- I did, I called Counselor Brechbuhl, talked to John Bolton --

Q  This is much later.

A  This is in August.

Q  Okay.

A  This is in August.

Q  I'm just -- after the, you know, it seems like the July 20th communication you had with Danyliuk really crystalized that this was also becoming a concern on the Ukrainian side of things.

A  It was a concern on the Ukrainian side.

Q  And I'm just wondering if you did anything right then and there other than Sondland, Volker channel?

A  I will check again.

Q  Okay. And then the July 25th call happens.

A  Yes.

Q  Who did you get a readout from about the July 25th call?

A  Three people. One was a very short message from Danyliuk, which said: Went well. Oh, there was also the Ukrainians put out -- the Ukrainian Office of the President put out a short description. Turned out, looking back on it, that's not a bad one because it talks about corruption and working on corruption would improve relations and that kind of thing, and then kind of normal working -- so that was that.

Tim Morrison and I had a conversation on the 28th. So that was, what, 3 days later. And he had -- this is one where he said, "It could've gone better," or something. I took it as a sarcastic comment: It could have gone better.

And then he described several of the things that happened on that call. He mentioned that Giuliani came up in the call. He mentioned that he -- he mentioned that Gordon Sondland had talked to President Trump before and after the call. So that was not in the call, but that was before and after, he told me. And he mentioned that the so-called previous Ambassador, Ambassador Yovanovitch, was a topic of the call.

Q  Okay.

A  So there was that.

I got one other readout of the call and this was from George Kent. And his was secondhand. So George Kent had talked to Alex Vindman, who had been on the call. So George hadn't been; Alex had.

Q  Was Morrison on the call?

A  I'm sorry, who?

Q  Was Morrison on the call?

A  I think so, yes, yes. I'm sure he was. I'm sure he was. Yes, the answer is yes.

George was not. George talked to Alex Vindman, and George then relayed Alex's comments to me. There was a difference in their two readouts of the call in one specific respect, and that is Tim Morrison was sure that President Trump had asked President Zelensky to fire prosecutor general Lutsenko. Lutsenko was still on the job because he had -- he had to stay on the job until Rada takes him off, so he was still on the job. And Giuliani, we know, wanted to keep Lutsenko on the job out there. And Tim Morrison's recollection or recounting of the call was that President Trump asked President Zelensky to fire Lutsenko. Vindman to Kent to me said the opposite, that is, that President Trump said, "Keep Lutsenko," again because Lutsenko and Giuliani were -- so that actually -- and that turned out to be the case. We now know, going back to the transcript we saw on September 25th, we know -- we think, it is a little bit unclear on that transcript, but we're pretty sure that President Trump in the transcript asked President Zelensky to keep -- it said, I understand you fired or you're about to fire or you're not going to keep this very good prosecutor general, and we think that's a mistake. So it turns out that the Vindman description of that aspect was the correct one, and Tim Morrison actually got that one wrong.

Q  Okay. So you spoke with Morrison and Vindman.

A  I spoke to Kent, who had talked to Vindman.

Q  Okay. Anybody else?

A  And Danyliuk and the report from the --

Q  Anybody else before the matter became public at the end of September?

A  No.

Q  Okay. So that's sort of the roster of --

A  That's the roster of reports.

MR. CASTOR: I'm at my -- there's about 10 minutes left. I'd like to pivot to our members.

MR. ZELDIN: Ambassador Taylor, on page 9, the second paragraph.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Congressman, I'm sorry. Which page?

MR. ZELDIN: Page 9 of your opening statement, where you discuss Mr. Yermak asking the United States to submit an official request for an investigation into Burisma's alleged violations of Ukrainian law.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, sir.

MR. ZELDIN: Was that request ever made by the United States?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No, not to my knowledge.

MR. ZELDIN: On page 10 of your opening statement, so second paragraph from the bottom in the middle of the paragraph, you say, quote, "I was hopeful that at the bilateral meeting or shortly thereafter, the White House would lift the hold, but this was not to be." The hold was released just 10 days later, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, sir.

MR. ZELDIN: Also, on page 10, same paragraph at the bottom you say, quote, "The Vice President did say that President Trump wanted the Europeans to do more to support Ukraine and that he wanted the Ukrainians to do more to fight corruption," end quote. Doesn't that align with U.S. law and policy what the Vice President stated?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It does. And as I understand it, Congressman, when President Trump decided not to go to Warsaw and ask Vice President Pence to go for him, President Trump asked Vice President Pence to make those two points.

MR. ZELDIN: Which, as you just stated, is entirely consistent with U.S. law and policy, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes. We want the Europeans to do more for Ukraine, and we want them -- the Ukrainians -- to do more to fight corruption.

MR. ZELDIN: And on page 11, the third paragraph down, you say, quote: In fact, Ambassador Sondland said, quote, "everything" was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance.

Ukraine never made such an announcement, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That's correct.

MR. ZELDIN: And the hold was still released just 10 days later, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That is correct.

MR. ZELDIN: On page 12, first paragraph, on September 5th, I hosted Senators Johnson and Murphy for a visit to Kyiv. During that meeting, did President Zelensky say anything to Senators Johnson and Murphy about a quid pro quo?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No, sir.

MR. ZELDIN: Did you say anything to Senators Johnson and Murphy about a quid pro quo?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No, sir.

MR. ZELDIN: On page 12, the middle paragraph, you talked about a conversation with Mr. Morrison. And this phone call, was Morrison on that call?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Congressman, that's a good question. I don't know what -- I don't know how he knew that. It was the same -- then, in the next paragraph, Ambassador Sondland told me that he had a conversation with President Trump. And so I -- and I think they were talking about the same conversation. I think those two paragraphs talk about the same conversation. And I don't know how Tim Morrison -- unless he may have been on the call, or he may have talked to Sondland after the call.

MR. ZELDIN: I might get back to that, but at the bottom of page 12 and the bottom of page 13 as well, so I'm skipping ahead to the bottom of page 13, it says, again, I asked Mr. Danyliuk to confirm that there would be no CNN interview, which he did. It seems throughout your opening statement you're talking about this demand for a public statement in order to release aid to Ukraine, but no announcement was ever made and the aid was still released, right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That's correct.

MR. ZELDIN: Earlier on, you had an exchange with the chairman. He asked you with regards to the legal definition of the term "quid pro quo." I believe you said something to the effect of "I don't speak Latin," correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Sorry.

MR. ZELDIN: Correct.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, sir.

MR. ZELDIN: In your opening statement, though, you do use the words "quid pro quo."

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I only quote other people using those words, Congressman.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. At the very end of your opening statement, you do make a reference to quid pro quo as one of the two Ukraine stories. On page 14 --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Ah, I do, yes, sir.

MR. ZELDIN: So it's an important question for us to ask you, if you're going to use that term "quid pro quo," for us to ask you what you mean by it, and we're not going to -obviously, we wouldn't accept the answer that you don't speak Latin. We want to know what you mean about it. I'll let Mr. Ratcliffe get into that further with you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Let's take a 5- or 10-minute break, and then we'll resume.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Sure.

[Recess.]

[4:45 p.m.]

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Let's go back on the record.

Folks, settle down a bit. Let's go back on the record.

Just a few follow-up questions before I hand it over to Mr. Noble, Ambassador.

My colleagues on the minority asked you about general circumstances in which aid may be withheld, that this kind of thing happens. So I want to ask you a little further about that.

There are certainly legitimate occasions when aid is withheld, such as when Congress decides in its policy judgment to withhold aid. Am I right.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, sir.

THE CHAIRMAN: And there may be other circumstances, changing conditions on the ground somewhere, where a decision will be made to withhold aid, appropriately so, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, sir.

THE CHAIRMAN: But you can distinguish between appropriate circumstances in which aid is withheld and illegitimate circumstances in which aid is withheld to coerce another country to do something improper.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: You can.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, my colleagues asked you, well, ultimately the aid was released. I think the thinking is no, you know, no harm no foul, it ultimately was released. But at the time that it was released are you aware that the White House was in possession of a whistleblower complaint -- now public -- that alleged that the assistance may be withheld for reasons of wanting leverage over Ukraine for political investigations? Were you aware that at the time it was released the White House already knew the existence of this complaint?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, I don't know that.

THE CHAIRMAN: Were you aware at the time that it was - the aid was released that in fact there were public reports in newspapers that the aid may be withheld for this improper reason?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: When it was released, on September 11th, when it was released?

THE CHAIRMAN: When the aid was eventually released AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Right.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- were you aware there were already public reports suggesting perhaps that it was being withheld for inappropriate or inexplicable reasons?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: In the press? I don't recall.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don't recall.

THE CHAIRMAN: And we'll check the timeline. That's my recollection, but I could be wrong.

So if I can go back to your testimony. At the bottom of page 10 you talk about a phone call you had with Mr. Morrison in which "he went on to describe a conversation Ambassador Sondland had with Mr. Yermak at Warsaw. Ambassador Sondland told Mr. Yermak that the security assistance money would not come until President Zelensky committed to pursue the Burisma investigation. I was alarmed by what Mr. Morrison told me about the Sondland-Yermak conversation. This is the first time I had heard the security assistance -- not just the White House meeting -- was conditioned on the investigations."

At that point did you understand that unless the Ukrainians did this for President Trump, that is committed to these investigations, they were not going to get that military assistance or that meeting?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, what I know for sure is what Mr. Morrison told me that he must have heard Ambassador Sondland tell Mr. Yermak. And as I said, this was the first time I'd heard those two put together, those connected.

THE CHAIRMAN: And when you say that, this was the first time I heard that the security assistance -- not just the White House meeting -- was conditioned on the investigation, when you talk about conditioned, did you mean that if they didn't do this, the investigations, they weren't going to get that, the meeting and the military assistance?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That was my clear understanding, security assistance money would not come until the President committed to pursue the investigation.

THE CHAIRMAN: So if they don't do this, they are not going to get that was your understanding?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, sir.

THE CHAIRMAN: Are you aware that quid pro quo literally means this for that?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I am.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Noble.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Thank you. Thank you, Chairman.

Ambassador, just sticking in this same general timeframe, still on page 10 of your statement, on September 1st you wrote that you had a conversation with Mr. Danyliuk to let him know that the delay of the U.S. security assistance was a, quote, "all or nothing proposition, in the sense that if the White House did not lift the hold prior to the end of the fiscal year, September 30th, the funds would expire and Ukraine would receive nothing."

How did Mr. Danyliuk respond when you told him that?

A  Mr. Noble, the reason I told him that, the reason I made it clear that it was all or nothing, was that he had sent me an earlier note, a note just before that, saying, well, it's a gradually increasing problem, that we're gradually missing out on this assistance.

And I wrote back and said, no, Alexander -- Sasha -- Mr. Danyliuk, if the hold is not lifted, in particular by the end of the fiscal year, then it goes away. And he was thinking that it was just kind of -- it would be dribbled out.

So in answer to your question, did he respond, nothing substantive. I mean, he may have said thank you or something.

Q  Subsequently, though, did you have conversations with the Ukrainians? I mean, did they become increasingly concerned when the freeze remained in place and they weren't getting an explanation why, and you had told that them these funds may evaporate completely?

A  Yes. And they -- I may have mentioned this already, I can't remember -- they could not understand why it was being held. And they suggested, well, maybe if I just go to Washington and convince the President or convince the Secretary of Defense that this is important that that would do the trick. They were trying to figure out why this was being held.

Q  But then at some point, and again later on page 10, Ambassador Sondland, it appears, told Mr. Yermak, President Zelensky's adviser, that the money would not come until Zelensky committed to pursuing the Burisma investigation. Is that right?

A  That is correct.

Q  So, I mean, did the Ukrainians have an understanding at that point what they had to do in order to get the funds released?

A  Certainly Mr. Yermak did. That's what he had heard from Ambassador Sondland.

Q  Okay. I want to go back now to the first time you, I believe, learned of the freeze. Was that during the July 18th SVTC --

A  It was.

Q  -- you had?

I'd like to ask some questions about that and the other interagency meetings that you had.

Can you just tell us how did you participate in the SVTC on July 18th?

A  So the way it works is that in the White House, in the Old Executive Office Building, there is a room, there's a series of rooms where they have interagency meetings.

MR. BELLINGER: I'm not sure all of this is public.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Ah.

MR. BELLINGER: You guys have to scrub it later.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Fair point. Thank you, Counselor.

You think it might be classified that there are those? Anyway, yeah.

MR. BELLINGER: No, no, no. It used to be, it used to be, but times have changed. It was classified when I was there.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Okay. So --

THE CHAIRMAN: I am just going to interject. I want to make sure we're not going it to get into classified information today.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: We're not. Unless the existence of these classified rooms is classified. I can't -- which I don't think it is.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Perhaps a way to navigate this would be to shortcut it and just say it's a conference call system.

A  Thank you. That's a good idea. It is a conference call.

Q  Okay.

A  It is a secure conference call.

Q  Okay.

A  I'm in Kyiv. I'm in a secure room. Can I say that? And there are several other satellite officers that beam in. And we're all in different parts of --

Q  So this is a video conference?

A  It's a video conference, a secure video conference.

Q  Okay. So you can see who the other participants are?

A  It depends on -- so if the camera is right there, all of those folks can be on the screen but I'm not, because it's going right over my head. So the answer is most, but not all. And I couldn't see the person who said -- the 0MB person who said: I've been told to stop this.

Q  Okay. Do you know the identity of the OMB staffer?

A  I don’t.

Q  But you believe -- I believe your testimony said you believe it was a female staffer?

A  It was.

Q  Okay. And to this day you still don't know who it was that announced it?

A  I don’t.

Q  Did you participate in the subsequent interagency meetings about the aid?

A  One of them. As I say, there -- this was a sub-PCC, so a Sub-Policy Coordination Committee. And then there is a Policy Coordination Committee, and that is chaired at the assistant secretary level. And then there's a Deputies Committee. And then there's a Principals Committee. And then there's an NSC meeting.

And it went -- and so I was present and beamed in from Kyiv for the sub-PC and the PC, but not the ones above that.

Q  Okay. Can you tell us what happened at the PCC meeting, the second one?

A  Yes. Around the room, observations, information about the value of the assistance. In particular OSD, I think it was Laura Cooper, who is probably on your list, made a very strong case and continued to make a very strong case for the effectiveness -- indeed, her office was the one overseeing this assistance, so she made a very strong case for that.

Others around -- the State Department representative, strong statement, we made a strong statement about the importance of this assistance.

Q  And was there an OMB representative there for that meeting?

A  I don't know the answer.

Q  Okay.

A  Probably.

Q  Do you recall whether there was any communication from the White House or from OMB regarding the freeze and whether it was going to stay in place at that meeting?

A  I don't. I think coming out of that meeting was the instruction that we're continuing -- that we're continuing the policy as it had been. And, probably after the PCC, the State Department and maybe the Defense Department decided they were going to move forward with this assistance anyway, OMB notwithstanding. This was a big decision that L came to over there, over some debate as to whether or not they could do it without OMB's clearance, send a CN to the Hill without OMB's clearance, and they decided to do that. I don't know if they've ever done that before.

This was a big decision for them.

Q  So as far as you know, that was unprecedented?

A  As far as I know.

Q  Was that related to the FMF or USAI portions of the assistance? Do you know?

A  I think both.

Q  Do you know whether there was any kind of written documentation of kind of the decisions made at these meetings?

A  There is every time.

Q  Okay. And State Department would have a copy of those?

A  NSC would probably have those.

Q  NSC.

A  And they were then sent out to the interagency, including the State Department.

Q  Okay. Are you aware whether there were any kind of preconditions or certifications that had to be made with respect to Ukraine before the funding could flow?

A  In this case, for --

Q  Yeah, for this assistance.

A  The only thing I heard was that there was a request -- and I'm not sure who it came from, but it may have come from the NSC -- to the Defense Department for an evaluation of the assistance to be sure that it was being well spent and it was effective. And the Defense Department came back very quickly with the conclusion that it was.

Q  Well, we've heard claims that President Trump was interested in corruption or concerned about corruption generally in Ukraine. Are you aware that DOD, in consultation with the State Department, had certified that Ukraine had taken sufficient steps to address corruption such that they were entitled to the aid at that time?

A  Mr. Noble, I'm not sure. I think in the Defense

Authorization Act every year there are conditions that are required to be met in order for that assistance to go forward. And my understanding is those conditions were met. On this specific one I'm not sure. I think so.

Q  Okay. In your statement on page 4 you reference several actions that President Zelensky had taken quickly to address corruption in Ukraine, including opening Ukraine's High Anti-Corruption Court, which had been a U.S. policy goal for quite some time.

A  We played a big role in that, yes.

Q  And President Zelensky had done that at that point?

A  He had done that and he showed up himself at the opening of the High Anti-Corruption Court -- with the two Senators, by the way. They were both there as well.

Q  Which two Senators?

A  Senator Murphy and Senator Johnson.

Q  And then President Zelensky had also, after winning control of the Rada, he changed the Ukrainian Constitution to remove absolute immunity from Rada Deputies, which you say in your statement was a source of corruption for over two decades. Is that right?

A  So Rada Deputies -- I imagine Representatives in this body and in the Senate would love to have this -- but the Rada Deputies in Ukraine up until the point where they changed the Constitution could commit any kind of crime and not be prosecuted.

And that was changed, he changed that right away, a commitment that he'd made in his campaign, and he made good on that commitment right away. And overwhelming support. It had been promised every Rada by every President before, it never happened. He got it done.

Q  So not only had President Zelensky campaigned on rooting out corruption, I believe his number one priority, but he had taken concrete steps. And yet the 0MB, the President, still had decided to freeze the aid purportedly because he had some concerns about corruption in Ukraine?

A  It is certainly true that he made -- he is not only fighting corruption. So he changed the -- President Zelensky changed the language. He said he wants to defeat corruption.

So he was really focused on this, he made it his number two priority. Number one priority was stopping the war on Ukrainian terms and number two was defeating corruption. And he did a lot on that.

And it was -- we talked earlier about how we're focused on institutions fighting corruption. So the High Anti-Corruption Court and the Special Prosecutor and all, the institutional way of fighting corruption, rather than case by case.

And so, yes, he pushed that very hard.

Q  Okay. So I want to move, fast forward a little bit to August. And I noticed in your statement that there's a little bit of a time gap between -- on page 9 -- between July 28th to the middle of August, to August 16th, between the first and second paragraphs on page 9.

And I also noticed that in the text messages that we have in which you're a participant that Ambassador Volker produced, there's also a similar gap in that timeframe.

So if you take the -- if you have the text messages and you turn to -- let's go to page 28 first. And if you look at -- I'll direct your attention to the top there. And beginning on or around August 11th -- well, actually, yeah, back to the top there.

So these are text messages between you and Ambassador Volker.

A  Okay.

Q  There's one July 24th, 2019, where Volker says: Hi, Bill. Can you talk now?

Do you see that?

A  I do.

Q  And then it skips forward till August 3rd and you have a discussion about: Did Tim -- I believe that's Tim Morrison -- say how he was doing on the call?

And then it skips forward to August 11th. And it's not until August 16th, I believe, that you kind of start talking again about the investigations or the requests for a White House meeting. Do you see that?

A  I do.

Q  Okay. And then, if you move to page 38, so this is the three-way text message chain between you and Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Sondland. And if you look toward the bottom, there’s a big gap between August 6th, 2019, and it then jumps to August 29th, 2019. Do you see that?

A  I see that, right.

Q  Do you recall whether you had any WhatsApp conversations with Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Volker basically during the month of August, or the last 3 weeks of August?

A  From the 6th to the 29th?

Q  Yeah. Do you know whether there’d be any messages that might have been deleted here?

A  Oh, I don’t know if it’s possible to delete on these things. I don’t know. I don’t know the reason for the gap.

Q  Okay.

A  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The State Department has all of mine. I have them as well. But, yeah, the State Department has all of these.

Q  Okay. But in this timeframe were you aware that Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Sondland were in direct communication with Mr. Yermak and with Mr. Giuliani about the drafting of a statement that they wanted President Zelensky to release?

A  So only after -- only after Ambassador Volker released his texts. I think that’s where they showed up.

Q  So you weren’t involved, as far as you can remember, in the drafting of that?

A  I was not.

Q  Okay. So that was something that Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Sondland were doing with Giuliani and Yermak?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. So I would like to show you kind of the end result of that process. If you turn to page 23 of the text messages. And, again, these aren’t ones that you were on.

But the last couple messages on that page, from August 13th, 2019, this is an exchange between Ambassador Volker and Mr. Yermak.

And Volker writes: Hi, Andrey. Good talking. Following is text with insert at the end for the two key items. We will work on official requests.

And then Ambassador Volker drafts -- pastes the statement that they want President Zelensky to release. And it reads: "Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States, especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians. I want to declare that this is unacceptable. We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, including those involving Burisma and the 2016 elections, which in turn will prevent the recurrence of this problem in the future."

So this is a draft statement that Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Sondland had drafted with Rudy Giuliani for President Zelensky to release. Were you involved in the crafting of this?

A  I was not.

Q  Okay. So you had no knowledge that this was going on at the time?

A  I had no knowledge.

Q  Were you aware of any statement generally that --

A  I wasn’t until I saw these once they were released.

Q  Okay. How did you react when you learned, I guess from seeing Ambassador Volker’s text messages, that this had been going on behind the scenes, given that you’re the Charge d’Affaires in Ukraine, and yet you have no idea that Volker and Sondland are working with Giuliani and Yermak to get out a statement from the President of Ukraine and you had no idea that that’s going on? Did that concern you?

A  It did. When I found out about it -- again, this was the irregular channel, I was in the regular channel. Every now and then I would see what was going on in the irregular channel, but not in this case.

And, yeah, I mean, I should have been involved, but I knew that there were a lot of communications between Ambassador Volker preceding -- and President Zelensky and Yermak -- preceding my arrival. They had a relationship.

And similarly with Ambassador Sondland. Ambassador Sondland had a relationship, he told me, I don’t know -- I think this is true -- that he could WhatsApp and phone and call President Zelensky. And normally, in a normal arrangement, the ambassador helps either facilitate that or monitors that or is at least aware of that and gets back-briefed on that. I had accepted that this was an unusual circumstance.

Q  I mean, is it -- would you say or would you agree that these text messages and the drafting of this statement was, in effect, making concrete the quid pro quo that you had realized in mid-July, as you describe in your statement, that a White House visit was dependent on President Zelensky making a public commitment to those two specifics investigations?

A  So again, being careful about my use and understanding of quid pro quo, which is imperfect at best, the facts were that these relationships between the announcement and the meeting -- or phone call and the meeting -- and then the security assistance, it was clear to me that there was that relationship.

What I didn’t know was there were these -- this drafting session, this drafting exercise to put together the language that President Zelensky would use.

Q  Okay. I want to fast forward a little bit to September 7th or 8th. Do you recall sending George Kent a WhatsApp message regarding your conversation with Tim Morrison about what President Trump wanted Zelensky to do? Do you recall telling George Kent about that?

A  Is this mentioned in my statement --

Q  No, but if you go to your statement --

A  September 5th. This is with -- Senators Johnson and Murphy were in town.

Q  And then on page 12 in the middle.

A  Right.

Q  It says you had a call with Mr. Morrison where he had a, quote, sinking feeling --

A  Yes.

Q  -- after learning about the conversation that President Trump had with Ambassador Sondland.

A  Yep.

Q  Did you relay that in a written communication to George Kent? Do you remember that?

A  I don’t remember.

Q  Can we go back to the text messages and turn to page 53, the last page?

A  Okay. I’m informed that on my text message there was a text back to George Kent.

Q  Okay.

A  So let me be clear. I didn’t remember it until just now and this great colleague back here reminded me that this was there.

Q  Okay. And those text messages have been turned over to the State Department?

A  They have, they have, they have. Sorry, where are we now?

Q  Sure. Last page of the text messages, page 53.

A  Yes.

Q  At the top of the page, I believe, on September 8th, 2019, 11:20 a.m. Gordon Sondland says: Guys, multiple convos with ZE.

That’s Zelensky, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  And POTUS.

A  Yes.

Q  President Trump.

A  Yes.

Q  Let’s talk.

A  Right.

Q  And then you go on to have a conversation, which I believe is the conversation you describe in your statement. Is that right?

A  Yes.

Q  On page 12?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. And that’s where President Trump had made clear that if Zelensky did not, quote, "clear things up in public," there would be a, quote, "stalemate." Is that right?

A  That is correct.

Q  And you understood that stalemate meant that Ukraine would not get the military assistance?

A  That’s correct.

Q  Okay. Was Ambassador Volker on that call with you and Ambassador Sondland?

A  I’m sure he was, yes.

Q  During that call, did you discuss the possibility of President Zelensky --

A  Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. On the phone call?

Q  The phone call, yes.

A  No, no, no, no. The phone call was just --

Q  Just you and Sondland?

A  Yes. Right. Sorry. The text was the three of us, the phone call was just the two of us.

Q  Okay. During that phone call did you discuss the possibility of President Zelensky doing the CNN interview during the YES Conference in Ukraine? Is that when that first came up?

A  That’s when he -- yes, that’s when Ambassador Sondland said that he had talked with them and they -- and the Ukrainians had agreed to do a CNN interview.

Q  Okay. Can you just describe in a little more detail your recollection of that conversation with Ambassador Sondland? Was this the first time you had heard the idea of President Zelensky making a public announcement on CNN about these investigations?

A  It was certainly the first time I’d heard about it on CNN. We’d had earlier conversations about making public comments. I think that is the case here. I’m remembering the thing about the interest that Ambassador Sondland had in having President Zelensky go in a box, in a public box. So there were those conversations on a couple of occasions. This is the first time on CNN, talking about CNN interview.

Q  And do you recall the dates of the YES Conference? When was this interview supposed to take place?

A  The interview, the CNN interview I think was going to be in UNGA, which is at the end of September. The YES Conference was the first week in September, as I recall, maybe the first -- oh, no, no, sorry. It was the Friday, Saturday -- Saturday is the 14th of September. But I don’t -- and there was a lot of press at the YES Conference. I don’t think there was talk about doing an interview there.

Q  Okay. So you think that the interview that President Zelensky was going to do that you discussed with Ambassador Sondland during your call on September 8th was going to be during UNGA?

A  When we were talking about it on September 8th, I think it was not clear when it was going to be.

Q  Okay.

A  And when it didn’t -- when it didn’t happen, didn’t happen, and then they were approaching the UNGA meeting on, what, the 25th of September, then they got more serious -- then I started hearing about the CNN interview. And so it was going to take place in New York.

Q  Okay. Going back to the text messages, do you see the message on September 8th at 12:37 p.m.? Can you just read what you wrote there about "the nightmare"?

A  I will.

"The nightmare" is they give the interview and don’t get the security assistance. The Russians love it -- parenthetical -- (and I quit.)

Q  Can you unpack that a little bit for us?

A  Sure.

Q  What did you mean by "the nightmare" and what would the Russians love?

A  "The nightmare" is the scenario where President Zelensky goes out in public, makes an announcement that he’s going to investigate Burisma and the election in 2016, interference in 2016 election, maybe among other things. He might put that in some series of investigations.

But he had to -- he was going -- the nightmare was he would mention those two, take all the heat from that, get himself in big trouble in this country and probably in his country as well, and the security assistance would not be released. That was the nightmare.

The Russians loving it. The Russians are paying attention. The Russians are paying attention to how much support the Americans are going to provide the Ukrainians. The Russians are leaning on Ukraine. They are leaning on Ukraine about Donbas. They are leaning on Ukraine about sovereign -- small little sovereign countries here, little statelets. They are leaning on economically, they have got the Nord Stream coming through, they have got -- they are putting pressure on -- they have to come to a new gas agreement by the 1st of January.

So they are leaning on them. And they, the Russians want to know how much support the Ukrainians are going to get in general, but also what kind of support from the Americans.

So the Russians are loving, would love, the humiliation of Zelensky at the hands of the Americans, and would give the Russians a freer hand, and I would quit.

Q  And why would that make you quit?

A  That’s exactly the scenario that I was worried about when I had my meeting with Secretary Pompeo on the 28th of May where I said: Mr. Secretary, you know, your current strong policy of support for Ukraine is one I can support and I would be glad to go out to Kyiv and support it and push it hard.

However, I told him and the others who were in the room, if that changes -- and this would have been a change, this would have been -- it was a nightmare. This would have been throwing Ukraine under the bus. And I told the Secretary: If that happens, I’ll come home. You don’t want me out there, because I’m not going to defend it, you know. I would say bad things about it. And you wouldn’t want me out there doing that. So I’m going to come home on that. So that was the message about I quit.

Q  And did you communicate that, these concerns around this time to Secretary Pompeo or --

A  I had done so on August 29th.

Q  In your -- in the cable?

A  Correct.

Q  What was the distribution on that cable?

A  It was called "NODIS."

Q  Okay. What’s that mean?

A  So it’s very limited distribution. It’s also first person, which means the way it reads is: Mr. Secretary, I am concerned -- I, Bill Taylor -- I am concerned about this problem.

So that’s first person. Normally these cables are not first person, they are third person. So it gets attention, there are not many first person cables coming, so it gets attention when it comes in from the ambassador saying: I am concerned.

And "NODIS" means that it is very limited distribution. It goes obviously to the Secretary. And then if other people want to read it they have to come up to the Operations Center in the State Department and they can go into the special room and they can read it.

Q  And in your statement, I believe page 10, you said you heard soon thereafter the Secretary carried that cable with him to a meeting at the White House focused on security assistance for Ukraine. Where did you hear that from?

A  Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent.

Q  Okay. And do you know what, if anything, else Secretary Pompeo did after receiving your cable to follow up?

A  I know that -- I know that he had been pushed -- I think I mentioned that after the July 18th meeting where the assistance was frozen by the 0MB hand, that there were a series of these meetings, up to and including Secretary of State and Defense. And so I know that Secretary Pompeo was working on this issue, that he wanted it resolved.

I was getting more and more concerned that it wasn’t getting resolved. And so I wanted to add my concern and my arguments, from the perspective of Kyiv and the Ukrainians, about how important this assistance was.

Q  Okay. And you said -- how did you learn that the aid had been unfrozen? I believe it was on September 11th, is that right?

A  It was September 11th. So, yeah, I remember getting an email from a staffer, a Senate Armed Services Committee staffer. And of course Senate staffers -- House staffers too, I’m sure -- get the word much earlier than anybody else.

And so I got this email, I think it was probably overnight, which I then sent to Tim Morrison and I think maybe to George Kent saying: Oh, this is great news. This is what we’ve been waiting for.

And Tim hadn’t heard it yet. So that’s how I first heard. And then he later that day confirmed.

Q  Okay. Are you aware that The New York Times published some communications, some emails, relating to the release of the freeze that involved you on October 9th, 2019, with a State Department employee, Brad Freedon (ph)?

A  Oh, I do remember this, yes.

Q  Do you recall those emails?

A  This is the one where Brad said something about nothing to see here, move along.

Q  I believe the quote is: Keep moving people, nothing to see here.

A  There you go.

Q  Did you have any communications with Mr. Freedon (ph) or anyone else at the State Department about why they wanted to keep the release of the funds quiet?

A  No, I didn’t have a conversation with Mr. Freedon (ph) on this one. I imagine that -- my understanding -- my view of this was that, as I said earlier, this was an embarrassment, this freeze on assistance was a mistake, an embarrassment, and it was going to be fixed, it had to be fixed. And the less said and the less attention it got, the less embarrassing it was.

So I was fine with don’t talk about this or, you know, let’s not make a big deal of this.

[4:23 p.m.]

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Okay. On or about September 14th, so after the aid was released, do you recall a meeting that you and Ambassador Volker had with Andriy Yermak?

A  I do. It was a dinner.

Q  A dinner. Can you tell us what happened at that dinner?

A  One of the things that happened was Mr. Yermak described to Kurt and me, described to Ambassador Volker and me, their plans for a resolution of Donbas, how they were going to get to a resolution with Donbas.

There was a fourth person there, another of his -- another Ukrainian colleague.

There were a couple other topics discussed, Mr. Noble, but anything in particular that I should try to remember?

Q  Do you recall anything about an investigation involving former Ukrainian President Poroshenko coming up during that meeting?

A  I do.

Q  Can you tell us about that conversation?

A  Yes. I can. I can see Ambassador Volker has been here.

Yes, so Ambassador Volker suggested to Mr. Yermak and Mr. Novikov, the other Ukrainian, that it would be a good idea not to investigate President Poroshenko, the previous President. And one of the reasons Kurt said that was there were indications, and maybe even some actions taken by that time, that made it clear that the new government, the new Zelensky government, was going to go after President Poroshenko for a range of issues, on things like -- people in this room will remember that President Poroshenko was in office at the time of the Kerch Strait incident. This was Thanksgiving a year ago, when the Russians attacked these Ukrainian patrol ships, patrol boats. And President Poroshenko was getting blamed for and being possibly even taken to court for some of those military decisions that he made.

And, at that dinner, both Mr. Yermak and Mr. Novikov took out their cell phones -- I, of course, don’t have -- but took out their cell phones and pulled up pictures of their relatives -- one was a brother, and one was a cousin -- who had been killed or wounded in the east. And they showed this to Kurt and me, and they said, Poroshenko is responsible for this.

There was a deep-seated anger at Poroshenko at an emotional level. And that was one of the things motivating -- one of the things motivating the attacks on, or the court cases on President Poroshenko. Not the only ones. There were others. This oligarch that I mentioned earlier, Kolomoisky, also had it in for Poroshenko.

And Kurt said, you know, you should move forward, don’t prosecute Poroshenko. And they responded, take a look at this.

Q  Do you recall Yermak saying anything to the effect that, why shouldn’t we investigate Poroshenko when you’re pushing us to investigate Joe Biden?

A  Oh, I don’t remember that, but -- I don’t remember that.

Q  Okay.

After the freeze was lifted, it sounds like, from your statement, you still had concerns that President Zelensky might go forward with the CNN interview and still announce the investigations. Is that right?

A  That’s right.

Q  Why did you have that concern that that was going to happen?

A  I had the concern because I had a couple of meetings with President Zelensky and Andrei Bohdan, his Chief of Staff, about this time. It was just after -- it was on the 13th, I think, of September, just after the hold had been released.

And walking out of that meeting, Andriy Yermak was about to walk in. And I had just said to President Zelensky, bipartisan support of Ukraine in Washington is your most valuable strategic asset, don’t jeopardize it. And don’t intervene -- don’t interfere in our elections, and we won’t interfere in your elections. I had just said that to President Zelensky, and on the way out I said the same thing to Andriy Yermak. And the body language was such that it looked to me like he was still thinking they were going to make that statement.

Q  At that point, had there been a White House meeting for President Zelensky scheduled?

A  No. And there still hasn’t been.

Q  Okay.

Did you participate in UNGA? Were you here in New York?

A  No.

Q  No? Did you help prepare for President Trump’s meeting with President Zelensky?

A  Yes. I sent in a suggestion to Tim Morrison on what should -- you know, what he could use as the President’s talking points when he sat down with Zelensky, basically making the point that, you know, correct, a good, solid, substantive conversation. Yeah. And that’s in the cables, I’m sure, that the State Department is preparing.

Q  Okay.

THE CHAIRMAN: I’d like to give priority to the members that have been here for most of the day.

Mr. Welch?

MR. WELCH: I’ll be brief.

I just want to, first of all, thank you. But I’ve been listening all day and -- pretty much all day, and what I understand your testimony more or less is, succinctly -- and correct me if I’m wrong -- is: You have a longstanding interest in Ukraine: it’s been the U.S. policy since 1991 to support Ukraine: that the policy has been internally for Ukraine to fight corruption, and we’ve been supportive of that, externally to resist aggression from Russia, and we were trying to be supportive of that; that when you were faced with this question of whether to return to public service at the request of Secretary Pompeo, you had a frank conversation where you made it clear that you had to be assured that you could defend what had been the consistent United States policy in both those respects: that if, in fact, you were unable to do that or the policy changed, you candidly said you would have to quit; that you then began your service on the understanding that the policy was to fight internal corruption and to resist external aggression; and that, as time developed, you started having questions as to whether there was a secondary channel for that policy: and, over time, you came to see that not only was there a secondary channel but that it included a policy variance from the traditional one of fighting aggression and corruption: that you had specific information from people who had talked to President Trump, including Mr. Volker and Mr. Sondland, that what that policy was was essentially to extract an agreement from the President of Ukraine to do these investigations and that everything, not just the White House meeting but the aid itself, was conditioned on getting that agreement and that explicit statement; and, at the end, there was an effort to, quote, put President Zelensky in a box, which the public statement would make him do.

Is that a fair summary of what you’ve said?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Excellent summary, Congressman. The one thing -- the only clarification I would make is that, in the beginning, in late June and early July, in July, there was, in my view, my observation, not a conflict. There was not a conflict --

MR. WELCH: Right.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: -- between these two channels.

MR. WELCH: No. And you were clear that just having somebody outside of the normal State Department isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct.

MR. WELCH: Having two policies was the question. But just a couple more, because I want to yield to my colleagues.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Welch, our time has expired.

MR. WELCH: Okay.

THE CHAIRMAN: We'll come back to you at the very top of the next.

MR. WELCH: Sure, Mr. Chairman. I yield.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

Forty-five minutes to the minority.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Where we last left off was a discussion of -- it was right around the time of this telephone call,July 25th.

A  25th, yes.

Q  And the very next day, you had a meeting with President Zelensky.

A  Correct.

Q  And I think you told us that feedback from the call from the Ukrainians was positive, for the most part.

A  Yes.

Q  They had put out a statement --

A  They had put out a statement. They'd mentioned investigations or -- I should look at that statement. But they had mentioned something that led me to believe that they were in the same meeting, that they were describing exactly that call.

Q  Okay. So --

A  Law enforcement, I think it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Q  Was there any other discussion during that meeting that was a fallout from the call?

A  Not that I recall. The bulk -- so it was Ambassador Volker, Sondland, and I were all there. And the bulk of the call, after the brief conversation about the -I'm sorry. The bulk of the meeting after the brief conversation about the call was on how to solve Donbas.

Q  Were you surprised when you read the whistleblower complaint? And, first of all, did you see the whistleblower complaint before it was public?

A  No.

Q  Okay. So it was made public, I think, on Thursday, September 26th.

A  Okay.

Q  Were you surprised when there was a discussion of this July 26th meeting in the whistleblower complaint?

A  Mr. Castor, I remember reading that quickly, but I may have missed that July -- but can you remind me what the --

Q  Sure.

A  Yeah.

Q  On page 4 of the complaint -- we can give you the complaint.

A  I'm sure I have it somewhere, but that's okay.

Q  You know, it states that Ambassadors Volker and Sondland reportedly provided advice to Ukrainian leadership about now to navigate the demands that the President had made to Zelensky.

Does that ring any bells? Does anything of that sort --

A  This is in the 26th meeting?

Q  Yeah.

A  Advice to Zelensky about how to navigate the --

Q  Demands of the President.

A  I was in that -- so the records of -- my records of that meeting are in the State Department, and they will come.

Q  Okay.

A  I don't recall that.

Q  Okay. By that --

A  Ah. Ah. Thank you, Counsel.

He did ask -- one thing that was in addition to the brief conversation about the call and Donbas, and it may have been at the end, President Zelensky still expressed his interest in the face-to-face meeting in the Oval Office.

Q  Okay.

A  Yeah. Thank you.

Q  But by that point in time, from your limited knowledge of what had occurred on the call, you didn't know that the President had made any demands or there was anything to navigate.

A  Correct.

Q  Okay. So, to the extent the whistleblower complaint chronicles that -- and you were in the meeting, and you don't remember anything of that sort.

A  I don't remember that.

MR. MEADOWS: Steve, let me -- your response, that you don't remember that, is really an indication that you don't recall that happening. Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, sir.

MR. MEADOWS: Okay. I just wanted to clarify that.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes. Yes. Good point.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Now, the various requests for the Ukrainians to open investigations that had been closed, did you have any opposition to the effort for Ukraine to investigate, you know, Ukrainians that had been engaged in wrongdoing that may have --

A  Just in general? Was that the question? Or --

Q  Right. You didn't have any objection to investigations being reopened that genuinely deserved to be reopened?

A  So when President Zelensky comes into office -well, even before that -- when he runs for President and then is elected and then takes office, again, his second priority was defeating corruption. And he said, I think in the call, in the July 25th call, he said he has a new prosecutor general, who is very good, by the way. And President Zelensky said, this man will do the investigations and, you know, he will enforce the law.

Q  Okay.

A  And so, yes, he committed to have Prosecutor General Ryabshapka, and then again recently saying that he'll take a look at all these --

Q  Uh-huh.

A  -- take a look at all these cases.

Q  Okay.

There was a reference to reaching out to the Justice Department. You mentioned Deputy Assistant Attorney General, which I assume is Bruce Swartz?

A  It is.

Q  Did you ask Ambassador Volker to reach out to Bruce Swartz?

A  He volunteered to do that.

Q  Okay. And what was the feedback from Swartz?

A  I don't know that they ever connected.

Q  Okay. And was there any followup effort to close the loop with the Justice Department?

A  No. I thought the whole thing was a bad idea.

Q  You thought it was a bad idea to reach out to Bruce Swartz?

A  No. I thought the idea of the Americans asking the Ukrainians to investigate a violation of Ukrainian law was a bad idea.

Q  Okay.

A  But Kurt, for some reason, wanted to pursue that. And when he volunteered to take that question to Bruce Swartz, that was fine with me.

Q  Okay. I mean, is it possible that Swartz's feedback on that issue would have been compelling to the group? Like, why didn't anyone follow up with Swartz?

A  No idea.

Q  Okay.

You called Counselor Brechbuhl on August 21st to engage about whether there was a change in U.S. policy.

A  Yes.

Q  And presumably that was on the heels of the security assistance being held up?

A  Yes.

Q  Was that the first time you had engaged Brechbuhl, you know, in the month of August?

A  In the month of August?

Q  Uh-huh.

A  So I'd had a couple meetings with him before I left.

Q  Right.

A  I called him early on, I think in -- this may have still been July, about the security assistance, and then -- I think about security -- and then called him again.

Q  Okay.

A  Yeah.

Q  So, on the 8/21 call that you mention on page 9 of your statement --

A  Yep.

Q  -- did you, at that time, alert him that you had concerns about the irregular channel?

A  At that time? Let's see. At some point, I had a conversation with him about -- I wasn't calling it the irregular channel at this point. I was talking about Ambassador Sondland, Ambassador Volker. And it might have also been in this case.

Q  Okay.

A  But it was not the main thing.

Q  Okay.

A  The main thing was security assistance.

Q  Okay. I'm just wondering, you know, during July and August, you're getting increasingly concerned, correct?

A  Correct.

Q  It culminates on August 27th when you wrote this first-person cable.

A  I sent it in on the 29th.

Q  Okay, but the end of August, right?

A  Right.

Q  And then by September 8th, you're discussing the prospect that you might have to quit, right?

A  I was discussing that even earlier. I was -- my cable on the 29th hinted at that as well.

Q  Okay. And so, on the 21st, did you raise any of these concerns? I mean, you had him on the telephone, right?

A  Yes. Yes. So when I asked him explicitly about a change in policy, he and I both remembered that a change in policy was what I was concerned about on May 28th. And this is why on a couple of times we've had that conversation. He knew exactly what I was talking about.

Q  Okay. And did he give you any feedback or -- I mean, you're sounding -- are you sounding the alarm? Is that a fair characterization?

A  I'm sounding the alarm on the 21st. I'm sounding the alarm on the 23rd. I had another conversation, oh, with Tim Morrison, I think, asking the same question. Is that -- am I getting these numbers right? Next day, yes, on the 22nd with Morrison, I asked him the same thing, had there been a change in policy.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  So, yes, I am getting increasingly concerned. I'm trying to get from Washington what's going on.

Q  And did Brechbuhl give you any indication that he was going to talk to the Secretary or he hears you loud and clear --

A  Hears me --

Q  -- and he'll try to do something about it?

A  He says, "I will check."

Q  Okay.

A  "I will check."

Q  And did he check?

A  I don't know. I didn't hear anything back from him.

Q  Okay.

And then Ambassador Bolton comes to Ukraine on August 27th?

A  Correct.

Q  And did you discuss these issues with him at that time?

A  At the end of -- yes. Yes. At the end of his -- he was there for, like, 3 days. And the second day -- he left the morning of the third day, early. The evening of the second day, which I think is maybe the 28th of September or so, I asked for a meeting with him to talk about this. And, again, this is the 28th.

September 29th is when the word leaks out in the Politico article, okay, there is a hold on -- so it wasn't out then, and, thus, it wasn't a topic of conversation with the Ukrainians. And he saw the full range of Ukrainians, including the President.

But I knew it. And I asked him at the end of his meeting, at the end of his visit, before he went to bed, if I could have a session with him. And I did, and I raised exactly this question. It was he who suggested then at that meeting that I write this note to Secretary Pompeo, which I did the next day.

Q  Okay. Did he urge -- he didn't urge a telephone call or anything of that sort?

A  No. He urged the first-person cable to get attention back there.

Q  Okay. Did you ask him whether he was trying to work the issue from his vantage point?

A  He indicated that he was very sympathetic. I had known from earlier conversations with people that he was also trying with the two Secretaries and the Director of the CIA to get this decision reversed. So he confirmed that and urged me to make my concerns known to the Secretary again.

MR. SMITH: Before we leave this, I think the Ambassador said the meeting was on September 27th. It was August 27th.

MR. CASTOR: Okay.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct. Oh, did I say September?

MR. SMITH: I think you did.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Thank you, Counselor.

MR. MEADOWS: So, Ambassador -- can I follow up with just one clarifying?

So, Ambassador, you said that you were aware of Ambassador Bolton's advocacy for this. You were aware of that how? From whom?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I was aware, Congressman, in the discussions that followed the meeting at the NSC where the hold was put on. And it rapidly went up the chain to Ambassador Bolton. And was told a couple of times by people at State and people at the NSC that the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, and the head of CIA all strongly supported the resumption of this assistance.

MR. MEADOWS: Who told you that? That's what I'm trying to get at. I mean, who were the conversations with?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I'm sure they were with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent.

MR. MEADOWS: From the State Department standpoint.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: The State Department.

MR. MEADOWS: All right. From the NSC standpoint -- I mean, who would have direct knowledge of what Ambassador Bolton had done or was doing that conveyed that to you?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Congressman, again, what I know is those principals were trying to get together with the President to have this meeting. So, knowing that --

MR. MEADOWS: Right, but you said somebody told you about Ambassador Bolton's advocacy --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That's what I was referring to. I was referring to that I knew what his position was, because he wanted to get that group together to make the case.

MR. MEADOWS: So did he tell you he was getting the group together? Or who told you the group was getting together?

I guess I'm a little concerned on who at NSC would've been telling you about Ambassador Bolton. You felt like he was a kindred spirit on this. So who was telling you from the NSC that he was?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It would've been either -- it would've been Tim Morrison. But I can't remember the specific phone call.

But, again, the main reason I know where Ambassador Bolton was was that interest in getting it reversed, getting the decision reversed, and the way to do that was to get a meeting with the President. So that was my main source of information. And that came, as I say, from the State Department.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  And then you had a subsequent conversation with Morrison? It sounds like you're talking to Morrison pretty much every day during this time period?

A  "Every day" is too strong, but -- let's see. Yeah. So Morrison is with Bolton.

Q  Okay.

A  So he's in Kyiv. He goes on to Warsaw with Bolton, and he and I have conversations from Warsaw.

Q  Okay. What’s Morrison's background? Where did he come from?

A  He came -- so he took Fiona Hill's place, coming from another part of the NSC doing arms control, and I don't know what before that.

Q  So you sent the first-person cable where you mention the term "folly."

A  I did.

Q  Did you get any feedback from the seventh floor on that cable?

A  I got feedback from the sixth floor on that.

Q  Okay. What feedback did you get?

A  I got feedback saying, I'm glad you sent that cable.

Q  Okay. Did you get any feedback from the Secretary or --

A  I didn't. I didn't. As I say, I know he carried it with him to one of these meetings where they were going to try to reverse the decision, but no direct feedback.

Q  Okay. How about from Mr. Brechbuhl?

A  Nope.

Q  Anybody else?

A  Not -- no, again, other than the desk. I somehow made sure -- I think I sent an email to Ulrich Brechbuhl to ensure that he saw that cable, and he may have sent back an acknowledgement that he'd seen it.

Q  Okay.

After the hold was lifted --

A  Yes.

Q  -- and the funds started to flow, was there any other activities that concerned you in the irregular channel?

A  Not that I can remember.

Q  Okay. I mean, you talked about the statement, the possible CNN interview, and some of these --

A  Correct.

Q  -- concerns from that channel.

A  Correct. But that had been in train for -- so I was trying to be sure that the things from the other channel that had been put in place, like the CNN interview, didn't happen.

Q  Okay.

A  And then the focus was on UNGA, as we said, on the General Assembly. And that, of course, was back into the regular channels, I mean, all the preparations for that.

Q  Did any of your conversations with Morrison reveal any concerns about the Giuliani-Sondland-Volker channel from that point on?

A  Not that I recall.

Q  Okay. Did you ever have any communications with Morrison after the aid was released where he indicated to you that the problem was solved and on to the next issue?

A  No. No. His -- no. My conversations with Tim Morrison have been primarily, in particular since then, since the aid was released, on China. He was very concerned about China's investments in Ukraine, so we've had many conversations about that.

Q  Okay. So you still talk with Mr. Morrison with some regularity?

A  I do.

Q  When did the fact that there was a complaint lodged about these matters come to your attention?

A  I'm not sure, Mr. Castor.

Q  The whistleblower complaint, when did that first come to your attention?

A  The whistleblower complaint?

Q  Yeah.

A  I guess when I read it in the paper.

Q  Okay. Which was towards the end of September or before it was made public?

A  No, no, no. In the newspaper.

Q  Okay. Did anyone try to contact you to find out any information, any firsthand information?

A  No.

Q  Okay.

A  No.

Q  How frequently do you have conversations with the DNI about these issues? Any?

A  I think none.

Q  Okay. Does a person by the name of Eric Ciaramella ring a bell for you?

A  It doesn't.

Q  So, to your knowledge, you never had any communications with somebody by that name?

A  Correct.

Q  After the aid was released, did you ever have a close-the-loop session with Volker and Sondland?

A  About that topic?

Q  Yes.

A  I don't think so.

Q  Okay. So, once the aid was released, it was sort of --

A  That was my big concern.

Q  Okay.

A  Right.

Q  The telephone conversation that Sondland relates, talking to the President, was pretty definitive, was it not?

A  I think so. It is the one we're talking about that he relates he had with the President --

Q  Right.

A  -- and then Morrison also reports on that same conversation, I think.

Q  Right.

A  That's right. Yes.

Q  And Morrison's view of that conversation is slightly different than Sondland's, is it not?

A  It could well be.

So I'm looking at, what, page 12 here. He described a phone call earlier in the day between Sondland and Trump. Sinking feeling from Ambassador Sondland.

So that may answer this question earlier about whether he was on it.

Q  Yeah.

A  According to Morrison, President Trump asking for a quid pro quo -- was not asking. Did insist that President Zelensky go to a microphone.

And then Sondland and I spoke on the phone. He said he talked to President Trump. Adamant Zelensky himself had to clear things up. The same comment about no quid pro quo. Sondland said he talked to the President and then he talked to Zelensky and Yermak after that.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  So it sounds like they're talking about the same phone call.

Q  What was the sinking feeling?

A  This was a comment that Mr. Morrison made when he heard that there were a Sondland-President Trump phone call, and that gave him a sinking feeling. And I think what he meant by that was, he recognized that that channel -- that's the irregular channel I've been talking about all day -- has the potential to be counter to the regular channel. And whenever he heard that there was an activation of that irregular channel, you know, he was concerned.

Q  Okay. How frequently, to your knowledge, was Sondland in discussion with the President?

A  This is a good question. Ambassador Sondland will tell you, has told you, told me: frequently. Frequently. I mean, I can’t -- I don't know.

I know for a fact that he can call the President directly and does. And I've known this has -- I have heard that on several occasions he had done that, so it's not just a one-off. I mean, he's done it a bunch -- a couple times that I know of.

Q  Okay. So it's a regular enough occurrence that he's probably talked to the President 10, 20, 30 times?

A  I have no idea of the number.

Q  Okay.

There's a little bit of a disconnect between -- like, right around this time period is when Sondland reports the President is pretty definitive, "I don't want anything. I want nothing." But right at the same time, Morrison is revealing that he has a sinking feeling.

And so I'm just curious as to how you piece those two together. Because, on one hand, the President says, I want nothing, then the aid's released; but, on the other hand, Morrison has the sinking feeling.

A  Morrison's sinking feeling is anytime there is an activation of that kind of Giuliani-oriented channel.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  But it seems to me that they describe the -- it seems to me that they describe the same phone call. You're right, there was some variance.

Q  Right.

A  And both related that the President said no quid pro quo. But they also both related that President Trump did insist that Zelensky go to a microphone and open investigations of Biden and 2016, and President Zelensky should want to do it himself, and --

Q  But that part's not from Sondland's readout of the call.

A  This is Morrison telling me about a Sondland-Trump meeting --

Q  Okay

A  -- phone call. Right? And then Sondland -- Gordon tells me the next day, on September 8th, that he talked to President Trump -- it must have been the day before -- and that Trump was adamant that President Zelensky himself --

Q  Uh-huh.

A  Because a week earlier, I had suggested to Gordon that maybe the prosecutor general could make this statement; it would be more logical than the President.

Q  But, in any event, you're only hearing this from either Sondland or Morrison, and you have no idea whether these calls actually happened.

A  I think they actually happened, just because I got two reports of what sounded like the same call.

Q  Okay. But by --

A  But it's true that I never talked to the President.

Q  Okay. But by September 9th, there had been some -- I mean, it had become public, right, with the Politico story that the aid was being withheld?

A  That was August 29th.

Q  Right. So by September 9 --

A  Correct, it was out there.

Q  -- on the eve of the aid hold being lifted --

A  Yep.

Q  -- it had been public.

A  For a week, week and a half.

Q  Right.

A  Yeah.

Q  And, as we understand it, there were Senators, you know, calling the --

A  Two Senators came up. Oh. Right, right. You're exactly right. Senators called the President. Yes.

Q  Okay. So it's possible Sondland -- when Sondland

says the President doesn't want anything, no quid pro quo, it's possible the President's reacting to the fact that he's getting some heat on this issue and he's about to lift the hold.

A  I don't know.

Q  Okay.

A  Don't know.

MR. MEADOWS: So I wanted a few clarifications --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Please.

MR. MEADOWS -- because sometimes my ears --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I have the same problem. I have the same problem.

MR. MEADOWS: So are you saying you got a call about the Sondland-Trump phone call from Morrison --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR Correct.

MR. MEADOWS: -- before you did from Sondland?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct. I got the Morrison call on the 7th, and I got --

MR. MEADOWS: Is that unusual, I mean, that you would get a report from the NSC on a phone call between an Ambassador and the President of the United States before you got a readout from the Ambassador or to the President?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Congressman, it's just a matter of logistics of when you're on what call.

MR. MEADOWS: Yeah, but I guess the question I have is, does Morrison report on other phone calls between the President and other individuals to you? I just find that just interesting, that he would pick up the phone and call you and say "by the way" about this readout between a phone call and the President before Ambassador Sondland did that.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It was before. There's no doubt it was before Ambassador Sondland did that. That's clear from the 7th and 8th of September.

But Tim Morrison and I have a lot of interactions that I just mentioned to Mr. Castor, and I may have called him with some other questions about, I don't know, China, and he may have related that. So it was not a regular -- I don't remember any other time when he related a conversation about the President.

MR. MEADOWS: So, obviously, this would've been a big deal, this phone call, I mean, with the President saying, no quid pro quo. Did you have a relief at that point that, well, gosh, since there's no quid pro quo, I guess the funds are going to be released?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That was not my reaction at the time, Congressman. My --

MR. MEADOWS: Well, what was your reaction? Because I guess I'm a little -- I mean, if this is such a big deal --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It is a big --

MR. MEADOWS: -- that you raised it with a Ukrainian official on September 1st --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. MEADOWS: -- why would you have not reacted in a more, I guess, exuberant manner?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: To the statement that I heard twice, that it was not a quid pro quo? Is that --

MR. MEADOWS: Right.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I should've been exuberant about that? Oh, because -- I'm just trying to understand your question. And so --

MR. MEADOWS: Yeah. No, that's the question. You understand it. I guess I find it that it was just very blase that you got a phone call --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I --

MR. MEADOWS: -- when you had raised this, and you didn't --

THE CHAIRMAN: Please let the witness answer.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: The answer, Congressman, is that --

MR. MEADOWS: Adam, I have not interrupted you at all today.

THE CHAIRMAN: I know, but he's trying to answer three times in a row.

MR. MEADOWS: I'm trying to clarify my question. He’s asked me two or three times.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: And I think I got the question now. Thank you.

MR. MEADOWS: Okay.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Thank you, Congressman.

So the answer is that, even after the statement that I heard both times from both recollections, recitations, descriptions of the phone call, after the quid pro quo, there is none, there is none, there is none, then it went on -both conversations went on to say: But President Trump did insist that President Zelensky go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016, and President Zelensky should want to do this himself. That was the -- that's what Tim --

MR. MEADOWS: And that came from Morrison?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That came from Morrison.

MR. MEADOWS: Okay.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: What came from Sondland when he told me this story was President Trump said it was not a quid pro quo. Ambassador Sondland said that he had talked to President Zelensky and Yermak and told them that, although this was not a quid pro quo, if President Zelensky did not clear things up in public, we would be at a stalemate.

MR. MEADOWS All right.

And so let me go back to one other thing, because I think you said -- you've said it twice now, and I want to make sure I understand you. You do not think it's appropriate for the Ukraine Government to investigate a violation of Ukrainian law. Is that what you said?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No, no. I think it's perfectly appropriate for the Ukrainian Government to investigate a violation of Ukrainian law. I think it's --

MR. MEADOWS: Okay. All right. I thought so.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yeah, yeah.

MR. MEADOWS: All right.

So one other area. You talked about -- and I think it was Mr. Noble had asked you about the funds being withheld, and you said you believed that it was the aid and foreign military sales as well, all together in one bunch, in answer to his question.

And I want to remind you, actually, the talk of the Javelins and foreign military sales, it comes at a separate time. And I want to refresh your memory on that and perhaps allow you --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: You’re --

MR. MEADOWS: -- to correct the record. Because I think Mr. Noble asked the question and you lumped it all together and said it came at one time --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No --

MR. MEADOWS: -- and we know that that's not accurate.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Let me tell you what I think is accurate.

MR. MEADOWS: Okay.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: What I think is accurate is there was 250 million in something called the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, USAI. And that --

MR. MEADOWS: Controlled by DOD.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: -- is owned by DOD, correct.

MR. MEADOWS: That's correct.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct. And there's another 141 million of, I think it's FMF that's run by the State Department.

MR. MEADOWS: State Department.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That is separate from -- those two things are separate from the purchase of Javelins by the Ukrainians with their own money --

MR. MEADOWS: That's correct.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: -- of about $29 million for about

150 Javelins, right? So those are three separate pieces. If I was not clear on that --

MR. MEADOWS: Yeah. Because they came in three separate tranches. And I used to be on Foreign Affairs, and when we talk about all of this stuff, there's a whole lot of things that hold up foreign aid.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. MEADOWS: And so you're a career Foreign Service --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I am actually not a career Foreign Service, but I've been in the State Department for a long time.

MR. MEADOWS: Well, you've been in the State Department for a long time.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That’s correct.

MR. MEADOWS: And so have you seen aid held up for a variety of reasons other than just a normal appropriations glitch? Have you seen Senators put a hold on foreign aid occasionally --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. MEADOWS: -- to get votes on things that --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don’t know about getting votes on things. But, sure, there are certainly holds put on foreign assistance packages. There’s no doubt about it.

MR. MEADOWS: That have nothing to do with our overall foreign policy initiative. Have you seen that?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don't remember, but I would not be surprised. I would not be surprised.

MR. MEADOWS: All right.

MR. JORDAN: Ambassador, how many conversations and/or meetings did you have with Mr. Morrison in this relevant time period?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: "Relevant time” meaning all summer?

MR. JORDAN: Well, you said you had one -- you get there on June 17th and you had one conversation with the individual who held Mr. Morrison’s position at NSC. You had one conversation in your first month there, and it was on July 19th.

So, between July 19th and the September timeframe when Mr. Morrison calls you to tell you about a call that Mr. Sondland had with the President of the United States, how many times between July 19th and September 9th, roughly, how many times did you communicate with Mr. Morrison? It sounds like it was a lot.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yeah. I was going to say 8, 10, 12. A good number. A lot.

MR. JORDAN: Yeah. So his predecessor you had one conversation with in this timeframe.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Well, no. I actually had -- before I went out, I sat down with Fiona and Alex -- actually, a couple times before I went out. And then had this meeting -- or had this call --

MR. JORDAN: Well, earlier, in a previous hour, when I asked you how many conversations you had with Dr. Hill between June 17th and July 19th, you said one, and that was on July 19th.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: And I think that's correct. And what I'm saying is before I --

MR. JORDAN: And we tried to establish -- it sounded like it was on your calendar. She probably called you, but you weren't sure. Am I characterizing that accurately?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That's correct.

MR. JORDAN: So you had one conversation with Dr. Hill in your first month on the job.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I think that's correct, yes.

MR. JORDAN: And now you've said you had multiple conversations with Mr. Morrison.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. This one that was in your testimony, was this Mr. Morrison called you to tell you about that, or was it his previously scheduled call?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: We're talking about September 7th now, Congressman?

MR. JORDAN: Let me just go back and look. Yeah, the September 7th -- you described a phone conversation between Ambassador Sondland and President Trump. Did he call you?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: The way we do these phone calls is, to be secure, to be secure -- September 7th may be a -- was it a Sunday? September 7th. It was a Saturday. So to have a secure call on a weekend, I go into the Embassy.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: And the way we arrange these calls is through unclass email. We say, Tim, you know, you got time? Or he may have sent me a note saying, do we have time? And I'd said, sure, I'll go into the Embassy at such and such a time.

So the short answer is I'm not sure who called whom.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. But you had multiple calls between July 19th and this call on September 7th.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: And did you have a prior friendship or relationship working with Mr. Morrison prior to his time as coming in --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No, I had not met him before.

MR. JORDAN: So you'd never met him before.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: He gets Dr. Hill's position.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: And then you have multiple phone calls with him in this timeframe.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That's correct.

MR. JORDAN: And I think you said some of it was relative to China. And Ukraine as well? The linkage --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: -- between China and Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No, China in Ukraine.

MR. JORDAN: I understand.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: China investing in -- yes.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yeah, he's very -- he and Dr. Kupperman and many people, as you are I'm sure aware, are concerned about the Chinese interest in buying up some of Ukrainian technology and a company called words redacted                                 . Yes. So we had many conversations about that.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. And of these multiple conversations, many conversations you had, do you think it's -- characterize it. Was it more Mr. Morrison reaching out to you to communicate information to you or the other way?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Both.

MR. JORDAN: Who initiated?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It’s both.

MR. JORDAN: Who initiated most? I'm just curious.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I'm just --

MR. JORDAN: You don't know?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Both. I don't know.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. Thank you.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It's some of each.

MR. JORDAN: All right.

MR. MEADOWS: And so this phone call you had was on a Saturday.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: September 7th I think was a Saturday.

MR. MEADOWS: So how many times do you go in to make phone calls on urgent matters on a Saturday?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Not infrequently, sadly.

MR. MEADOWS: So you literally say, well, I need to go talk to Washington, D.C., and go in on a Saturday --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR If it has to be secure, yes, I go into the Embassy. And the Embassy is 25 minutes away.

MR. MEADOWS: No, I get the secure nature, but --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yeah.

MR. MEADOWS: So what you're saying is you go into the Embassy to make this phone call to talk about a phone call that he had with the President.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That he had it --

MR. MEADOWS: Sondland had it with the President.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Right. Morrison is talking about a Sondland conversation with the President, correct.

MR. MEADOWS: Okay. And so, as you go in -- you don't recall what else you talked about?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: In that phone call?

MR. MEADOWS: Yeah.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don't.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  You first learned you were going to be coming here today to answer questions last week? Or before?

A  No, no, no. You sent me -- somebody sent me a note or an invitation to come probably 2 weeks ago?

Q  Okay.

A  Yeah.

Q  But prior to today, have you had any communications with congressional staff about any of the issues that we've discussed here today?

A  No.

Q  Okay. And, you know, there was a report running yesterday about things that may or may not have occurred on a codel, and I just want to --

A  Staffdel, maybe. Was it a staffdel?

Q  Codel or staffdel.

A  So I saw a report. Maybe this is what you're asking.

While I was in Kyiv -- this must've been -- maybe about the same time. I can't remember. In September. The Atlantic Council had one of its many visits, and the Atlantic Council invites congressional staff. Generally, they are fairly junior congressional staff. And I think there were probably 15 or so congressional staffers on this trip.

John Herbst, Ambassador Herbst organizes these. It was a Sunday afternoon. They were just off the plane. They came to my residence, and I gave them a briefing. And it could've been that one of your staffers was on this, Mr. Chairman.

Q  My question was just simply, you haven't had communications with --

A  I have not.

Q  -- congressional staff outside of what we're here doing here today?

A  That's right. Other -- if the question is about that Atlantic Council one, there were a bunch of congressional staffers whom I gave a regular briefing to.

Q  Okay. Fair enough.

What else -- what can you tell us about the Atlantic Council? Did you know they were funded in part by Burisma?

A  You know, I didn't know that. I didn't know that. So I have great respect for the people -- I know a lot of the people at the Atlantic Council. And I know that -- and I know that they have to raise funds. I didn't know that Burisma was one of their funders.

Q  Okay. But you learned that recently or --

A  Maybe in the past week.

Q  Do a lot of Ukrainian business enterprises contribute money to the Atlantic Council, to your knowledge?

A  I don't know.

MR. CASTOR: Mr. Armstrong, did you have something you wanted to --

MR. ARMSTRONG: Yeah, just briefly.

You were talking about the High Court of Anti-Corruption. And that was actually set up under Poroshenko, but it was inactive. And when Zelensky got elected, he brought it back, right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, sir. "Inactive" is probably -- well, it wasn't put into effect. It wasn't -- it didn't start. And the problem was, it didn't have a place to meet. And so -- under President Poroshenko. And so people were thinking that he was kind of dragging his feet.

MR. ARMSTRONG: Yeah.

MBASSADOR TAYLOR: And then Zelensky gets in, and within, like, 2 weeks, the same fellow, this prosecutor general that I mentioned a minute ago, Ryabshapka, came up with a place, got them in, and they opened it on September 5th.

MR. ARMSTRONG: But earlier in your testimony, you said -- we had a comment about Parliament, and you said you can buy your way into Parliament. We asked about criminal justice. You can buy your way out of prosecution essentially is going on.

And there were actually -- you had talked earlier about concerns about Zelensky's relationship with a particular oligarch. There were concerns about the Naftogaz board, the boards of state-owned banks, and, obviously, even outside of all of this, some questions about Burisma and what we just found out.

And corruption relating to oligarchs is not something new, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct.

MR. ARMSTRONG: I mean -- and during this, we went through it. I mean, there was a parliamentarian, Leshchenko, who was investigated. You said he was an original supporter of Zelensky and then wasn't?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: So he was originally -- well, he started off as a journalist. He joined President Poroshenko's party and was elected to Parliament. And then, as a reformer, he was advising the Zelensky campaign, self-selected out of the Zelensky camp.

MR. ARMSTRONG: And people were excited about Zelensky's election, but also, at the same time -- and I'll get back to this in a second -- I mean, there was at least four current or former members of the Ukrainian Government that were, I mean, participating in our 2016 election. And I don't mean anything -- I mean, they were posting on Facebook, whether it was former Prime Minister Yatseniuk was posting on Facebook; Minister of Internal Affairs -- who is still a member of government, correct.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct.

MR. ARMSTRONG: -- Avakov, who has, I mean, said some pretty derogatory things about the President. Chaly, who was the Ambassador to Ukraine, coined an op-ed in The Hill during the campaign.

So we have a concern about a potential relationship with Zelensky. We have -- I mean, this is systemic, and it's gone on for a long time.

So, I mean, while we're excited and this is moving forward and some of these things are going on, you can see probably how this administration maybe had a little concern, particularly not only with corruption but also with direct relationship to what went on with --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Congressman, the only thing I'd say is that the concern should not have been about the new team. Now, your point is a good one -- that is, they had one carryover from --

MR. ARMSTRONG: Well, let me ask you this. Because you weren't the Ambassador during the 2016 election.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That's true.

MR. ARMSTRONG: But you were the Ambassador during the 2008 election.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I was.

MR. ARMSTRONG: And if four members of the Ukrainian Government were directly involved in the election of -- which ended up being President Obama, in your position of Ambassador, how would you have handled that?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: What would I have done to -- so the scenario is --

MR. ARMSTRONG: Let me ask -- let's start here: Would that have concerned you?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Any interference of diplomats or of government officials in an election in another country would concern me.

MR. ARMSTRONG: So I'm assuming none of that happened in

2008.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Not that I know of.

MR. ARMSTRONG: Any Ukrainian officials that you're aware of.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Not that I'm aware of.

MR. ARMSTRONG: Okay. Thanks.

MR. CASTOR: I think our time has expired.

THE CHAIRMAN: Let's take a 5- or 10-minute break. We do have votes coming up. It would be my intention for staff to continue the interview during votes. And I don't think we have a lot more questions for you. I don’t know where the minority is, but hopefully we won't go too much longer.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I'm at your service, Mr. Chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Thank you, Ambassador.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Thank you.

[Recess.]

[5:31 p.m.]

THE CHAIRMAN: We're going to go back on the record to try to get to as many members as we can before votes. And let me start by recognizing Mr. Malinowski.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Ambassador, for your service and your patience with us today. I just wanted -- you've answered most of my questions, so I wanted to maybe try to sum things up a little bit. It seems to me from your testimony and from that of others that we've heard that there was a group of officials in the executive branch who were working on Ukraine and who cared about Ukraine across the interagency.

And at the start of this drama, all of you basically agreed on the objective, supporting Ukraine against Russia, fighting corruption, promoting democracy. You wanted a good relationship between the two countries. And then, at a certain point, you all learned that the President was in a different place, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes. So, in the May 23rd, before I got out there, in his meeting with the delegation that came back enthusiastic about Zelensky, the President was less enthusiastic.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Right. And at that point, things -- that group of people, roughly speaking, split into two different camps. You all still had the same goals, but there was one group of folks who felt that they didn't want to have anything to do with what Mr. Bolton reportedly described as the drug deal because it was wrong, it was unprincipled, we should not be operating that way.

And then there was a second group of people that may have included Kurt Volker, Ambassador Sondland, Secretary Perry, who decided that they had to somehow go along with this drug deal because they felt it was the only way to bring the President back, to get him to support the vision of the relationship that you wanted. Is that a fair assessment?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It is, Congressman. And it was motivated, but as you said, toward a strong relationship. It was just a different -- they thought they had to take a different route through Giuliani to get there.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Right. And so the problem wasn't with either of those groups of people. The problem was the drug deal itself, in effect. It was this decision that, you know, you had to go through this path to get to that outcome. And so let me ask you, who was responsible for the drug deal? Who was responsible for setting all this into motion? Was it Mr. Sondland? Was it Ambassador Sondland?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don't think so. I think the origin of the idea to get President Zelensky to say out loud he's going to investigate Burisma and 2016 election, I think the originator, the person who came up with that was Mr. Giuliani.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And he was representing whose interests in --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: President Trump.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Krishnamoorthi.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: Hello, Mr. Ambassador.

Thank you for your incredible service to our Nation.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Thank you, sir.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: First of all, on page 12 of your statement, you talked about the meeting that you helped facilitate between Senators Johnson and Murphy with President Zelensky. Do you recall that meeting?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I do.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: And in your statement, you say that they emphasized that President Zelensky should not jeopardize bipartisan support by getting drawn into U.S. domestic politics. What exactly were they referring to when they said he should not jeopardize bipartisan support by getting drawn into U.S. politics?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: The Senators were concerned -- the

Senators could see that President Zelensky faced a dilemma, and the dilemma was investigate Burisma and 2016 or don't. And if they investigated, then that would be seen to be interfering on the side of President Trump's reelection; if they didn't investigate, that would be seen to be interfering in favor of some of his -- of President Trump's opponent. So they told him: Just don't get involved, just don’t get involved.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And both Senator Murphy and Senator Johnson said -- or expressed that sentiment, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I want to be careful about quoting Members of Congress and Senators. This is why I was counseled by smarter people than I about how to phrase this. But that was spoken by Senator Murphy.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Okay. And, now, some folks might say that the beginning of those investigations was merely investigating corruption. Why was it your and their sentiment that it was actually getting Zelensky drawn into U.S. politics?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It would get into U.S. politics if the Ukrainians were to go -- was to investigate the Burisma cases that were closed at the time when Vice President Biden was in town -- in Kyiv frequently making the point about anti corruption and when his son was on the board of Burisma. So it was that cluster of issues surrounding Burisma that would be highlighted by an investigation.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: And you agreed with the sentiment expressed by the Senators, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I did.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: Now, let me turn your attention to page 8 for a second. There?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yep.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: Ambassador Sondland said that -- I'm looking at the top of the page -- said that a call between President Trump and President Zelensky would take place soon. This is in the July timeframe. And Ambassador Volker said that what was, quote, most important for Zelensky to say that he will help investigation and address any specific personnel issues if there are any, closed quote.

What specific personnel issues are being referred to?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Congressman, I don't know. To this day, I don't know what he was referring to there.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: Okay. And did Ambassador Sondland ever bring up personnel issues?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Not in my -- not that I know of.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: Finally, Giuliani. You may or may not be aware of this, but Giuliani had a hand in trying to force out Ambassador Yovanovitch from her post as Ambassador. Are you aware of any attempts by Giuliani or anyone else to come back at you for some of the text messages that you had sent basically questioning the wisdom of Ukraine policy that was being pursued by Volker, Sondland, Giuliani, or anyone else?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No, sir.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: And did anybody ever question you directly about your statements and whether you were somehow out of line in making the statements that you made?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Not yet.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: Okay. Thank you. I hope never.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Thank you.

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: Do me a favor though: Stay honest as you are. Thank you, sir.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Thank you, sir.

THE CHAIRMAN: Just one followup question before I go to my next colleague. Prior to the codel you mentioned with Senators Murphy and Johnson, Senator Johnson told The Wall Street Journal that Sondland had described to him a quid pro quo involving a commitment by Kyiv to probe matters related to U.S. elections and the status of nearly $400 million in U.S. aid to Ukraine that the President had ordered to be held up in July.

Apparently, Senator Johnson had told this to the Journal before the codel. Did he ever raise this with you during those meetings?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: He didn't raise that, no, Mr. Chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Representative Lynch. Then Maloney and Speier, if you have questions, Speier, Jackie Speier.

MR. LYNCH: Thank you. Thank you, Ambassador. I really appreciate your courage in coming forward, and thank you for your service.

I'd like you to focus on page 10 and 11 of your opening statement. And September 1st seems to be a red letter day, so to speak. You have a conversation -- excuse me, yeah, you have a number of conversations here that are very important.

One you had with Mr. Morrison, who described a conversation between Ambassador Sondland with Mr. Yermak at Warsaw, where Ambassador Sondland told Mr. Yermak that the security assistance money would not come until President Zelensky commits to pursue the Burisma investigation.

You also say that's the first time you've heard that security assistance, not just the White House meeting, was conditioned on the investigation. And then you text message Ambassador Sondland, and you're saying -- it's a question: We are now saying the security assistance and the White House meeting are conditioned on investigations, question mark, end quote.

There's also a statement here that you relate that Ambassador Sondland also told you that he now recognized he'd made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelensky was dependent on a public announcement of investigations, in fact. Ambassador Sondland said everything was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance.

He said the President -- Trump wanted President Zelensky, quote, in a public box, close quote, by making a public statement about ordering such investigations. This is a rich description. This is all one day, September 1st. And so I would like to know, is this a product of your memory, or is this something that you took contemporaneous notes, you know, at the time that this was occurring?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Contemporaneous notes, Mr. Lynch.

MR. LYNCH: They are. And that is your usual practice?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It is, indeed.

MR. LYNCH: And did you surrender these notes to the State Department?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I did.

MR. LYNCH: You did?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I did.

MR. LYNCH: And do you have copies in your custody?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I do.

MR. LYNCH: You do. Okay. That's all I got. I yield back.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Maloney.

MR. MALONEY: Just a quick followup on that one point. Over here. My name is Sean Maloney. Ambassador Sondland, thank you for your testimony today.

Just to follow up on my colleague's question, along those same lines, when you use quotation marks in your opening statement, did you have a standard that you applied? In other words, would we find those phrases, those quotes in the notes you just described to my colleague, Mr. Lynch?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, sir. If I had them -- if I put them in quotation marks, that means I can find them in my notes. And I took notes -- it would either be in a text message or WhatsApp message or notes that I took on my little notebook that I carry around, or a notebook that I keep in my office that I take notes on phone calls when I'm in the office. So the answer is, yes, if I've got quotes on them, I can find them.

MR. MALONEY: Thank you.

I want to direct your attention to page 10. I just have a couple of questions about the Warsaw meeting.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. MALONEY: Now, we see towards the bottom of page 10 you describe the meeting that Vice President Pence had with President Zelensky. I believe that was on September 1st?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. MALONEY: And in that fourth paragraph towards the bottom, you mentioned that while President Zelensky, and I'm quoting, had opened the meeting by asking the Vice President about security cooperation, you go on to say, the Vice President did not respond substantively but said he would talk to President Trump that night.

Do you see where I'm reading from?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I do.

MR. MALONEY: Do you know whether the Vice President spoke to the President that night?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don't.

MR. MALONEY: And then you also go on to say, the Vice President did not say the President wanted the Europeans to do -- excuse me, the Vice President did say that President Trump wanted the Europeans to do more to support the Ukraine and that he wanted the Ukrainians to do more to fight corruption.

In the next paragraph, however, you describe another meeting that's going on also in Warsaw, also the same day, as I understand it, between Ambassador Sondland and Mr. Yermak. Is that right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: This is a report of a phone call I had with Mr. Morrison. I think it's the same one that we just -- I think he called me to tell me about or I called him to ask about the events in Warsaw on September 1st.

MR. MALONEY: And --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I'm sorry, Congressman. This is the same phone call with Mr. Morrison. He went on to describe this subsequent conversation with Sondland, Yermak.

MR. MALONEY: I think I understand your answer, sir. But my question is, is in the phone call you're having with Mr. Morrison --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: And he’s describing a Warsaw meeting between Mr. Sondland and Mr. Yermak --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. MALONEY: -- which seems to have happened at the same time as the Vice President was meeting with President Zelensky. Am I correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It was the same event, but probably -- I wasn't there, but what happens at these is there's a bilateral meeting between Vice President and the President with all the aides. And then, after that, the aides may get together separately, and that's what I imagine happened here.

MR. MALONEY: I understand. Do you know whether Ambassador Sondland ever spoke to the Vice President about his conversation with Mr. Yermak?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don't know.

MR. MALONEY: I want to ask you about one other thing, sir, which is, on page 12 and on page 13, my colleague Chairman Schiff has taken you at some length through the various statements of conditionality and your view of that. And it's not my intention to go back into that. I just wanted to ask you about the wording you use at this point in the sequence of events.

So, on September 8th, there is the call between Sondland and Volker and you, and you recount this expression about how when a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check. And then, of course, you mention that Ambassador Volker used the same term several days later. Do you see where I'm reading from the from in the middle of the page?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I do.

MR. MALONEY: And you go on to say that holding up security assistance for -- and you use the words "domestic political gain" was, quote, crazy. Do you see that?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I do.

MR. MALONEY: And the day before -- excuse me, the day after that, on September 9th, it comes before in your testimony a couple paragraphs up, but it's actually the next day is when you write the famous text: I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign. Do you see that?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I do.

MR. MALONEY: And so my question, sir, is, when you use phrases like "domestic political gain" or a "political campaign," I want to understand what you meant by that, because, of course, we’re not just talking now about whether or not an investigation was launched or whether or not it would be appropriate or not to do that. I'm curious about why you connected it up to, quote, a domestic political gain and, quote, a political campaign?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Because as I understood the reason for investigating Burisma was to cast Vice President Biden in a bad light.

MR. MALONEY: That would be the domestic political gain?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. MALONEY: To cast Vice President Biden in a bad light?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Right.

MR. MALONEY: And the political campaign would be what political campaign?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: A political campaign for the reelection of President Trump.

MR. MALONEY: On page 2 of your testimony -- last question. On page 2 of your testimony, you say that Ukraine was special, which struck me. You talk about your many years of service and the extraordinary work you've done for our country, but in that third paragraph, you say: Ukraine is special for me. Do you see that? In fact, you say, across the responsibilities I've had in public service, Ukraine is special for me. It's in the third paragraph, halfway through.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes. Yes, sir.

MR. MALONEY: Throughout the day, you've responded to our questions in a very professional manner. I take it this is your years of training as a diplomat. But I'm curious about your emotional reaction to these events. Ukraine, as you say, was special to you, and you witnessed this over the series of a couple of months this summer from June, I guess, through the present, but really to early September, especially. What was your emotional reaction to these events?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It was a reaction based on the fact that, as I mentioned, either before or after that, just after that, that I think Ukraine is important objectively to the United States. That is not emotionally, but we can do some kind of analysis and determine why it's important for Ukraine to succeed as a state and why it's important for Russia not to succeed in its aggression. That’s kind of the analytic piece.

The emotional piece is based on my time in Ukraine in 2006, 2009, when traveling around the country, I got to know Ukrainians and their frustrations and difficulties and those kind of things. And then coming back and seeing it now where they have the opportunity, they've got a young President, a young Prime Minister, a young Parliament, the Prime Minister is 35 years old. This new government has appealed to young people who are so idealistic, pro-West, pro-United States, pro-Europe, that I feel an emotional attachment, bond, connection to this country and these people.

MR. MALONEY: You cared about it?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I cared about this country.

MR. MALONEY: And you didn't want to see it screwed up?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I didn't want to see it screwed up. I wanted to see it succeed.

MR. MALONEY: And you didn't want to see it screwed up by some political agenda coming from Washington. Is that fair to say?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Well, what I didn't want to do is have United States assistance to Ukraine blocked or suspended for no good reason that I could see. And there are some bad reasons that -- I didn't want to see that blocked. That was my concern, in this episode.

MR. MALONEY: Thank you, sir.

THE CHAIRMAN: Just one followup question before I go to Representative Speier. In Warsaw, Morrison relates to you there are two meetings going on. There is a meeting with a Vice President and President Zelensky, and then there's the separate meeting between Sondland and Yermak, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct, and they're probably in sequence. They're probably not at the same time.

THE CHAIRMAN: And the meeting with the Vice President and Zelensky was actually a big meeting with one or two dozen people. Am I right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Probably. I was not there, but, yes. Normally that's the case.

THE CHAIRMAN: So, at a big meeting like that, it stands to reason they're not going to get into the specifics about that we want you to do this political investigation in order to get this. Am I right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: That takes place, in fact, in this small, private meeting between Sondland and Yermak?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, without -- presumably without the Vice President.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Representative Speier.

MS. SPEIER: Thank you.

Ambassador, thank you for really a lifetime of service to our country. You're really a great American.

I've got a couple of kind of strings I'd like to just get some clarification on. You said that you met with Ambassador Volker and Mr. Yermak over dinner on the 14th of September after the money had been released. And Mr. Volker kept pushing, saying, do not investigate Poroshenko. Did you have a subsequent conversation with him as to why he was doing that?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: With Mr. Volker, no. I wouldn't characterize it, Ms. Speier, as saying that he -- or he kept doing it. I mean, he raised it once, got a pretty emotional response or kind of, you know, a strong response from both Ukrainians at the table. And he didn't push --

MS. SPEIER: He backed off?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Kurt did not pursue it.

MS. SPEIER: But you didn't ask him afterwards why he was --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I didn't.

MS. SPEIER: Okay. Did anyone in the Zelensky administration indicate to you a sense of confusion with what you have dubbed as the irregular policy channel?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Indirectly. So, in my conversations in the regular channel with President Zelensky and his team, they would, on occasion, express confusion or uncertainty about what direction they were getting from the United States because they were hearing, as I mentioned earlier, directly from Ambassador Sondland who could and would pick up the phone and call President Zelensky or President -- Assistant Yermak and give them advice outside of the normal channel -- outside of my channel, outside of the normal channel. So they were hearing different things from both -- from those two channels. And that's confusing.

MS. SPEIER: There's hardly any reference to Secretary Perry, who has been included as one of the tres amigos. Did you have any contact with him?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I didn't.

MS. SPEIER: And he was never in any of your text messages?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No, not in any text messages. He was in two phone calls, Ms. Speier. Early on the -- I think two phone calls. Certainly was in the June 28th phone call, and he might have been -- I'll check my notes to see if he were in the June 18 phone call. But those were the only two times that I heard him on the phone or had any interaction with him.

MS. SPEIER: Did you think it was peculiar that he was engaged in this?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No. Secretary Perry is very interested in energy markets. Ukraine could be a big energy market. It would be -- Secretary Perry knows that there are a lot of companies, in particular in Texas, but I'm sure in other places, who would like to sell liquid natural gas, liquefied natural gas, LNG, to Ukraine or east Europe more broadly. So he had been interested in this, and I didn't think this was very unusual.

MS. SPEIER: So, on page 12, third paragraph, you reference that President Trump did insist that President Zelensky go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and the 2016 election interference. Was that specific reference to Biden and not Burisma?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I would check my notes, but I think the answer is yes.

MS. SPEIER: So it was very specific to an investigation of Biden?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MS. SPEIER: All right. There was a lot of discussion after September 11th that it might be difficult to get all the money out to Ukraine -- by the September 30th end of the fiscal year. How much money actually got released?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I should know the answer to that. I don't know the answer to that. I know it's probably about 90 percent of -- that's rough, Ms. Speier, but roughly 90 percent.

MS. SPEIER: Okay. And my last question is, at one point, there was a reference made, I think it's on page 9, where Mr. Morrison references that the President doesn't want to provide any assistance at all. And that's in quotes.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yeah.

MS. SPEIER: Did that alarm you?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It did.

MS. SPEIER: And coupled with that May 23rd, I think it was, meeting in the White House where everyone came back very excited and the President seemed very unexcited, what does that tell you about his interest in Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Again, I have never -- I wasn't in that meeting. I've never had conversations with the President. Secretary Pompeo did tell me the same thing that the participants of that May 23rd meeting said, and that was the President was skeptical of Ukraine. And we’ve heard several descriptions of the skepticism. Some appear in this -- the Politico article. I mean, he was concerned about the allegations here. And that's as much as I know about the President's view.

MS. SPEIER: Okay. Thank you.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Representative Lieu.

MR. LIEU: All right. Thank you, Ambassador Taylor, for your service to our country. Thank you for serving in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne. I note for the record you jumped out of perfectly fine airplanes, so thank you for your courage.

I'd like to talk about U.S. national security. It's a fundamental principle, intent of U.S. national security to push back against Russian aggression, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: [Nonverbal response.]

MR. LIEU: And Ukraine is one of the countries at the tip of the spear of pushing back against Russian aggression, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It is.

MR. LIEU: And on page eight of your statement, you write, Ambassador Volker and I could see the armed and hostile Russian-led forces on the other side of a damaged bridge across the line of contact. Over 13,000 Ukrainians had been killed in the war, one or two a week. More Ukrainians would undoubtedly die without the U.S. assistance.

But I want to make clear, U.S. security assistance to Ukraine isn't just to help Ukrainian national security. It's also to help U.S. national security. Is that right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It is. That’s correct.

MR. LIEU: All right. And, in fact, that's why, as you said, the Department of Defense within a day came back with analysis saying: We need to give security assistance to Ukraine.

Isn't that right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That is correct.

MR. LIEU: Okay. When the President of the United States freezes aid to Ukraine, the Russians can detect weakness, isn't that right, between the U.S. and Ukrainian relationship?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: The Russians are very careful observers of Ukraine and the United States, and they would immediately -- my bet is they knew. They're very good. My bet is they knew that there was something up with the security assistance. So --

MR. LIEU: And if the U.S. doesn’t give security

assistance, it could in effect embolden the Russians to be even more aggressive towards Ukraine. Isn't that right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Absolutely right.

MR. LIEU: Okay. So, when the President of the United States freezes security aid to Ukraine for months and months and months, that not only harms Ukrainian national security, it also harms U.S. national security. Isn't that right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes, sir.

MR. LIEU: All right. Let me move on quickly to one other aspect. The public reporting on Ambassador Sondland's testimony is that he didn't remember a lot of stuff. You have a number of conversations here with Ambassador Sondland. I just want to make sure, in those conversations, there was no indication he was under the influence of alcohol, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct.

MR. LIEU: He didn't slur his words, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct.

MR. LIEU: There was no indication that he was under any medications that caused him short-term memory loss, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Not that I know of.

MR. LIEU: Okay. And last couple questions. The State Department told you not to come here today. Is that fair?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: They did.

MR. LIEU: So did they tell you to also not give documents and notes to Congress, your notes? Did they say you can't provide that to --

MR. BELLINGER: They did. We've been prohibited from providing documents directly to Congress.

MR. LIEU: Okay. Thank you. That's all I have.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Thank you.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Lieu.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Just a couple of sort of cleanup questions for you, Ambassador Taylor, and then I think, at least, on the majority side, we’ll be finished.

You were asked by Mr. Jordan about the number of conversations that you had with Tim Morrison, the senior director on the NSC. Is it fairly common to speak regularly with members of the NSC who cover the country where you are the effective Ambassador or Charge de mission?

A  Mr. Goldman, you know, a lot of it depends on the pace of activity in certain issues, and it certainly is the case in this one. So the role, of course, of the senior director is to be the interface between the President, National Security Advisor and the President, and the interagency.

And, often, they'll be in direct interactions with people in the field. In particular, I think it's the case that embassies or ambassadors will be in touch. I try to keep my, you know, DAS Kent, the Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent, advised on all of these things, but it's also very common for an NSC director or senior director to be directly in touch.

And when I said it was dependent to some degree on the issue, I think I mentioned that Tim Morrison, much more than Fiona Hill, Dr. Hill, was very interested in Chinese investment in Ukraine, continues to today. So our conversations, the vast bulk of the conversations I had with Tim Morrison concerned the Chinese attempts to buy a Ukrainian words redacted                                        manufacturerwords redacted

And he has been a -- Tim Morrison has been a driving force in Washington to try to prevent that, and we are on the front end of that. And so, you know, I go down to words redacted                                        , words redacted                                        and I visit and talk to people who are looking for alternative investors, and Ambassador Bolton, when he was there, and Tim was there for that visit.

The main focus of Ambassador Bolton's visit and conversations with all of these officials that he had in the Ukrainian Government was China. And, again, this was the day before Ukrainians knew that there was even a hold. But it was China and its attempt to buy words redacted                                                                          .

So, when the question comes, how often are you talking to -- well, it depends on the issue. And if there's any -- so, for example, Fiona was focused on Russia. She's a Russia expert. And the Russia-Ukraine Donbas negotiations were stalled. So there was not much happening there. What was not stalled was the Chinese attempt -- well, what was not stalled was our attempt to block Chinese purchase of these words redacted                                        . So that's what -- Tim was

on the phone a lot for those purposes.

Q  You mentioned that you kept Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent as much up to date as you could.

A  Yeah.

Q  Did you speak -- during the last few months, since you arrived there in mid-June, did you speak at all with Assistant Secretary Phil Reeker?

A  A couple of times. Phil Reeker has not focused very much on Ukraine. He relies heavily on George Kent as the DAS. And George, as we know, is -- you have had him. You know George, so he's great. He's an incredible resource on Ukraine and Thailand, by the way.

When I was there in 2006, 2009, he was the deputy political counselor. He then, of course, went back as the DCM. He then was pulled back to be the DAS, Deputy Assistant Secretary. He is a wealth of -- as you probably heard from him, he's a wealth of knowledge. So Phil Reeker relies on George Kent, and I'm in constant contact with George Kent. We have weekly -- we have regular weekly SVTC meetings.

Q  Did you ever raise any concerns about the -- what you call the irregular policy path or track with Ambassador Reeker?

A  I don't think so. I think it was primarily with George Kent.

Q  Any other conversations on the sub topics today with Ambassador Reeker that come to mind?

A  No. So, let's see, Ambassador Reeker, I think, was in my -- I have to check my notes on this too -- I think was in my meeting with Secretary Pompeo, I'm pretty sure he was, on the 28th of May, before I decided -- as I was deciding. And Phil was there. And Phil Reeker travels a lot. He has got all the European countries, and so he's on the road more than average, I will say, and so hasn't focused a whole lot on Ukraine.

Q  You said you received reaction to your cable on August 29th from the sixth floor. Who responded to you?

A  It was actually George Kent, who may actually be on the fifth floor, but, you know, down one.

Q  Okay. What about Under Secretary David Hale? Did you communicate at all with him?

A  On occasion. I went to see him before I went out. And he had visited Kyiv before I got there, so I was hoping to have him come out, but he didn't. But only on occasion would I -- I may have tried to be sure that he got the cable, the notice cable.

Q  Okay. But you never spoke to him about it?

A  No.

Q  Did you ever speak to anybody other than George Kent about your -- at the State Department about your notice cable?

A  Ulrich Brechbuhl, I believe, the counselor, just to be sure that he got it because I wanted to be sure that the Secretary got it.

Q  Right. But you never received a response --

A  I didn't.

Q  -- in any meaningful way?

A  I didn't.

Q  Did you ever receive any indication when you relayed any concerns to the State Department about this irregular policy group that anyone in the Department actually took any steps to resolve anything?

A  There was some discomfort within the State Department with Ambassador Sondland's role in Ukraine. Of course, Ukraine is not in the EU. But it was well-known that, in that famous May 23rd meeting in the Oval Office, that Ambassador Sondland was given direction, with Secretary Perry and Ambassador Volker, to focus on Ukraine, to do something with regard to Ukraine policy.

Q  You testified a little bit earlier about a staffdel or Atlantic Council trip --

A  Yep.

Q  -- where you met with a staff member from the Intelligence Committee, right? And you had no conversations about any of these issues --

A  No.

Q  -- with that individual?

A  No.

Q  Were you aware that there were also three staff members from -- Republican Members of Congress who were on the Foreign Affairs Committee on that trip as well?

A  I knew the names and affiliations and members or committees that each of those members of the staffdel were on.

Q  Did you have any conversations with any of those staff members about any of the issues here today?

A  No. This was a briefing, as I say, in my residence. I gave them a briefing, and then we had an opportunity for questions and answers, and they hit it off.

Q  Are you familiar with the individuals Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman?

A  I only know them through the newspapers.

Q  Or the indictments?

A  Or the indictments in the newspapers.

Q  So you were not -- but prior to the public reports about their involvement in Ukraine and their association with Rudy Giuliani, you were not aware of them in any way?

A  Mr. Goldman, looking back on this, I think back in like March or April someone had -- again, when I was at the Institute of Peace -- sent me some description of interference in -- what was this deal -- in maybe a natural gas -- I think there was a -- I think there was a proposal to sell natural gas to Ukraine.

And I think the person who was telling me this referenced these two names, which I didn't recognize at the time, and I didn't even register at the time. But now, you know, in the last, you know, now they're indicted or now they were picked up at -- then I now recollect that they were mentioned in this previous discussion.

Q  Who were you having this conversation with?

A  I got a note from a man named Dale Perry. He's a businessman.

Q  Did you get an open letter from Dale Perry? Did you ever see that, or a memo of some sort?

A  Yes. Yes. Which I then sent -- again, it meant nothing to me. I was at the Institute of Peace. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I sent it to George Kent and to Masha Yovanovitch.

Q  Okay. Did you ever get a readout of the private meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky at UNGA in New York after their press conference?

A  Ambassador Volker gave me a description, I think, of that meeting. It was not too private. I mean, there were staffs on both sides, right. Okay. I think there's only one. So I think -- and Ambassador Volker, with not in great detail, he was in the meeting and said that it was a good meeting.

The President left pleased that they had finally met face to face. They discussed some connections between President Zelensky's cabinet or his government and several cabinet members on President Trump's team that they should connect.

Q  Was there any discussion that you heard of, whether it was at the principal level or the staff level, about any of these investigations that we've been talking about?

A  No.

Q  Now, you said that the new prosecutor general --

A  Yes.

Q  -- confirmed that he is looking into the issues that were the subject of the --

A  "Confirmed" may be too strong.

Q  Sorry. Just for the record --

A  Right. Right. Right. So what he said, I think fairly recently, last couple of weeks, was that he was going to take a look at all of the cases that had been closed over the past several years to be sure they were done correctly.

Q  And would that include a Burisma investigation?

A  Could.

Q  Or the 2016 election interference --

A  Could.

Q  -- investigation?

A  Could.

Q  So would you say that, at the end of the day, that President Trump got the investigations that he was pressuring Ukraine for?

A  Hasn't gotten them yet, and, of course, President Zelensky didn't have to go in front of a mike and say this. But Mr. -- but the prosecutor general did say that he was going to take a look at any or all of these cases that may have been closed for no good reasons.

Q  All right. So he's at least open to looking into this?

A  He's at least open, yes.

Q  Okay. I think -- all right. We are out of time anyway. So we'll yield to the minority.

MR. JORDAN: Thank you, Ambassador.

I want to go back to the phone calls you had with Mr. Morrison. In the last hour, when I asked you, you said that there were several -- just a few minutes ago when majority counsel asked you, you said that many of those calls dealt with the issue of China and its influence or attempt to influence Ukrainian -- the country of Ukraine.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: That's all fair?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: But there were at least four calls where it wasn't about China because you reference four calls in your testimony?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Absolutely.

MR. JORDAN: Were there other calls that weren't about China that were about this subject that aren't reflected in your testimony?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Congressman, I don't think so. I tried, as I went through my notes, to pull out everything that I could on this topic. I think I got them all, but I -- I think I got them all.

MR. JORDAN: So you think any conversation you had with Mr. Morrison relative to the subject that we’ve been discussing all day are at least highlighted and referenced in your opening statement?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Congressman, that was my intent

MR. JORDAN: That was your intent.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: -- and I hope I succeeded. Others have taken a look through these, and I think I'm okay on that.

MR. JORDAN: And it's not out of the -- well, let me ask it this way. Let's go to the first -- the first call is a couple days, 3 days after the call between President Trump and President Zelensky, and you get a readout from Mr. Morrison about President Trump and President Zelensky's call. Is that accurate? It's on page nine of your testimony at the top.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Page nine, let's see.

MR. JORDAN: Top of page nine.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: All right. Yes.

MR. JORDAN: That's your first readout of the call between President Trump and President Zelensky?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. And why did Mr. Morrison call you? Did he call you to give you a readout of that call, or was there -- and/or some other reason?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That will be in my notes. So what I did, Congressman, in preparation for this, I tried to pull out all relevant phone calls, meetings, et cetera, and within each of those phone calls, I wrote down the components of those or aspects of those that was relevant here, which means that I didn't write down, and so I'm not remembering what other topics. I know that there were other topics in many of these calls.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. You don't know about this one?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don't --

MR. JORDAN: You know this was talked about, what you referenced in your testimony, that he gave you a readout of President Trump, President Zelensky's call.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I do.

MR. JORDAN: And there may have been something else on the call. You don't recall?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: There could have been other things on the call as well, yes.

MR. JORDAN: Who initiated this call?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: You asked me this before, and I probably told you that I couldn't remember. It's not clear to me from my notes here whether or not I did it or he did it. Again, I -MR. JORDAN: Can you hazard a guess who likely initiated the call? Was it you calling him, or did he call you to talk about this? And was this his primary focus of the call, giving you a readout of President Trump, President Zelensky's call?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I can’t hazard a guess.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Probably other issues on the call. Again, his main focus was not this; it was China.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: But I don't want to guess.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. Let's go to the next page.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: Your second call with Mr. Morrison, it looks like the big paragraph about halfway down, on September 1st.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yep.

MR. JORDAN: And can you give me the particulars of this call? Did he call you? Did you call him? Was it a scheduled call?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Ah, so this was -- so he was in Warsaw on September 1st, yeah.

MR. JORDAN: You indicate at the bottom of the paragraph that he gives you a readout of the call that took place between President Zelensky and Vice President Pence. Is that accurate?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes. Yes. Yes.

MR. JORDAN: All right. And, again, how did this call come about?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Same way the others did, which is one of the two of us emails on an unclass system the interest in having a phone call. The other writes back and says: The time is good. Let's go it at such and such a time. I go to a secure phone and get on it. So I can't hazard a guess on who initiated this one either, Congressman.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. And was it the primary focus to give you a readout of the call between the President of Ukraine and the Vice President of the United States?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. So now we have two calls that you get from Mr. Morrison, you initiate, he initiates. It's on the thing. Some of them are on the weekend. And both are readouts from Mr. Morrison giving you a readout between either the President's call with the President of Ukraine or the Vice President's call with the President of Ukraine?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: Right. And then we have the third one, that we discussed earlier, which I think took place on the 7th. Is that right? Page twelve of your testimony.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Conversation with Mr. Morrison in which he describes -- yes.

MR. JORDAN: So now we have Mr. Morrison and you getting on the phone again, and Mr. Morrison is giving you a readout of a conversation that Ambassador Sondland had with President Trump?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: And is this -- I guess, maybe it is. I don't know. Is it customary for the NSC to call up the Ambassador and give them readouts of the President and Vice President's phone calls?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It's not unusual for the NSC to be describing the policy steps that need to be implemented coming out of phone calls. That's not unusual.

MR. JORDAN: That's not what I asked. I asked --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Sorry.

MR. JORDAN: -- is it unusual for the new guy at the NSC to call you three times in 5 weeks and give you a readout of the Vice President's call with President Zelensky, the President's call with President Zelensky, and the President's call with Ambassador Sondland? I'm asking, is that unusual?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Congressman, I'm trying to be responsive here. It doesn't seem unusual to me.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. Yeah. I mean, I read this, and it's like Mr. Morrison, new on the job, and he calls you four times relative to the subject matter that this committee is looking into.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yeah.

MR. JORDAN: And three of those four times is to give you a direct readout of the Vice President's conversation with someone else or the President, on two occasions the President of the United States talking with someone else.

And you're saying that happens all the time?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Those meetings don't happen all the time, as we know. So it doesn't happen all the time.

MR. JORDAN: Is it customary for the person at the NSC to, when the President of the United States has a conversation with someone and the Vice President of the United States has a conversation with someone, is it customary for someone at the NSC to call up the Ambassador and say, "Hey, I just want to let you know what the President said on his call"?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Congressman, my understanding is not unusual.

MR. JORDAN: Not unusual?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Not unusual.

MR. JORDAN: And the fact that you had three of those in this sort of time period, that's not unusual?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: The unusual aspect of that is that there were meetings of the President of the United States with someone having to do with Ukraine in that short period of time.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. All right.

MR. ZELDIN: And, by the way, Ambassador, just to follow up with one quick question on that, when did you first meet Mr. Morrison?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: In person, I met him when he came with Ambassador Bolton to Ukraine the end of August. That's when I first met him in person.

MR. ZELDIN: And so these phone calls from Tim Morrison to you, you hadn't even met Tim Morrison before?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That's correct.

MR. ZELDIN: An Ambassador can be recalled by the President at any time with or without cause, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I'm sure that's -- yes.

MR. ZELDIN: A lot of claims in your opening statement

are without firsthand knowledge, and I just -- I wanted to ask about one of them. So, in your opening statement, you reference Burisma five times. You reference Biden twice. One of those references of Biden was just a reference to the July 25th call. The other reference was on page 12 of paragraph 3. And so, on September 7th, Ambassador Sondland has a call with the President, according to a conversation that you had with Tim Morrison, right?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: September 7th. Are we looking at the same paragraph?

MR. ZELDIN: Third paragraph down on page 12.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Right, in which he described a phone conversation with Sondland and President Trump, yes, sir.

MR. ZELDIN: This is the only reference in your opening statement to Biden other than your one reference to the July 25th call. And this isn't firsthand. It's not secondhand. It's not third hand. But if I understand this correctly, you're telling us that Tim Morrison told you that Ambassador Sondland told him that the President told Ambassador Sondland that Zelensky would have to open an investigation into Biden?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That's correct.

MR. ZELDIN: Is it possible that somewhere in that chain of events that the President spoke to President Zelensky about Burisma? Probably assume President Trump spoke to Ambassador Sondland about Burisma?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don’t know, Congressman.

MR. ZELDIN: Yeah. It's just -- it's hard when we -- I mean, it’s one thing if you have firsthand information, but a lot of what you're saying in your opening statement is not firsthand information. That's one example. And it happens to be the only reference at all in your opening statement to Joe Biden.

You testified that the goal requesting investigations into the 2016 election in Burisma was to influence the U.S. election. Is that correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I'm sorry. Say that again, Congressman.

MR. ZELDIN: I believe you testified earlier that the goal of requesting investigations into the 2016 election and Burisma was to influence the U.S. election. Is that an accurate reflection of your testimony from earlier?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don't think so.

MR. ZELDIN: Would you like to tell us what your position is on it? What was the goal of requesting investigations into 2016 election and Burisma?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: As I understand it from one of the -- maybe the article in The New York Times about Mr. Giuliani's interest in Burisma, in that article, he describes, and I think he quotes Giuliani at some length, that article indicates that Giuliani was interested in getting some information on Vice President Biden that would be useful to Mr. Giuliani's client. I think that's what he says. He says he's got one client, and he's useful to the client.

MR. ZELDIN: And then it's your inference that Mr. Giuliani's goal would be the President's goal?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: And your source is The New York Times?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: So do you have any other source that the President's goal in making this request was anything other than The New York Times?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I have not talked to the President. I have no other information from what the President was thinking.

MR. ZELDIN: Is it possible that requesting an investigation, for example, into the 2016 election wasn't to influence a future election?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I'm sorry. Can you say that one again?

MR. ZELDIN: Is it possible that the request to investigate interference with the 2016 election was not to influence a future election?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don't know, Congressman.

MR. ZELDIN: Well, you just told us what you inferred based off of what The New York Times told you Rudy Giuliani was thinking, which inferred what the President was thinking. I'm asking you to answer a question that, is it possible that the request to investigate the 2016 election was for a reason other than influencing the 2020 election? Is that possible?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don't know if it's possible.

MR. ZELDIN: I remember you testified a little earlier that you're familiar with the Robert Mueller investigation.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I said I'd heard of the Robert Mueller investigation, yes, sir.

MR. ZELDIN: And the investigation was still ongoing at that time, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I suppose -- yes.

MR. ZELDIN: Was your understanding of the Robert

Mueller investigation that Robert Mueller was investigating foreign interference in the U.S. election --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: -- from 2016?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: As far as Burisma and Zlochevsky, when did you first become familiar with this corruption case?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: With Burisma, I think this summer when it became -- when it was an item in the press.

[6:30 p.m.]

MR. ZELDIN: And can you give us a rough idea of when that might have been?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I can’t.

MR. ZELDIN: A month?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: July.

MR. ZELDIN: And you wrote in your opening -- you testified in your opening statement, it’s on page 6, paragraph 2, quote: By mid-July it was becoming clear to me that the meeting President Zelensky wanted was conditioned on the investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 elections.

So that was mid-July. Is it -- had you back familiar with this case before mid-July?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: As I say, I don’t remember exactly when I became familiar with that case.

MR. ZELDIN: I’m having trouble understanding how you would have concluded it was clear to you by mid-July that the meeting President Zelensky wanted conditioned on the investigations of Burisma if you can’t even testify now that you had even heard of the Burisma case by then.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I think I said it was sometime this summer. And I don’t know exactly when it was.

MR. ZELDIN: So it’s possible that you did hear Burisma before mid-July?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: And then in mid-July it, as you testified, became clear to you that the meeting that President Zelensky wanted was conditioned on an investigation into Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. Obviously you would be identifying at that point that it’s important to the President, that investigation, if you were reaching that conclusion?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No. What I know is what -- what Ambassador Sondland was able to tell me about those investigations and Ambassador Volker. I don’t know what was in the President’s mind.

MR. ZELDIN: So where was this condition coming from if you’re not sure if it was coming from the President?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I think it was coming from Mr. Giuliani.

MR. ZELDIN: But not from the President?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don’t know.

MR. ZELDIN: And you testified earlier that Mr. -- you were interpreting Rudy Giuliani’s advocacy as the position of the President?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: What I said -- what I said, I think, was the President was Giuliani’s client.

MR. ZELDIN: And by Rudy Giuliani -- you believe in mid-July, when you reached this conclusion, that Rudy Giuliani wants an investigation into Burisma. Are you believing at all that the President wants an investigation into Burisma or no?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don’t know. What I know is that the direction was coming from Giuliani.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. Well, it’s important to point out then, because your opening statement has leaked because that’s what’s been happening during these depositions, so everyone outside has read your opening statement, but what they haven’t read obviously is that you’re testifying now that you’re not even sure if that condition came from the President. You don’t even know where it came from. You’re guessing maybe Rudy Giuliani and you’re not sure whether or not it came from the President. Is that what you’re saying?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: What I’m saying is that I’m describing conversations that I heard. I didn’t hear it from the President. I can’t say what the President was thinking. I can -- I can say what Kurt Volker and Ambassador Sondland told me.

MR. ZELDIN: Did you have any firsthand knowledge that confirms that the President was conditioning an investigation into Burisma and alleged election -- Ukrainian interference in the 2016 elections with a meeting with President Zelensky?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Again, I had no conversations with the President.

MR. ZELDIN: So did you have any firsthand knowledge at all to support that?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Firsthand meaning -- firsthand meaning had I talked to the President? No, I’ve never talked to the President.

MR. ZELDIN: Or any other firsthand knowledge, other than a communication directly with the President.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No communication with the President.

MR. ZELDIN: And no communication with Rudy Giuliani.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: There was none with Giuliani, only with Sondland and Volker.

MR. ZELDIN: Why wouldn’t you want to get more familiar with the case on its merits at this time?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I’m sorry, Congressman, say it again.

MR. ZELDIN: Why wouldn’t you want to get more familiar with the case on its merits at that time?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I am trying to do U.S. foreign policy. I am trying to stay out of U.S. domestic policy and politics. So I’m not looking to get involved in that.

MR. ZELDIN: Did the merits of the case matter to you -- did the merits of the case matter to you in taking that position?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: The merits of the case matter by taking the position of staying out of domestic politics.

MR. ZELDIN: But the merits of whether or not there was actual corruption was not part of your decisionmaking process at that time?

As part of your decision -- in mid-July you make this conclusion of a condition. And I’m just asking if part of that decisionmaking process of what to do next included any analysis of this particular corruption case on its merits.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I did not investigate the Burisma case on its merits.

MR. ZELDIN: Were there any meetings at that time at the embassy to discuss the case on its merits?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: What we did at the embassy, as I mentioned, is we are focused on institutions, not on specific cases. We’re looking to fight back against corruption and to help the Ukrainians fight back against corruption by improving their courts and their judicial system. That’s -- not on individual cases.

MR. ZELDIN: And if you did take the time to analyze the case on its merits and you were to determine that it, in fact, had merit, that this was a corruption case impacting parties from both the Ukraine and the United States, wouldn’t you possibly conclude differently with regard to an answer you gave earlier where you said this was not in the U.S. interest?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Can’t answer that one. Don’t know.

MR. ZELDIN: If the case had merits, maybe it would be in the U.S. interest.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Don’t know, Congressman.

MR. ZELDIN: And I believe you might have testified earlier, U.S. law conditions aid to Ukraine based off of their efforts to make progress in fighting corruption, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Some of the security assistance has conditions in the Defense Authorization Act every year that has conditions on their -- having to do with civilian control of the military and those kinds of things. And it may well have some language about governance in contracting.

MR. ZELDIN: If the President believed that looking further into Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election and Burisma had merit where would he have gone if you aren’t going to even look into it? What other way does he have to look into these two cases?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: He has -- he has a lot of resources, Congressman, as you know. In the Justice Department I think he’s suggested or directed further investigations of 2016 and related things. So he’s got many ways to investigate.

MR. ZELDIN: But you weren’t one of those resources?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That’s correct.

MR. ZELDIN: So before you send your text on September 1st, it appears that there were two things that you come in contact with, one being the Politico story that we spoke about earlier and on page 10 a September 1st conversation between Ambassador Sondland and Mr. Yermak in Warsaw.

With regards to that September 1st reference in your opening statement, the source of your information is Tim Morrison, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I’m looking for your cite here.

MR. ZELDIN: The bottom of page 10.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: The bottom of page 10, right.

During the same phone call I had with Mr. Morrison, he went on to describe a conversation Ambassador Sondland with Yermak.

Yes, it was with Morrison.

MR. ZELDIN: Tim Morrison. Is he your only source of information?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: Was he in that meeting? Was he part of that conversation with -- between Ambassador Sondland and Mr. Yermak?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don’t know.

MR. ZELDIN: Well, how would Mr. Morrison know that information if he wasn’t in the meeting?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Because he could have talked to Ambassador Sondland. I don’t know which of those two.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. So that conclusion, again, it’s not firsthand or secondhand?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: It could have been firsthand. I don’t know. First or second --

MR. ZELDIN: But it’s not your firsthand. So best case scenario it’s your secondhand information, but maybe it’s thirdhand information.

On your call with Tim Morrison after the July 25th call between President Trump and President Zelensky, did he tell you anything in his readout other than the reference to -- anything else specifically from the call other than the reference to fire Lutsenko?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes. He mentioned -- I think it was he who mentioned -- that there had been discussion of the previous ambassador.

Did I mention that? I think I did. Let’s see here.

Yes, here we are. Yes, he said, fire Lutsenko. Talked about the previous ambassador. He mentioned Giuliani. And he mentioned -- and he mentioned that Gordon had -- Gordon Sondland had called the President before and after the meeting -- the phone call.

MR. ZELDIN: But as far as what was on the July 25th phone call, other than a reference to fire Lutsenko, what else was specifically said on the call?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Again, I just said that he also talked about the previous ambassador, Ambassador Yovanovitch. He mentioned Giuliani. And that’s all I have written down.

MR. ZELDIN: After the text on September 1st, you then had a conversation with Ambassador Sondland, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: September 1st, you’re going to go back to that one.

MR. ZELDIN: Yes, we’re going back to that.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Hang on here. So -- this is when -- are you looking at page 13, Congressman?

MR. ZELDIN: Well, you do talk about it on page 10. At the bottom is the reference to Ambassador Sondland’s meeting with Yermak that you heard from Tim Morrison. And then it goes through, as you go into the next page, the following paragraphs are leading you into your conversation that you had with Ambassador Sondland. The first full paragraph on page 11 is your text, and then you get into specifics about the phone call in the following paragraph.

In that conversation between you and Ambassador Sondland, did you ask him about the meeting he had with Mr. Yermak that Tim Morrison told you about?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I did not.

MR. ZELDIN: So the basis of your information, secondhand or thirdhand, that there was a link between money and an investigation into Burisma, you then have an opportunity to talk to the person who was in the meeting and you don’t even ask him whether or not that meeting happened or if this was discussed?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I was -- there’s no doubt that the meeting happened. And I didn’t ask him further about the conversation with Yermak.

And those are -- you know, all I’m reporting -- all I’m reporting is firsthand knowledge of my phone call with people or my texts with people.

MR. ZELDIN: Right.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: But you’re right, those are often about other conversations.

MR. ZELDIN: But it seemed like that would have been a good opportunity to ask Ambassador Sondland about the meeting with Mr. Yermak, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: And I didn’t take the opportunity.

MR. ZELDIN: How long was that phone call, if you remember, between you and Ambassador Sondland on September 1st?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I don’t remember.

MR. ZELDIN: Maybe -- any idea? Like a couple minutes or 30 minutes? Was it a short call, a long call?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Let’s see here. So we’re talking about the phone call on 11, on page 11. Is that right?

MR. ZELDIN: On page 11.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yeah, yeah. Right. Asked me to call him, which I did. During that phone call, right. Sondland told me he now recognized he made a mistake.

So probably, I don’t know, 15 minutes, 20 minutes.

MR. ZELDIN: And here you have a -- so the reference on the phone call is to Burisma, not the Bidens, is that -- is that correct? That’s what’s -- that’s what’s in your opening statement?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: During the phone call Ambassador Sondland told me that President Trump told him he wants President Zelensky to state publicly investigate Burisma and alleged -- is it that the one you’re talking about?

MR. ZELDIN: Yeah.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: On the second paragraph?

MR. ZELDIN: Yes.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: And nothing linking that to aid, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No, the next paragraph describes how it’s 1inked to aid.

MR. ZELDIN: Where -- where did -- where did -- where did Ambassador Sondland --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Link it to aid? So --

MR. ZELDIN: Go ahead.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Yeah. So Ambassador Sondland on this phone call tells me that he now recognizes that he’d made a mistake when he told the Ukrainians that the only thing they had to do in order to -- the only thing they had to do -- only thing they would get if they -- if they announced these investigations was a meeting. Said that was a mistake.

MR. ZELDIN: That was never actually communicated to Ukraine, correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: No, I think that is what he communicated to Yermak.

MR. ZELDIN: According to a conversation that you had with Tim Morrison about what Ambassador Sondland spoke to Mr. Yermak?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: That’s on the previous page, that’s correct.

MR. ZELDIN: You had this conversation with Ambassador Sondland and you didn’t ask him?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Did you just ask that? Is that the same question? I just want to be sure I’m getting this.

Yeah, I did not ask him.

MR. ZELDIN: Go ahead.

VOICE: No, I’m just confused as to which call.

[6:46 p.m.]

MR. ZELDIN: We are talking about the September 1st phone call. I believe the Ambassador is testifying that Ambassador Sondland had communicated this to Mr. Yermak. But that information is not from Ambassador Sondland; that information is from Tim Morrison, who may or may not have been in that meeting with Ambassador Sondland and Mr. Yermak.

And then when Ambassador Taylor then sent this text and had a call, during the call with Ambassador Sondland, he didn’t even raise that meeting at all with Mr. Yermak.

I just want to understand --

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Got it. Got it. Right.

MR. ZELDIN: -- that chain. Is that all correct?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: I didn’t raise the Yermak meeting. What I raised was the concern about linking the security assistance to the investigation. That was the concern.

MR. ZELDIN: Right, but you didn’t confirm, though, that that was actually communicated. You didn’t ask Ambassador Sondland that.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: If he’d communicated it to the Ukrainians? No, I asked him about the linkage.

MR. ZELDIN: Right.

Okay, Steve.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Looking back on these events, would you have handled anything differently in terms of your communications with the seventh floor of the State Department?

You sent your cable. You know, you had a couple phone calls with Mr. Brechbuhl. But it doesn’t seem like your concerns penetrated.

A  Mr. Castor, I don’t think that’s true. I think that, first of all, they shared my concerns. Second of all, they got my cable. Third of all, based on the concerns and the cable, Secretary Pompeo went to the White House, probably on a couple of occasions, you know, in trying to have these meetings, and attempted to get the decision changed. So I’m comfortable --

Q  Okay.

A  -- that I got a response.

Q  Okay. So, looking back on things, you wouldn’t have handled anything different?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay.

MR. CASTOR: I’d just note for the record we haven’t seen a copy of the subpoena and we haven’t made it a part of the record. Is that still on the table as an option?

MR. GOLDMAN: We’re happy to show you a copy of the subpoena.

MR. BITAR: We’re more than happy for you, Mr. Castor, to also make sure that the seal is authentic and that the signature is authentic. No worries. I’ll get it for you now.

MR. GOLDMAN: And apparently you have an email in your inbox with the --

MR. CASTOR: Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, I don’t have my emai1.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  You would agree that, if Burisma -- if their motivation for engaging Hunter Biden for their board was not related to his corporate governance expertise but, in fact, was hoping to buy some protection, you would agree that that’s worthy of investigating, right?

A  Mr. Castor, I don’t know why Burisma got him on the board.

Q  But if Ukrainians were engaged in misdeeds or wrongdoing with regard to putting Hunter Biden on their board, that could be something that could be worth investigating, right?

A  I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know the relationship that he had with the board. I don’t know.

Q  Okay. And, at the time, the Vice President had a, you know, policy supervision of Ukraine on some respects.

A  He was very interested in policy with Ukraine, yes.

Q  Okay. So do you see a perceived conflict of interest there?

A  I’m a fact witness. I’m not giving opinions on --

Q  Okay.

A  -- this thing, but -- so I --

Q  Is it reasonable to see a perceived conflict of interest there, or is that crazy?

A  I’ve said other things are crazy.

Q  A reasonable person could conclude that there is a possible perceived conflict of interest there, right?

MR. BELLINGER: You asked him that question earlier, at the beginning, about 7-1/2 hours ago. It was one of the first questions you asked him. He’s already answered it.

MR. CASTOR: So he’s not going to answer it?

MR. BELLINGER: He’s already answered it.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Have you had any communications with other witnesses or likely witnesses before this investigation, such as Mr. Morrison? Presumably he’s sort of on the docket next to come in. Have you had any conversations about your testimony with other possible witnesses?

A  Not about testimony. Again, he’s very interested in China, and we continue to talk about China --

Q  Okay.

A  -- but nothing about --

Q  With Mr. Reeker?

A  No.

Q  With some of the others?

A  No.

Q  You didn’t have any communications with some of our previous witnesses?

A  No. Nothing on the substance of the testimony.

Q  And just one other item. The State Department, they didn’t order you to not appear under subpoena, right?

A  Correct.

MR. CASTOR: I think that’s all I’ve got. I’m out of members, so -- I’m almost out of time.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Ambassador Taylor, you’ve been here a long time. I just wanted to address one thing --

A  Please. Please.

Q  -- which was brought up in the last --

A  Yep.

Q  It will just be a couple minutes. But we understand you’re tired and it’s been a long day, and we --

A  No, no. I am tired, but it’s okay.

Q  We appreciate it. This won’t be long.

A  Not a problem.

Q  So I think you testified earlier today that you drafted your statement based on, in part, a review of your notes and the various WhatsApp and text messages that you are in possession of, right?

A  Correct.

Q  And so is it accurate that the statement, the opening statement, that you gave is based on your very best recollection after reviewing your own notes?

A  It is correct.

Q  Okay. And so is that the most accurate recitation of events that you can remember today? Is --

A  It is.

Q  -- that right?

A  It is .

Q  When Mr. Zeldin was questioning you, he was talking about the connection -- he was sort of conflating a couple things between Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump, and the New York Times article. I just want to clarify a couple of things for now.

You did see that May 9th New York Times article, which I believe is exhibit 1, right?

A  I did.

Q  And so you understood from that article that Mr. Giuliani was interested in pressing Ukraine to conduct investigations into Biden and the 2016 election?

A  Correct.

Q  And that was before you took the job.

A  It was.

Q  Okay.

A  It was one of the hesitations about taking the job.

Q  Right. I believe you expressed in your text messages your concerns about Rudy Giuliani and Biden in those text messages. Do you recall that?

A  I do.

Q  And were you aware of other public statements, either on Twitter or on television, that Rudy Giuliani was making frequently on this topic, about these investigations?

A  Not on Twitter or television, because I rarely do either of those. But in the general press, I think this is pretty wel1-described.

Q  Okay.

And then you also testified, right, that at that May 23rd Oval Office meeting you understood that President Trump directed Ambassadors Sondland, Volker, and Secretary Perry to consult with Rudy Giuliani in order for a White House meeting to occur?

A  That was my understanding.

Q  That was your understanding.

A  Yes.

Q  And then after that point, you had many conversations with Ambassadors Sondland and Volker about Rudy Giuliani’s interest in the investigations in Ukraine. Is that accurate?

A  Mr. Goldman, I don’t remember many conversations with those two about Rudy Giuliani’s specific interest, but certainly with the interest that they were expressing, presumably coming from Giuliani, in having these investigations proceed.

Q  Right. And you say presumably coming from Rudy Giuliani because you, A, understood that Rudy Giuliani was interested in these investigations and, B, understood that the President had directed them to discuss Rudy Giuliani’s concerns before scheduling a White House meeting.

A  A and B both correct.

Q  Okay.

And then you had a telephone call with Tim Morrison on July 28th where he gave you a brief readout of the President’s call with President Zelensky.

A  Yes.

Q  And I believe you testified that you understood also that Ambassador Sondland spoke to President Trump both before and after that call?

A  Tim Morrison said that, that he had -- in that call. He said -- yes.

Q  Okay. And then when you actually read the call transcript, Tim Morrison’s readout was accurate, correct?

A  It was.

Q  It wasn’t complete --

A  It wasn’t complete, but what he said was accurate. Right. Yes.

Q  And, subsequently then, you in early September had two separate phone calls, right, with Tim Morrison and Ambassador Sondland about a phone call between Ambassador Sondland and President Trump?

A  Correct. And both --

Q  Right?

A  Yes.

Q  And both of those conversations, so what Ambassador Sondland told you about his own conversation with President Trump and what Tim Morrison told you about Ambassador Sondland’s conversation with President Trump, were pretty consistent.

A  They were pretty consistent.

Q  Right. And you understood that President Trump was insisting and conditioning the White House meeting on, I think, quote, "everything," which was both the security assistance and the White House meeting.

A  That’s what Ambassador Sondland said. He said that they were linked. They were linked.

Q  Right.

A  I don’t remember him saying President Trump said that they had to be linked.

Q  Right. But you understood Ambassador Sondland was speaking regularly --

A  Having just gotten off the phone call with President Trump, and he was then relaying it to Yermak and me.

Q  Right.

And then you also had your own conversations with Ukrainian officials about Rudy Giuliani, right? And if I could refresh you, because it’s late, you, I think, testified that on July 10th, when you had your meeting with the Chief of Staff and the Defense Minister, they relayed to you that they understood that Mr. Giuliani had said that there would not be a phone call.

A  Ah. Yes. Yeah, that’s exactly right. And that came through the Prosecutor General Lutsenko. Yes.

Q  Right. And they certainly understood that Mr. Giuliani represented President Trump, correct?

A  They did.

Q  Because why else would they care what Rudy Giuliani thought?

A  Correct.

Q  And just to be clear, who ultimately decides whether or not there is a White House meeting between the President of the United States and any other foreign leader? Is it Rudy Giuliani, or is it the President of the United States?

A  It’s the President of the United States.

Q  Okay.

MR. GOLDMAN: Just 1 minute.

All right. I think we are done. I don’t know if the minority has a couple followup questions?

MR. CASTOR: Thank you for coming in today. We appreciate your cooperation.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Glad to be here.

THE CHAIRMAN: I can tell my timing is good.

MR. GOLDMAN: Chairman Schiff has arrived to adjourn the

proceedings.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Unless he has questions.

THE CHAIRMAN: No, no. We are adjourned. And I want to thank you, Ambassador.

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Whereupon, at 7:00 p.m., the deposition was concluded.]

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent

PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE,
joint with the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
and the
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
WASHINGTON, D.C.

INTERVIEW OF: GEORGE KENT

Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Washington, D.C.

The interview in the above matter was held in Room HVC-304, Capitol Visitor Center, commencing at 10:08 a.m.

Present: Representatives Schiff, Himes, Sewell, Carson, Speier, Quigley, Swalwel1, Heck, Maloney, Demings, Krishnamoorthi, Conaway, Wenstrup and Hurd.

Also Present: Representatives Norton, Malinowski, Raskin, Rouda, Phillips, Engel, Perry, Meadows, and Zeldin.

Appearances:

For the PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE:

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For the COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM:

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For the COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS:

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For GEORGE KENT:

ANDREW WRIGHT
BARRY M. HARTMAN
NANCY IHEANCHO
K&L GATES LLP
1601 K Street NW
Washington, D.C. 2006-1600

THE CHAIRMAN: The committee will come to order.

Good morning, Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent, and welcome to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which, along with the Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees, is conducting this investigation as part of the official impeachment inquiry of the House of Representatives.

Today's deposition is being conducted as part of the impeachment inquiry. In light of attempts by the State Department in coordination with the White House to direct you not to appear and efforts to limit your testimony, the committee had no choice but to compel your appearance today. We thank you for complying with the dually authorized congressional subpoena, as other witnesses have done as well. We expect nothing less from a dedicated career civil servant like yourself.

Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent has served with distinction as a Foreign Service officer with deep experience relevant to the matters under investigation by the committees. In his capacity as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the European and Eurasian Bureau you oversee policy towards Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijani. Previously he was deputy chief of mission in Kyiv from 2015 until 2018 when he returned to Washington to assume his current position.

In 2014 and 2015, he was the senior anticorruption coordinator in the State Department's European Bureau. Since joining the Foreign Service in 1992 he has served among other postings in Warsaw, Poland, Kyiv, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and Bangkok, Thailand. Given your unique role, we look forward to hearing your testimony today, including your knowledge of and involvement in key policy discussions, meetings and decision on Ukraine that relate directly to areas under investigation by the committees. This includes developments related to the recall of Ambassador Yovanovitch, the President's July 25, 2019 call with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, as well as the documentary record that has come to life about efforts before and after the call to get the Ukrainians to announce publicly investigations into two areas President Trump asked President Zelenskyy to pursue: the Bidens in Burisma, and the conspiracy theory about the Ukraine-supported interference in the 2016 U.S. elections.

To state clearly on the record, I want to let you and your attorneys know that Congress will not tolerate any reprisal, threat of reprisal, or attempt to retaliate against you for complying with a subpoena, and testifying today as part of the impeachment inquiry. This includes any effort by the State Department, the White House, or any other entity of the government to claim that in the course of your testimony under dually authorized subpoena today, you are disclosing information in a nonauthorized manner.

We also expect that you will retain your current position after testifying today, and that you will be treated in accordance with your rank, such that in the normal course of the remainder of your career, you will be offered assignments commensurate with your experience and long service. Should that not be the case, we expect you to notify us immediately and we will hold those responsible to account.

Before I turn to committee counsel to begin the deposition, I invite the ranking member, or in his absence a minority member from the Foreign Affairs or Oversight committees to make an opening remark.

MR. JORDAN: Secretary Kent, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Kent, thank you for appearing today. On September 24th, Speaker Pelosi unilaterally announced that the House was beginning its so-called impeachment inquiry. On October 2nd, the Speaker promised that the so-called impeachment inquiry would treat the President with fairness.

However, Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Schiff, and the Democrats are not living up to that promise. Instead, Democrats are conducting a rushed, closed-door and unprecedented impeachment inquiry. Democrats are ignoring 45 years of bipartisan procedures designed to provide elements of fundamental fairness and due process. In past impeachment inquiries, the majority and minority had coequal subpoena authority and the right to require a committee vote on all subpoenas. The President's counsel had the right to attend all depositions and hearings, including those held in executive session. The President's counsel had the right to cross-examine the witnesses and the right to propose witnesses. The President's counsel had the right to present evidence, object to the admission of evidence, and to review all evidence presented, both favorable and unfavorable.

Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Schiff so-called impeachment inquiry has none of these guarantees of fundamental fairness and due process. Most disappointing, Democrats are conducting this inquiry behind closed doors. We’re conducting these depositions and interviews in a SCIF, but Democrats have been clear every single session that there's no unclassified material being presented in the sessions. This seems to be nothing more than hiding this work from the American people.

The Democrats intend to undo the will of the American people 13 months before the next election, they should at least do so transparently and be willing to be accountable for their actions.

Chairman, I believe the ranking member from the Foreign Affairs Committee would like to say something as well as well.

MR. MCCAUL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As you know, I conduct myself as both chairman and ranking member in a very bipartisan way, and I think that should apply here as well. I am -- next to declaring war, this is the most important thing that the Congress can do under Article I. To hide behind that, to have it in a SCIF, to defy historical precedent that we conducted under both Nixon and Clinton, which guarantees the participation of counsel, White House counsel in the room in an adversarial way.

To also provide the minority the power of that subpoena. That was done during both prior impeachments, because both sides recognized that with a fair. It's really about fairness. If -- I would just urge you, if you're going to continue, and I've been back in my district for 2 weeks, talking to my constituents both Republican, and Democrat, and Independent, above all what they had in common was they wanted to see this done the right way. I know you're a fair man. We've known each other for a long time. I hope that this resolution will come to the floor so that we can participate in a democratic system, with a democratic vote, up or down, to proceed with this inquiry, so that it is backed by the American people.

To do so otherwise, I think, defies democracy, it defies fairness, and it defies due process. And if we're going to do this, for God's sakes, let's do it the right way.

I yield back.

THE CHAIRMAN: I think my colleagues will certainly have an opportunity to discuss these matters further, but in the interest of moving ahead with the deposition I recognize Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a deposition of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, George Kent conducted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, pursuant to the impeachment inquiry announced by the Speaker of the House on September 24th.

Mr. Kent, could you please state your full name and spell your last name for the record?

THE WITNESS: George Peter Kent, K-e-n-t.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you. Now, along with other proceedings and furtherance of this inquiry, this deposition a part of a joint investigation, led by the Intelligence Committee, in coordination with the Committees on Foreign Affairs, and Oversight and Reform.

In the room today are equal numbers of majority staff and minority staff from the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Oversight Committee, as well as majority and minority staff from the Intelligence Committee. This is a staff-led deposition, but Members, of course, may ask questions during their allotted time, and there will be equal allotted time for the majority and the minority.

My name is Daniel Goldman, I am the senior adviser and director for investigations for the HPSCI majority staff. And I thank you very much for coming in today. I would like to do brief introductions before we begin. To my right is Nicholas Mitchell, who is the senior investigative counsel for the HPSCI majority staff. And Mr. Mitchell and I will be conducting most of deposition for the majority. And I'll let my counterparts from the minority staff introduce themselves as well.

MR. CASTOR Good morning, sir, Steve Castor with the Republican staff of the Oversight Committee.

MR. BREWER: Good morning, I'm David Brewer, Republican staff, Oversight.

MS. GREEN: Meghan Green, senior counsel for HPSCI minority.

MR. GOLDMAN: Now this deposition will be conducted entirely at the unclassified level. However, this deposition, as you no doubt know, is being conducted in HPSCI's secure spaces, and in the presence of staff with the appropriate security clearances, and, as we understand as of this morning, your attorneys all have appropriate security clearances. We understand that you received a letter from the State Department that addresses some of the concerns about the disclosure of classified information. But we want you to rest assured that, in any event, any classified information that is disclosed is not an unauthorized disclosure today.

It is the committee's expectation, however, that neither the questions asked of you nor the answers that you provide or your counsel provide will require discussion of any information that is currently, or at any point could be properly classified under Executive Order 13526. As you no doubt know, EO 13526 states that, quote "In no case shall information be classified, or continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified" unquote, for the purpose of concealing any violations of law or preventing embarrassment of any person or entity.

If any of our questions can only be answered with classified information. We would ask you to inform us of that before you provide the answer, and we can as just the deposition accordingly.

Today's deposition is not being taken in executive session, but because of sensitive and confidential nature of some of the topics and materials that will be discussed, access to the transcript of the deposition will be limited to the three committees in attendance. You and your attorney will have an opportunity to review the transcript at a later date.

Now before we begin the deposition, I would like to go over some of the ground rules. We will be following the House regulations for depositions. We have previously provided counsel with a copy of those regulations, but let us know if you need additional copies.

The deposition will proceed as follows today. The majority 1 hour to ask questions, and the minority will be given 1 hour to ask questions. Thereafter, we will alternate back and forth in 45 minute rounds. We'll take periodic breaks. But if, at any time, you or your counsel need a break, please just let us know. Under the House deposition rules, counsel for other persons or government agencies may not attend this proceeding, and we understand that none are here. You, however, are allowed to have personal attorney present during this deposition, and I see that you have brought a couple. At this time if counsel could please state his or her name for an appearance for the record.

MR. WRIGHT: My name is Andrew Wright with K&L Gates.

MR. HARTMAN: Barry Hartman, K&L Gates.

MS. IHEANACHO: Nancy Iheanacho with K&L Gates.

MR. GOLDMAN: To your left there is a stenographer taking down everything that is said, all questions and answers, so that there is a written report for the deposition. For that record to be clear, please wait until questions are completed before you provide your answers, and all staff and members here will wait until you finish your response before asking the next question. The stenographer cannot record nonverbal answers such as a shaking of the head or an uh-huh so please make sure that you answer questions with an audible verbal answer.

We ask that you give complete replies to questions based on your best recollection. If a question is unclear or you are uncertain about the response, please let us know and we can rephrase the question.

And if you do not know the answer to a question or cannot remember, simply say so. You may only refuse to answer a question to preserve a privilege recognized by the committee. If you do refuse to answer a question on the basis of privilege, staff may either proceed with the deposition, or seek a ruling from the chairman on and objection, in person or otherwise, during the deposition at a time of the majority staff's choosing. If the chair overrules any such objection, you are required to answer the question.

Finally, you are reminded that it is unlawful to deliberately provide false information to Members of Congress, or to staff of Congress. It is imperative that you not only answer our questions truthfully, but that you give full and complete answers to all questions asked of you. Omissions may also be considered false statements.

Now as this deposition is under oath, Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent, would you please stand and raise your right-hand to be sworn?

Do you swear or affirm the testimony that you are about to give is the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

THE WITNESS: I swear that the testimony I am about to give is the truth and nothing but the truth.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you. Let the record reflect that the witness has been sworn. But before we begin, Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent, now is the time for you to make any opening remarks.

MR. ZELDIN: Mr. Goldman, can we just go around the room and have everybody identify themselves?

MR. GOLDMAN: You want back? Why don't we start at the table here. Mr. Quigley.

MR. QUIGLEY: Mike Quigley from Illinois.

MS. SPEIER: Jackie Speier.

MR. SWALWELL: Eric Swalwell.

MS. SEWELL: Terri Sewell.

MR. ROUDA: Harley Rouda.

MR. RASKIN: Jamie Raskin, for Maryland.

MR. HECK: Denny Heck, Washington State.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Tom Malinowski, New Jersey.

MR. PHILLIPS: Dean Phillips, Minnesota.

MR. ROONEY: Francis Rooney, Florida.

MR. MEADOWS: Mark Meadows, North Carolina.

MR. MCCAUL: Mike McCaul.

MR. JORDAN: Jim Jordan, Ohio.

MR. GOLDMAN: And then if we could start behind here.

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MR. GOLDMAN: Mr. Kent.

MR. KENT: Good morning, as you've heard, my name is George Kent. I'm the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus in particular. I have served proudly as a nonpartisan career foreign service officer for more than 27 years, under five Presidents, three Republican and two Democrats. As you all know, I am appearing here in response to your congressional subpoena. If I did not appear I would have been exposed to being held in contempt. At the same time, I have been instructed by my employer, the U.S. Department of State, not to appear. I do not know the Department of State's views on disregarding that order. Even though section 105(c) of the Foreign Service Act of 1980, which is 22 U.S. Code 3905 expressly states, and I quote, "This section shall not be construed as authorizing of withholding of information from the Congress or the taking of any action of a member of the service who discloses information to Congress," end quote.

I have always been willing to provide facts of which I'm aware that are relevant to any appropriate investigation by either Congress or my employer. Yet, this is where I find myself today, faced with the enormous professional and personal cost and expense of dealing with a conflict between the executive and legislative branches not of my making.

With that said, I appear today in same spirit that I have brought to my entire career, as a Foreign Service officer and State Department employee, who has sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, as one of thousands of nonpolitical career professionals in the Foreign Service who embody that vow daily around the world often in harsh and dangerous conditions.

There has been a George Kent sworn to service in defense of the Constitution and U.S. national interests for nearly 60 consecutive years and counting, ever since my father was sworn in as a midshipman at Annapolis in June 1961, commissioned in 1965, after finishing first in his class, and serving honorably for 30 years, including as captain of a ballistic missile nuclear submarine. Principled service to country and community remains an honorable professional choice, not just a family tradition dating back to before World War II, one that survived the Bataan Death March, and a 3-year stint in a Japanese POW camp unbroken. I hope the drama now playing out does not discourage my words redacted                       son, words redacted                      , from seriously considering a life of service.

After two internship on a State Department Soviet desk in the late 1980s, I formally joined the Foreign Service in 1992, and have not, for a moment, regretted that choice to devote my life to principled public service. I served twice in Ukraine for a total of 6 years, posted in Kyiv, first during and after the Orange Revolution from 2004 to 2008, and again, from 2015 to 2018, in the aftermath of the Revolution of Dignity when I worked at deputy chief of mission.

In between, I worked in Washington from 2012 to 2015, in several policy and programming positions directly affecting U.S. strategic interests in Ukraine, most notably, as director for law enforcement and justice sector programming for Europe and Asia, and then as the European Bureau's senior anticorruption coordinator.

In the summer of 2018, then-Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, Wess Mitchell asked me to come back from Kyiv to Washington early to join his team as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State to take charge of our eastern European Caucasus portfolio, covering six countries in the front line of Russian aggression and malign influence, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The administration's national security strategy, which Wess helped write, makes clear the strategic challenge before us great power competition, with peer or near-peer rivals, such as Russia and China and the need to compete for positive influence without taking countries for granted. In that sense, Ukraine has been on the front lines, not just of Russia's war in eastern Ukraine since 2014, but of the greater geopolitical challenges facing the United States today.

Ukraine's success, thus, is very much in our national interest in the way we have defined or national interests broadly in Europe for the last 75 years, and specifically in central and Eastern Europe, for the last 30 years, since the fall of the Wall in 1989. A Europe whole, free, and at peace -- our strategic aim for the entirety of my foreign service career -- is not possible without a Ukraine full free and at peace, including Crimea and Donbas, both current occupied by Russia.

I am grateful for all of you on the key congressional committees who have traveled to Ukraine in the past 5 years -- and I had occasion to speak to many in the 3 years I was in Kyiv -- and appropriating billions of dollars in assistance in support of our primary strategic goals, in particular, increasing Ukraine's resiliency in the face of Russian aggression in the defense, energy, cyber, and information spheres, and empowering institutions in civil society to tackle corruption and undertake systemic reforms.

I believe that all of us in the legislative and the executive branches in the interagency community working out of our embassy in Kyiv, with Ukrainians in government in the Armed Services in civil society, and with our transatlantic allies and partners, can be proud of our efforts and our resolve in Ukraine over the past 5 years, even though much more remains to be done.

U.S. officials who have spoken publicly in Ukraine to push back on Russian aggression and corrupt influences have been subject to defamatory and disinformation campaigns, and even online threats for years. Starting in 2015 for former Ambassador Pyatt, in 2017 for me, and in 2018 for former Ambassador Yovanovitch.

That was, frankly, to be expected, from Russian proxies and corrupt Ukrainians, and indicators that our efforts were hitting their mark. You don't step in to the public arena of international diplomacy in active pursuit of U.S. principled interests against venal vested interests without expecting vigorous pushback.

On the other hand, I fully share the concerns in Ambassador Yovanovitch's statement on Friday expressing her incredulity that the U.S. Government chose to move an ambassador based, as best she tell, on unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives, at an especially challenging time in our bilateral elections with a newly elected Ukrainian President.

One final note, I will do my best to answer your questions today and I understand there are going to be a lot of them. I suspect your questions may well involve some issues, conversations and documents that span a number of years. The State Department is in the process of collecting documents in response to the subpoena, not to me, but to the Department that may contain facts relevant to my testimony. I have no such documents or materials with me today.

With the exception of a few documents related to the State Department inspector general's submission to Congress this month, neither the Department nor the committee has provided documents at issue in this inquiry. I will, thus, do my best to answer as accurately, completely and truthfully as I can to the best of my recollection.

And with those introductory words, I’m ready to answer all your questions regarding the subject of the subpoena, which has ordered me to appear before you today.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Kent.

MR. JORDAN: Could we get a copy, could staff get a copy of the Secretary's opening statement for us, please.

MR. GOLDMAN: Yeah, we can deal with that.

EXAMINATION

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Mr. Kent, I'm going to pick up just where you left off there about the documents. You are aware of a request of you as well to provide documents. Is that right?

A  In the letter that was emailed to me on September 27th there was a request to appear voluntarily and to provide documents, yes.

Q  What did do you, if anything, in relation to providing documents in response to that request?

A  I received direction that from the State Department that at the same time you issued the letters to me you issued a subpoena to the Department, and therefore the documents would be collected as part of that subpoena request since they are considered Federal records.

THE CHAIRMAN: Ambassador, you don't need to turn the mic off.

BY MR GOLDMAN:

Q  Are you aware of the status of that document production by the State Department related to your personal documents -- or professional documents, I should say?

A  I collected all the different types of records that possibly could be considered part of the request and provided them to the listed authority at the State Department.

Q  And have you had any followup conversations about production of those documents?

A  I have not.

Q  Have you had any conversations, separate and apart, from the letters that we understand you received? Have you had any type of conversations with the State Department -- anyone at the State Department about your testimony here today?

A  My testimony today? No.

Q  Okay. So you didn't have -- sorry, I don't mean the substance of your testimony, but did you have any conversations about whether you would be testifying or will testify?

A  The interaction consisted of letters through counsel.

Q  So you had no personnel conversations with anyone?

A  I had no personal conversation.

Q  Did you have any conversations with anyone at the State Department about the document request?

A  Yes.

Q  Can you describe those conversations?

A  Define conversations.

Q  All right. Well, who did you speak to about the document?

A  Okay. So the first interaction was with somebody I presume many of you are familiar with words redacted                      , who works with our congressional liaison. And initially, when I asked in email form whether I should start collecting documents, because I had received a personal request, I was instructed to await formal guidance, meaning formal instructions on how to fulfill the document production request, so that was the first interaction.

Q  And what was the second interaction?

A  The second interaction with the Department issued written guidance on how to be responsive to the subpoena for documents to the Department late on October 2nd and that was in writing.

Q  From whom?

A  The instructions were sent from the executive secretary of the Department, Lisa Kenna.

Q  And what did you do upon receiving those instructions?

A  That was after close of business. The senior bureau official at the time was Maureen Cormack (ph), and Maureen gave me a paper copy and said that the European Bureau staff on whom most of the requirements would fall would convene at 9 o'clock the next morning to discuss how we could fully be responsive to the request.

Q  And did that meeting at 9 o'clock the next day occur?

A  It occurred.

Q  And what happened at that meeting?

A  We had roughly 20 members of European Bureau still there and followed the overall staff meeting of the morning which was from 8:30 to 9:00. Most people left. Those related to the inquiry stayed. And we had several additional staff who joined us at that meeting.

Q  And can you just summarize the conversation at that meeting?

A  We started going through the instructions of the State Department, which initially, the first paragraph identified a number of individuals as key record collectors. And so we -- the first question that came up was when it said "including colon" and it listed names, was that an inclusive or exclusive list? Was it only those individuals or more? We had two people in the room who are not members of the European Bureau staff, there could have been more, but they self-identified as words redacted                       from congressional liaison and words redacted                       from the Office of Legal Counsel at the State Department. They clarified that that was not an exclusive list meaning not only those people listed, but others who might have records should also responsive.

Q  Okay. At any -- I just want to back it up a little and a little bit more generally here. I appreciate your detail, but we are somewhat -- we didn't want to stay here all night. So I’m just trying to get a sense of, sort of, the back and forth. Was there, at any point, did you take issue with any of the directives or suggestions that you received from the State Department?

A  The letter of instruction that was issued after the close of business on October 2nd was the first formal instruction that any of us had received in response to the subpoena to the Department and the personal letters which had been sent at the end of September 27th, so there was not any formal structured interaction, as I mentioned, that I’d had initial interaction with words redacted                      , and she directed me to await formal guidance. I did several interactions with other State Department officials on Tuesday, October 1st.

Q  With whom?

A  With the director general of the Foreign Service and with the acting L, so to speak, Marek String

Q  And what was the purpose of those conversations?

A  I approached the director general late in the afternoon -- mid-afternoon on October 1st, because I had not had any contact from any member on the leadership of the Department. And there was a letter sent to these committees that characterized interactions that I do not feel was accurate.

Q  Can you explain what you didn't feel was accurate?

A  Well, there was a line in there that the committees had been attempting to bully, intimidate, and threaten career foreign service officers. And I was one of two career foreign service officers which had received letters from the committees, and I had not felt bullied, threatened, and intimidated. There was another line in there that suggested that the career Foreign Service officers had requested the committee's to route all communications through House liaison and I think your colleague who -- words redacted                      , who sent me the initial email on Friday night received my reply, which indicated that I acknowledged receipt, and that our congressional liaison had requested that the information be routed to them. So I was concerned that the letter itself did not accurately characterize the interaction.

Q  When you're talking about the letter, you're talking about the letter from Secretary Pompeo?

A  Correct.

Q  And what was the response of the two individuals that you spoke to?

A  Well, Ms. Perez, who is one of the top two career foreign services officers and oversees the personnel system, I had worked for her previously directly in a previous job. And because I'd had no contact with the leadership of the Department outside of the European Bureau, I suggested that it was time that somebody engaged me personally, particularly since representations were being made about me.

Q  What representation? Oh, the letter?

A  Right, the language in the letter.

Q  And what was Ambassador Perez's response?

A  She needed to go and give a response to 150 people about taking care of your people. And she said when that was finished, she would reach out and find somebody that would reach out to me. And so she came back after an hour and said that the acting legal counselor of the Department, "L" in our parlance, Marek String, would reach out to me; that if I did not hear from him in 24 hours, I should contact her again.

Q  Did hear from him?

A  I did after I wrote him an email.

Q  And did you ultimately have a conversation with him?

A  I did. He called me back through the Operations Center in the evening when I was already at home.

Q  And can you summarize that conversation for us?

A  He apologized for not having had anyone reach out to me prior. He said it was a very busy day, that they had responsive and were doing a lot and -- but I'd known Marek previously and respected him. If it weren't for Marek, we would not have had Charge Taylor out in Kyiv. He helped with the process of getting him brought back on board as an Active Duty person. So I respected his professionalism previously, so it was a professional conversation.

Q  Did you voice the same -- similar concerns?

A  I did.

Q  And what was his response?

A  He apologized, because I mentioned that there had not been an exchange.

Q  Sorry. Did you voice your concerns about the two statements in the letter that you disagreed with?

A  To the best of my recollection, again, it was a phone call at night when I was in my kitchen eating dinner at about 9 -- between 8 and 9. So I cannot say it was more, I think, the tonality. It was a pleasant, professional exchange.

Q  And was there any follow-on conversations that you had?

A  Not with Marek, not with Marek. That was again, on the night on the 1st. The guidance that we received in writing came shortly after close of business on the 2nd. And then the next sort of point was the meeting, the guidance, our -- the European Bureau's meeting at 9 o'clock on October 3rd.

Q  And since October 3rd, until today, October 15th, is anything else -- any other further conversation that you've had?

A  I have not. That was also the time where I think the 3rd was when we formally -- I formally engaged Andrew Wright as my counsel in this process. And therefore, there were additional engagements, interactions with -- through counsel.

Q  Are you aware that as we sit here today, we have not received one document from the State Department?

A  I can read the news, but as I’ve answered you before, I'm not aware -- I did my role. Obviously there were a lot of documents and records that I had that I needed to provide, based on the subpoena and the guidance that the State Department issues. But having provided those records, I do not know the process on reviewing them.

Q  After your conversation with Marek String, did you have any additional conversations with anyone in L?

A  I did. There was a representative from L, as I previously mentioned words redacted                      , who attended the European Bureau guidance meeting on October 3rd.

Q  Did you have any private conversations with him?

A  We have a very public exchange in front of the roughly 20 people in the meeting. And then subsequent to that, I was called out into the hall where I had a continued conversation with him and words redacted                       .

Q  Can you describe the public exchange?

A  Well, public -- in a room, closed-door room. The exchange started when we were discussing the issue of who needed to be responsive to the records collection. The individuals listed primarily were in the European Bureau. And I noted several people who should have been listed who played key roles on staff at the embassy in Kyiv. And then I mentioned Consular Affairs Assistant Secretary Risch, because he had spoken to Rudy Giuliani several times in January about trying to get a visa for the former corrupt prosecutor general of Ukraine, Viktor Shokin. And my read of the request would include that.

words redacted                       took issue with my raising the additional information, and the conversation rapidly, I would say, either escalated or degenerated into a tense exchange.

Q  So what was his response to your suggestions of additional custodians?

MS. SPEIER: What did he say?

MR. KENT: I've got two questions here, so I don't know how you want to manage -- Representative Speier asked me a question and you.

MS. SPEIER: No, I didn't. I was just talking to myself.

MR. KENT: Oh. Sorry.

MR. BAIR: It was the same question.

MR. GOLDMAN: It's the same question.

MR. KENT: He objected to my raising of the additional information and said that he didn't think -- I do not remember his exact words, but -- he made clear that he did not think it was appropriate for me to make the suggestion. I took the opportunity, then, to point out that that was the first -- the meeting was the first time that we were discussing guidance for being responsive to a subpoena. At this point, it was already October 3rd. The request for the documents and the request for submission had been delivered on September 27th and we had less than 2 business days to be responsive. words redacted                       has then said, I don't think I should be even talking to you. It's not appropriate. I should only talk to counsel, and I talked to your counsel last night. That was, as I knew, a factually incorrect statement at that point. He never had a conversation with my counsel. The conversation ended at that point, but later on when I then picked up this issue of guidance and our responsibilities, he raised his voice again, suggested, as I told you before, I should not be talking to you, it is against the bar ethics, for me to contact and talk to you directly. I took issue with that. I said I'm under no obligation to retain private counsel. I said somebody provided information to the Secretary that he said publicly in Italy that the congressional committees were preventing me from talking to legal counsel. And I said I've got 15 witnesses in a room hearing you say that you don't want to talk to me. So I'm worried that you as working for this office, are adopting positions at odds with the language that your office is providing the Secretary of State.

My interest in this process was so that the State Department and the Secretary would be protected, and being fully responsive to the legal subpoena that had been issued.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Was his concern more of a process concern or did he take any objection to your substantive suggestion that additional custodians should be included?

A  I honestly cannot answer what he was thinking. I can only say what he said to me.

Q  That's what I'm asking. What did he say?

A  He said to me that he represented the Secretary of State and the Department's interest in this process. And that was the end of that -- and he also said that he was the author of the lines about the -- of the letter that included the language about the bullying and intimidation.

I pointed out to him that I thought the language he had then drafted, since he said was the drafter, was inaccurate. And he asked why did I say that. I said, well, you say that the career Foreign Services are being intimidated. And he said, who are you speaking about? And I asked him, about whom are you speaking? And he said, you're asking me to reveal confidential information. And I said, no, I'm not. There are only two career Foreign Service officers who subject to this process. I'm one of them. I'm the only one working at the Department of State, and the other one is Ambassador Yovanovitch, who is teaching at Georgetown. So I'm not asking to you reveal anything that isn't already commonly known.

So that was that part of that conversation.

Q  What his response when you said that?

A  He spent the next 5 minutes glaring at me.

Q  Did he disagree that Mr. Risch should be included in the --

A  We did not return to that topic.

Q  Now this was all with the others in the room?

A  This is in the room with the 15 to 20 other people, yes.

Q  And then you said there was an additional conversation in the hallway with words redacted                       . Can you describe that conversation?

A  Correct. words redacted                       then said, opened the door after a couple of minutes and asked if I could come out. So I excused myself before my colleagues. I apologized for them having had to hear an uncomfortable conversation. I said that it was important that they had been there as witnesses, since that was likely the only such only conversation engagement I would have with the legal staff of the State Department. I walked out, closed the door. And I stuck my hand out and said, Hi, I'm George Kent. We've never met. We shook hands. And then I said, that was unprofessional. And he then said, you were unprofessional. He got very angry. He started pointing at me with a clenched jaw and saying, What you did in there, if Congress knew what you were doing, they could say that you were trying to sort of control, or change the process of collecting documents. And what I said to him was what I hear you saying -- I said that's called projection. What I hear you saying is that you think that I am doing that.

What I was trying to do was make sure that the Department was being fully responsive. He then told me, I don’t think it is appropriate for you to go back into that room. I told him that's not your business, that's my meeting, but I will agree with you, though, I will go back in and tell my colleagues that since I'm one of the chief records collectors, I will go back to my office and resume collecting records to be responsive to the request.

And the only other thing we did was I gave him my business card, he wrote his name and phone number in my notebook. And he said, I imagine you will be writing up your version of this conversation and I will be too. And that was it.

Q  And did you write up your version?

A  I did.

Q  Did you provide that memo to the State Department to be turned over?

A  I believe -- yes, I did.

Q  Were you aware that the original request to the Department was made on September 9th?

A  I am aware that there was a letter sent, yes. I was traveling through much of that next week. So I am not a lawyer and I understand there are different ways of signaling how serious the issue is, but yes, I was aware that an earlier set of letters were sent prior to the September 27th letters.

Q  Were you asked to collect your records prior to, I believe, you said October 2nd?

A  There was no request for anyone to collect records prior to the subpoena that was issued, to my understanding, on the 27th.

Q  And I assume you did not have any further conversations with words redacted                       ?

A  No, and I think as counsel can confirm, once our relationship was established, he, words redacted                      , was taken off of my account, and while I did not participate in further conversations, my understanding is that the tone and further back and forth between L and my counsel was fully professional and respectful.

Q  All right. Before I move on, Mr. Kent, is there anything else on the topic of the State Department's response to the Congress' subpoena that you think the committee should know about that you haven't addressed?

A  No.

THE CHAIRMAN: If I could, I take it, at some point, you were instructed by the State Department not to provide the documents directly to the committee, but rather to provide them to the State Department?

MR. KENT: The initial document request under the subpoena was to the State Department and the State Department as part of its guidance did share the consideration that communications would be considered Federal records, and that they would be handling them, and that is a position that I accepted.

THE CHAIRMAN: But in terms of your own documents, the ones in your possession that we had requested, did you get instructions from the State Department that rather than provide them to the committee, you should provide them to the State Department?

MR. KENT: The letters that came in, the letter that came to me on September 27th was sent concurrently with a subpoena for those documents. And so they are considered Federal records. And all executive branch employees are reminded of that. So I was responsive to the request under subpoena to the Department for those records to be collected.

THE CHAIRMAN: But did you receive any instructions from the State Department that you should not provide the documents directly to the committee?

MR. KENT: I would have to go back and look at the written guidance that was issued on October 2nd. But I will say it was my understanding that I would provide the documents as part of the subpoena to the Department for the documents. My documents are not my personal documents. Any record that I create in the performance of my professional duties would be considered a record of the Department of State.

THE CHAIRMAN: And I assume that any records that you had on a personal device, those would have been provided to the State Department to be turned over as well?

MR. KENT: That is the -- right, correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Did you have any conversations with anyone else in the State Department about your interaction with words redacted                      ?

A  Yes.

Q  Who?

A  Now former, I guess, technically retired, he sent in his resignation letter, Michael McKinley, senior adviser to the Secretary of State. I had had no prior interaction with Mr. McKinley until the weekend after the letters were issued, and the story became news, and he reached out to talk to me.

Q  He reached out to you?

A  Correct. I was out picking apples with my wife -- Stribling Orchards,a very nice place in Markham, Virginia, if you ever want to get good apples -- and he reached out to me through the Operations Center and said that he felt the State Department should stand up for its career Foreign Service officers and wanted to know if I had any objection to him trying to get the Department to issue a statement of that nature.

Q  What did you say?

A  I think said I think it is entirely appropriate for the State Department leadership to stand up for its career foreign service officers.

Q  And what did you say about the statement?

A  He didn't share the statement with me. I asked him if he'd already floated the idea, and if he got any responses.

Q  What did he say?

A  He said he had not yet succeeded in securing an agreement to issue such a statement.

Q  Had he heard about your interaction with words redacted                      ?

A  So that came later, because our first conversation was on September 28th, Saturday, when I was picking apples. He then subsequently came to my office, and he was the only Foreign Service officer outside the European Bureau who initiated contact and came to my office.

So he checked in with me several times over the last 2 weeks to see how I was doing. And I did describe my -- the guidance meeting and what had occurred on the 3rd of October.

Q  And what was his response to --

A  He was concerned about that. He asked if I had written it up. And I said, I wrote a note to the file. And he asked if, in his capacity as a senior adviser to the Secretary, in part, responsible for ensuring that the Department leadership was connected to the career Foreign Service, if I would mind sharing it with him so that he could share it with other leaders of the Department, and I said I had no problem. And so I shared with him a copy of my note to the file.

Q  Did he say who he was going to share it with?

A  He later told me he shared it with the Deputy Secretary Sullivan, tinder Secretary Hale, and I believe the counselor -- sorry -- acting legal, Marek String.

Q  And did he indicate to you what the -- any response was to sharing the memo?

A  No.

Q  Did he indicate to you who he had discussed a statement with?

A  Not specifically.

Q  Generally?

A  He said leadership of the Department. That's -- so I presume that included people outside of the European Bureau, but I did not ask specifically which individuals he had engaged.

Q  Did you have any further conversations about that statement with him?

A  I did ask him, one of the times he dropped by my office, I asked him if that statement had gone anywhere, and he said, no.

Q  Did he indicate why not?

A  I don’t know recall if he gave any specific information on why.

Q  Anything else noteworthy about your conversations with Ambassador McKinley?

A  I had had never met him. I actually had to Google him. His career has not crossed mine. He's been an ambassador in four places -- three times in South America and Afghanistan. But he appeared to me in person to be a genuinely decent person who was concerned about what was happening.

And so I very much appreciated him reaching out on a personal level and showing, as someone who's been an ambassador in four missions, including Afghanistan, understanding it's important to be responsive and engage the people who work for you.

Q  Did you share his concerns?

A  Which concerns?

Q  About how the career Foreign Service officers were being treated during this process?

A  Well, as I mentioned before, that's why I reached out to the director general, Carol Perez, on October 1st because I had concerns that outside of the European Bureau, the leadership in the Department was not actually signaling its support for the career Foreign Service officers.

Q  All right. Mr. Kent, we're going spend some time today discussing Ukraine policy as well as efforts by nongovernment individuals to influence Ukraine policy. As you no doubt are aware one of the central players in this investigation is Rudy Giuliani. When did you first learn that Rudy Giuliani had taken an interest in Ukraine?

A  Well --

Q  Or any Ukrainians?

A  I think it's a matter of record that the former mayor of New York and the current mayor of Kyiv have known each other for over a decade. Mayor Klychko is a former heavyweight boxing champion of the world. And so I believe that Giuliani first met Klychko, roughly, in 2008.

Q  Okay.

A  So I think Giuliani, as a person, a private individual, has traveled to Ukraine over the course of the last decade.

Q  When you were in Ukraine, did you ever meet with him?

A  I never met with him, never been in the presence of him, never had any communication with him.

Q  So other than, as of 2018, at some point, did you come to learn that Mr. Giuliani was actively engaged in matters relating to Ukraine?

A  The first indication that I heard of contacts in 2018 came in May 2018. The then-prosecutor general of the country, Yuriy Lutsenko, had planned to go to New York and his plane, KLM plane, was canceled. But my understanding was that his intent to go to New York was to meet with Rudy Giuliani.

Q  And did you understand what the purpose of that meeting was?

A  At the time, no, because the meeting didn't happen.

Q  How did you learn about it?

A  There were stories in the Ukrainian media that he intended to go. I'd heard the story about the cancelation, KLM. Some of the stories later claimed that he did not have a visa. That was not true, because I know the plane had been canceled and he later traveled to New York. And also the head of Ukrainian diaspora organization words redacted                      , told me that he had had a conversation with Lutsenko and Lutsenko said his intent was to go to New York and meet with Giuliani.

Q  Were you still in --

A  I was in -- I left Kyiv, Ukraine on August 12th, 2018.

Q  And what did you learn about Mr. Giuliani's interactions with Mr. Lutsenko after that initial aborted trip?

A  The next time I heard Mr. Giuliani's name mentioned was on the 9th of January this year, 2019, when I was copied on an email that Giuliani was calling the State Department regarding the inability of the previous prosecutor general Viktor Shokin to get a visa to come to the United States.

Q  How did you learn about that?

A  I was copied on an email. Because I'm the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State covering Ukraine, and it was a matter about Ukraine.

Q  And did you have any involvement in that visa issue?

A  I was involved extensively in conversations and exchanges over the next 2 days, yes.

Q  Describe briefly who Viktor Shokin is.

A  Viktor Shokin served as prosecutor general of Ukraine from, I believe his appointment date was February 10th, 2015, until sometime of the spring, perhaps late February, early March 2016. He was a longtime prosecutor. He was known to have been the godfather of then-President Poroshenko's kids. And he was someone with whom and about whom the U.S. Government had many conversations over that period of time as prosecutor general.

Q  Was there a broad-based international assessment of his, whether or not he was a credible or corrupt prosecutor general?

A  There was a broad-based consensus that he was a typical Ukraine prosecutor who lived a lifestyle far in excess of his government salary, who never prosecuted anybody known for having committed a crime, and having covered up crimes that were known to have been committed.

Q  Who was the email from that you received on January 9th?

A  I do not recall. I believe it may have been from one of the staff in the Office of the Secretary of State, because Rudy Giuliani was trying to call into that office.

Q  And did you follow up on this email?

A  The initial redirection was to the Assistant Secretary of Consular Affairs, Mr. Risch.

Q  Okay. The redirection by who?

A  I was just copied on the email. Since it was about a visa, I think it was entirely appropriate for the matter to be referred to the part of the State Department that deals with visas.

Q  And what was Mr. Giuliani's involvement in this matter?

A  He was pushing a visa. He wanted Viktor Shokin to get a visa.

Q  Had Viktor Shokin been denied a visa at that point?

A  Apparently, Mr. Shokin did not have a valid visa at the time. I do not know whether he had been denied a visa recently.

MR. SWALWELL: Ambassador, can you spell "Risch"?

MR. KENT: I believe, with apologies to any German Americans, I think it is R-i-s-c-h, but sometimes names get changed. My original German name was Kindt, K-i-n-d-t, and then my great-great-grandmother changed to anglicize it to K-e-n-t.

MR. SWALWELL: Thank you.

BY MR. GOLDMAN

Q  So describe generally what your role was in this visa matter, if any?

A  There was a series of conversations between members of the Consular Affairs front office and European Affairs front office. For the European office, that included Assistant Secretary Wess Mitchell and myself principally. And to the best of my recollection, on the side of Consular Affairs, it would be Assistant Secretary Risch and the deputy assistant secretary for visas, who I believe is Ed Romatowski.

Q  Just to try to get to the bottom line, Mr. Giuliani, what was the State Department's view about the propriety of a visa for Mr. Shokin?

A  Mr. Shokin, as I mentioned, was well and very unfavorably known to us. And we felt, under no circumstances, should a visa be issued to someone who knowingly subverted and wasted U.S. taxpayer money. And as somebody who had a fiduciary responsibility for anti corruption programs, I felt personally strongly, Wess Mitchell felt very strongly that it was incorrect and so we stated that view clearly to our congressional -- to or Consular Affairs colleagues.

Q  Okay. And what -- did you learn why Mr. Giuliani was pushing to have a visa granted?

A  To the best of my recollection, the story that he conveyed to my colleagues in Consular Affairs was that Shokin wanted to come to the United States to share information suggesting that there was corruption at the U.S. embassy.

Q  And did you understand what he was referring to?

A  Knowing Mr. Shokin, I had full faith that it was bunch of hooey, and he was looking to basically engage in a con game out of revenge because he'd lost his job.

Q  And do you know whether there was any engagement with Mr. Giuliani on behalf of the State Department?

A  To the best of my recollection, to my awareness based on the email exchanges, He may have had between two and three conversations with the Assistant Secretary in that period of time, Giuliani to Risch. No time did Wess Mitchell or I engage Giuliani.

Q  And did you learn about the substance of those conversations from Mr. Risch?

A  I shared what I recall, and I presume that either that was in one of those conversations were an email exchange, but I couldn't tell you for sure.

Q  What ultimately happened with the visa application?

A  When the State Department was not being responsive, my understanding is that former Mayor Giuliani attempted to call the White House, and deputy chief of staff, my understanding deputy chief of staff, Rob Blair, then called the State Department to ask for a background.

Q  Who did Mr. Blair speak to in the State Department?

A  In the end, I believe it was a conference call. I participated sitting in Wess Mitchell's office. I believe Consular Affairs may have also been on the call.

Q  And can you describe the conversation?

A  We laid out enough frank detail about U.S. Government engagement and assessment of Mr. Shokin. And Mr. Blair said, thank you very much, I've heard enough. He identified his role at that point to ground truth the situation and look out after the interest of the Office of the President. And I took from his response to us that he'd heard what he needed. And that was the last I heard about that, and Mr. Shokin, to the best of my knowledge, did not ever receive a visa and has not come to the U.S.

Q  So after Mr. Giuliani reached, attempted to convince the State Department to issue the visa directly, and was told no, he then went around to the chief of staff's office?

A  That -- I do not know who he tried to reach at the White House. I only know that Mr. Blair reached out to us to ground truth the situation.

Q  To your knowledge, had anyone in the State Department informed Mr. Blair or the chief of staff's office?

A  My understanding is he reached out to us, and we were responsive to him reaching out to us.

Q  And did you understand the he learned about it from Mr. Giuliani?

A  I do not if he had a direct conversation. To the best of my recollection, he said he was asked, which suggests that he did not have the conversation himself. I don't know.

Q  Was this the first that you had heard about any concerns about the embassy in Kyiv?

A  No. I was at the embassy in Kyiv when a series of corrupt prosecutors, including Shokin’s team accused us of not sharing our assistance to improve the prosecutor service in Ukraine. And to my understanding, because it was released as part of the disinformation campaign, that included a letter from April 2016 which I signed as Charge.

Q  Was that -- were those accusations accurate?

A  The accusations were completely without merit.

Q  Following this January 9th meeting, when is the next time that you learned about any involvement of Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine matters?

A  On February 11th, there was a seminar hosted at the U.S. Institute of Peace, about the conflict in Donbas, and the Minister of Interior, Arsen Avakov, came and participated presenting his plans for what he calls a plan of small steps.

We had a separate meeting, since I'm the leading policymaker focused on the region. And during that meeting, he let me know that Yuriy Lutsenko, the then-prosecutor general of Ukraine, had made a private trip to New York in which he met Rudy Giuliani. I said, did he know what the purpose was, and the Minister of Interior Avakov said it was to throw mud. And I said, throw mud at whom? And he said, a lot of people. I asked him, whom? And he said, towards Masha, towards you, towards others.

Q  Masha is Marie Yovanovitch?

A  Former Ambassador Yovanovitch, yes.

Q  Did he say -- name any other names?

A  At that point, to the best of my recollection, he mentioned specifically Masha and me, and then said others but did not mention the others.

Q  Where was this meeting?

A  It would have either happened at the U.S. Institute of Peace or in my office, which is right across the street. The State Department and USIP are across the street.

Q  Did he explain in any more detail what he had learned about the conversations between Lutsenko and Giuliani?

A  He was just passing along information. That was not the purpose of the meeting. The meeting was to talk about our assistance programs. He oversees the law enforcement reform. It was to talk about Ukrainian politics. Frankly, at the time, he was the second most powerful person in the country after President Poroshenko. It was to talk about his ideas about trying to bring peace to the Donbas. And his comment about Lutsenko's trip and meeting with Giuliani was and, Oh, by the way, probably the last thing he said before we finished the meeting.

Q  Did he express -- why did he mention this to you?

A  I don't know. I would say that Mr. Avakov likes to keep lines of communication open to all sides and -- but I cannot say why he chose to share that information.

Q  Did he express any concerns about this?

A  He thought it was the wrong thing to do. He thought Lutsenko was a fool to have made a private trip and to have done what he did.

Q  Do you know whether he was aware of Mr. Giuliani's connection to President Trump?

A  Mr. Avakov?

Q  Yes.

A  Mr. Avakov is a very well-informed person, and I'm absolutely sure he knew who Giuliani was connected to.

Q  Did you, after learning this information, what, if anything -- what if any conversations did you have with anyone else about the information you learned?

A  I cannot say with complete certainty, but I know that I shared the information that Avakov passed to me with others.

Q  Who else?

A  Based on my normal procedures I would guess that I shared it with people who followed Ukraine in the European Bureau, as well as with the leadership of or embassy in Kyiv.

Q  Do you know what mud Lutsenko and Giuliani were discussing in connection to you?

A  I did not know, no.

Q  At that time you did not know?

A  I still don't know.

Q  You haven't seen memoranda that --

A  I've seen the letter that I signed in April 2016. I don't know if that's all. I've seen a fake list that had my business card that I used temporarily in 2015, when I was at the embassy as acting DCM. The business card was the one I used in 2015, the letter itself was completely fake with lots of misspellings. But I have never -- no one has ever shown me what Lutsenko might have been passing to Giuliani. So I did not know then and I still do not know now.

Q  You mentioned the documents that the State IG had provided to Congress. Have you reviewed those?

A  They were not -- no one shared this with me, no. So I -- what I have been told, I first learned about it from words redacted                       reporter who emailed me, a person I'd never had contact with, and to whom I did not respond, who claimed that she had seen the documents and asked me a question, and with the many dozens of emails from media over the last several weeks, since this story started, I didn't answer a single one, I forwarded them all to our press officer.

Q  Was this recent?

A  This was after -- it was probably a day or 2 after the IG came up and passed documents.

Q  Did you speak to Ambassador Yovanovitch about the conversation that you had with Mr. Avakov?

A  I did not -- well, I cannot say for certain. I mean, again, the conversation was February 11th. That was the day of the seminar. I could say -- I cannot say for certain whether I talked or whether I sent a brief email.

Q  Okay.

A  My guess is, to the best of my recollection, I conveyed the information.

Q  Did you become aware of whether Ambassador Yovanovitch had also spoken with Mr. Avakov around this time?

A  I believe it may have been that conversation that she shared that she had had a similar conversation with him.

Q  At that point did you understand what Rudy Giuliani's interest was in meeting with Lutsenko?

A  I did not have any visibility. I had better insights into the mind of Yuriy Lutsenko than I did of Rudy Giuliani

Q  And what were those insights into Mr. Lutsenko?

A  Mr. Lutsenko is somebody with whom the embassy had a long relationship dating back to the Orange Revolution period, which is when I first met him. And at that time he was a seemingly pro-Western politician. We met with him, he's a very gregarious, outgoing person. He was imprisoned for 2 years under former President Yanokovitch, and he came out and resumed politics. When Shokin was forced out, the intent of then-President Poroshenko was to appoint someone he trusted. Yuriy Lutsenko is also the godfather of his kids. And the question was whether someone who didn't have a law degree could be a reliable partner to try to reform the prosecutorial service.

So I had a series of meetings with him in the spring of 2016 to judge and assess whether he would be a serious partner for us. And so, that was the initial, if you will, renewal of a relationship. Subsequent to that time, it was very clear that Mr. Lutsenko was not any more serious about reforming the corrupt prosecutorial service than Viktor Shokin had been. And at that point, our relationship -- not personal to me, but the relationship between the embassy and Mr. Lutsenko began to sour.

Q  So it was the embassy and the U.S. view that Mr. Lutsenko was another corrupt prosecutor general?

A  That was our assessment, yes.

Q  When you spoke to Mr. Avakov, did you learn whether Mr. Giuliani was working with anyone else on matters related to Ukraine?

A  He just mentioned his -- his -- this is, by the way, aside. Again, he's a Ukraine politician serving as minister of interior, he was talking about another Ukraine politician serving as prosecutor general, and his focus was on that dynamic. And because he said he'd heard my name mentioned, he’d passed that along.

Q  When was the next time that Rudy Giuliani came up in conversation?

THE CHAIRMAN: A question if I could, just for clarification. You mentioned a letter with misspellings and forgery.

MR. KENT: Yes?

THE CHAIRMAN: Can you tell us what that letter was and what you know of its provenance?

MR. KENT: Well, that was part of series of news articles that came out I believe starting March 20th, this spring. There with a number of articles that were initially led by John Solomon of The Hill, who gave -- who took an interview with Yuriy Lutsenko earlier in March. And so, there was, I believe, video somewhere, there certainly were pictures of them doing interview. And it’s part of a series of articles, it was an intense campaign. One of those articles released because the interview on the first day Lutsenko had claimed that Ambassador Yovanovitch had given him a list in their first meeting of people not to prosecute. Several days later, a list of names was circulated on the internet, with -- the photograph had a copy of my temporary business card that I used for a short period of time in 2015. So it was a real -- it didn't look like a regular business card. It was the one that we did on the embassy printer. So I think the card was genuine, and someone attached that to a list of names that was a hodgepodge of names.

Some of the people I had to google, I had not heard of. Half the names were misspelled. Not the way that any American, or even Ukrainian, or Russian would transliterate Ukrainian names. My best guess, just from a linguistics semantic point is the person who created the fake list was either Czech or Serbian.

THE CHAIRMAN: So when you referred earlier to a forged letter, you were referring to the forged do-not-prosecute list?

MR. KENT: That was -- yeah. This was the -- it wasn't a letter, it was just a list of names with my actual business card attached.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

BY MR GOLDMAN:

Q  When was the next time that you learned anything being Mr. Giuliani's involvement in Ukraine, after February 11th?

A  Well, Mr. Giuliani was almost unmissable starting in mid-March. As the news campaign, or campaign of slander against, not only Ambassador Yovanovitch unfolded, he had a very high -- a media promise, so he was on TV, his Twitter feed ramped up and it was all focused on Ukraine, and it was focused on the four story lines that unfolded in those days between March 20 and 23rd.

Q  Where do those story lines unfold?

A  They unfolded both in the U.S. media and the Ukrainian media, simultaneously in peril.

Q  What U.S. media outlets?

A  Well, Mr. Solomon started off in The Hill, as I recall. There was a lot of tweeting, and of people that I had not previously been aware of, and then that also then played into late night television, subsequent days, both the Hannity Show and the Laura Ingraham Show covered this topic extensively.

Q  That original John Solomon article, was that based on accurate information?

A  It was based on an interview with Yuriy Lutsenko.

Q  And was the information that Mr. Lutsenko provided accurate, to your knowledge?

A  No. It was, if not entirely made up in full cloth, it was primarily non-truths and non-sequiturs.

The interview was broken into two parts. The first part was focused on any corruption efforts in which he went after the Ambassador and other actors on anticorruption issues. I think that is where he claimed that we hadn't shared his money, meaning his assistance to the prosecutor general's office.

And the second half of the first wave theme was looking back at the 2016 campaign and allegations that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau head, a person name Artem Sytnyk, had somehow provided the list of people taking money from the discredited pro-Russian party, Party of Regions, back in 2016.

So that was day one. There were two story lines that were launched more or less in parallel that were covered extensively in the U.S. press, first by The Hill and amplifiers, and in Ukraine by what are known as Porokhobots, trolls on the internet, particularly Facebook, in support of then-President Poroshenko and against the people that are perceived to be Poroshenko's opponents.

Q  You said there were some, I think you said, surprising Twitter --

A  I honestly -- I have forgotten my Twitter password. I'm not on the Twittersphere. So they are just names that did not mean anything to me until they all of a sudden became very active, talking about Ukraine and particularly the activities of our embassy in Ukraine.

Q  Were you aware of whether the President retweeted this John Solomon article?

A  To the best of my recollection, the President may have retweeted something affiliated with the Hannity Show the second day.

Q  Did it reference John Solomon, as you recall?

A  I honestly, again, I have started following Twitter more than I did before March, but I was not an active follower at that point.

Q  Prior to the initial Hill article between February 11th and March 20th, was there any engagement that you had, either with the Ukrainian -- on the Ukrainian side, or with any State Department officials about any of these issues related to Rudy Giuliani?

THE CHAIRMAN: If I could -- just for clarification again, I think I mentioned one or two of the story lines, but you said there were four story lines. Can you tell us what the other story lines were?

MR. KENT: The third story line that came out the next day was focused on the Bidens and Burisma, that was the third story line. The fourth one that came out of day after was going after some civil society organizations, including anticorruption action center that were described as Soros organizations?

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  I want to -- we're going to go through these four a little bit in more depth, but I want to make sure that there's nothing else that occurred between February 11th and March 20th of note on this topic?

A  I received an email from our embassy on March 19th, the deputy director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau for Ukraine, usually referred to as NABU, that was set up in 2015 and proved very effective at trying to investigate high-level corruption as it was intended to do. The deputy director was a former Georgian national named Gizo Uglava. And he came into the embassy and described his conversation the night before with a completely inebriated, drunk, Yuriy Lutsenko, and Lutsenko was angry. He said he'd given an interview with an American journalist 2 weeks prior and that interview that he had accused the embassy of undermining him, and that was his motivation, and that the embassy had been supportive of the Democrat party, and was not supportive of the Trump party and that -- so basically the lines of attack that then came out in the subsequent articles, Lutsenko shared with this other law enforcement individual, who then came and shared what he had heard from Lutsenko the night before.

Q  To the embassy?

A  To the embassy, yes.

Q  And prior to March 19th, there was no other indication other than television or --

A  To the best of my recollection, the story was not in play publicly until the first articles appeared. And to the best of my recollection, somebody from The Hill reached out to us in the early evening, or the very end of the work day on the 19th, and asked the press officer of the European Bureau whether we had reaction to a number of assertions, allegations.

Q  All right. Let's go through -- just give me one minute.

[Discussion off the record.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  So did you understand why the Ukrainian law enforcement source went to the embassy to describe what a drunk Lutsenko had said?

A  I believe, first of all, Mr. Uglava had a very good working relationship with the embassy. His organization, NABU, was one of the key anticorruption organizations that had been stood up after the Revolution of Dignity. It was in its first year, it was functioning surprisingly well, meaning it was putting together investigations on high-level corrupt individuals. And because of its initial effectiveness, which I think surprised a lot of people, it then became a target of people in places of influence, because it had been effective. And one of the people that was looking to destroy NABU as an effective Bureau was Yuriy Lutsenko.

Q  And did the information that you received about this, was that in writing or was it on the phone?

A  I received it in an email from the embassy. And that email should be part of the records collected, not individually, but the State Department has a system, that is supposed to automatically be able to pull all emails and cables that have key words. That's my understanding of how that material should be provided eventually to the committees after review.

Q  Could you just summarize for us the four lines that you -- lines of --

A  I think the four story lines that played out in the media, the first one was the anticorruption line in which the embassy was attacked, and anti corruption actors in Ukraine were attacked. The second line was the 2016 cycle, allegations that somehow, somebody, whether it was Ukrainians or people at the embassy had animus towards Paul Manafort. The third line was a line of reporting related to the Bidens, and the interconnectivity between Vice President Biden's role alleged interconnectivity between Vice President Biden's role and pushing our anticorruption agenda, and the presence of his son, Hunter Biden, on the board of the gas company Burisma. And the fourth line of attack was alleging that certain civil society organizations were funded by the Soros organization.

Q  Now, based on your time as DCM there, which would have overlapped with some of these events, as well as your expertise in the area and your current role as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, did you believe that there was any merit to any of those four story lines?

A  I did not.

Q  I believe our time is up so I yield to the minority.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  What did your State Department officials do to try to counteract these stories that you believe were totally fabricated?

A  Correct.

Q  What did you or State Department officials do to try to counteract these stories?

A  When stories, media occurs about any of the issues in our area of responsibility, particularly when they touch on allegations or assertions about U.S. policy, or U.S. issues, the responsible part of the State Department with the press officers and the team in embassies work together to prepare press guidance, and that can be a combination of either guidance, if asked, or if a situation warrants it, statements that would usually come out by the spokeswoman.

Q  Right, so what did you do?

A  So immediately since our Ambassador and embassy was being attacked with allegations that we felt were completing baseless, we prepared press guidance, and I believe the record -- the public record would show that the media outlets quoted that press guidance.

Q  And was that it?

A  That was it for those initial days, yes. In terms of the public stance in response to media articles.

Q  Was that sufficient to counteract the narrative?

A  The narrative continued to be pushed until the narrative was still out there. It accelerated on whatever that Sunday was, because the son of the President issued a Tweet in which he suggested that we needed more like Ambassadors like Rick Grenell and fewer, I believe he may have hashtagged Obama appointee was the point, and it was taken by people as an attack on Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Q  So what else did the State Department do? I mean, this seems like it is a major threat to the Ambassador, and major threat to the State Department. What type of additional full-throated maneuvers did the State Department take here?

A  The request from the embassy endorsed by the European Bureau, there should be a high-level endorsement of Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Q  And then what happened there?

A  There was no high-level Department endorsement of Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Q  What did the State Department do? You described a series of complete falsehoods in your words.

A  Yes.

Q  Fabrications, a fake list, that is going to the heart of the ability of the Ambassador to serve effectively.

A  Correct.

Q  And so is it fair to say this was a big league crisis for the Ambassador?

A  This particularly after there were Tweets by members of the Presidential family, it was clearly a crisis for Ambassador Yovanovitch and a crisis that was threatening to consume the relationship. So our recommendation to our superiors was that there should be a clear statement of support for Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Q  Clear statement of support, and obviously there was a media statement --

A  The initial media guidance that we released and was quoted extensively was, I think, complete fabrication, utter nonsense as well as in rebutting Prosecutor General Lutsenko's allegation that somehow we had misdirected assistance met for the prosecutor general. We said something along the lines that we had a fiduciary responsibility to the American taxpayer and when our assistance was not going to good use, we redirected it for more productive purposes.

And so, those were the initial lines in that first couple of days. When we got to the weekend, past the Sunday morning talk shows, saw the President's Tweet against the Ambassador. The question that consumed us was what do we need next? And how do we show support for Ambassador Yovanovitch?

Q  And what does the State Department do? It didn't seem like the efforts were sufficient.

A  There were exchanges at this point with officials, including, to the best of my recollection, Under Secretary Hale. It may have included the Counselor of the Department, Brechbuhl, at that point. And there was a suggestion made, and I can’t remember by whom, initially, but eventually, Gordon Sondland, our Ambassador to U.S. EU also joined some of the back and forth that Ambassador Yovanovitch should issue a statement, or do a video or tweet declaring full support for the foreign policy of President Trump, essentially asking her to defend herself as opposed to having the State Department defend her.

Q  You talked about the four lines. And the first one you said was the anticorruption actors were being attacked, was that part of the non prosecution list?

A  The non prosecution, or the allegation that Ambassador Yovanovitch, in her first meeting with Yuriy Lutsenko, which, if I recall correctly, occurred in October 2016. He alleged that there had been this list. There was no such list, and that was part of our reason for pushing back firmly. And -- but that was part of, I would say, a cluster of issues around the anti corruption theme.

Q  Has the embassy ever communicated names not to prosecute for any reason?

A  That's not what the purpose of our advocacy, or our program is. Our advocacy is to help, in terms of programming, is to build capacity, so they can have the ability to go after corruption and effectively investigate, prosecute, and then a judge allege criminal activities. The issue of whether we asked at any time that they follow up on a prosecution, if there is a criminal nexus in the United States, we have several different ways of conveying that interest. We have something called the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, or MLAT. We also have FBI agents known as legal attaches overseas. So we can do it in writing direct from the Department of Justice, or we can have the legal attaches engage their counterparts.

But what Lutsenko alleged was that we were not doing a law-enforcement-to-law-enforcement request based on a criminal nexus in the United States but that we were politically asking them not to prosecute Ukrainians. And we just don't do that.

[11:37 a.m.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  At any point in time were names of officials, whether it was for any reason, shared with the prosecutor's office in connection with do not prosecute?

A  Well, again, we don’t go in and say do not prosecute. The types of conversations that we have that might be construed are different.

Q  You mentioned the name Sytnyk earlier?

A  Artem Sytnyk who is the still and the first head of the so-called NABU, National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.

Q  And was he ever in the cross hairs of Lutsenko?

A  He was.

Q  Was he being investigated?

A  To the best of my knowledge, yes, there were open prosecutor general investigations on Mr. Sytnyk.

Q  Do you know if anyone at the embassy ever asked Lutsenko not to investigate Sytnyk?

A  What I would say, I would characterize the interactions as different because what we warned both Lutsenko and others that efforts to destroy NABU as an organization, including opening up investigations of Sytnyk, threatened to unravel a key component of our anti corruption cooperation, which had started at the request of Petro Poroshenko.

Q  I mean, could reasonable people interpret that as a request not to investigate Sytnyk?

A  I am sure that Mr. Lutsenko has claimed that, but he also claimed that there was a list, and there was no list, and he made a lot of other claims. And so as I said, this is an issue of believabi1ity about someone who routinely lies.

Q  You're familiar with the name Shabunin?

A  Vitali Shabunin perhaps? Is that --

Q  Yeah. And could you identify him for us?

A  He is one of the leaders of the NGO known as AnTAC, it's the anti corruption center in Ukraine.

Q  What's AnTAC's role?

A  AnTAC is an advocacy group that is designed to both publicly bring attention to issues related to corruption, to advocate for better laws and better prosecutions, and on occasion it has also participated in some of the capacity-building activities that were funded by the U.S. Government.

Q  Who funds AnTAC?

A  AnTAC is an organization, has funding that, to the best of my knowledge, includes primarily funds from the European Union and the U.S. Government. It has also received grants from the International Renaissance Foundation, which is the Ukrainian name and arm of the Open Society Institute.

Q  And who runs the Open Society Institute?

A  The Open Society Institute was initiated 20-odd years ago by George Soros.

Q  Can you remember -- sorry. Do you know if the name Vitali -- I apologize for these pronunciations.

A  That's okay.

Q  I'm not familiar with how to do this properly, and I apologize. I mean no disrespect.

A  I'm not Ukrainian, so --

Q  Vitali Shabunin, do you know if he was ever the subject of a prosecution in Ukraine by Lutsenko?

A  I do not know. To the best of my knowledge, he was subject to harassment by the securities service known as the Security Bureau of Ukraine. There was an incident where someone threw what’s known as bright green, it's iodine-based disinfectant, and they actually threw it on his face near his house. It can damage eyes but is oftentimes done as a form of intimidation in the former Soviet Union.

So because Shabunin was outspoken, he was certainly the target of harassment. But I don't know for certain whether there was an active criminal investigation by the prosecutor general's office.

Q  Was he ever up on charges of hooliganism or something to that effect?

A  I believe when the person who was picketing his house and throwing this green material on him, and claiming to be a journalist even though he wasn't, provoked him, and Shabunin pushed him near his house. Yes, he was then -- I think there was a charge of alleged hooliganism.

Q  Do you know if anyone ever tried to communicate with Lutsenko's office that this was not a worthwhile charge to pursue?

A  I think, you know, if we're going back -- I don't know specifically about that particular incident or charge, but as a matter of conversation that U.5. officials had with Ukrainian officials in sharing our concern about the direction of governance and the approach, harassment of civil society activists, including Mr. Shabunin, was one of the issues we raised, yes.

Q  Was Shabunin on this list that you described as fake?

A  I don't know if that list has been provided to the committee. You could show me the list and I might have some recollection. But I --

Q  Okay. Do you have any recollection of who was on that list?

A  There were about 15 names, and I remember it was very odd. It included the country's leading rock star Slava Vakarchuk, who is now the leader of one of the parties in parliament. It included very bizarrely a person who was a friend of the current -- the ex-President Poroshenko and was head of the overseer of the defense industry named Gladkovskiy, and in parentheses it had his previous name, Svinarchuk. The reason why that's memorable is because it means a pig or a pig farmer, and he changed his name before he went into government so he didn't have a name that said basically Mr. Piggy. But no one knew that that was really -knew that was his name when the list allegedly was created in 2016. That was a story line from 2019.

There were a couple of young so-called Euro optimist MPs where friends had joined Poroshenko's party but then become sort of critics of President Poroshenko. Their names include Mustafa Nayyem, Svitlana Zalishchuk, and Serhiy Leshchenko.

I believe the former defense minister, who was running for President at the time, Anatoliy Hrytsenko, was at the list. There was a judge I'd never heard of. And there may have been other people on that list. I just don't remember the full list.

Q  What do you know about Leshchenko?

A  Serhiy Leshchenko was a journalist for Ukrainskaya Pravda, which is an online -- the leading online news source in Ukraine. He ran for parliament as one of the young pro-western members of then-President Poroshenko's party. He continued to act as an investigative-style public figure even as a member of parliament.

He did not get reelected in the parliamentary elections in September. And because he was an active parliamentarian, because he had been an investigative journalist, he was someone that the U.S. Embassy had known for years.

Q  What was his role in the Manafort issue?

A  To the best of my recollection he was one of the individuals who helped popularize the information that came out of the black book. I believe Andy Kramer from The New York Times was the first person to write a story in English about it. Andy came and talked to me sometime in late 2015, 2016. I do not recall. He was based in Moscow, so he was not there in Kyiv that often.

But at some point Andy shared with me where he had heard the first information. And so I believe, although I cannot say for sure, that Mr. Kramer may have shared that he had talked to Leshchenko as one of his sources for that early article.

Q  Were there other sources of information regarding Manafort pushing out of Ukraine?

A  About -- well, Mr. Manafort operated in Ukraine for over a decade. So are you specifically saying about his entire time, or what's the specific --

Q  Around that timeframe, which of course is -- you know, mid-2016 is when he became involved with the President's campaign.

A  Right. Because Mr. Manafort had spent a decade in Ukraine, Ukrainians followed his reemergence as a U.S. figure very closely.

Q  And was Leshchenko the primary person bringing that to the attention of The New York Times and the other --

A  No. I think, all Ukrainians, they didn't need a single person doing it. Because Mr. Manafort first appeared in Ukraine in 2005 when he was hired by former Prime Minister Yanukovych who tried the steal the election that became the Orange Revolution, that was the end of 2004.

To the best of my recollection, in this case it's actually quite good because I was with Ambassador Herbst at the time when Yanukovych told us that he’d hired Manafort, and that was the spring of 2005. So Mr. Manafort's time in Ukraine started in 2005, and according to public records, he participated up through the campaigns of 2014.

Q  Now, the allegation that the embassy shared an animus about Manafort or was interested in pushing information to the forefront, is that an accurate description of the second narrative that was pushed in the March 2019 timeframe?

A  That is part of what Yuriy Lutsenko in that narrative pushed, yes.

Q  Okay.

A  It's, again, inaccurate, not accurate characterization.

Q  Okay. Is it accurate that somebody in the Ukraine, not from the embassy, but somebody, maybe Ukrainians, were pushing this narrative?

A  I think it would be accurate to say, given what President Yanukovych did to the country, which was loot tens of billions of dollars, that there were many Ukrainians who in part blamed Paul Manafort for that success because he proved to be a brilliant political technologist in giving Yanukovych advice that helped him win the presidency.

Q  And do you think people in the U.S., supporters of President Trump that saw this information come out of the Ukraine may have wondered if this was an effort to attack the President or the President when he was a candidate?

THE CHAIRMAN: Counsel, are you asking what the American public -- an opinion about what the American public might believe?

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  No. Is it reasonable -- I'll restate it.

A  Well, I will just say, I was in Ukraine at the time so I don't know what the reaction was.

Q  Is it reasonable to conclude that if you are in President Trump's world and you're seeing these stories coming out of the Ukraine that it appears to have the look of a political attack?

THE CHAIRMAN: The witness can answer if they wish, but you're asking the State Department witness a question about how to evaluate the public response to --

MR. MEADOWS: Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, with all due respect, we didn't cross-examine you or -- you're not the counselor.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Meadows, I said the witness can answer, but it seems --

MR. CASTOR: Okay. Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: But it seems that you're asking for an answer that's beyond the knowledge of a State Department witness.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Was that part of the second narrative that you described that, you know, injecting the Manafort was an effort to attack then-candidate Trump?

A  Again, I can't say how any individual, any American would react to a narrative. I can only answer for myself and the knowledge I had. And I'll tell you what I told Ukrainians in 2016. I said that Paul Manafort was an extremely successful political adviser who had helped President Yanukovych win, and no one should underestimate his abilities to help any candidate that he advised. And that was my assessment of his professional ability to help a candidate win, regardless of the country.

Q  Do you think the second narrative that either Lutsenko is pushing or the journalist he was dealing with in the United States were pushing, do you think that related to trying to spin up President Trump's supporters?

A  You're asking me to speculate on what Yuriy Lutsenko, Rudy Giuliani, and John Solomon were doing, and I would suggest that's a question for those three individuals.

Q  Did it have the effect of that though?

A  It's hard for me to make an assessment since there were so many story lines put in play at the same time to assess how any one of those story lines had an effect on any given audience.

Q  Did the State Department zero in on that particular story line, or did they approach all of these four at the same time?

A  Our primary concern was that our Ambassador and our embassy were being subjected to inaccurate accusations. But as situational awareness, we followed or tried to follow because the volume was intense, the various different stories.

Q  The third story line was relating to Burisma?

A  Correct.

Q  And what's your knowledge of Burisma's corruption history and efforts to prosecute Burisma?

A  I first became aware of the owner of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, when I first went to our embassy in mid-January 2015. I went for a short period of time. At the time I was the senior anti corruption coordinator, but I'd already been selected to be the next deputy chief of mission.

So my predecessor had a 3-week break. He was going back to words redacted                                             , and I was asked to go out, because so much was happening at the time, the Russians were pushing the final push to take as much territory as they could, that they needed an extra officer. And as well, Ambassador Pyatt thought I could be helpful in the anti corruption front.

I was asked by our professional Department of Justice former prosecutor, who was engaged in capacity building, words redacted                                             if I would be willing to go in and talk to the prosecutor general's office, because in late December 2014, somebody in the prosecutor general's office of Ukraine -- this is, to be clear, pre Lutsenko, pre Shokin, a different corrupt, ineffective prosecutor -- who inexplicably had shut the criminal case that had been the basis for a British court to freeze $23 million in assets held by Mykola Zlochevsky.

That was an issue of our interest because we had made a commitment to the Ukrainian Government in 2014 to try to recover an estimated tens of billions of dollars of stolen assets out of the country. The first case that U.S., U.K., and Ukrainian investigators worked on was a case against Zlochevsky, and that's because the British Serious Crimes Office had already opened up a case, an investigation against Zlochevsky.

We spent roughly half a million dollars of State Department money in support of the FBI and this investigation and to build capacity to track down stolen assets. And so, again, I had a fiduciary responsibility -- I'd previously been the director of the office which provided that funds to find out what had happened and why were our monies being wasted.

So armed with the facts that the DOJ rep gave me, we asked for a meeting at the prosecutor general's office. They made the deputy prosecutor general named Donylenko available. And so I went into his office, February 3, 2015, and said, how much was the bribe and who took it? And he laughed and said, ha ha ha ha, that's what President Poroshenko asked us last week. And I said, and what did you tell him? And he said $7 million, and it happened in May before our team came in, May of 2014.

I said, wrong. Somebody, a prosecutor under your command, signed a letter on December 25 -- which is not Christmas in Ukraine. They celebrate it late -- and provided it to the lawyer who provided it to the British judge before the FBI and the Serious Crimes Office could react. So that was 6 months after your team came into the office.

He did not offer the name of anyone he suspected of having taken the bribe. He did, however, say, well, I've been friends with Zlochevsky for 21 years, and he's in Dubai right now. Here's his phone number. Do you want it? And I said, no, I think you should actually arrest him next time he comes back to Ukraine.

But I want to make very clear the seriousness with which the U.S. Government takes this because we spent months and hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to help your country get your stolen assets back, and somebody in your office took a bribe and shut a case, and we're angry.

So that was my introduction. And the focus at that point was on Zlochevsky the person, the ex-minister, when he was minister of ecology, which oversees the unit that issues the licenses to do substrata geologic exploration for gas. He awarded it to a series of companies that happened to be either through shell companies or affiliated with the holdings, which was known as Burisma.

But the focus at the time, the case in 2014, in the frozen assets, was the assets frozen for Zlochevsky, the minister, not directed to the conduct of Burisma, the company.

Q  Okay. But he controlled Burisma?

A  Yes. Whatever the roster may say, he's the beneficial owner, as they say.

Q  And did they suffer from allegations of corruption, the company?

A  The company, which is actually a major player, thanks to all the licenses he granted to himself, when he was a minister, is a serious gas producer, but its reputation in the industry is a company that throws elbows and uses political strings. So it's a legitimate company, but it does not have a good reputation in Ukraine.

Q  Because it has a history of corruption?

A  Because it has a history of not just competing on quality of service.

Q  Okay. But is that a euphemism for corrupt activities?

A  He was the minister and he granted himself licenses to explore gas.

Q  Okay. But you're agreeing with me, right, this is --

A  Yes. And it was the position of the U.S. when I went into that office in February 3 that the prosecutor general should, first of all, prosecute whoever took the bribe and shut the case, and second of all, there was still the outstanding issue of trying to recover the stolen assets.

Q  You had some firsthand experience with anti corruption issues in 2014, 2015, and then you went to Kyiv in 2015, correct?

A  Correct.

Q  What else can you tell us about issues relating to the company, related to corruption?

A  Well, I think, that pretty much sums it up. If you're asking about the corruption of the company, there is the issue of how they got the licenses and then their reputation. And so our concern was primarily focused on the fact that we, working with the U.K. and Ukrainian law enforcement authorities, had frozen assets that, to the best of my knowledge, were in accounts that were under his name.

Q  When did that occur?

A  The action -- this was all in 2014. And, again, to the best of my knowledge, the reason why this was the first effort to try to recover stolen assets is because the U.K. Serious Crimes Office had opened up a case in the spring of 2014, and as we were talking to the Ukrainians, how can we be of help, there was a stolen assets recovery conference in London co-hosted by the attorney general and the U.K. counterpart and the World Bank that this became the test case for our ability as partners in the U.S., U.K. playing a key role together to try to recover stolen assets from the previous government.

Q  Did the company ever engage in, you know, public efforts to rehabilitate their image?

A  Yes.

Q  And what were those?

A  I later became aware -- I did not know it at the time because, again, my focus was on Zlochevsky -- that one of the ways that they did was to appoint westerners to their board.

Q  Corporate governance experts?

A  Westerners.

Q  But not corporate governance experts?

A  I don't know all the members' backgrounds. And I've served my entire life in government service, so I'm not familiar with corporate boards.

Q  Do you know who they appointed to their board?

A  The big name in Ukraine was former President of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski.

Q  And why was he appointed to the board?

A  I don't know. I've never met Mr. Zlochevsky, and I do not know why they did what they did.

Q  Anybody else that you recall appointed to the board?

A  It's become clear in public knowledge that Hunter Biden, the son of then-Vice President Biden, was also appointed to the board.

Q  Any idea why they wanted to name him to the board?

A  Again, I've never had a conversation with Zlochevsky, so I don't know.

Q  But it was probably because his dad was the Vice President?

A  That's a question for Zlochevsky. That's, I think, how people have interpreted it.

Q  That's a reasonable interpretation, right?

A  As I said, I have never had a conversation with Mr. Zlochevsky.

Q  Did he have any experience in the natural gas business?

A  I have never met nor do I know the background of Hunter Biden.

Q  Okay. So you don't know if he spoke any of the relevant languages?

A  I do not know.

Q  Do you know if he moved to Ukraine?

A  I don't know.

Q  Do you know how much he got paid?

A  I have not seen any documents. I've heard people make suggestions.

Q  Did he get paid a lot?

A  I'm a U.S. Government employee. I don't know how much corporate board members get in any country, but I understand a lot of people get paid a lot of money.

Q  It wasn't a nominal fee.

A  Again, I don't work in the corporate sector so I don't know what standard board compensation would be.

Q  Okay. I mean, it's been reported that it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000 a month or more?

A  I have read articles, and I have no idea how much Burisma may pay its board members.

Q  Have you ever met with -- during your time in Kyiv, did you ever meet with anybody on the board of Burisma? Did they pay a courtesy call on the embassy?

A  I personally never met and I don't know if board members met with the embassy. I don't know.

Q  Did anybody affiliated with the company ever pay a courtesy call in the embassy to try to help the embassy understand the company is engaging in rehabilitating their image?

A  Again, I can only speak for myself. And there was no one affiliated with Burisma that asked to come to the embassy to meet me. But that's me as the DCM over a 3-year period of time.

Q  In engaging with some of these anti corruption-focused organizations, whether it's NABU or AnTAC, did you have any firsthand experience of the efforts that Burisma was trying to rehabilitate their image, whether -- you know, did NABU communicate that to you?

A  That would not have been a conversation that we had with NABU. I will say that now that you mention it, there apparently was an effort for Burisma to help cosponsor, I guess, a contest that USAID was sponsoring related to clean energy. And when I heard about it I asked USAID to stop that sponsorship.

Q  Why?

A  Because Burisma had a poor reputation in the business, and I didn't think it was appropriate for the U.S. Government to be cosponsoring something with a company that had a bad reputation.

Q  When was that?

A  I would believe that would be sometime in mid-2016.

Q  Okay. Any other communications with, you know, AnTAC officials or NABU about Burisma and their effort to rehabilitate themselves?

A  I do not recall direct communications with anybody from AnTAC. I do know that the former Ambassador to Ukraine, John Herbst, whom I mentioned previously, had been on the board, I believe, of AnTAC. And he recounted to me an exchange with another member of the AnTAC board named Daria Kaleniuk, who criticized him because the Atlantic Council, where he runs the Ukraine Project, agreed to take Burisma as a corporate sponsor. And so Daria criticized the Atlantic Council for doing so.

Q  When was Ambassador Herbst -- when was his tenure?

A  He was Ambassador to Ukraine between 2003 and 2006.

Q  So before --

A  Before Bill Taylor.

Q  Well, before -- okay. Maybe it would be helpful to just go through the chronology of the ambassadors. We've got Herbst, and then -- to the extent you remember. This isn't a quiz.

A  Again, I went to -- I was then serving in Thailand afterwards, so I wasn't necessarily focused on Ukraine. We had Ambassador Herbst. We had Ambassador Taylor, I believe from 2006 to the 2009. The next Ambassador, I believe, was John Tefft. And then the next Ambassador after that was Geoff Pyatt. And then there was Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Q  The fourth narrative you identified, you know, going after the civil society organizations --

A  Right.

Q  -- and you identified NABU and AnTAC, right?

A  Right. NABU was a -- well, it was -- AnTAC was a civil society organization, and the other one that I recall being mentioned early on was something called the Ukraine Crisis Media Center, which was set up to help be a sort of platform for information about Ukraine starting during the Revolution of Dignity, 2014.

Q  Any other organizations you can think of that fall into that fourth bucket?

A  In the initial press coverage, AnTAC was clearly the main target, but these story lines continued to repeat and combine. So, for instance, in May former Mayor Giuliani alleged that former Ambassador Yovanovitch was going to work for a Soros organization and after she left post, which was false. She went to work, still as a U.S. State Department employee, as a diplomat teacher/lecturer at Georgetown.

Q  Was there any basis to that allegation? Like, had she considered it, or was there any talks with any of these organizations?

A  Absolutely none.

Q  Okay. So it was totally, from your point of view, totally fabricated?

A  Fake news. It was, you know. He stated something that was fake, not true, publicly.

Q  So you said the U.K. -- or, I'm sorry, the Ukraine Crisis Media Center, NABU, and AnTAC. Any other organizations sort of fit into that --

A  Those were the only ones that I remember having been mentioned, but, again, there are a lot of stories out there.

Q  Going back to Shokin’s tenure as prosecutor general.

A  Yes.

Q  You indicated that he was not well regarded for his legitimate prosecutions?

A  Correct.

Q  And the same can be said of Lutsenko?

A  Correct.

Q  With regard to Shokin, it really seemed that the IMF and the U.S. Government adopted an official position that Shokin had to go?

A  Correct.

Q  And that's the subject obviously of the Vice President. You know, he made some statements that have been videotaped about how he played a role in removing Shokin, and as a result, you know, $1 billion in aid was freed up. Are you familiar with that?

A  Yes.

Q  And is it fair to say that it was the U.S. Government's official position Shokin needed to go?

A  Yes.

Q  And what did the U.S. Government do to demonstrate that position, in addition to what the Vice President did and said?

A  Right. Again, as I’ve stated before, U.S. State Department officials feel when we're spending taxpayer money in a country we have a fiduciary responsibility. So I'd like at this point to explain what we felt our fiduciary responsibility had been and why this became an issue of policy.

We had been asked by President Poroshenko to help with a project in -- to reform the prosecutor general's office. The previous year we'd worked with Minister of Interior Avakov, whom I mentioned earlier to the launch of what was known as the patrol police. It was an immediate success. They were trained by the California Highway Patrol, brand new police, highest female police officer percentage in the world at the time.

And so he asked us to do something similar in making a quick victory reform in the prosecutor general's office. He appointed, he, Poroshenko, appointed a new deputy prosecutor general named David Sakvarelidze, that's a Georgian name. Just like the deputy head of NABU, there were a lot of Georgians that Poroshenko brought in who had a proven track record in Georgia.

And asked us to work with him and another deputy prosecutor general, with whom we had a good relationship via the FBI, named Vitaly Kasko. And the focus was to create an inspector general's unit inside the prosecutor's office that could go after corrupt prosecutors.

So that was stood up in the -- Shokin was appointed in February. We started -- I think Sakvarelidze may have been appointed in March. We started working on that project, and they hired a bunch of young, enthusiastic prosecutors.

And then in the summertime they launched what was going to be their first case, in the central province of Poltava, as a test case. They had a businessman who complained he was being shaken down by a couple of corrupt prosecutors. He agreed to be a cooperating witness.

They worked with the security service, which had wiretap authority, and they tapped these two prosecutors whose names I believe are Shapakin and Korniyets. Don't know their first names. And then they went in to get the warrants and arrest them.

And the reason why I'm going through all this detail is it's important to understand that one of those two prosecutors that was the first case turned out to have been the former driver of Shokin, who he made his driver a prosecutor.

So the people in the IG unit had no idea that the first corrupt prosecutor -- and there were a lot of them -- that they were targeting happened to have been the former driver and very close, personal friend of the prosecutor general.

When they arrested him -- and the only reason they could arrest him is because the deputy prosecutor general heard about it and tipped them off, except he tipped off the wrong corrupt prosecutor in the province -- Shokin went to war. He wanted to destroy anybody connected with that effort. They tried to fire and put pressure on the judges who would issue the warrants. They tried to fire all of the inspector general prosecutors.

He eventually managed to force out everybody associated with that, including the deputy head of the security service, the intel service, who had provided the wiretapping coverage. It was absolute warfare protecting his associate, and he destroyed the inspector general unit that we'd been standing up.

So then that was the wasting of U.S. taxpayer resources, and so that is the reason why the IMF, the U.S., and the European Union said collectively the justice sector and the prosecutor is so important for the success of this country and it's so important to reform it that Victor Shokin has shown that he’s actively wasting U.S. taxpayer dollars and he's preventing reform.

And because in the conditionality of our sovereign loan guarantees, the U.S. Government guaranteed loans for Ukraine to borrow in the market, 2014, 2015, and 2016, reform, anti corruption reforms, and the prosecutor's reforms were key conditionality.

The conversations that went between the embassy and the State Department were then brought ahead of the Vice President going to Ukraine in December of 2015, and Shokin's removal then became a condition for the loan guarantee.

Q  What year was this?

A  The visit that we're talking about by the Vice President was in December 2015, I believe.

Q  And what official overt acts did the U.S. Government take with regard to Lutsenko?

A  At that point he was not the prosecutor general. He was actually the head of -- he was basically the majority leader in parliament.

Q  No. I'm talking about during Lutsenko's reign as the prosecutor general.

A  Okay. So we're now shifting from the 2015 period to 2016 to 2019. When you say official acts, what do you mean?

Q  Well, there was a number of official acts that, you know, it was the official U.S. Government's position that Shokin needed to go.

A  Right.

Q  And there were similar issues with Lustenko that he wasn't a tremendous prosecutor. Is that correct?

A  Correct. But we never said that Lutsenko should go.

Q  Okay. So the U.S. Government never took an official position that Lutsenko needed to go?

A  We didn't. We complained about some of his actions, but --

Q  It didn't amount to the concern that you have with Shokin?

A  That, I believe, would be an accurate assessment, yes.

Q  Okay. Mr. Jordan.

MR. JORDAN: Well, I would just ask, why? I mean, you said Mr. Shokin was terrible. I think the term you used earlier was he's a typical Ukrainian prosecutor --

MR. KENT: Yeah.

MR. JORDAN: -- didn't do his job, and that you all wanted him gone. You said his kids were -- him and Poroshenko were godfather to each other's kids.

MR. KENT: Yeah.

MR. JORDAN: And then you get the new guy, Lutsenko, who you said is just as bad, also kids are -- you know, kids with -- Mr. Poroshenko and him are godfather to each other's children. Lutsenko is showing up drunk, making statements. And, oh, by the way, he's not even a lawyer. And so I think the counselor's question was, where was the outrage with Mr. Lutsenko that was there for Mr. Shokin?

MR. KENT: First of all, the first phase -- Yuriy Lutsenko was prosecutor general for over 3 years, almost 3 and a half years. Shokin was for a year. And his unwillingness to do anything and his venality and his undermining U.S.-supported projects started within several months.

Yuriy Lutsenko, as I say, is a charming person, and so it was not clear how he would end up being as a prosecutor general in actively undermining reforms immediately. Several months after he became prosecutor general in the spring of 2016, for instance, former President Poroshenko in one of his calls with then-Vice President Biden asked for a former, I believe, New Jersey State prosecutor words redacted                                             by name

words redacted                       had served for 2 years as an anti corruption adviser under contract to the Department of Justice in Ukraine and spoke Ukrainian fluently. And, in fact, Poroshenko had thought about appointing him as the first head of the NABU, this National Anti-Corruption Bureau. It turned out he was too old. He was already 65, and you had to be under 65 to be appointed.

So Poroshenko had actually helped recruit him for a previous anti corruption job. So he asked by name whether the U.S. Government would be willing to bring him back to Ukraine as an adviser. The U.S. Government agreed and so the embassy's part of the section that does anti corruption work and law enforcement reform brought words redacted                       on contract as an adviser inside the prosecutor general's office to help mentor Lutsenko, to help stand up an IG unit to replace the informal team that had been destroyed by Shokin.

So for the first period of time it appeared that we were going to be able to work with Mr. Lutsenko on prosecutorial reform, which was both a necessary precondition for a successful country and a priority for the U.S. Government programming.

MR. JORDAN: It's been reported that there was broad international consensus on Shokin. Who led that charge? Was that everyone was equally involved and invested in moving him, or was that led by the U.S.?

MR. KENT: When it comes to certain conditionalities, the IMF, particularly in the economic sphere, has, I would say, the primary voice. When it comes to certain other efforts the U.S. oftentimes is the lead voice. That includes in the security sector where we provide the most military assistance. And we coordinate through the European Command with willing allies, like the Poles, Lithuanians, U.K., Canada, and in the justice sector, as well, the U.S. played -- also had a lead voice.

MR. JORDAN: So the United States would be the lead one pushing for the new prosecutor?

MR. KENT: I would say the U.S. has had more skin in the game on --

MR. JORDAN: Oh, of course.

MR. KENT: -- justice sector reform over the last 5 years.

MR. JORDAN: That's understandable. Right. Thank you.

MR. ZELDIN: If I could follow up to that, if you don't mind, Steve.

So did Shokin ever investigate actual corruption?

MR. KENT: I am not aware of any case that came to conclusion, but I do not have insight into what all the prosecutors do in Ukraine, and there are about about 25,000 of them.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware of him ever having an investigation into actual corruption?

MR. KENT: I do not know, again, what happens behind closed doors. I think proof is in the pudding. Am I aware of any case on corruption that went to court and was settled when he was prosecutor general? I'm not aware of that.

MR. ZELDIN: I'm not asking that.

MR. KENT: Okay. What are you asking?

MR. ZELDIN: If you ever had an investigation. I'm not asking about the conclusion of the investigation.

MR. KENT: Honestly, sir, I can't answer that question. I do not know.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. Earlier on in response to the questions you were asked with regards to Burisma and Zlochevsky, it sounded like you were talking about actual corruption. No?

MR. KENT: When I was talking about Zlochevsky, when I was talking to Mr. Danilenko, the deputy prosecutor general, prior to Shokin coming in, that was based on a specific case that had been developed in 2014 before I came to Ukraine. And by time I got there, that case had been dismissed by the team against Zlochevsky, the person, by the team of prosecutors that were there prior to Mr. Shokin going into office.

MR. ZELDIN: But you did testify that Shokin had an investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky, correct?

MR. KENT: I did not say that.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware that Shokin had an open investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky?

MR. KENT: I have read claims by people that there were investigations, but I have no specific knowledge about whether those investigations were open or what the nature of them might be.

MR. ZELDIN: When did you learn of an investigation by Shokin into Burisma and Zlochevsky?

MR. KENT: I just told you, I did not learn of an investigation. I've read claims that there may have been an investigation.

MR. ZELDIN: When did you first read of claims that there may be an investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky?

MR. KENT: I read stories referencing that in the last several months after the series of articles starting in March brought this set of issues to the fore.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. So before the last several months when you started reading about a case against Burisma and Zlochevsky, you were never previously aware of an investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky?

MR. KENT: Specifically during Shokin's time, no.

MR. ZELDIN: And one followup. With regards to the EU and the IMF, was there a U.S.-led effort to get the EU and the IMF to also target Shokin, or was that something that EU and IMF did totally on their own?

MR. KENT: The IMF keeps its own counsel, but oftentimes when they go on factfinding missions they often have conversations with embassies. Here in Washington, the U.S. Treasury is the U.S. Government liaison with the IMF.

In terms of the European Union, traditionally in a country like Ukraine, the European Union Ambassador and the U.S. Ambassador coordinate very closely. And since 2014 and the German presidency of the G7, there is a coordinating process for the G7 ambassadors plus the head of the European Union mission. And they meet almost weekly, and they discuss issues and they go into issues like this in very deep detail.

MR. ZELDIN: So the United States and the EU were coordinating with regards to the effort to target Shokin?

MR. KENT: The U.S. and the EU shared their assessments at the time. And I have to say that in particular, if we're talking about the period of time between Thanksgiving, 2015, and March of 2016, I was not in Ukraine. I was back here to take Ukrainian for several months.

My understanding is that the ambassadors spoke and compared views on their concerns that Shokin's continued presence as prosecutor general prevented any hope of prosecutorial reform.

MR. JORDAN: Mr. Secretary, you said you didn't know for sure if Shokin was investigating Burisma, but you knew Burisma was a troubled, corrupt company, right?

MR. KENT: As I said, Burisma had a reputation for being, first of all, one of the largest private producers of natural gas in Ukraine but also had a reputation for not being the sort of corporate, cleanest member of the business community.

MR. JORDAN: And you were so concerned about that that you advised USAID not to do any type of coordinated activity --

MR. KENT: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: -- sponsoring any type of corporate or contest with them? Okay.

MR. KENT: Correct.

MR. MCCAUL: Sort of following up on that question, and thank you for your service, yeah, you referred to Burisma as it had a bad reputation essentially?

MR. KENT: That is what I was told by the members of our embassy community who focused on economic issues and had liaison with the U.S. business community, yes.

MR. MCCAUL: And so you instructed USAID to pull back on funding for a clean energy conference, is that right, that Burisma was headlining?

MR. KENT: To the best of my awareness, it was one of these sponsor programs where it invited school kids or young Ukrainians to come up with ideas for a clean energy campaign, and there may have been something like a camera for the best proposal.

And the cosponsorship was between a part of USAID that worked on energy and economic issues. And when I heard about it I had concerns, so I raised those with the mission head of USAID in country at the time and she shared my concerns.

MR. MCCAUL: So when the State Department evaluates foreign assistance to countries isn't it appropriate for them to look at the level of corruption in those countries?

MR. KENT: Yes. Part of our foreign assistance was specifically focused to try to limit and reduce corruption. And we also tried, to the best of our knowledge and abilities, to do due diligence to make sure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are being spent for the purposes that they were appropriated and that they are as effective as they can be.

MR. MCCAUL: In fact, if you look at Central America, corrupt governments down there, isn't it appropriate to evaluate the corruption factor and where the money goes to on foreign assistance?

MR. KENT: I will be honest with you, sir, I've never served in the Western Hemisphere, and I've only made one trip to Panama as part of my National Defense University industrial study group. So I would defer to my colleagues who are working on Central American policy.

MR. MCCAUL: But in line with your previous statements, the whole notion of looking at corruption in foreign governments and predicating foreign assistance on that, is an appropriate thing.

MR. KENT: I believe that my colleagues who have worked on international narcotics and law enforcement see when there are funds appropriated by Congress to try to fight drug trafficking and improve the law enforcement systems in Central America. It's intended to help our national interests to both stop the drug trafficking and improve the justice system so that corruption can be contained.

MR. MCCAUL: And I think based on your testimony, Ukraine has a strong and long history of corruption. Is that correct?

MR. KENT: I would say that corruption is part of the reason why Ukrainians came out into the streets in both 2004 when somebody tried to steal the election and again in 2014 because of a corrupt, kleptocratic, pro-Russian government, which eventually collapsed. The Ukrainians decided enough was enough.

And so Ukraine, yes, is a country that has struggled with these issues, but I would say also in the last 5 years has made great progress.

MR. MCCAUL: And just for the record, I signed with Chairman Engel a letter to obligate the funding security assistance to Ukraine. But is it not appropriate for the President of the United States to bring up with a foreign leader issues of corruption when the foreign leader brings up Javelin missiles? Is it not appropriate to discuss going after corruption in a country where we are providing foreign assistance?

MR. KENT: Issues of corruption have been part of the high-level dialogue between U.S. leaders and Ukrainian leaders regardless of who is the U.S. leader and who the Ukrainian leader is. So that is a normal issue of the diplomatic discussion at the highest level.

MR. MCCAUL: Thank you.

MR. MEADOWS: Steve, can I just get one clarification?

It's not long.

MR. CASTOR: Of course.

MR. MEADOWS: Did I hear you say that Shokin, prosecutor Shokin, really, his reputation within 3 months of being appointed was really negative from your standpoint? Is that what you said?

MR. KENT: That's what I said.

And it's not just my personal opinion. If you look at the political polling, if you go to IRI or NDI, both of which have done extensive polling in Ukraine since 2014, President Poroshenko, who was elected with roughly 55 percent of the vote in 2014, maintained that support through the first year. And then as this controversy over the corrupt godfather of his kids, Prosecutor General Shokin, exploded in what was known as the diamond prosecutor affair -- because one of the things they confiscated from his former driver was a cache of diamonds -- his support levels, Poroshenko's support levels, as polled by the International Republican Institute in particular, plummeted from about 55 percent to the mid-20s over that period of time.

And so that was the issue that destroyed Poroshenko's credibility and his high-level support in the eyes of the Ukrainian people.

MR. MEADOWS: So timeframe, was that 2015?

MR. KENT: Yes, sir.

MR. MEADOWS: And so when in 2015 would your opinion have been this is a bad guy, we can't trust him?

MR. KENT: Our concerns about Shokin's conduct in office were triggered by the reaction to the so-called diamond prosecutor case.

MR. MEADOWS: Yeah. And when was that?

MR. KENT: That took place in late summer, early fall of 2015.

MR. MEADOWS: All right. Steve, go ahead.

MR. CASTOR: With all the time I have left, I'd like to open up a new topic. I'm just kidding. I'm out of time.

MR. KENT: And if we could take a break.

THE CHAIRMAN: Yeah. Actually, what I was going to suggest is let's take a half an hour lunch break. Let's resume promptly at 1:00.

I want to remind all Members that may not have been here for prior sessions, although we have not discussed classified information today, we are in a closed deposition, and under House Rules, Members are not to discuss testimony in a closed session.

I know, Mr. Jordan, I've had very little luck in getting members to abide by that. But those are the rules, and I'm just reminding Members and staff they're not to discuss the substance of the testimony.

[Recess.]

[1:10 p.m.]

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Let's go back on the record.

Mr. Secretary, I want to just ask you a few questions to follow up on my colleague's questions, and then I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Mitchell to continue going through the timeline with you.

One question I have though is, we've come to learn of a meeting between Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Lutsenko, and there were some Ukrainians that were apparently -- apparently came to believe that President Trump had called into that meeting.

Do you know anything about that?

MR. KENT: I do not. ,

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Earlier in response to some questions from my colleagues in the minority you mentioned that there was an effort to get the top level of the State Department to issue a statement of full-throated support for the Ambassador and that statement was not forthcoming. Is that right?

MR. KENT: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And was the hope that that statement would come from Secretary Pompeo?

MR. KENT: The statements of that nature could come from a variety of people or levels. So I think we were looking for a statement of support from a high-ranking State Department official.

THE CHAIRMAN: And would it have been most helpful coming from the Secretary himself?

MR. KENT: It's always most helpful if the top leader issues a statement, but to be honest, I cannot recall during that week whether he was on travel. If he were on travel then Deputy Secretary Sullivan might have been the top-ranking official in the building. I just don't recall on those particular days who was essentially in charge.

THE CHAIRMAN: And did you ever learn why no statement was issued by a top-level official at the State Department?

MR. KENT: No.

THE CHAIRMAN: You mention, I think, that in this context that the suggestion was made to the Ambassador that instead of or because there would be no statement coming from the top that maybe the Ambassador should go out herself, defend herself, and express her personal support for the President.

MR. KENT: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: Where did that idea come from?

MR. KENT: I think I recall being copied on emails in which Under Secretary David Hale made the suggestion. Separately, Gordon Sondland made the suggestion. I think with Gordon he made the suggestion specifically to be aggressive on Twitter or to tweet. But in any case, there were a number of suggestions that Ambassador Yovanovitch herself speak out against the campaign against her.

THE CHAIRMAN: And how did you come to know Ambassador Sondland's advice?

MR. KENT: I believe I was copied on the email. It may not have been -- I don't think it was from him, but it was an exchange between Ambassador Yovanovitch and my guess would be leaders in the European Bureau. Again, that is an email that should be a record that was collected and is part of the document collection.

THE CHAIRMAN: Part of the document collection that has not yet been provided to Congress?

MR. KENT: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And in that email communication, that's where you would have learned of Ambassador Sondland's suggestion that the Ambassador tweet out a defense of herself and express her support for the President?

MR. KENT: And the President's foreign policy, yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: You mentioned that there are appropriate legal channels that can be used if the United States is conducting an investigation --

MR. KENT: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- and wishes to get overseas evidence through LEGAT and through the MLAT process. Is that right?

MR. KENT: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: There have been a number of public press reports that Attorney General Bill Barr and others at the Justice Department are essentially doing an investigation of the investigators into the origins of the Russia investigation.

Do you know whether Mr. Barr or anyone else at the Justice Department has sought information to bolster, I think, what you describe is a bogus theory about the 2016 election that had been part of that John Solomon series?

MR. KENT: I am not aware of any Justice Department inquiries to Ukraine regarding 2016, no.

THE CHAIRMAN: I think you testified in an answer to my colleague's questions that at the time that it was U.S. policy and IMF policy and the policy of other allies and allied organizations that Shokin needed to go. This was based on Shokin essentially dismantling an inspector general office the U.S. had helped fund to fight corruption in Ukraine, particularly in the prosecutor's office. Is that right?

MR. KENT: That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And at the time that the State Department and these other international organizations were seeking to have Shokin removed, you weren't even aware whether Shokin had any investigation of Burisma?

MR. KENT: I do not recall that being part of the conversation. The conversation was very much focused, first and foremost, on the so-called diamond prosecutors case that involved these corrupt prosecutors, Korniyets and Shapakin, and the campaign that Shokin conducted to destroy and remove from office anyone associated with it regardless of what part of government those officials served in, prosecutors, investigators, judges, even security officials who had been involved in the wiretapping.

THE CHAIRMAN: And what was your position at the time?

MR. KENT: At the time this was occurring, in 2015, I was in the capacity of the number two at the embassy, the deputy chief of mission.

THE CHAIRMAN: So as the number two in the embassy, at this time, you weren't even aware of even an allegation that there was an investigation underway by Shokin involving Burisma?

MR. KENT: That was not something that I recall ever coming up or being discussed.

THE CHAIRMAN: My colleague also asked you about whether it was appropriate to bring up the conversation -- bring up a discussion of corruption in the context of the President of Ukraine asking for more javelins or expressing the need for more javelins.

I want to ask you actually about what the President said, because he didn't talk generically about corruption. He asked for a favor involving an investigation into CrowdStrike and that conspiracy theory and for an investigation into the Bidens. Is it appropriate for the President of the United States in the context of an ally seeking military support to ask that ally to investigate his political rival?

MR. KENT: The first time I had detailed knowledge of that narrative was after the White House declassified the transcript that was prepared -- not transcript, the record of conversation that was prepared by staff at the White House. As a general principle, I do not believe the U.S. should ask other countries to engage in politically associated investigations and prosecutions.

THE CHAIRMAN: Particularly those that may interfere with the U.S. election?

MR. KENT: As a general principle, I don't think that as a matter of policy the U.S. should do that period, because I have spent much of my career trying to improve the rule of law. And in countries like Ukraine and Georgia, both of which want to join NATO, both of which have enjoyed billions of dollars of assistance from Congress, there is an outstanding issue about people in office in those countries using selectively politically motivated prosecutions to go after their opponents. And that's wrong for the rule of law regardless of what country that happens.

THE CHAIRMAN: And since that is really U.S. policy to further the rule of law and to discourage political investigations, having the President of the United States effectively ask for a political investigation of his opponent would run directly contrary to all of the anti corruption efforts that we were making. Is that a fair statement?

MR. KENT: I would say that request does not align with what has been our policy towards Ukraine and many other countries, yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Mitchell.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  Good afternoon, sir.

A  Afternoon.

Q  I'm going to pick up where Mr. Goldman left off, which was the end of March of this year, 2019. And you testified earlier that you met with the deputy director of NABU on about March 19.

A  I did not. I was here in the United States. Somebody at the embassy did.

Q  And you received correspondence regarding a meeting that the deputy director of NABU had with someone in the embassy in Kyiv. Is that correct?

A  Correct. Somebody in the embassy sent an email recounting a conversation that was held with Mr. Gizo Uglava, deputy head of NABU.

Q  And that email relayed a conversation that the deputy director had with Mr. Lutsenko --

A  Correct.

Q  -- about an interview that Mr. Lutsenko had given with an American journalist?

A  Correct.

Q  Was that the first time that you got wind of this interview that Mr. Lutsenko had had with, what you later learned to be, Mr. Solomon?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. And the following day, March 20, was the day that Mr. Solomon published the article in which there was video of part of the interview that he had with Mr. Lutsenko. Is that correct?

A  That's my recollection of what happened on the 20th of March.

Q  And once you saw that article, is this when the State Department issued or shortly thereafter issued these denials saying that it was a complete fabrication, it was false?

A  Yes. It would have been on March 20 that the U.S. Embassy, which is 7 hours ahead of us, and the press team at the European Bureau would have worked to prepare guidance in response to attacks against our Ambassador.

Q  Were you involved in that?

A  Yes, I was.

Q  Okay. What was your involvement?

A  I reviewed the language, as I do any proposed press guidance related to any of the six countries over which I have policy oversight, and I have the ability to either clear -- with just that word "clear" -- or make suggestions and edits for the text.

Q  Okay. And in this particular case, what did you do?

A  I believe I may have toughened up the language, so complete fabrication may have been from me. But I cannot tell you in detail because press guidance is just that. It's then provided by a press officer in response to press inquiries.

Q  Okay. But you agreed at the time, as you do now, that it was, in fact, a complete fabrication?

A  Yes. I can tell you that it was my language about the fiduciary responsibility, the same language you heard me use here today, because of my background in being the director of the office which had the responsibility for undertaking these programs.

And so that language about we have the fiduciary responsibility to ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used appropriately, and when they're not we redirected them to better purposes, that was language that I added.

Q  And based on your personal experience and your personal knowledge of these allegations?

A  Correct.

Q  And then at some point -- and the chairman asked you questions about this as well -- there was an effort or discussion, let me say it that way, about whether the State Department should issue a full-throated defense for the Ambassador?

A  Yes.

Q  And that was done over email?

A  Yes.

Q  And that was Ambassador Sondland, Under Secretary Hale, and counselor -- you think Counselor Brechbuhl might have been on those emails as well?

A  Two separate strings. Ambassador Sondland's communications would have been with Ambassador Yovanovitch, and then she would have communicated with the Department. There would have been potentially communications with the European front office with Under Secretary Hale and Counselor Brechbuhl.

Q  Were you on all of those communications that you've just described?

A  The emails that I've described are because I was copied on the emails, and that's why in the process of collecting documents relevant to the subpoena research, my memory was refreshed of the email traffic on which I was copied.

Q  And what was the time period for that email traffic in relation to the article that came about on or about March 20?

A  It would have been over the next perhaps 10 days, basically the last 10 days of March.

Q  Okay. And during that time period, were there also additional articles that came out by Mr. Solomon?

A  The articles came out, if not daily, almost daily, and they oftentimes combined two of the four themes I laid out before. To the best of my recollection, there was never a new line of attack, but many articles combined two of the previous four themes.

Q  Okay. And the suggestion was made to the Ambassador to release a tweet or make some sort of strong statement herself. Is that right?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay. And did the Ambassador do that?

A  This back and forth was done in the context of the upcoming, at that point, first round in the Ukrainian presidential elections that took place, I believe, on March 31.

So Ambassador Yovanovitch, in consultation with her press attache, made a decision, she informed us, to record some preelection videos encouraging Ukrainians to vote. And as part of that process, she included in that a statement of support of the administration and the foreign policy, the administration of President Trump and its foreign policy.

Q  Okay. And those videos that you just described, the purpose of them was to publish them in Ukraine. Is that correct?

A  Correct. These were videos that the embassy was already planning to issue in a preelection encouragement for Ukrainians to engage in their civic duties. And so Ambassador Yovanovitch used that metaphor of civic duty in making reference to support as a career nonpartisan public official who supported and carried out the foreign policy of President Trump as she had with other Presidents.

Q  So was the intended audience of those videos people within the United States as well?

A  My understanding based on the email back and forth that I received from Ambassador Yovanovitch, including her press officer, was that her intent was to send a signal such as was being suggested by her within the context of something that was already being planned that was focused on electoral and presidential politics.

Q  Okay. And do you know whether that video was forwarded to anyone within the White House?

A  I do not know.

Q  Do you know why the Department of State elected not to do a full-throated defense of the Ambassador?

A  I think that's a question that the committees could ask those outside of the European Bureau.

Q  You do not know why?

A  I do not know why.

Q  Did you have any conversations at any point with anyone who would have made that decision?

A  The State Department is a hierarchical organization. I work for the acting assistant secretary. Normally the acting assistant secretary is the one who engages officials above our bureau, to include the Under Secretary of Political Affairs, David Hale, who has oversight over our bureau; on occasion, the counselor of the Department, Ulrich Brechbuhl; and then depending on the situation, as appropriate, the Secretary himself.

Q  Okay. So these are all the individuals that would have made that decision?

A  These are the leaders of the Department of State.

Q  Okay. But did you have any conversations with them --

A  No.

Q  -- about their decision not to issue a full-throated defense of the Ambassador?

A  I did not have conversations with them, no.

Q  Are you aware of anyone from the Department of State at around the end of March or beginning of April reaching out to Sean Hannity?

A  Yes.

Q  What do you know about that?

A  I believe, to the best of my recollection, the counselor for the Department, Ulrich Brechbuhl, reached out and suggested to Mr. Hannity that if there was no proof of the allegations, that he should stop covering them.

Q  And how do you know that?

A  Because I was informed of that in an email.

Q  By who?

A  I cannot say for certain who was the sender. It could have been from the counselor, and it could have been from Acting Assistant Secretary Reeker.

Q  Okay. And why would they have informed you of this communication to Hannity?

A  Because I'm the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State overseeing our relations with Ukraine, and I am normally the one who would have primary communications with our ambassadors or charges for the six countries over which I have policy oversight.

Q  Okay. So is it fair to say that you were in communication with Ambassador Yovanovitch pretty frequently during this time period, end of March, beginning of April, about these issues?

A  It is fair to say that when she was Ambassador and I was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, we were in regular communication about everything that went on in the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.

Q  Okay. And do you know whether this communication from Counselor Brechbuhl to Sean Hannity had any effect?

A  I unplugged when we moved back to the U.S. and so we don't have a TV at home, so I do not watch TV at night.

Q  Okay. But the situation regarding Ambassador Yovanovitch and the allegations against her was something that you were keenly aware of during this time period?

A  Correct. However, the week you're referring to is the week of the Ukrainian presidential election, and so my focus that week was on the first round of results and what would be the potential impact on U.S. national interests if, as seemed likely at that time, there would be a new President.

Q  Do you have any recollection as to when Counselor Brechbuhl reached out to Hannity?

A  I do not. If you had asked me that question before you gave me a timeframe, I would have given you a rough timeframe. I do not remember the exact days. End of March, early April is what I would have said.

Q  But, again, it's memorialized in an email to the best of your recollection?

A  To the best of my recollection, there is some sort of email regarding that, yes.

Q  Okay. Are you aware that at the beginning of March Ambassador Yovanovitch was asked to extend her stay in Embassy Kyiv?

A  Yes.

Q  How do you know that?

A  The first person who asked her to consider extending her stay was me, and that was in January when she was back for the chief of mission conference. We had a challenge in the process of finding someone that we would nominate to replace her. And because of a different assignment, it was clear that that was not going to happen on schedule.

And we had concern -- I had concern that the country, Ukraine, would be going through transition and we might not have an Ambassador there. So I initially asked her to consider staying on through the election season in Ukraine.

Q  When you say through the election season, what time period did that encompass?

A  There were two elections scheduled for this year in Ukraine. There was presidential elections in the spring and then there were parliamentary elections scheduled no later than the fall.

Q  So when you talked to Ambassador Yovanovitch in January of 2019 and you floated the idea that she extend her stay you thought of extending her stay through the fall of 2019?

A  My proposal was through the end of the year to give us a chance to find a potential number -- another nominee that the White House could put forward and possibly be confirmed and be out in Ukraine, or at the very least having an experienced Ambassador there through the most critical part of transition and then possibly have the Charge.

Q  Had you talked to anyone else at the Department of State prior to making this proposal to the Ambassador in January 2019?

A  Not that I recall, but it is possible that I talked with Wess Mitchell, who was our assistant secretary at the time.

Q  Okay. Is it fair to say that you wouldn't have proposed this to Ambassador Yovanovitch had you thought that it would have met any resistance at the Department of State?

A  Correct.

Q  And that's because Ambassador Yovanovitch was a well-respected Ambassador?

A  She was the senior-most career Ambassador in Europe, yes.

Q  And what was Ambassador Yovanovitch's reaction when you offered her this possibility in January of 2019?

A  Well, I asked her if she would be willing to stay longer, and she said that she would think about it. And she came back and said she would be willing to consider it.

Q  Okay. When did she say that?

A  Again, we started the conversation in January. My guess is that she thought about it for a little bit and got back to us, to me some point over the next month, which was prior to the conversation that you were referring to in March.

Q  Okay. So between the time that she came back to you and said that she was willing to extend her stay and the conversation that you had in March, what happened with regard to this extension?

A  So the conversation in March was not with me. It was with Under Secretary David Hale. He visited Ukraine the first week of March. I accompanied that visit. And Under Secretary Hale asked her to stay until 2020.

Q  Had you spoken to Under Secretary Hale about his proposal before he made it to the Ambassador?

A  No.

Q  Okay.

A  Not that I recall.

Q  And did you speak with Ambassador Yovanovitch about Under Secretary Hale's offer?

A  Well, I was there on the trip, and so by time she told him that she was willing to stay, because what she said was she wanted to have clarity because she had a 91-year-old mother with her and needed to also plan for other issues, by time Under Secretary Hale flew away she had indicated her willingness to stay essentially an extra year through 2020 to give the State Department and the administration time to find a nominee that could be nominated and confirmed and sent out so that we would have an experienced Ambassador in an important country at a time of transition.

Q  When did you first learn that the offer for an extension had been rescinded?

A  I don't know I heard, per se, that the offer for an extension had been rescinded. The offer was on or about the 5th of March. The 5th to 7th of March, I think, was the time when Under Secretary Hale was there. The media storm that was launched with Mr. Solomon’s interview of Prosecutor General Lutsenko started on March 20, 2 weeks later.

Q  Okay. So the talk about potentially recalling Ambassador Yovanovitch and the rescinding of the extension were one and the same?

A  To be clear, there were two people representing leadership of the State Department, first I, the deputy assistant secretary, and then the under secretary who asked Ambassador Yovanovitch about her willingness to stay longer. What then happened was a media campaign against her, and then subsequent to that was a request for her to come back.

Q  Okay. And when was that request made for her to come back?

A  To the best of my recollection, she indicated on April 25 that she'd been instructed to get on a plane to come back to Washington as soon as possible.

Q  So she indicated to you?

A  Yes.

Q  Was that the first that you heard that she'd been recalled?

A  I believe that was the first time I heard that instructions had been sent for her to come back to the U.S., yes.

Q  Okay. So you learned for the first time that she had been instructed to come back from the Ambassador herself?

A  To the best of my recollection, yes.

Q  And did she provide any -- at any time, has she provided any reasons why she was recalled?

A  I understand that, because it was part of her opening statement that was published, she referred to a conversation she had with the Deputy Secretary of State.

Q  Other than her opening statement?

A  I believe that I did hear about that conversation subsequently, and I cannot say whether it was from her or from one of the people above me, like acting assistant secretary. But I did hear an account of that session. I heard of it before reading it on Friday, yes.

Q  Okay. And whatever you heard before, was it consistent with what you read on Friday?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. Who else did you speak to, if anyone, on the 7th floor regarding the recall of Ambassador Yovanovitch and the reasons for that recall?

A  I was not having conversations with anybody on the so-called 7th floor State Department leadership about this issue.

Q  Anyone else at the State Department?

A  I or other people having conversations with the 7th floor?

Q  People that you had conversations with.

A  I did not have further conversations about that effort. It was presented as a decision, so it was, she was recalled. And I believe she came back on the 26th of April for consultations.

Q  Well, what was your reaction to learning that she'd been recalled?

A  I, on a personal level, felt awful for her because it was within 2 months of us asking her, the Under Secretary of State asking her to stay another year. And within a very short order she was being recalled.

Q  But you never sought a time to investigate why or find out why she was being recalled?

A  My position is not to investigate. Decisions had been made by the leadership of the State Department and ambassadors serve at the pleasure of. So when an instruction comes down that is a decision that was being made.

Q  So on May 6 the State Department issued a statement saying that Ambassador Yovanovitch was ending her assignment in Kyiv as planned.

A  I believe --

Q  Do you recall that statement?

A  I believe that was something issued by the embassy in Kyiv not by the State Department, and it was in the form of a management notice.

Q  Do you recall seeing that at the time?

A  I did.

Q  Okay. And what was your reaction to that embassy notice?

A  If I'd been the DCM, I don't think that’s how I would have had that news be released to the embassy community.

Q  Okay. Can you explain?

A  I think of a situation of that magnitude I would have called a townhall meeting and talked to people face to face. Also the fact that it was leaked to the Ukrainian press within 2 hours was another indication of why issuing a management notice to roughly 600 people would not have been the way to introduce that information to 600 employees that their boss was no longer going to be their supervisor.

Q  Okay. So I take it that you took issue with the way in which it was communicated, but what about the substance of the message itself, and specifically that it said that she was leaving her post as planned?

A  Again, this was an embassy management notice. If I had still been the deputy chief of mission, I would have handled notification of the embassy staff differently, so that's -- I am now the -- that was my job from 2015 to 2018. My job now is as a deputy assistant secretary for oversight of policy and programming. It's not running an embassy.

Q  On May 14, Rudy Giuliani told Ukrainian journalists that the Ambassador was recalled because she was part of the efforts against the President. Were you aware of Mr. Giuliani's statement at the time?

A  I do not know that I saw that statement at that time, no, but I did see an interview that he gave with a Ukrainian publication, censor.net, that I believe was published on May 27 that expressed a variant of that opinion, yes

[1:40 p.m.]

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  And what was your reaction to Mr. Giuliani's statement?

A  Mr. Giuliani, at that point, had been carrying on a campaign for several months full of lies and incorrect information about Ambassador Yovanovitch, so this was a continuation of his campaign of lies.

Q  So you did not think it was true at the time that the Ambassador was removed because she was part of the efforts against the President?

A  I believe that Mr. Giuliani, as a U.S. citizen, has First Amendment rights to say whatever he wants, but he's a private citizen. His assertions and allegations against former Ambassador Yovanovitch were without basis, untrue, period.

Q  How did Bill Taylor come to be appointed as the Charge d’ affaires?

A  When it became clear that Ambassador Yovanovitch was going to be recalled, one of my responsibilities as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State was to try to find and resolve how we are going to ensure that our key missions have appropriate leadership.

One of the unfortunate elements of the timing was that we were also undergoing a transition in my old job as deputy chief of mission. The person who replaced me had already been moved early to be our DCM and Charge in Sweden, and so we had a temporary acting deputy chief of mission. So that left the embassy not only without -- the early withdraw of Ambassador Yovanovitch left us not only without an Ambassador but without somebody who had been selected to be deputy chief of mission.

So collectively we all knew -- and the "we" is the people who ran our policy towards Europe -- that we needed to find an experienced hand that could help the embassy in transition, help the relationship in transition, and also be a mentor to the new incoming deputy chief of mission, who had not yet arrived and had never been the deputy chief of mission.

There was a process of looking to see who was available, who might be good. I had at one point thought of Bill Taylor, but because he had not been a career Foreign Service officer but had been a senior executive civil servant, I knew that it would be very difficult to go through the process of recalling him and getting in him in a position to go out.

In a conversation with Kurt Volker, then the special representative for Ukraine negotiations, Kurt mentioned again that he thought Bill would do a good job. And I told him, I agree, but I just don't know if it's possible. So I started that process of engaging the lawyers and the people who deal with personnel issues to see if it were actually possible to recall someone who had been an Ambassador, had been a senior executive, but had not been a senior Foreign Service officer back to serve as Charge. And that took us 3 or 4 weeks, but we eventually got to the answer that we achieved, which was yes, and he went out as Charge, arriving June 17th or 18th.

Q  And did you have conversations with Bill Taylor about this possibility of him becoming the Charge d'affaires during this time period?

A  Extensive conversations.

Q  On April 29th, Bill Taylor sent a WhatsApp message to Kurt Volker describing a conversation that you had with Bill Taylor in which you talked about two, quote, two snake pits, one in Kyiv, and one in Washington. And then Mr. Taylor went on to say that you, Mr. Kent, described much more than he knew, and it was very ugly.

Do you recall having that conversation along these lines with Mr. Taylor?

A  I had many conversations with Charge Taylor, and my reference to the snake pits would have been in the context of having had our Ambassador just removed through actions by corrupt Ukrainians in Ukraine as well as private American citizens back here.

Q  And what corrupt Ukrainians in the Ukraine were you talking about?

A  The series of corrupt former -- or still current prosecutors who engaged former Mayor Giuliani and his associates, and those included former Prosecutor General Shokin, the then Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, who no longer is, the special anti corruption prosecutor, Nazar Kholodnytsky, and anther deputy prosecutor general named Kostiantyn Kulyk.

Q  And when you say engaged, what do you mean by engaged?

A  Well, those individuals -- when I say engaged, they apparently met, they had conversations. Some of them were interviewed -- Mr. Kulyk was interviewed, I believe -- by Mr. Solomon. Mr. Giuliani publicized his meeting with Nazar Kholodnytsky in Paris about the same time that he gave an interview to censor.net and accused former Ambassador Yovanovitch, me, and the entire U.S. Embassy of partisan activity in 2016. And we’ve already talked about his engagement with Shokin and Lutsenko.

Q  Do you have any any information about money being exchanged between any of these Ukrainians that you described to Mr. Giuliani?

A  I have no knowledge of any money being exchanged.

Q  It doesn't mean that they didn't exchange money, you just have no knowledge of it?

A  I have no information to suggest that happened.

Q  Okay. Now, Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman have also appeared in the news recently?

A  Yes.

Q  Were you aware of Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman's existence at the end of April, beginning of June 2019?

A  Yes.

Q  How did you become aware of them?

A  I first heard their names through a series of conversations with a variety of people.

Q  Okay. When was the first time you heard of Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman?

A  There is a U.S. -- I'll give you a series of points and I'm trying in my mind sort out what I heard from whom, when, but we're talking about the period primarily starting in April, possibly in March. I'm not sure that I heard of their names before then.

There is a U.S. businessman who's active in gas trading to Ukraine named Dale Perry, his name came up publicly last week because he was interviewed by AP. He sent an open letter complaining about corruption and pressure that he was facing, including he said, an effort to unseat the American Ambassador in Ukraine.

And he fingered three individuals that he said were attempting to move into the gas business, and those included Harry Sargeant III from Florida and then two, he said, people who came from Odesa, referencing Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. So that was the first source that I recall hearing.

Second, I heard from people when I went to Ukraine in the first week of May that Giuliani associates were coming to Ukraine, and the names that were mentioned were Fruman and Parnas. One of the people I met was an affiliate of the new President -- President-elect at that point; he was not yet President -- and his name was Ivan Bakanov. He has since become head of their security service. And he mentioned Fruman's name, and he said and there’s another one, I don't remember his name. And later on he WhatsApp'd me the business cards of Fruman and Parnas.

And also on that trip before I met with Bakanov, I met with Minister of Interior Avakov, the person whom I'd had the conversation I detailed in Washington in February, and he mentioned them as well, and said that they were coming in to Ukraine and that he -- that was the first time that I heard that Rudy Giuliani was planning to come that week as well.

Q  So the first time that you spoke with Mr. Avakov in February he did not mention Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman is that correct?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay. But then he did at the beginning of May?

A  Correct.

Q  And when what day say exactly about Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman?

A  He said that he had heard that they were coming to town and that their associate Rudy Giuliani was coming as well.

Q  Okay. You said it was the first week of May?

A  That's when I was in Ukraine, yes. So I was in Ukraine I believe May 8th and 9th, and I believe I may have met Avakov the first day I was there, that would be the 8th, and he mentioned that he heard that Parnas and Fruman were coming, and that they were coming with their associate, the Mayor Giuliani.

He also told me that when he had been, he, Avakov, had been in the United States in February, he had communication that Mayor Giuliani had reached out to him and invited him to come and meet the group of them in Florida. And he told me that he declined that offer.

Q  Did Mr. Avakov explain why he declined that offer?

A  He told me he had a tight schedule and needed to get back Ukraine. But he said did say that he was planning to have coffee with them, they had asked, and he was planning to meet them in Kyiv. I don't know if they met or not. I met him before that, but he said that if they want to meet, I'll meet and have coffee with them.

Q  During the May trip?

A  The May trip, yes.

Q  And did Mr. Avakov explain to you why Mr. Parnas, Mr. Fruman, and Mr. Giuliani were traveling to Ukraine at the beginning or mid-May?

A  He did not, no.

Q  No indication whatsoever?

A  He did not.

Q  If I recall when you had this conversation with Mr. Avakov in February, Mr. Avakov thought it was unwise what Mr. Giuliani was doing. Did I get that right?

A  He told me in February that he thought that it had been unwise that Yuriy Lutsenko, the prosecutor general of Ukraine, made a private trip to New York to see Rudy Giuliani.

Q  Was that because -- well, why?

A  I can't answer that question. I mean, that was his assessment as the minister of interior that the prosecutor general of his country should not make a private trip to the United States. That was my understanding of his assertion in February.

Q  Now, you indicated that you had another conversation with -- I can't read my own writing, Bakanov?

A  Bakanov.

Q  Bakanov. And what was his relationship with then-candidate Zelenskyy at the time of this meeting at the beginning of May?

A  He was President-elect Zelenskyy's oldest childhood friend. Zelenskyy told me the first time we met the December of 2018 that the person he had known the longest, that he had grown up on the same corridor in their apartment block from kindergarten was Ivan Bakanov.

Q  Okay. And can you describe that conversation?

A  In December 2018?

Q  No, I'm sorry, in May of 2019.

A  So my conversation with Ivan Bakanov?

Q  Yes.

A  To the best of my recollection that was a conversation where we talked about what might happen since it was in between post election, pre-inauguration. I asked him what jobs he thought he might be interested in or appointed to since his childhood friend was now the President-elect, and he described to me his interest in either being chief of staff or the new prosecutor general.

Q  And what did Mr. Bakanov say with regard to Mr. Fruman, Mr. Parnas, and Mr. Giuliani?

A  He did not mention Mr. Giuliani. To the best of my recollection, the only name in that meeting that I wrote down -- and that's part of the records which I provided to the State Department -- was Fruman. And then later on he followed up because he couldn't remember the other name, which turned out to be Parnas.

And he said, these guys want to meet me, what do you think? And since I had met with Mr. Avakov in the morning, I repeated what Avakov told me. He told me, you can always meet and have a cup of coffee with people, you don't have to make any commitments.

Q  Okay. At the time did you have any understanding of what Parnas and Mr. Fruman might be doing in Ukraine with Mr. Giuliani?

A  I understood that they were associates of Mr. Giuliani, and this was now 2 months into the campaign that had led to the, ultimately, unfortunately, to the removal of our Ambassador. But I did not know their specific purpose in coming to Ukraine on or about the 10th and 11th of May.

Q  Did there come a time when you did learn what their purpose would be?

A  I only read subsequent to leaving Ukraine the press coverage of the former Mayor of New York's stated intent to go to Ukraine, and then to notice that he canceled his trip.

Q  And when you say Mr. Giuliani's public statements about the purpose of his trip that he ultimately canceled, what is your recollection of what Mr. Giuliani said?

A  I don't recall what Mr. Giuliani said in the paper about his reasons for canceling, other than the fact that I believe he may have criticized some individuals around President-elect Zelenskyy.

Q  And do you recall that his statements were also about investigating the Bidens?

A  I honestly don't remember what he may have been saying or tweeting. As I said earlier, at this point I was not a regular -- I don’t tweet personally, and I don't follow all the tweets of everybody.

Q  When you learned that Mr. Giuliani was going to travel to Ukraine at the beginning of May, May 9th or May 10th, did you have any discussions with anyone at the Department of State about his upcoming trip?

A  Not that I recall, no. I learned about it when I was in Ukraine.

Q  Were you at all concerned about his trip?

A  He's a private citizen. Private citizens have the right to travel. The extent that I might have had concern, it would be what he might try to do as a private citizen involved in the U.S.-Ukraine official relationship.

Q  To the extent that it could interfere with the ordinary diplomatic channels that would be handled by the Department of State?

A  To that extent, yes. Again, I did not know the purpose of his trip, I only heard that he might be coming in.

Q  I think my time is up.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  We talked this morning about what the State Department did in the press to counteract these narratives?

A  Correct.

Q  The John Solomon stories and so forth.

A  Yes.

Q  Did the State Department undertake any effort to convince the White House, not the press, but the White House, that these stories are not grounded in good facts?

A  That is not -- relations between or communications between the leadership of the State Department and the White House at that level do not go through the regional bureau.

Q  Okay.

A  So I'm not aware of the conversations that would have happened.

Q  Do you know if there was any effort, I mean, they would have kept you in the loop if they were trying to make the case that, hey, you can't be believing this stuff. And if you're thinking about removing Yovanovitch, hold on, let me -- let us make our case. Did that opportunity occur?

A  My understanding is that there were high-level discussions between the leadership of the State Department and the White House prior to the decision to recall Ambassador Yovanovitch, but those obviously were ultimately unsuccessful, and the account that I heard at the time is in accordance with what I read Ambassador Yovanovitch had in her statement on Friday.

Q  Okay. Because you mentioned at one point the White House got involved with the visa application for Shokin?

A  I didn't say that. What I said was that after the State Department made clear that it was not ready to issue, it was our understanding that former Mayor Giuliani reached out to the White House, and then that was the point at which Deputy Chief of Staff Blair was tasked with calling us to find out the background of the story.

Q  And ultimately Shokin didn't get the visa?

A  He didn’t get the visa, correct.

Q  So Mr. Blair was sympathetic to your point of view and didn't push the issue anymore?

A  My understanding is -- what I recall him saying is I heard what I need to know to protect the interest of the President. Thank you. And that was the end of that conversation.

Q  Okay. So there certainly was at least one incident where you had some positive back and forth with the White House that led to a result consistent with your interests?

A  Correct. That was -- I believe that conversation occurred on the 11th of January, specifically about this issue of a visa for the corrupt former prosecutor.

Q  Do you know if Shokin had come to the United States on a visa before?

A  Yes. words redacted

Q Okay. So he had been granted visas in the past?

A  He had had visas at some point in the past, correct.

Q  And do you know when?

A  I do not know.

Q  Okay. Do you recall if it was during your time when you were in Kyiv?

A  I do not know.

Q  Was the denial of his visa, was this the first time he had made an attempt to travel to the United States but had been denied?

A  I do not know that. To the best of my knowledge he didn't try to travel to the U.S. and was denied, he did not have a visa. To the best of my recollection, because of the acts of corruption affiliated with undermining U.S. programming and policy goals, we probably, if the visa had not expired prudentially, revoked the visa under the assumption that we don't want corrupt individuals coming to the United States.

Q  Was Lutsenko on par with Shokin in terms of being an unreliable prosecutor?

A  Well, I think -- how would you define unreliable prosecutor?

Q  Well, you talked at great length that Shokin was not prosecuting corruption cases?

A  Correct. Yeah.

Q  There were cases of corruption where he just simply, you know, looked the other way and caused them not to be prosecuted. And then I think you mentioned that he prosecuted people that weren't doing anything wrong?

A  Yeah, I think Shokin's record and his nearly year tenure was not of prosecuting crime. Lutsenko was in office 3 years, and so he had more opportunity to take some action. He did lead a number of cases that led to small scale convictions as well as settlements and payments of fines to allow companies to continue to operate in Ukraine.

Q  But what was the position of the embassy about Lutsenko, was he a --

A  So I would say the breaking point of our disillusionment with Yuriy Lutsenko came in late 2017, by that point he had been in office for a year and a half, and there was a specific case, and it was as emblematic as the diamond prosecutor case had been for Shokin.

The National Anti Corruption Bureau, NABU, became aware because of complaint that there was a ring of Ukrainian state officials that were engaged in selling biometric passports, Ukrainian passports, to people who did not have the right to the passports, including foreigners.

And the ring included deputy head of the migration service, a woman named Pimakova (ph), as well as people collaborating in the security service of Ukraine.

And, obviously, for our own integrity, you know, we want to know that a passport from a country is issued to the correct person. And as this case was developing, Lutsenko became aware of it, and this corrupt official who was sort of the apex of the scheme went to him or to the prosecutors and became essentially a cooperating witness for them. And so they basically busted up the ring or they busted up the investigation by NABU. And then he went further and exposed the undercover agents that had been a part of this case.

So that's obviously a fundamental perversion of law and order to expose undercover agents. They were actually engaged in pursuing an actual crime, whereas, he was essentially colluding with a corrupt official to undermine the investigation.

And so this case was critical to us because when we searched the database it turned out that a number of the passports that had been issued as part of these schemes had gone to individuals who had applied for U.S. visas.

So we were very angry and upset because this threatened our security, and it potentially also threatened their ability to retain their visa free status in the European Union.

Q  So did the State Department take a position that Lutsenko had to go?

A  We didn’t say that. What we said was that all the officials that were involved in this ring needed to be held to account and prosecuted, and we needed to see that they were taking seriously our concerns about the integrity of their passports.

Q  Had Lutsenko had any open investigations at that time into any oligarchs?

A  Again, there are a lot of prosecutors in the country, and I don't know which investigations he might have had open.

Q  But you didn't know whether there was any specific investigations into somebody like Zlochevsky?

A  I do not know if there was an investigation into Zlochevsky, the individual, Yuriy Lutsenko has said publicly that he investigated Burisma on nonpayment of taxes. And as I recall, there was a settlement where Burisma paid a penalty for nonpayment of taxes, and at that point Zlochevsky returned from his external home in Monaco and resumed a public life in Ukraine.

Q  Going back to the passport issue. Did it present a risk that terrorists would get credentials?

A  That was a potential theoretical risk, and that is exactly what I told in the first meeting that we had with the new deputy foreign minister, the deputy justice minister, the deputy head of the migration service, the deputy head of the security service, when we had occasion, the essentially, DCMs of the European Union Ambassadors, embassies, and with me as the U.S. DCM, we all raised our great concerns that this uncovered ring posed a threat to our interests as well as Ukraine's continued access to for visa free travel to the European Union.

Q  What would it have taken for the U.S. Government to take a stronger position as it did on Shokin with regard to Lutsenko?

A  I think that the -- Yuriy Lutsenko, apart from this NABU case where he actively undercut an investigation that was in our interests, Lutsenko's actions did not raise to the same level. We did, however, I mentioned earlier that at the request of Petro Poroshenko, we made available a former New Jersey prosecutor words redacted                                              , we let that contract lapse after roughly 9 months because it was clear that Lutsenko was not going to push forward reform as he had promised to us.

So what we did was we curtailed our capacity building assistance to the prosecutor's office under Lutsenko while we continued to engage Lutsenko personally as well as other leaders on the continuing need for reform. And we made clear that we were willing to resume assistance with their political will to actually take the steps that were necessary to reform the prosecutor's office.

Q  What type of decisionmaking would have had to have occurred at the State Department to take an official position that Lutsenko needed to go?

A  Well, I mean, it's -- I would say that we're now talking about late 2017, and we were beyond having the potential leverage of sovereign loan guarantees. Ukraine's economy had stabilized. And I would say that there was less consistent high-level engagement on Ukraine.

Q  Okay. In March of this year, Ambassador Yovanovitch gave a speech at the Ukraine Crisis media Center?

A  Correct.

Q  Are you familiar with that? Where she called on Kholodnytsky to be removed?

A  Correct.

Q  What can you tell us about that.

A  Nazar Kholodnytsky was selected by Viktor Shokin as, in our view, the weakest of the three final candidates to become the special anti corruption prosecutor. This is a new unit that was semi-independent within the prosecutor's office, and it was set up specifically to prosecute cases of high corruption that were developed by NABU. We worked intensively with Nazar for almost 2 years, until we reached a breaking point with him. And that intensive work included U.S. prosectors who were brought in, and FBI agents embedded as mentors. Intensive training trips to the U.S., training in Ukraine. A mentoring trip to Romania where Laura Kovesi is a very well-known anti corruption prosecutor and now the lead prosecutor in Europe. Because even though we saw Kholodnytsky as an imperfect person, he was the new anti corruption prosecutor, and his success, would be Ukraine's success, would be our success.

However, we reached a breaking point in a case that was known as the fish tank case. There was suspicion that he had been involved in corrupt acts, and under a Ukrainian warrant a bug, a tap was put in his fish tank in his office. And in the course of the first 2 weeks, he was caught trying to suborn a witness, coach him to lie, as well as obstruct justice in a case that involved his hometown, in an effort to bribe the minister of health, Ulyana Suprun, words redacted                                             So words redacted                                              agreed to wear a tap for NABU and caught the effort on trying to give her a bribe.

So we had a case involving corruption, and he was caught on tape suborning the witness and trying to obstruct justice. At that point it was no longer possible for the U. S. Government, despite 2 years of investment, to continue to work with Nazar.

We called him into the embassy to have a conversation. This is before it went public. And I and the director of the international narcotics and law enforcement section of the embassy had the conversation, tough conversation with him, and suggested that if he were to resign quietly, given the information that was clearly available, that he was young enough that it wouldn't necessarily destroy his career, but that we, the U.S. Government, could no longer work with him.

And that if he were to remain as the anti corruption prosecutor, we would cease cooperating with him. And he stood up, walked out, and you know, tweeted, you know, before he left the embassy compound that he was going to have a defiant attitude. So we stopped cooperating with him once presented with evidence that he was actively suborning a witness and obstructing justice.

Q  You have regaled us over the course of many, many minutes today about the deep issues of corruption in the Ukraine. You talked in extensive detail that the problems are in the Shokin era, during the Lutsenko era, and even now with Kholodnytsky. Is it fair to say that if the President had a deep-rooted skepticism in Ukraine's ability to fight anti corruption, that was a legitimate belief to hold?

A  It is accurate to say that Ukraine has a serious problem with corruption, and the U.S. is committed where there's a political will to work with Ukrainians, inside and outside government to make changes, but absent that political will, this will be a problem that will stick with Ukraine and stick with the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.

Q  So we send a lot of money to Ukraine, correct?

A  I would not say that we send money. Congress appropriates money. The accusation by former prosecutor Lutsenko is that we didn't show him the money, but that fundamentally misunderstood how our assistance is administered. And this was the issue in the letter that I think is part of the packet that you may have received that I signed in April 2016.

He accused us, or they accused because it was before Lutsenko came in, of -- and then he just picked up the accusation, that somehow we didn't hand them the money. I talked to one of his temporary deputy prosecutors who was a reformist who later chose not to work with him. And she told me that they actually thought that we, the U.S. Embassy, had bags of cash that we would hand to her or to her predecessors, and that's how we, the U.S. Government, did business.

The way the U.S. Government and the Embassy supports anticorruption programming in Ukraine is that we sign agreements with implemented. One of those is the Department of Justice. They have this program, OPDAT, Overseas Prosecutorial Development and Training. Another was with the U.N. organization called IDLO, International Development Law Organization. Another was the OECD, which has a strong and vigorous anticorruption component. And finally, a civil society association, AnTAC, the anti-corruption center.

Those are the four organizations with which the U.S. Government signed contracts or grants to administer our justice programming for the reform of the Prosecutor General's Office.

Q  How much grant money does AnTAC get?

A  I do not know the exact amount.

Q  Do you know a ballpark?

A  Huh?

Q  Do you know a ballpark?

A  I do not. I would hesitate to offer a number because I don't -- it's been years since I've seen any spreadsheets.

MR. JORDAN: Secretary, Mr. Kent, I just want to go back to questions Steve asked earlier. What was it going to take for the government to take the same position with Mr. Lutsenko that you took with Shokin, and I've just been making a list. He wasn't a lawyer. He actually talked about showing him the money, I think you just said. We know that he's been drunk on certain occasions. He was selling passports, potentially to terrorist.

MR. KENT: He was not selling passports. He undermined an investigation of people selling passports.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. I guess we'll live with that distinction. It's pretty minor. And the guy he hired for this new prosecutor's office was every bit as bad. The one guy he picked -- he hired Kholodnytsky, right?

MR. KENT: Shokin hired Kholodnytsky. So his predecessor hired Kholodnytsky.

MR. JORDAN: Kholodnytsky was working when Mr. Lutsenko was prosecutor?

MR. KENT: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: He didn't bring him in line?

MR. KENT: After -- he did not.

MR. JORDAN: So I think it sort of underscores Mr. Castor's question. What was it going to take for the United States Government to say this guy has got to go as well?

MR. KENT: We made our concerns about the ineffectiveness of Mr. Lutsenko clear to his patron, the then President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, but that assignment is made by the nomination of the Ukrainian President, and the dismissal requires a vote in the Ukrainian parliament.

MR. JORDAN: Thank you.

MR. PERRY: Thank you. Scott Perry, down here, from Pennsylvania. I just want to clarify something that's been kind of veered on numerous occasions before you got here and today. Are you familiar with the transcript of the call between the President of the United States and President Zelenskyy? Are you familiar with it?

MR. KENT: I read it after it was declassified by the White House, yes.

MR. PERRY: Okay. So you have some, and if you need it, we can give it to you. But in a kind of exchange on the last round the implication was is that there was a favor asked by the President for an investigation. Do you know anywhere in the transcript where the President uses the word investigation?

MR. KENT: I don't have the transcript in front of me.

MR. GOLDMAN: Can we admit it as an exhibit?

MR. PERRY: Sure.

[Majority Exhibit No. 1 Was marked for identification.]

MR. KENT: But I will say that at the time I didn't have access to the transcript, so --

MR. PERRY: But you've had it now.

MR. KENT: After it was declassified.

MR. PERRY: You had it up until today. And I just want to let you know, it doesn't say an investigation. The President doesn't say an investigation. When he uses -- do you see it as, or it was implied that the President is asking for a favor for him, but when he says, do us a favor, do you see that as the United States or the President of the United States when he says do us a favor?

MR. KENT: Sir, I was not on the call.

MR. PERRY: I know you weren't, but I'm reading it to you right now. It's on page 3 at the top.

MR. GOLDMAN: Could we provide him one?

MR. KENT: So sir, could you repeat. Could you repeat your precise question again.

MR. PERRY: The implication was in the last round that the President was asking to do him a favor. Do the President of the United States a favor, but the verbiage says do us a favor. Do you see that as doing a favor for the United States or the President himself personally?

MR. KENT: As I'm reading the paragraph, it refers to CrowdStrike and Mueller and then so on and so forth, and so that is the first time I'd ever heard of this line of thought. That does not strike me as being related to U.S. policy.

MR. PERRY: Okay. And, again, in regard to the, do us a favor line, it has nothing to do with Biden or Burisma in this paragraph on the top of top page 3?

MR. KENT: That's, as I'm reading through this again, it's --

MR. PERRY: Well, I'll let you know --

MR. KENT: It's not in that paragraph. Yeah --

MR. PERRY: There's nothing referred to in on page 3 regarding Biden or Burisma that can be connected with the line, do us a favor. The words, do us a favor.

MR. KENT: I would agree with you that it's not in that paragraph.

MR. PERRY: Right.

MR. KENT: As put together by the staff at the National Security Counci1.

MR. PERRY: Right. Okay. And do you remember anywhere in this transcript where the President says, you know, for the -- the President of the United States says to President Zelenskyy to dig up or get some dirt?

MR. KENT: Again, I think the National Security Council account is what it is.

MR. PERRY: Yeah. It's not in there is my point. It's not in there. And I just want to make the record clear because for hours and hours in testimony over the course of days here there's a continual characterization of these events that are not true, that are not correct, per the transcript.

Moving on, in the past round you were asked about your opinion about the President, is it proper for the President to ask another country for an investigation into a political rival? I think that was the general characterization. I want to explore that a little bit. And in your answer you said that it would not be the standard. And my question is, do you have -- does the Department of State have a standard in that regard?

MR. KENT: I believe it is a matter of U.S. policy and practice, particularly since I have worked in the area of promoting the rule of law, that politically related prosecutions are not the way of promoting the rule of law, they undermine the rule of law.

MR. PERRY: But is that written as a policy somewhere or is that just standard practice?

MR. KENT: I have never been in a position or a meeting where I've heard somebody suggest that politically motivated prosecutions are in the U.S. national interest.

MR. PERRY: Okay. So would you say that if the United States was interested in pursuing justice of a past incident, of an incident that occurred in the past regarding someone that had a political office, is that off limits to the United States of America?

MR. KENT: I think if there's any criminal nexus for any activity involving the U.S., that U.S. law enforcement by all means should pursue that case, and if there’s an international connection, that we have the mechanisms to ask either through Department of Justice MLAT in writing or through the presence of individuals representing the FBI, our legal attaches, to engage foreign governments directly based on our concerns that there had been some criminal act violating U.S. law.

MR. PERRY: One more, Steve.

Regarding your conversation about Ambassador Yovanovitch's release, and you heard her viewpoint because you heard it previous, and then you saw it related in her opening statement here. Right? Do you think there's another viewpoint? I know you know that viewpoint, is there a potential for another viewpoint?

MR. KENT: A viewpoint about what?

MR. PERRY: About her release. You heard her viewpoint. This is what happened to me. This is why I was released.

This is why she was released as the Ambassador. That's her viewpoint. You heard that, you knew that. Correct?

MR. KENT: As I mentioned, I heard that that was the view expressed and conveyed by the Deputy Secretary of State to her. Correct.

MR. PERRY: Right. And do you think there could be another viewpoint other than hers?

MR. KENT: That was the viewpoint of the Deputy Secretary of State.

MR. KENT: And it's also hers, correct?

MR. KENT: She conveyed what she heard from the Deputy Secretary of State.

MR. PERRY: But there could be another viewpoint, that's my point.

MR. KENT: Theoretically there are multiple points about --

MR. PERRY: Right. And whose decision ultimately is that?

MR. KENT: What decision about what?

MR. PERRY: Who serves as an Ambassador from the United States to another country?

MR. KENT: All Ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the President.

MR. PERRY: So if an Ambassador is relieved for whatever reason, is that something that would normally be investigated by the Secretary Department of State?

MR. KENT: All Ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the President. And that is without question, everybody understands that.

MR. PERRY: All right. Thank you. I yield.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  When is the first time you heard about the call between the President and President Zelenskyy?

A  Which call?

Q  The July 25th call, the one that is the subject of the exhibit?

A  Well, can you repeat the question.

Q  When did you hear about the call?

A  I heard that the call was going to take place on -- I heard that it would take place the day before on the 24th.

Q  Okay. Did State Department officials want the call to occur?

A  Yes. I was informed that it was finally scheduled by Lieutenant Colonel Alex Vindman, who's the director at the National Security Council responsible for Ukraine. And I then emailed the Embassy suggesting that they send a communications officer over to the presidential office to check the quality of the line because it had been a long time since we had had a formal call, and sometimes those lines don't work when they get calls. So as far as I know, the embassy did that to ensure that when the White House situation room called out the call would go through.

Q  Okay. You said finally scheduled, so there had been some process over time to get this call scheduled?

A  There had been discussions on and off for awhile for a followup call to the congratulatory call on April 21st, the day that Zelenskyy won the presidency, and the timeline slipped until it was after the parliamentary elections. Those occurred on July 21st, and the call eventually happened 4 days later on the 25th.

Q  Everyone was in favor of making this call happen after the parliamentary elections?

A  The State Department was supportive of a call.

Q  And was there anybody who was not supportive of the call in the U.S. Government?

A  I have read that there were officials that had some reluctance.

Q  What did you read?

A  I think that’s a question you could ask people that work at the National Security Council.

Q  So you read there were some issue from the National Security Council about scheduling the call?

A  I read that there were some people who had some misgivings about the call, yes.

Q  Okay. But you didn't know about those misgivings prior to the call?

A  I may have heard that there were some views, I did not understand what the views were behind that expression.

Q  Okay. Who held those views?

A  I don’t know.

Q  Okay. So you didn't have any personal knowledge of any officials at the National Security Council being uncomfortable with the idea of having a call?

A  I got the impression that there was at least one official uncomfortable, but I didn't understand what that was about. I, the State Department, was in favor of a congratulatory call after the election.

Q  Did Alex Vindman tell you anything that gave you pause?

A  Before the call, no.

Q  Okay. So it's finally scheduled, it happens on July 25th. You weren't on the call, right?

A  Correct.

Q  Was anyone from the State Department, to your knowledge?

A  I believe I was aware that the White House Sit Room was going to try to patch through the counselor of the department, Ulrich Brechbuhl.

Q  Okay. Any other folks from the Department?

A  That was the only name that I or office that I heard mentioned.

Q  Okay. Nobody in Kyiv?

A  It would not be normal to have the embassy patched into the phone call.

Q  Okay. And then after the call occurs, did you get a read-out from anybody?

A  I did.

Q  Who did you get the read-out from?

A  From Lieutenant Colonel Vindman.

Q  And when was the read-out?

A  It was not the same day. It may not have been the day after, but it could have been either July 26th or 27th, several days after.

Q  What did he tell you to the best of your recollection?

A  It was different than any read-out call that I had received. He felt -- I could hear it in his voice and his hesitancy that he felt uncomfortable. He actually said that he could not share the majority of what was discussed because of the very sensitive nature of what was discussed.

He first described the atmospherics and compared it to the previous call, which was April 21st. That had been a short, bubbly, positive, congratulatory call from someone who had just won an election with 73 percent. He said this one was much more, the tone was cooler, reserved. That President Zelenskyy tried to turn on the charm, and he is a comedian and a communicator, but that the dynamics didn't click in the way that they had on April 21st.

Again, he did not share the majority of what was said. I learned the majority of the content after reading the declassified read-out. He did share several points. He mentioned that the characterization of the Ambassador as bad news. And then he paused, and said, and then the conversation went into the direction of some of the most extreme narratives that have been discussed publicly. That's all he said.

Later on, he said that he made reference to a back and forth about the prosecutor general, that would be Lutsenko, saying, you've got a good guy, your prosecutor general, and he's being attacked by bad guys around you, is how I recall Lieutenant Colonel Vindman characterizing it. And then he, in summation, he said in his assessment, Zelenskyy did not cross any line. He said that Zelenskyy said, if anything bad had happened in the past, that was the old team. I'm a new guy, I've got a new team, and anything we do will be transparent and honest.

Q  And is that as much as you can remember from your --

A  And then there was -- I think the last thing that Lieutenant Colonel Vindman mentioned was there about a brief mention by Zelenskyy about U.S. -- interested in working on energy-related issues. Previously, I should have said, at the front earlier in the conversation, that he said that Lieutenant Colonel Vindman told me that President Zelenskyy had thanked the U.S. for all of its military assistance. That the U.S. did a lot for Ukraine. And Lieutenant Colonel Vindman told me that the President replied, yes, we do, and it's not reciprocal.

Q  Is that pretty much what you can remember?

A  That is I think the summation of everything I can recall.

Q  Did he tell you anything about the Bidens?

A  He did not mention, to the best of my recollection, including the notes that I took, which I've submitted to the State Department. He did he -- Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, did not mention the specifics. He just said, as I said at the beginning, he said the majority of the conversation touched on very sensitive topics that I don't feel comfortable sharing.

Q  Did he mention Burisma?

A  He did not mention any specifics.

Q  And he didn't mention 2016?

A  He did not mention that to me, no.

Q  And did you make any followup inquiries with him like, hey, can I come over and speak with you in a secure environment or learn more about this call --

A  None.

Q  It seems like there's some issues relating to one of the countries that I have responsibility for?

A  I did not, and no.

Q  What was your expectation where you would next learn more?

A  That was the second conversation between the two Presidents in April, May, June, July, 4 months. We at that point were focused on trying to sort through why the Office of Management and Budget had put a hold on security assistance. We were also focused on the way forward and potentially trying to arrange a meeting possibly on the 1st of September in Warsaw on the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II, possibly in New York during the UN General Assembly.

So those were the next step issues in the relationship, both functionally in terms of military assistance, as well as in procedurally in terms of the possibility of a meeting.

Q  And the meeting you said could have happened in Warsaw. What was the date that Warsaw was supposed to be?

A  The start of World War II was the 1st of September 1939, so the commemorations were the 1st of September 2019 in Warsaw.

Q  You said the General Assembly was the 26th, if I'm correct?

A  That week, I believe the Monday may have been the 24th or the 23rd, so maybe the 23rd through the 27th was the week of the leaders' participation.

Q  Okay. And so then you never -- did you learn any more about that call from any other officials?

A  No.

Q  So between the time that you had the conversation with Vindman, it was on the telephone, right?

A  A secure call between NSC and the State Department, yes.

Q  And the time when the transcript was declassified, did anybody else give you a read-out or any information about the call?

A  No.

Q  When the transcript was released on September -- I think it was September 25th, did you have an advanced copy of it or --

A  I was up in New York engaged in meetings with leaders in my area of responsibility and, no, I did not have any advanced knowledge.

Q  Okay. Now, did you have any communications after the call after you spoke with Vindman, did you then subsequently debrief anybody about what happened on the call?

A  I may have shared with other people in the European front office, which had a focus on that, and that includes people like Tyler Brace, who is our one political appointee, schedule C, former staffer for Senator Portman, who has a specific interest in Ukraine and Russia, as well as the acting assistant secretary.

Q  Uh-huh. Any other individuals that you discussed the call with?

A  In terms of giving a substantive read-out, I do not recall having a substantive discussion. We have a weekly secure video conference call with the leadership of Embassy Kyiv, now led by Charge Bill Taylor, it is possible that I discussed part of that with him subsequently.

Q  Now, during this time period had you been having communications with Ambassador Yovanovitch?

A  At this point she was back in the United States, and so we did have reason to have communications, yes.

Q  Okay. And how frequently were you speaking with her?

A  I would say we're now talking about the end of July through the month of August, perhaps once or twice a week.

Q  And into September?

A  Right. The second half of August I was on vacation with my family words redacted                       , so there's no contact there. We got together for dinner in early September. Her words redacted                       mother and my wife were very close socially when we were in Washington, I'm sorry, in Kyiv, so it essentially was a social gathering, a meal shared.

Q  And did you relate anything to her when you had dinner with her in early September about the call?

A  I may have made some reference to the negative characterization of her.

Q  Okay. Do you remember anything else that you may have related to her about that call?

A  I would not have -- to the best of my recollection in general, I wouldn't have discussed the substance of the call in part because the read-out of the call I got was not substantive, and second of all, I wouldn't have been appropriate.

Q  Okay. So you're having dinner with Ambassador Yovanovitch, it's early September, and you made brief mention?

A  I may have made brief mention of negative characterization of her personally.

Q  And what was her reaction?

A  I honestly don't remember.

Q  How long were you having this discussion with her at dinner?

A  Generally, this would have been a very short conversation because her mother and my wife were part of it, and we generally avoided talking about anything related to work when we were together.

Q  Did she have any followups for you? I mean, the President of the United States -- you know, you related to her that the President of the United States may have mentioned her on a call with President --

A  As I think she may have said to you Friday, in part because of the what the Deputy Secretary of State told her, she aware of the President's views of her.

Q  So presumably this was really interesting information that you had and you related to her, and I'm just wondering whether there was any additional back and forth. I mean, did she --

A  No, not that I recall. Ambassador Yovanovitch is an intensely private person, she's an introvert. And, again, she's also someone who follows very strict what is deemed proper and proprietary, and so that's -- we did not linger on any conversation of that nature.

Q  Now, when you related this information to her, did you provide any characterization about your view of the call?

A  Not that I recall.

Q  Okay. Did you provide a characterization of your view of how the President conducted himself on the call?

A  No, that wouldn't have been appropriate, and no.

Q  Okay. And after the dinner, early part of September, you know, leading up to the release of the transcript on the 25th, did you have any additional discussions with her?

A  I was on travel for the mid-part of the month. I was back for a couple of days, and then I was up in New York for the U.N. General Assembly meetings, which was, as you said on the 25th, I was in New York when that occurred. So, again, to the best of my recollection, no.

Q  And she was at Georgetown at this point on a fellowship?

A  She was teaching -- yes, a course on diplomacy at Georgetown.

Q  And your office is at the State Department. Did you have an occasion to visit with her during the workday? I mean, did she come over to the State Department? Did you appear at Georgetown at any point in time?

A  No. She at one point asked -- commented that the students in the Masters program at Georgetown had superior oral briefings skills, but lacked fundamental writing skills. And I had mentioned that previously we used to run essentially remedial writing seminars for the officers in the European bureau as well as Embassy Kyiv, that I helped conduct, and she asked if I had the notes from that, and I said I did. And so I passed her essentially the notes of presentations I had made about writing well.

Q  Okay. And then you mentioned that you spoke to her on a somewhat regular basis, but the call never came up other than the dinner?

A  To the best of my knowledge, I cannot recall.

Q  Okay. The communication you had with Vindman on the 29th, and that was an estimated date.

A  It could have been a day or two earlier. It could have been the 29th, honestly. It's several days later, depending on what day the call happened, during the week, it could have been the next Monday, it could have been the Friday, I just don’t remember.

Q  Fair enough. And you said that was your only communication you had with the NSC about it?

A  I did not seek to revisit that issue nor did I talk to anybody else at the NSC about the call.

Q  Who else was on the call with NSC, do you remember?

A  That call between Lieutenant Colonel Vindman and I was just a call between the two of us.

Q  Okay.

MR. CASTOR: I think I'm out of time here.

MR. ZELDIN: How much time is left?

MR. CASTOR: About 1 minute.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. I am interested. Why wouldn't you asked for more information about the call?

MR. KENT: Lieutenant Colonel Vindman was clearly extremely uncomfortable sharing the limited amount of information that he did. So he shared what he felt comfortable sharing, and that constituted the read-out that I received from him.

MR. ZELDIN: But you didn't want to have more information?

MR. KENT: He made clear to me that he felt uncomfortable sharing as much as he had actually shared. So the relationship between a director of the NSC and say someone at my level is a relationship, it's intense, it's frequent, and you have to develop a trust factor. And he made clear to me that he had shared as much as he felt comfortable sharing, and I respected that.

MR. ZELDIN: We're out of time, but we might revisit that.

THE CHAIRMAN: Why don't we take a 10-minute break and use the facilities, and we'll come back. And try to be prompt in 10 minutes.

[Recess.]

THE CHAIRMAN: All right. Let's go back on the record. Secretary, I have a few questions for you. I think a couple of my colleagues do, and then we'll go back to the timeline with Mr. Goldman.

I just very briefly wanted to go through a bit of the call records since that was raised by my colleagues in the minority. If you turn to page 2 of that call record at the bottom, this is again the July telephone call between President Trump and President Zelenskyy. The very last sentence reads: We are ready to -- this is President Zelenskyy: We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps, specifically, we are almost ready to buy more javelins from the United States for defense purposes.

And there, Mr. Secretary, he's referring to Javelin anti-tank weapons?

MR. KENT: That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: That are important in terms of fighting off either Russia troops or separatists in Donbass?

MR. KENT: That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: Immediately after President Zelenskyy raises this desire to purchase more javelins, the President says, I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it, I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they said CrowdStrike. Do you know what that refers to, CrowdStrike?

MR. KENT: I would not have known except for the newspaper media coverage afterwards explaining what that was a reference to.

THE CHAIRMAN: And the President goes on to say, I guess you have one of your wealthy people, the server they say Ukraine has it. Do you know what server the President believes Ukraine had?

MR. KENT: I can only again refer to the media articles that I have read subsequently about this explaining that there is, the founder of CrowdStrike who is a Russian American, and the media as said that that was a confused identity. But that's again -- the only basis I have to judge that passage is what I've read in the media.

THE CHAIRMAN: And further on in the paragraph, the President says: I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people, and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. Do you have any reason to question the accuracy of that part of the call record?

MR. KENT: I wasn't on the call, and the first time I saw this declassified document record of conversation was after it was declassified by the White House.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, you mentioned that you when you spoke with -- is it General Vindman?

MR. KENT: Lieutenant Colonel Vindman.

THE CHAIRMAN: Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. When you spoke to Colonel Vindman, he said there was certain very sensitive topics he did not feel comfortable mentioning. Was this one of the topics that he did not mention?

MR. KENT: This whole passage, which you just went through, he made no reference to it. That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: If this were a matter of standard U.S. policy of fighting corruption, that wouldn't be a sensitive topic, would it, if the President was actually advocating that Ukraine fight corruption?

MR. KENT: If he had read this to me, I would have asked him what is CrowdStrike and what does that mean, because it's just not clear to me just reading it. As I said, other people interpreted what the context was for that, but again, I'll go back to what I said before.

Understanding that this is a reference to concerns about 2016. If anybody did anything in 2016 that violated U.S. elections or election laws that, you know, there's a reason to investigate something with the U.S. nexus, we should open that investigation. And if the Ukrainians had a part in that, then that would be natural for us to formally convey a request to the Ukrainians.

THE CHAIRMAN: But if it were a legitimate law enforcement request or if it were a generic discussion of corruption in line with U.S. policy, it wouldn't have been a sensitive matter and Colonel Vindman could have raised it with you, right?

MR. KENT: If it was a normal matter, he probably would have. Again, when he said that there were sensitive issues that he didn't feel comfortable talking about, I did not know what exactly he meant until I read this declassified memorandum of conversation.

THE CHAIRMAN: Let me ask you about another matter that it appears he did not bring up with you. The President, on the top of page 4, says: The other thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son. That Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution. So if you can look into it.

Was that another one of the very sensitive topics that Colonel Vindman did not feel comfortable sharing with you?

MR. KENT: That passage -- he made no reference that would have in his limited read-out to me that would have matched that passage of the memorandum of the conversation.

THE CHAIRMAN: So the dual request to look into the Bidens and to look into this CrowdStrike 2016, for lack of better description, conspiracy theory, Colonel Vindman didn't feel comfortable informing you that either one of those things was raised by the President during the call?

MR. KENT: That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Quigley.

MR. QUIGLEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, thank you for your service and for being here. Earlier you mentioned that media campaign against the Ambassador took place. Were you aware of who was involved with that media campaign?

MR. KENT: I could only see the figures that voluntarily associated themselves with that campaign in both countries.

MR. QUIGLEY: And who was that in Ukraine and who was that in the U.S?

MR. KENT: Well in Ukraine, very clearly, the prosecutor general at the time, Yuriy Lutsenko, his press spokeswoman retweeted the tweet of Don Trump, Jr. attacking the Ambassador. So very clearly, it wasn't just him personally as a Ukrainian, but the institution.

There were -- I made references earlier to what were known as the Porokhobots, the trolls on social media who were active in support of Poroshenko. And 10 days before the election, rather than attacking Russia or attacking his political opponents, as they normally did, they were attacking Ambassador Yovanovitch and me by name.

So I would say that is cluster of the Ukrainians who were actively promoting this campaign. And then obviously the people in the United States that were promoting it.

MR. QUIGLEY: Sure. Referencing Mayor Giuliani, you became aware of his activities in Ukraine. What was your understanding while this was happening of what his role was? A personal attorney working somehow for the government working as a campaign person's attorney?

MR. KENT: His role in orchestrating the connections with information from Yuriy Lutsenko seemed to be a classic, you scratch my back, I scratch yours, issue. Yuriy Lutsenko told, as I mentioned, Gizo Uglava, that he was bitter and angry at the embassy for our positions on anti-corruption. And so he was looking for revenge. And in exchange, it appeared that the campaign that was unleashed, based on his interview, was directed towards Americans, principally the Ambassador, as well as organizations that he saw as his enemies in Ukraine, the National Anti Corruption Bureau as well as the Anti Corruption Center.

Several Ukrainians at the time told me that they saw what Lutsenko was trying to do was get President Trump to endorse President Poroshenko's reelection. This was happening in March before the election. That did not occur. It would not have made a difference either because Zelenskyy, as noted before, won with 73 percent.

MR. QUIGLEY: To your knowledge, was Mr. Giuliani ever tasked, coordinated, briefed with anyone at the State Department to do what he was doing?

MR. KENT: To the best of my knowledge, in the first phase of Mr. Giuliani's contact with Ukrainians and his efforts to orchestrate the media campaign, nobody from the State Department had contact with him. When I say the first phase, that is essentially the phase involving Prosecutor General Lutsenko through the election of President Zelenskyy, which occurred on April 21st.

MR. QUIGLEY: So the first phase, but at any time other time and after the fact, were you aware of any tasking, briefing, coordination that took place?

MR. KENT: Yes.

MR. QUIGLEY: And could you detail that?

MR. KENT: At a certain point, I believe in July, then special representative for Ukraine negotiations, Volker, told me that he would be reaching out to Rudy Giuliani.

MR. QUIGLEY: And --

THE CHAIRMAN: I just want to mention, we intend to go through this in a timeline.

MR. QUIGLEY: First of all, it's somewhat news to me, and I'll pass it back if that's what you want, but it seems --

THE CHAIRMAN: We're going to get into all of this.

MR. QUIGLEY: All right.

THE CHAIRMAN: And it may be more orderly to do it in chronological order though.

MR. QUIGLEY: Very good. I'll ask one more question. In your belief, in your understanding, in your experience, why was the Ambassador recalled?

MR. KENT: Based on what I know, Yuriy Lutsenko, as prosecutor general, vowed revenge, and provided information to Rudy Giuliani in hopes that he would spread it and lead to her removal. I believe that was the rationale for Yuriy Lutsenko doing what he did.

Separately, there are individuals that I mentioned before, including Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who started reaching out actively to undermine Ambassador Yovanovitch, starting in 2018 with a meeting with former Congressman Pete Sessions on May 9th, 2018, the same day he wrote a letter to Secretary Pompeo impugning Ambassador Yovanovitch's loyalty and suggesting that she be removed. And others also in 2018 were engaged in an effort to undermine her standing by claiming that she was disloyal.

So that's the early roots of people following their own agendas and using her as an instrument to fulfill those agendas.

MR. QUIGLEY: Okay.

THE CHAIRMAN: Ms. Speier, any questions on what we covered so far?

MS. SPEIER: Thank you for your lifetime of service on behalf of the country. Secretary, as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, it would seem to me that you would be familiar with the efforts by the administration to engage with Ukraine. Is that --

MR. KENT: Correct.

MS. SPEIER: So in that circumstance, you were read into that July 25th phone conversation by the Lieutenant Colonel but were not actually on the call?

MR. KENT: Correct. I've never in 27 years been on a call made by a President of the United States.

MS. SPEIER: So that is not consistent with your role then. Okay.

MR. KENT: I have never served at the National Security Council, I've only served at the State Department and at embassies overseas.

MS. SPEIER: All right. You said earlier that you provided all of your documents to the State Department for them to make available to us. Forgive me if I don't think they're re going to be forthcoming. But if you were to identify certain documents in particular, you mentioned a few already today, but if you were to mention certain documents that you think are particularly important for us to have access to, what would they be?

MR. KENT: The, if you will, I guess, the unique records that I generated in the course of my work would include notes to the file and conversations that I took down in my handwritten notes.

MS. SPEIER: Anything else that comes to mind?

MR. KENT: Likely the WhatsApp exchange between me and Ambassador, or sorry, Charge Taylor.

MS. SPEIER: So is it typical for you to use WhatsApp in communicating with your colleagues?

MR. KENT: In parts of the world, WhatsApp has become a very active method of communication for a variety of reasons, it's considered encrypted, although I don't think text messages are secure. I believe the voice encryption is still secure. And in countries like Ukraine there's actually no data charge for use WhatsApp, and that's what drives the use of social media, so they pay for text messages, but when they use social media apps they don't actually pay for that data. So that has altered communications in parts of world by rate setting and how people communicate.

So in Latin American, for instance, and in parts of Europe and Asia, applications like WhatsApp have become the dominate form of communication.

MS. SPEIER: There has been a lot of conversation earlier today from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle about Burisma as being a company that lacked some ethical commitments and moral compass of sorts. Are there other companies in Ukraine that would fall in that same category?

MR. KENT: There are many companies in Ukraine that might fall into that category, yes.

MS. SPEIER: Could you give us some examples?

MR. KENT: If you took the roster of the richest Ukrainians, they didn't build value, they largely stole it. So we could go down the richest 20 Ukrainians and have a long conversation about the structure of the Ukrainian economy, and certainly most of the billionaires in the country became billionaires because they acquired state assets for largely under valued prices and engaged in predatory competition.

MS. SPEIER: Burisma doesn't stand out as being different from any number of companies?

MR. KENT: I would say that Mr. Zlochevsky's actions stood out in one way that he was the actual minister who awarded himself the licenses to explore for gas exploration.

MS. SPEIER: Okay.

MR. KENT: Other people may have just had the minister on their payroll.

MS. SPEIER: Okay. Going back to that July 25th call, there was a lot of exchanges between Ambassador Sondland, Mr. Volker, and also the Charge Taylor about whether or not the aid would be forthcoming, whether or not the statement would be written. Were you privy to any of that?

MR. KENT: I did not participate in those exchanges by virtue of the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, you don't have me as a participant in those exchanges, and none of those have been released.

I did have my own dialogue with Charge Taylor in the course of our work, in the same way that I had a dialogue with Ambassador Yovanovitch and with our ambassadors in Moldova, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and our Charges in Georgia and Belarus.

THE CHAIRMAN: And I would like to address my colleague we're going to get to that through the timeline.

MS. SPEIER: I'm particularly interested in 2017. Are you going to take care of that?

THE CHAIRMAN: We are. Can I suggest that we have the counsel continue with the timeline, and then as we get through it members can add in with questions. Thank you.

Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Focusing your attention on May of this year when I believe you said that Rudy Giuliani met in Paris with Nazar Kholodnytsky, who was the prosecutor of the anti-corruption.

A  The special anti corruption prosecutor, yes.

Q  Anti corruption, okay. And he had already been removed by that point, right?

A  No, he had been under pressure for over a year. We stopped cooperating with them approximately in March of 2018 when the so-called fish tank scandal emerged.

Q  Okay. Just to summarize. You have testified today that Mr. Giuliani met with Yuriy Lutsenko in January, that he advocated to get the former Prosecutor General Shokin a visa in January. And then he met with a special prosecutor in May, who the U.S. had ceased all former relations with. And Lutsenko and Shokin are generally, the general consensus belief is that they either are or, at this point, or were corrupt prosecutor generals. Is that an accurate summary of Mr. Giuliani's meetings with prosecutors in Ukraine?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. And you also indicated that by May of this point, Mr. Giuliani had been on television and in the media advocating for the four story lines that you summarized from those March articles. Is that right?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay. And then in May you went to Ukraine and you had meetings with Ukrainian officials, two of whom mentioned to you that Mr. Giuliani wanted to meet with them. Is that right?

A  Mr. Avakov mentioned Giuliani. I can't recall if Mr. Bakanov mentioned Giuliani when we first talked, the one name that I wrote down in my notes was that he mentioned Fruman, he said he didn't remember the other name, and later he sent me the business card of Fruman and Parnas.

Q  Thank you for clarifying that. But he knew that Fruman and Parnas were associates of Giuliani, right?

A  Correct.

Q  Now, you would agree, right, that high-level Ukrainian officials don't meet with every private American citizen who travels to Ukraine. Correct?

A  Correct.

Q  So the Ukrainians certainly understood that Mr. Giuliani was not a regular private citizen. Is that right?

A  Correct.

Q  And would you assess that they understood that he represented President Trump?

A  They understood that Mr. Giuliani asserted he represented Mr. Trump in his private capacity. Yes.

Q  Did they understand what that meant? Private capacity versus official capacity?

A  Ukrainians such as Arsen Avakov are experienced players willing to meet with anybody. The team of the incoming president at that time, President-elect Zelenskyy, had spent their entire careers as a tight-knit group of entertainment company executives who had no experience in politics. So they were looking to try to figure out to understand how to navigate political networks.

Q  And did you speak to any of the incoming officials about Mr. Giuliani in this May, June timeframe?

A  My conversation with Mr. Bakanov, as I recounted part of it before when he gave the names of the associates, one of whom he knew, the other he couldn't remember, when he asked for my counsel, I had suggested, as I said, someone like you who’s an associate could meet and hear somebody out without making commitments. But at this time it would be my best counsel to you to shield your President-elect from private citizens.

Q  And to your knowledge was Mr. Giuliani promoting official U.S. policy in Ukraine at this point?

A  Mr. Giuliani is a private citizen who was not a U.S. Government official.

Q  But I understand that, but is what he was pushing consistent with official U.S. policy?

A  Mr. Giuliani was not consulting with the State Department about what he was doing in the first half of 2019. And to the best of my knowledge, he's never suggested that he was promoting U.S. policy.

Q  And the actual efforts that he was making, just to be very clear, were they consistent with what official State Department policy was?

A  The U.S. has a lot of policy interests in Ukraine. It involved promoting the rule of law, energy independence, defense sector reform, and the ability to stand up to Russia. As a general rule, we don't want other countries involved in our own domestic political process, no.

Q  So around this -- at the end of May, there was the inauguration of President Zelenskyy. Is that right?

A  Correct. I believe it may have been May 20th, to be precise.

Q  Were you involved at all in the discussions about who would represent the United States at that inauguration?

A  Yes.

Q  Can you just summarize for us what your involvement was and what those discussions entailed?

A  The starting point was the conversation between Presidents Trump and President-elect Zelenskyy on election day. President Zelenskyy asked if it would be possible for President Trump to come to inaugural. There was no date at that point. President Trump suggested that he would talk to Vice President Pence, and schedules willing, that he hoped it could work out, but in any case, the U.S. would have representation at the inaugural. That was April 21st.

By the time we got close to when the inauguration date was set, which was on very short notice, the outgoing Ukrainian parliament voted on May 16th, which was a Thursday, to have the inauguration on May 20th, which was a Monday, leaving almost no time for either proper preparations or foreign delegations to visit.

So we scrambled on Friday the 17th to try to figure out who was available. Vice President Pence was not available. Secretary of State Pompeo was traveling. And so we were looking for an anchor, someone who was a person of stature and whose job had relevance to our agenda.

I suggested to Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, since there oftentimes is this dialogue between the State Department and the NSC for inaugural delegations, to having the NSC ask Secretary of Energy Perry. Because he had traveled to Ukraine, understood the issues, and energy was one of the top three issues that we were working with Ukraine. So that was the start of that conversation, and then it was a matter of building out possibilities.

Inaugural delegations are determined by the White House. So whatever the NSC and the State Department worked together as options, ultimately the decision is made elsewhere. As an example, when President Yushchenko was inaugurated in Ukraine in 2005, and I was the control officer on the ground at the time, the delegation was Secretary Colin Powell in his last act as State of State, and five Ukrainian Americans. That's it.

In this case, we proposed a group of officials that we thought were relevant, those included a number of Senators and as well as Marcy Kaptur, the head of the Ukrainian American Caucus in the House. It included some Ukrainian American leaders here in the United States, as well as officials. That was about 15 in total to play with.

Former National Security Advisor Bolten weighed in at some point in the process, and eventually the White House settled on a list, which was, in the end, Secretary Perry, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman representing the NSC, Ambassador Sondland, Ambassador Volker, and then our Charge in country at the time, Acting Joseph Pennington.

Q  Was Ambassador Sondland on the State Department's original list?

A  He was not somebody that we initially proposed, but Ambassador Sondland has his own networks of influence, including chief of staff Mulvaney. So it did not surprise us when he weighed in, his name emerged.

Q  Why did it not surprise you. What did you understand Ambassador Sondland's role in Ukraine to be by March 17th of this --

A  Ambassador Sondland had started cultivating a relationship with the previous Ukrainian President Poroshenko. He visited, as I recall, a ship visit to Odesa, which may have been where he first met Poroshenko and other leaders. And so in the same way that he had expressed an interest in our relationship with Georgia starting late in 2018, early this year he expressed an interest in playing a role in managing our relationship with Ukraine.

[3:24 p.m.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  And you described an independent relationship that he had with the chief of staff. What do you know about that?

A  Well, I think the proof in the pudding is, after the delegation went to the inauguration on May 20th and had a meeting with President Zelenskyy -- and that included Senator Ron Johnson, who was there not as part of the Presidential delegation but separately. But he sat in the meeting with Zelenskyy, and then he joined a briefing to the President in the Oval Office on May 23rd.

It was Ambassador Sondland's connections with Mulvaney that got them the meeting with the President. It was not done through the NSC staff, through Lieutenant Colonel Vindman and Ambassador Bolton.

Q  I don't understand what you mean.

A  Well, normally for international issues, meetings would appear on the President's calendar because they were proposed by the National Security staff and pushed through the National Security Advisor. In this case, the out-brief to the President of the inaugural happened because of Ambassador Sondland's connections through Chief of Staff Mulvaney, to the best of my knowledge.

Q  So you're talking about President Trump's debriefing after the inauguration on May 23rd.

A  The inauguration on May 20th. The Oval Office meeting to talk about that and the way forward occurred in the Oval Office on May 23rd.

Q  Before the inauguration, you just mentioned that you were not surprised that Ambassador Sondland was added to the list because of his relationship with the chief of staff. Were you aware of Ambassador Sondland having any significant role in Ukrainian policy for the State Department by mid-May?

A  Again, I don't remember when the ship visit was to Odesa, but I think Sondland's visit to Ukraine to Odesa for the U.S. port visit was the start of his involvement.

Q  I understand that. I'm asking way ahead. If that was during the time that President Poroshenko was the President, that was earlier.

A  But it was the last month of his presidency. So he did call President Poroshenko in March for instance after the attack started on Ambassador Yovanovitch to suggest the Porosheno back off. So his acceleration of his involvement in Ukraine and in our relationship was in one phase, just starting the last month or two of Poroshenko's presidency, and it accelerated after President Zelenskyy's assumption of office on May 21st.

Q  Did it also accelerate after Ambassador Yovanovitch was recalled?

A  Ambassador Yovanovitch was recalled on the 26th of April, and she was out of the country by the time President Zelenskyy was inaugurated on May 20th. So it was coterminus. She essentially ceased serving as Ambassador, the functions of Ambassador, on April 26th.

Q  Right. And after that, did Ambassador Sondland's role increase in Ukraine?

A  Yes.

Q  Were you aware of whether that went through official channels or how that came to be?

A  The way that came to be was the main three U.S. officials, executive branch officials, Secretary Perry, Ambassador Sondland, and Special Representative Volker, were part of that briefing of the President. And they came out of that meeting asserting that going forward they would be the drivers of the relationship with Ukraine.

Q  Before the inauguration did you have any conversations with the Ambassador Sondland about Ukraine generally?

A  To the best of my knowledge, before May, likely during the chief of mission conference where all ambassadors come back for several days in mid-January, Ambassador Sondland came through the office suite where my office is to see my colleague who works with Western Europe. Julie Fisher (ph) is her name. And she introduced him to the other people in the office. So I shook his hand. There was no conversation, but that was the first time I had met him, without a substantive conversation, in January.

Q  So you did not speak to him again after January?

A  To the best of my recollection, we had no direct conversation and were not in each other's presence until the U.N. General Assembly week, the last week in September.

Q  So you did not attend that Oval Office meeting on May 23rd, right?

A  I did not.

Q  Okay. Did you get a readout of what occurred?

A  There were several readouts. That particular week I was -- my eldest daughter graduated from Boston University and I then took my kids and my wife up to Acadia National Park we were hiking on Cadillac Mountain so I was not in Washington those days where the readout occurred May 23rd.

Q  So did you subsequently learn what occurred?

A  So there were several readouts provided secondhand from representatives who had been in that meeting and presumably those will be part of the documents that were collected as part of your requested documents and --

Q  So you're -- sorry. You're referring to written readouts?

A  Written readouts. I believe there were three separate readouts. Again not from anyone that I got that was forwarded by email. Specifically Fiona Hill whom I'm gathering that the committee talked to yesterday. She gave a readout to my office director who was probably acting for me that week, words redacted                       , normally office director of Eastern Europe. Kurt Volker gave a readout to his then-special assistant, Chris Anderson (ph), who is currently a language student. And Gordon Sondland would have given a readout to somebody that would have been forwarded to us.

So when I came back from my New England vacation, I had three different versions of that conversation in my inbox.

Q  And so what did you -- just quickly, what did you understand to have occurred at that meeting?

A  I should say that in addition to those secondhand accounts I eventually heard Kurt Volker's account directly from him, the way he characterized it to a number of interlocutors when we were together in Toronto on the 1st and 2nd of July for the Ukraine Reform Conference and the interlocutors included President Zelenskyy himself. He said that President Trump had been very angry about Ukraine, he said that they were corrupt, and they had wished him ill in 2016. So that was one part of the discussion.

On the other hand, by the end of the meeting there was agreement that they would work moving forward to work towards an Oval Office visit, a visit to the White House which Presidents Zelenskyy and Trump had talked about in that initial call on April 21st. And that energy issues would be of importance going forward, keeping in mind not only Secretary' Perry's presence, but the concern that the Russians were going to cut all gas transit through Ukraine on New Year's day the way they had done three times since 2006.

Q  You --

A  And finally sorry. The last point that I recall from the readouts was that there would be an accelerated search for a political nominee for Ambassador, as opposed to having a career Foreign Service officer proposed from the State Department.

Q  Were you aware of any evidence that Ukraine was involved in any way, Ukrainian officials were involved in any way in interfering with the 2016 election?

A  I'm not aware of any evidence to that effect, no.

Q  And you're familiar with the Intelligence Community assessment about Russia's interference?

A  I have read the documents that have been made available to me as part of my read. The Office of Intelligence and Research briefs me twice a week, but that does not mean that I've read every document about Russia, no.

Q  No, I understand, there is specific document that the Intelligence Community assessment about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Are you familiar with the conclusion?

A  I know that it exists. I can't say -- I don't recall reading any special confidential version of it. And to the extent that it has been discussed in general in the media I'm aware of those findings.

Q  And you're aware that the Intelligence Community uniformly determined that Russia interfered in the election?

A  I'm aware of that general conclusion, yes.

Q  And are you aware that Special Counsel Mueller indicted I believe 12 Russians and laid out an indictment --

A  Yes.

Q  -- how Russia interfered. Right?

A  Yes.

Q  Do you have any reason to believe that both of those either the indictment or the Intelligence Community assessment is wrong in any way?

A  I have no reason to believe that, no.

Q  Okay. You mentioned this April 21st call. And we haven't touched upon it touch. You said you were not on the call. Did you get a readout of that call as well?

A  I did.

Q  And what did you learn that was discussed on that call?

A  Again, I received that readout from Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. It was a very short and nonsubstantive call, as you might expect. As I recall April 21st was Easter Sunday in the United States. Again, Ukrainians are Orthodox. Different calendar. And we were very pleased that the President agreed to call on election day on a Sunday. We had presumed that it might happen the next workday, which was a Monday. And as you might expect on a Sunday call when it was probably past midnight in Ukraine on election night, President Zelenskyy was in a good mood, President Trump was very positive and congratulated him on a great win.

And President Zelenskyy, as I recall what Alex told me, said that he had studied President Trump's win in 2016 running as an outsider and had adopted some of the same tactics. And invited President Trump to his inaugural, the date to be determined. And President Trump, as I said, acknowledged he would try to find somebody appropriate to attend. And said, we'll try to work on getting you to Washington.

And that was more or less the extent that probably was something more said, but you know on an election day the point is what Alex summed up was, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, those types of calls are designed to build rapport and he thought it was successful doing so.

Q  Following the May 23rd Oval Office meeting, where there was a -- you testified there was a decision to try to arrange a White House meeting. You know, what if any actions did you take or were -- did other Ukraine-focused government officials take to try to set that up?

A  That's the function of the national security staff. To the extent that there is input, they ask for input from other officials, other offices. We obviously stand ready to be supportive but that's -- that's their function. That's not our function --

Q  Were you supportive of a White House meeting?

A  I was, the State Department was. Ukraine is an important country that Congress appropriates roughly in the ballpark $700 million a year in assistance and Zelenskyy won a clear mandate for change and so we were supportive of a visit to the White House, yes.

Q  Did you have any reason to doubt Zelenskyy's sincerity about his anticorruption views?

A  I had no reason to doubt the sincerity of Zelenskyy trying to represent change for his country based on the series of meetings I had with him dating back to December 2018. Starting from the beginning it was clear that he had a prior association with a fairly notorious oligarch named Ihor Kolomoisky and that was going to be a mark of his willingness to really make a break from past relationships and stand on principle.

So from not necessarily our first conversation in December, but in the second conversation in March prior to the election, we were already talking about Kolomoisky and the down sides of association with somebody who had such a bad reputation.

Q  And how important is -- would a White House meeting be to President Zelenskyy?

A  The President of the United States is a longtime acknowledged leader of the free world, and the U.S. is Ukraine's strongest supporter. And so in the Ukraine context, it's very important to show that they can establish a strong relationship with the leader of the United States. That's the Ukrainian argument and desire to have a meeting.

The foreign policy argument is it's a very important country in the front lines of Russian malign influence and aggression. And the U.S. spends a considerable amount of our resources supporting Ukraine and therefore it makes sense. But that's the arguments for a meeting. The time on a President's schedule is always subject to competing priorities.

Q  Following that meeting you said that Secretary Perry, Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Volker had asserted that they were leading Ukrainian policy efforts? Did I get that right?

A  Correct.

Q  Who had asserted that?

A  Well, the three of them asserted that. And citing the fact that they had briefed the President coming out of that meeting, they felt they had the mandate to take the lead on coordinating efforts to engage the new Ukrainian leadership.

Q  And what engagements with the new Ukrainian leadership occurred following that meeting up until the conference on July 1st that you're aware of?

A  I do not -- I do not recall. Special Representative Volker traveled frequently to Ukraine so it is possible that he may have gone in late May. I just don't recall precisely. He traveled frequently there.

There was a coordinating meeting in the Department of Energy in mid-June, on June 18th. So Secretary Perry chaired that. Ambassador Sondland, Ambassador Volker from the State Department, Acting Assistant Secretary Reeker, my direct supervisor, Tyler Brace, all attended that meeting in Secretary Perry's office, and they also connected recently arrived Charge Taylor from Kyiv.

So I would say that, to the best of my knowledge, after that May 23rd meeting, this June 18th meeting was the next meeting where a number of officials got together specifically to talk about policies and programs towards Ukraine.

Q  And in June and early July, are you aware of any conversations that Ambassador Sondland might have had with the Chief of Staff Mulvaney about Ukraine and President Zelenskyy?

A  I'm not aware of conversations between Sondland and Mulvaney, but frankly that's a relationship that I would not be a part of. To the best of my -- what I am aware of is that subsequent to the June 18th meeting, there was a June 28th conference call between Secretary Perry, Sondland, Volker, and involving Charge Taylor, at the end of which they were patched through to President Zelenskyy.

Q  And what did you learn about that conversation?

A  I do not recall. I got a readout of that conversation. Initially I have an email suggesting that Ambassador Sondland on June 27th had written Charge Taylor to suggest that that would be a U.S. -only meeting or a U.S. -only call. But in the end, on the next day, it turned into a call with President Zelenskyy after a pre-conversation among the Americans, based on what Charge Taylor has told me.

Q  Was it unusual that you were not included on that conference call?

A  Well, if it involves the Secretary of Energy it's not necessarily unusual. But again, that was I think a period of time where the direction of our engagement with Ukraine shifted into shall we say unusual channels.

Q  And what do you mean by unusual channels?

A  Well, I think it's somewhat unusual to have an Ambassador to the E.U., plus the Secretary of Energy engaged deeply in the policy towards a country that is not a member of the E.U. It was just -- again, we had our Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, and I know you've talked to former Ambassador Volker. His listed responsibilities were focused on negotiating with Russia over their war in Ukraine, and then Charge Taylor as the lead representative in country.

And so frankly, in that constellation Charge Taylor was the primary voice for our full interests as the Charge of our mission in Kyiv.

Q  And one more question, you said that you learned of the call from Charge Taylor.

A  Correct.

Q  But he did not give you a substantive readout of the call?

A  He did give me a readout, yes. He gave me a readout of prebrief with the Americans.

Q  And what was that readout?

A  He indicated that there was a discussion about the need to raise a sensitive issue with Zelenskyy. And in that discussion Ambassador Volker volunteered that he would be seeing Zelenskyy in person the next week in Toronto and that was the meeting in which I participated on July 2nd.

Q  Do you know what the sensitive issue was?

A  Kurt Volker told me that it was giving guidance to Zelenskyy on how he needed to characterize his willingness to be cooperative on issues of interest to the President.

Q  Such as?

A  I did not have the full details of what exactly that was, but I think it was sending signals about potential investigations.

Q  I think our time is up. We yield to the minority.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Vindman was on the July 25th call?

A  The July -- yes.

Q  And was he on the April 21st call?

A  Yes.

Q  Was he in the meeting with the President on May 23rd?

A  I do not know and I think not.

Q  Okay. You said you got three readouts, one from Fiona Hill, one from Sondland, and one from Volker?

A  The initial readouts I got were, yes secondhand from these three people. It was my understanding.

Q  -- in on the meeting?

A  My understanding is again Fiona didn't give it directly to me. My understanding is that she may have gotten it from deputy -- then deputy national security advisor Kupperman.

Q  She sent you the readout?

A  No. She had a conversation with words redacted                       , who was the acting deputy assistant secretary at the time. To the best of my knowledge. I received the readout from words redacted                       once I came back from my vacation.

Q  Okay. You said when you returned to your office you had three emails. Is that --

A  Yes. I believe I got an email with words redacted                       readout of a conversation with Fiona, Chris Anderson's readout that he got from Kurt Volker and a third readout from someone in the State Department who worked with our mission to the European Union that would have had Ambassador Sondland's version.

Q  So Sondland gives a readout to his staffer who writes it up, sends an email.

A  Yes.

Q  Volker produces one with Christina Anderson?

A  Chris Anderson.

Q  Chris Anderson. And so then help me understand again. Like who produced the one from the NSC?

A  So Fiona had a conversation. To the best of my recollection, she had a conversation with words redacted                       , who is normally the director for Eastern Europe and, while I was away at my daughter’s words redacted                       , was acting in my stead as acting deputy assistant secretary.

Q  Oh, okay. So he's a State Department employee.

A  He's a State Department employee, yeah.

Q  Was she in the meeting?

A  My understanding is -- again, I did not talk to her, but my understanding was that her version of the readout came from Mr. Kupperman, the then deputy to Ambassador Bolton. But I'm not sure.

Q  Was he in the meeting?

A  I'm not sure. My understanding again, this is now third hand from words redacted                       is that Fiona's readout came from Kupperman, not from her participation in the meeting. But I don’t know. I have not talked to Fiona about that.

Q  Okay. Was Kupperman in the meeting?

A  My understanding from what I heard from words redacted                       relaying what he heard from Fiona his impression was that that came from Kupperman who was in the meeting. But I can’t --

Q  He was in the meeting?

A  Huh?

Q  He was in the meeting?

A  That is the impression I received from talking to words redacted                      .

Q  Did any of these readouts have a list of officials in the meeting?

A  No.

Q  Okay. Can we just go through who we think was in the meeting? We know Secretary Perry, Senator Johnson.

A  To the best of my knowledge, the principals --

Q  Ambassador Volker.

A  -- the briefers to the President were those that represented lead officials and that would be Secretary Perry, Ambassador Sondland, Ambassador Volker and Senator Johnson.

Q  And they brought staff to the meeting?

A  I do not know. I was -- again, I was on leave status.

Q  Okay.

A  And I wasn't in the meeting and wouldn't have been in the meeting even if I were in Washington.

Q  Okay. Who from the NSC was in the meeting?

A  To the best of my understanding, all I know is that Charlie Kupperman -- or Kupperman. I don’t know first name, sorry. Kupperman, former deputy National Security Advisor Kupperman may have been in the meeting.

Q  Okay. But Vindman wasn't?

A  That is my understanding, correct.

Q  Did Vindman tell you subsequently that he wasn't in the meeting?

A  I didn't ask if he was in the meeting, because when I returned from work I had three different version or readouts of the meetings from others.

Q  But you had regular communications with Vindman. Right?

A  I did.

Q  And did he ever at any point in time tell you that he wasn't in the meeting or was being excluded from things?

A  We didn't have a conversation along those lines. No.

Q  Do you think he was excluded?

A  I honestly don’t know. And I had three different versions of the meeting so I wasn't looking for a fourth.

Q  And in your regular communications with Vindman do you have any reason to believe that he's been cut out of any of these discussions? Not just about the May 23rd meeting, but about subsequent relevant events?

A  Again, I don’t -- I go over to the NSC when there are meetings that the NSC does not want to allow the State Department to be on the secure video conference system, but apart from specific meetings that I'm invited over, I don't go over there on a regular basis just because it takes time. It's easier if they'll allow us to be on video conference. It is a better use of my time. So I would say I have more communications with Lieutenant Colonel Vindman by email and phone call.

Q  Okay. And in any of those emails or phone calls has he alerted you that he -- he's been cut out of the process?

A  He is a lieutenant colonel and colonels who have served in staff positions generally aren't people who complain. He's a -- he was a campaign planner before he came over to the NSC and he has that campaign planning mentality, you know, what's the goal and he'll plow forward. That's just his personality.

Q  Okay. And do you think he is plowing forward?

A  He's very active at scheduling interagency meetings and asking the State Department to write papers for him.

Q  But plowing forward, does it have some sort of connotation that he's going through a tough time and he's --

A  No. He's a lieutenant colonel who spends his day working on campaign plans. That's what his -- that was his job at the Joint Chiefs of Staff before he was brought over as a detailee to the NSC. I think if you talk to most State Department employees will have an opinion that the role of the National Security Council is to coordinate the work of other agencies, not to task us. We don't respond to them. And occasionally we have to remind them of that.

Q  You have to remind him of that?

A  My staff oftentimes complains that they feel that he thinks that they work for him the way he works for other people at the JCS and have asked me on numbers of occasions to gently point out to him that we don't report to him. So I have supported my staff in gently suggesting that he remember what the roles of the National Security Council staff are vis-à-vis a bureau and an executive agency like the State Department.

Q  Did he receive that warmly?

A  He received it with a smile and that's -- we have a good working relationship. I would say there's more tension perhaps between him and the staff that work for me, but we have a respectful working relationship.

Q  Okay. And in Fiona Hill's readout what was her -- what can you remember from her readout?

A  I think -- what I recall and I can’t say the specific details particularly since there were three versions floating around that I read in rapid succession, just by tonality that the meeting was perhaps more problematic than the initial readouts that we got through secondhand knowledge of what Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Volker said.

I believe one element and I can’t remember where this came from that initially the President did not want to sign a congratulatory letter. And he actually ripped up the letter that had been written for him. But by the end of the meeting, he’d been convinced and the version I recall hearing was Ambassador Sondland helped draft it. And to be honest, the second version of the letter actually read better than the first version. I wasn't involved in either of them because I had been on leave and eventually that letter was signed.

Q  At the State Department in the wake of Ambassador Yovanovitch's, her recall, can you describe the morale with those closest to her?

A  When you say those closest to her, are you referring to the embassy staff that had been working for her in Kyiv?

Q  And her close confidants here in Washington.

A  I don't know who her close confidants in Washington would be. I was, as I mentioned, in Ukraine and Kyiv at the embassy on May 8th. I did offer to have a restricted townhall meeting for Americans, essentially, in our version of the SCIF, and the country team, the meeting room, where we'd have -- and anyone who wished to have a conversation about what had happened and the way forward.

And my sense was -- one of them actually said that when the attacks started in March, particularly after members of the President's family started attacking her, at some level they realized that she was going to be recalled, and it was a matter of when, not if. Their question, as people working at the embassy, was what was going to be the impact on them, on the embassy, and on our policy towards Ukraine.

And so, while I did -- basically I was willing to answer any questions, I think they were more focused, at that point, already, having digested that she had been removed, and they wanted to know what was going to happen next. So I assured them that our policy was our policy and it would remain our policy. And that we were in the process of trying to find an experienced person that temporarily would lead the mission and would be a good leader for the people working there, the 250 Americans working in our embassy, and also someone that could be a voice and face for U.S. policy in Ukraine.

I honestly cannot remember, but probably did not say that it was going to be Ambassador Taylor. He was the one we all wanted at that point, but we still had to work out whether we could bring him back. And those details with the personnel system had not yet been finalized.

Q  Would Ambassador Taylor have fit the mold for the type of person that was discussed in the meeting with the President?

A  When you said the person discussed in the meeting with the President, meaning what?

Q  Well, the meeting with the President, you related that President Trump seemed angry, that he was, you know, Ukraine was corrupt. That there are those in the Ukraine that wished him ill in 2016 and they were going to work towards an Oval Office meeting, energy issues were important and then you mentioned that there was a decision to put in a new political Ambassador.

A  So Charge Taylor, notwithstanding the fact he was nominated and confirmed by the Senate, nominated under president George Bush, was not a permanent nominee for the position of Ambassador.

Q  Okay.

A  He was called back essentially to government service because he knew all the players. He's a bundle of positivity and gets along with everyone and he's a real leader. He was a long time senior executive at the State Department, but he was a graduate of West Point who joined the 101st, and he was platoon leader in Vietnam and in Germany. So it is hard to find anybody hasn't been impressed by Bill Taylor.

Q  And is there still an effort afoot to find a permanent political Ambassador?

A  There is. And that is the job of the White House because it is the President's prerogative to appoint, nominate an Ambassador and then the Senate's role to confirm.

Q  During his tenure as Vice President, Joe Biden had a role with regard to Ukraine. Is that correct?

A  Correct.

Q  And what was the role as you understood it? And you were in country at the time, right?

A  I was, although his involvement in Ukraine predated my return to the Ukraine account. I believe -- it should be a matter of record, but I believe as Vice President he visited Ukraine six times, which probably is unusual for any country outside of the usual countries like Germany, like -- one of which I believe would've been when the former leader Yanukovych was there and then the subsequent visits afterwards.

By the time I came back on the account, it was clear that President Obama, towards the end of his administration, had delegated several foreign policy issues in Europe to Vice President Biden to take the lead. Ukraine was one of them; Cyprus was the other.

So, if you will, Vice President Biden was the top cover. The State Department's lead official post-Russian-invasion-of-Ukraine/occupation-of-Crimea was Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland. And then we had a very active Ambassador, Geoff Pyatt, at the time. And so those were the chief voices on our Ukraine policy: Pyatt as chief of mission, Toria as the assistant secretary, and Vice President Biden as Vice President.

Q  When he got involved with advocating for the removal of Shokin, what type of planning went into that? Was that something that was planned for on the Vice President side of things or did the embassy or the State Department tee him up with the right information he needed to weigh it into that?

A  Geoff Pyatt allowed me to go back to my family at Thanksgiving. I had come out on an emergency basis for my predecessor words redacted                                              . And I came out on 24 hours' notice to Ukraine the beginning of October for my third stint. So I was not in country at the time of the visit and planning.

My understanding is that the conversations that were near-daily between Ambassador Pyatt and Toria Nuland regarding what to do on the way forward then included pitching the Office of the Vice President to push President Poroshenko to remove Shokin.

There was a similar push against Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, who had several different corrupt political backers. And there was one named Martynenko who was involved in all sorts of dirty business, including nuclear fuel supplies from Russia. And so we pressured Yatseniuk to have one of his corrupt cronies resign, and Martynenko resigned.

And there was also the pressure on Poroshenko, on the corrupt prosecutor general, and Shokin was not dismissed, I believe, until early March, so 3 weeks after Vice President Biden's visit in December 2015.

Q  The Vice President, he relates to some of these details on a video that's been published on I think the Wall Street Journal. Have you seen that video?

A  I did. To the best of my recollection, he was at some conference, maybe Council on Foreign Relations, sometime in 2018, and he was telling the story in a sort of folksy manner.

Q  He was folksy. And he describes a quid pro quo where, you know, $1 billion worth of aid would be held up until they fired Shokin. Is that what your understanding of the way he tells it?

A  That is -- sounds more or less like what he said on that stage. Yes.

Q  And going back to 2016 when it actually happened, was that the way it went down?

A  Again, I was in -- briefly in Ukrainian language training at the time of his visit so I was not in Ukraine. I would think that the State Department could produce documents related to the sovereign loan guarantees and the timing of those three guarantees to align the timing.

We provided one in 2014, one in 2015, and one in 2016. And I do not recall the exact timing of the issuance of those loan guarantees, but I'm not aware that they aligned perfectly with his visit to Ukraine on December 2015.

Q  Okay. But you think it is fair to say that this was a bottom up initiative?

A  To the best of my knowledge, the idea came from Ambassador Pyatt in discussion with Assistant Secretary Nuland and then was pitched to the Office of the Vice President.

Q  Okay. So if we're going to pursue additional information on that, we would probably have some documents to inform us that we could ask for.

A  That would be my impression. I would just note having read the subpoena that the document request was date timed I believe starting January 20 or 21st, 2017. And we're talking about events that happened in November, December, 2015.

MR. ZELDIN: Steve, if I can ask, did you know at the time of the Vice President's visit when he had made that threat that he was going to make that threat? I mean, or was it some other expectation more narrowly tailored towards advocating for Shokin to be removed?

MR. KENT: Yeah. I know as was discussed earlier, the U.S. the IMF, the European Union countries, we had all come to the conclusion in the wake of the diamond prosecutors affair that there was going to be no progress for reform on the prosecutor general under Shokin.

But specifically about how the Vice President's trips messaging was managed by that point. I left the day before Thanksgiving to fly back to the U.S. and to go into Ukraine language training. So at that point I was not privy to those discussions in the two weeks prior to the Vice President's visit.

MR. ZELDIN: So you don't know whether or not the Vice President was going to threaten the loss of $1 billion?

MR. KENT: My understanding, as I explained, is that that was an approach that was discussed between Ambassador Pyatt and Assistant Secretary Nuland to use his visit as leverage. This was an issue that Ambassador Pyatt and Assistant Secretary Nuland in her visits that was an agenda item that they were pushing. And in the same way that the Department of Justice official asked me to go in to the prosecutor general office office in February 2015 and ask who took the bribe and how much was it to shut down the case against Zlochevsky, the Ambassador and Assistant Secretary Nuland asked the office of Vice President if the Vice President could push this tough message.

MR. ZELDIN: And to be clear, was Ambassador Pyatt and Assistant Secretary Nuland advocating to threaten the loss of $1 billion?

MR. KENT: I believe that is the case. But again, we're now relying on my memory of almost 4 years ago. So I believe it was pushing the Ukrainians essentially for an additional what would be called a prior action before we would issue the sovereign loan guarantee. But I think that's something that we would have to look at the documents from that period of time.

MR. ZELDIN: You as the deputy chief of mission were not involved in that process.

MR. KENT: So in parts of 2015 I went out as essentially the acting deputy chief of mission. I then came back to the U.S. the day before Thanksgiving and was in the U.S. for 3.5 months for language training and then returned to Kyiv in late March 2016. So in the 2 weeks prior to the Vice President's visit, I was already back in the U.S. as a language student as opposed to being an active participant in the conversations.

MR. ZELDIN: And you referenced Ambassador Pyatt, you referenced Assistant Secretary Nuland. Of anyone involved in that process, are you aware of anyone in contact with Hunter Biden at the time other than the Vice President?

MR. KENT: I am not aware of, no.

MR. JORDAN: One quick question.

Mr. Secretary, you leave 2 weeks before the Vice President gets there. But this policy, this idea that we were going to call for Shokin's removal it didn't just develop in those two weeks.

MR. KENT: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: You weren't involved in a discussion and a decision to say this is going to be our official policy we're going to ask the Vice President to do this.

MR. KENT: I think someone made a reference to Ambassador Pyatt's speech in September. Earlier -- at some point today, he gave a strong, hard-hitting speech against corruption, and it was clear then that we were pushing for Shokin's ouster. And so we had taken a harder line against Shokin in the wake of the diamond prosecutor affair in mid-2015.

So months prior to Vice President Biden's visit, this was an issue that U.S. officials including our Ambassador and our Assistant Secretary of State were pushing in their meetings with the Ukrainians.

MR. JORDAN: I guess I'm asking, though, was there a decision made between Ms. Nuland, the Ambassador, and you to say, we’re going to ask the Vice President to do it on this trip. And if so when was that made?

MR. KENT: Again, I do not -- I could not -- I was not part of -- I would say that on a daily basis Ambassador Pyatt and Assistant Secretary Nuland had conversations, that was conversations that the Ambassador would have on his office with her on a secure phone and I'm sure there were additional email back and forths. But I cannot give you a precise date other than to say that --

I would say that on the record Ambassador Pyatt's speech in Odesa, which I believe was in September of 2015 was a powerful public statement of U.S. concern about the lack of progress. And I believe it may have specifically mentioned both the shortcomings of prosecutor Shokin and reference to our concern that the case against Zlochevsky had been shut down and frozen money was released.

And so I think that speech is a matter of public record September 2015, Vice President Biden's visit happened October, November, December, 3 months later.

MR. JORDAN: Do you think they told the Vice President the 2 weeks prior to him getting there when you had left do you think that they talked to the Vice President when he got there in country?

MR. KENT: Again, the way a trip would normally be staffed, there would be conversations prior, there would be paper prepared and conversations prior to the trip. And that oftentimes would be someone like Assistant Secretary Nuland going over and participating in a pretrip brief.

MR. JORDAN: When did you learn that the Vice President made this demand on the Ukrainians and specifically the President?

MR. KENT: I think I -- I don't recall -- I mean, he gave a public speech and in the well of the Ukrainian parliament. But this demand would have been delivered in private in his meeting with President Poroshenko.

MR. JORDAN: You never got a readout on how it all went down?

MR. KENT: I was a language student for a period of several months in the U.S. I was aware that he'd made the request. I was also aware that Shokin remained an embattled prosecutor general for several months more until there was a vote held in their parliament to remove him.

MR. MEADOWS: So let me follow up one last time. So who made the decision that Vice President Biden should be the one that communicated this? You know, if you all are having all these discussions for so many months, who made that decision that says, let's wait until the VP goes over to make this request?

MR. KENT: Yeah. Well, there was no waiting, as I mentioned.

MR. MEADOWS: Well 3 months.

MR. KENT: Well that was a -- I gave an example of a publicly available speech that was a statement, a very strong statement on the record of --

MR. MEADOWS: Yeah, but your inference was is that that was the start of it.

MR. KENT: No, I wouldn't say that. It's just that I think that's a public mark where people could see this is the American Ambassador speaking on the record about our concerns about the lack of progress and the rule of law reform in 2015 a year and a half after the Revolution of Dignity. At the same time, there was constant private messaging, messages and meetings that Ambassador Pyatt had in Kyiv, conversations or meetings when Assistant Secretary Nuland would travel, and conversations would happen when Vice President Biden would talk to both President Poroshenko as well as then prime minister Arseny Yatseniuk.

MR. MEADOWS: So before you went away to language school, you had no recollection that the decision had been made that the Vice President was going to make this? Is that your statement?

MR. KENT: No. I would say that -- well, again, we're now talking about conversations, of which I was not a part, that happened 4 years ago. I do not think -- my guess, to the best of my ability, I would anticipate that the issue of Shokin’s status was raised prior to the Vice President's trip, possibly during a conversation. But I was not on those calls between the Vice President of the United States and the President of Ukraine.

MR. MEADOWS: But wouldn't it be a big deal if the Vice President is going to demand a curtailment of $1 billion? Wouldn't that have registered with you, since your passion and --

MR. KENT: Right. Well, as I said, my understanding of how that decision got to the point of having the Vice President raise that in the first week of December when he came to Kyiv started with conversations between Ambassador Pyatt and Assistant Secretary Nuland and then a recommendation that Vice President Biden pushed that issue when he visited.

That's my understanding of how the information, the idea, the flow pattern occurred and then he made the request when he came out.

MR. MEADOWS: Okay, Steve.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  At the time was there any discussion of perceived conflicts of interest either on the part of the Vice President or his son?

A  You're now talking about a period leading up to his visit in December 2015.

Q  Well, Hunter Biden he was first reported that he was on the board in mid-2014?

A  Correct.

Q  And the Vice President's involvement with Ukraine is pretty significant at that point in time and it remained until he, you know, through 2016. Correct?

A  Yes.

Q  And the question was, you know, were there any discussions of a perceived conflict of interest on the part of either Hunter Biden or the Vice President?

A  When I was -- the first time I was in Ukraine as acting deputy chief of mission in the period of mid-January to mid-February 2015, subsequent to me going into the deputy prosecutor general on February 3rd and demanding who took the bribe and how much was it to shut the case against Zlochevsky I became aware that Hunter Biden was on the board. I did not know that at the time.

And when I was on a call with somebody on the Vice President's staff and I cannot recall who it was, just briefing on what was happening into Ukraine I raised my concerns that I had heard that Hunter Biden was on the board of a company owned by somebody that the U.S. Government had spent money trying to get tens of millions of dollars back and that could create the perception of a conflict of interest.

Q  And what did the person on the other end of the line tell you?

A  The message that I recall hearing back was that the Vice President's son Beau was dying of cancer and that there was no further bandwidth to deal with family related issues at that time.

Q  Was that pretty much the end of it?

A  That was the end of that conversation.

Q  Okay. That was in mid-2015?

A  That would have been in February, because to the best of my recollection Beau Biden died that spring. I then returned to Ukraine in August of 2015 and I believe he passed before then. So the only time that conversation could have happened is in that narrow window between January, February, 2015.

Q  And subsequent to that, did you ever think through with other State Department officials about maybe we should try to get Hunter Biden to leave the board or maybe we should get the Vice President to transition his key responsibilities on Ukraine to some other senior U.S. official?

A  No. It's easy in a conference room like this to have a considered discussion about things. In Ukraine at that time, we had a war with Russia occupation, we had an embassy staff going from 150 Americans to 250 Americans, from no Special Force U.S. Government soldiers to close to 70 in country, our assistance went from $130 million to nearly a billion.

And we were working nearly nonstop. Ambassador Pyatt, I can tell you from working for him, would wake up between 4:58 and 5:01, because that was when I got the first email from him, and went to bed between 12:59 and 1:01, because that's when I would get the last email. He had an internal clock. He only slept 4 hours. And it was nonstop, 20 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Q  Okay. Gotcha.

You referenced earlier the President's congratulatory note to President Zelenskyy.

A  His call.

Q  No, the note.

A  Yes.

Q  It was ripped up?

A  That is what I heard from others, yes.

Q  Was that the May 29th letter?

A  If there's a letter that's signed May 29th that would be the second version that was then signed.

Q  Okay. So that's the only letter we're talking about, right?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay. In the letter they talk about a White House meeting as a prospect.

A  I believe so.

Q  I can make it an exhibit or I can read it whatever your preference is?

A  If I could look at it that would be helpful.

Q  Okay. So this will be Exhibit 2.

Do you guys need copies or are you good?

A  Very positive letter, yes.

[Minority Exhibit No. 2
Was marked for identification.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Yes. The penultimate paragraph says, to help show that commitment -- the last sentence of the penultimate paragraph says, I'd like to invite you to meet with me at the White House in Washington, D.C. as soon as we can find a mutually convenient time.

A  Yes.

Q  So this was the spiffed up letter or --

A  This is the letter that I understand that Ambassador Sondland helped arrange, yes, sir.

Q  I think you'd characterize the new letter as possibly better than the original?

A  Yes.

Q  What were the difference to the extent you remember?

A  Just I think stylistically I liked the second version. I don't know who the drafter of the first version was and I don't know how many people were involved in production of the language of the second one. I just thought the second one read better.

Q  Okay. And do you know why the President was disappointed with the first version?

A  It wasn't he was disappointed with the version of letter, he -- based on what the readout I heard from Kurt Volker and others that he was disappointed with Ukraine.

Q  Okay. And so the new letter was offered the to the President for his signature somewhat later in time?

A  My understanding, and I think this may have been the version from Gordon Sondland that while the President was angry obviously at the point that he point and tore up the letter. By the end of the meeting he agreed to sign a revised version and this is the version that he signed.

Q  Okay. And the offer or the invite to come meet at the White House, is that something that is customarily offered to an ally without specific the meeting will happen on this date?

A  Well, as I mentioned before, President Trump and President-elect Zelenskyy had this discussion on April 21st when President-elect Zelenskyy had invited President Trump to come to his inauguration, and he said, well, I will send somebody there, but I'd like to get you to the White House.

So this was following up on that theme. President Trump had offered it in concept in April. He put it in writing in May. But, you know, as anyone who's ever staffed not just the President but a principal, you can have an agreement in principle to meet but then schedules are complicated, particularly when you're dealing with two Presidents of two countries.

Q  So it is not uncommon for the meetings to be proposed suggested, discussed and then take a while to put together?

A  That's a fair statement, yes.

Q  And sometimes the meetings don't actually happen.

A  That would also probably in certain circumstances also be a fair assessment.

Q  Okay. Because these issued are complicated?

A  Because schedules are busy, yes.

Q  If I heard you correctly you mentioned that in March Ambassador Sondland contacted President Poroshenko to urge him to back off attacks on Ambassador Yovanovitch was it? Did I hear that right?

A  That is probably close to what I said. And it that is what I recall seeing in an email exchange, yes.

Q  Okay. So in March Poroshenko is about to lose the election? Right?

A  He doesn't realize it but the rest of the country does, yes.

Q  Okay. And so in urging him to back off the attacks on Yovanovitch, do you have any idea whether Poroshenko genuinely knew that his apparatus was attacking her?

A  When I visited in May I had the prime minister, and three ministers, and a former prime minister tell me that Poroshenko authorized the attacks -- let me be careful. He authorized Lutsenko to share the information with Giuliani that led to the attacks on Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Q  Okay. And where did you learn of Sondland's content?

A  With Poroshenko in March that I referred to.

Q  Okay.

A  In an email I believe from the embassy it could have been Ambassador Yovanovitch, it could have been from the DCM at the time, Pam Tremont.

Q  Okay. Did Sondland tell you himself?

A  I did not hear it directly from Sondland, no.

Q  Do you have an understanding of like how this conversation was put together?

A  My understanding based on also seeing how Ambassador Sondland has engaged Georgian leaders, because I also have responsibility for Georgia, is that when he meets leaders in Brussels -- or, in the case of the Ukraine, he met President Poroshenko and other leaders in Odesa during the U.S. trip visit, he hands them his business card, he gets their business card, and then starts direct communication via WhatsApp or phone calls.

Q  With world leaders?

A  With world leaders.

Q  Okay. And he did that with President Poroshenko?

A  Yes. To the best of my knowledge, he did that with President Poroshenko as well as the then Georgia prime minister.

Q  I'm going to mark Exhibit 3.

[Minority Exhibit No. 3
was marked for identification.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  This is a letter to Poroshenko from Senators Menendez, Durbin, and Leahy about the Mueller investigation.

Does anybody need copies? Do you have enough?

Take as much time as you need to check this out.

Have you ever seen this letter before?

[4:23 p.m.]

MR. KENT: I do not recall, but I can't rule out. The U.S. Congress does not, as a matter of course, copy embassies on its correspondence with other countries, but we oftentimes do receive courtesy copies sometimes through the State Department.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Do you know if the State Department has provided us a copy?

A  I honestly cannot remember, but I at least recall hearing about a communication which could have been this letter.

Q  Okay. And what do you remember about this communication?

A  Well, that there were some people expressing interest in whether Ukraine had possibly stopped cooperating. This is not the first time I've heard it, but I honestly could not give you precisely, you know, information. Again, this was not a communication that went through the embassy --

Q  Of course.

A  -- nor did we go to the prosecutor general to raise the concerns of the three Senators who sent this letter.

Q  Okay. Do you know if anyone in the leg affairs --

A  At the time, I was working in Kyiv, so I would not necessarily have been aware. My predecessor was Bridget Brink, who is now serving as our Ambassador in Slovakia. So she was the Deputy Assistant Secretary at the time, so I'm not sure if this letter was passed through and was discussed.

Q  If the State Department found out about this, do you think they would dispatch their legislative liaisons to talk with the Senators or their Senator's staff to --

A  Honestly, again, I was in Kyiv at the time, so I do not have knowledge of any interaction between the Senate's -- three senators, their staff --

Q  Fair enough.

A  -- and either Hill liaison or the European Bureau.

Q  Were you aware of any questions about whether Lutsenko was failing to cooperate with Special Counsel Mueller?

A  Again, I didn't have any conversations with Mr. Lutsenko as a general rule. By this point in May of 2018, our relations with him had soured. And so we didn't have a complete break in communications, but we did not -- we, the U.S. Embassy, did not meet with him frequently.

Q  Do you know if anyone at the State Department had a -- picked up the phone and called the Justice Department and said, you know, this Lutsenko fellow is not so great. If you are getting information from him, you might want to better understand that he is not well-regarded at this point?

A  To be honest, I have no knowledge of that, and I can't say either yes or no.

Q  Okay. I'll ask you one last question, and then our time is about to expire after this round.

There was some discussion about instances where Mayor Giuliani was operating in Ukraine and having meetings. And we know that he has got some clients and other interests. It's fair to say the Ukrainians are aware of his celebrity status, at least some Ukrainians?

A  I think some Ukrainians, like many Americans, remember him from the time he was Mayor of New York at the time of the attacks, September 11. Besides I mentioned, in a positive light, former heavyweight boxing champion, Mayor of Kyiv, Klychko. The other individuals that former Mayor Giuliani has chosen to associate in Ukraine have far less positive reputations in Ukraine.

Q  Right. But, you know, he was at least somebody that was, you know, considered to be an international, you know, political figure from his time as Mayor of New York.

A  Right. Although, again, that would have had less impact in Ukraine, which was focused on its own issues and challenges at the time.

Q  Right. But his ability to get meetings is understandable?

A  I mean, he had an existing relationship with the mayor of Kyiv, and I think Mayor Klychko would probably see him at any moment. I would say that is the level of an easy ask. It was well known in Ukraine that his main paying clients in Ukraine at the time were the mayor of Kharkiv and a Russian Ukrainian oligarch named Pavlo Fuks.

Q  Is this before 2016 -- I'm sorry, before 2018 in the --

A  I believe that Mayor Giuliani's association with Mayor Kernes and Pavlo Fuks contractually began in 2017.

Q  Okay. Thank you.

MR. KENT: And if I could take another break.

THE CHAIRMAN: Let's gets a 5-minute break. We still have a lot of material to get through, and we want to try to get you out as a reasonable hour. So let’s try to come back as soon as possible after a quick break.

[Recess.]

THE CHAIRMAN: Let's go back on the record.

Secretary, I have just a few questions before I hand it back to Mr. Goldman. My colleagues asked you a great deal about the Bidens and Burisma. I want to go back to one of the origins of the narrative they were getting at. You mentioned there were four false narratives in the Solomon article back in April of 2019. Is that right?

MR. KENT: Well, there were four narratives that were introduced, led off by the Solomon articles. But I'm not sure that all four were introduced by Solomon. The first two were definitely part one, part two, but there were a number of different platforms in play that week.

THE CHAIRMAN: And part one, was that Lutsenko's claim that Biden pressured Poroshenko to fire Shokin because of the prosecutor general's office investigation of Burisma?

MR. KENT: No. I believe that the first day the two themes that were introduced were the anticorruption theme, and that was targeting the embassy, including the letter that I had signed in April 2016, and NABU, as in an organization, and then the 2016 conversation. The discussions of the Bidens and Burisma was the third narrative theme that was introduced a day or two later.

THE CHAIRMAN: So that was the third false narrative you referred to?

MR. KENT: Right.

THE CHAIRMAN: And, in fact, that false narrative that the Vice President had pressured the firing of Shokin over Burisma, Lutsenko himself would later recant. Did he not?

MR. KENT: Mr. Lutsenko has held many positions on many issues that are mutually exclusive, and including on this issue.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, in mid-May of 2019, Mr. Lutsenko, were you aware, did an interview with Bloomberg in which he said he had no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son. Are you familiar with that interview?

MR. KENT: I am more familiar with the interview that he gave to The L.A. Times, in which he said that the activities related primarily to Zlochevsky's actions as minister, which occurred several years before Hunter Biden came on to the board. So his interviews this year, subsequent to leaving office, are more in accord with the facts as I understood them at the time, than his assertions as prosecutor general.

THE CHAIRMAN: So let me ask you a little bit more again about this false narrative since recanted. Just to be absolutely clear about this, when the Vice President was asked to make the case, or help make the case for Shokin's firing, this was the policy of the State Department, and the State Department was asking the Vice President to assist with the execution of that policy?

MR. KENT: That would be a correct assessment, yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And it was the policy of other international organizations as well that recognized that Shokin was corrupt?

MR. KENT: Correct. He was not allowing for reform of the prosecutor general service, and in contrast, he actually was actively undermining reform of the prosecutor general service and our assistance.

THE CHAIRMAN: And this involved, as you said, an effort to undermine the very inspector general office that the State Department had assiduously worked to help the Ukrainians establish to root out corruption within the prosecutor force?

MR. KENT: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Goldman.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Picking up off of that June 28 conference call that you referenced, following that, you said that you were in Toronto for a meeting where President Zelenskyy also was present?

A  Correct. This was the Ukraine Reform Conference. It essentially is the primary friends, donors of Ukraine. This was the third edition. The first one was held, I believe, in Denmark; second in London; and the third was hosted in Canada by the Canadian Government. And Kurt Volker and I were the ranking U.S. officials who attended for the U.S.

Q  And who was there from Ukraine?

A  President Zelenskyy himself.

Q  And any of his senior aides?

A  Many of his senior aides. In the meeting that we had on July 2, to the best of my recollection, those included his chief of staff, Andriy Bohdan, who is a very controversial figure; it included his two closest personal assistants, a person named Shefir, and another one named Yermak; it included a professional in the presidential apparatus, Igor Zhovkva; their ambassador to Canada, Andriy Shevchenko, and an interpreter.

Q  And what was discussed at that meeting?

A  The whole range of U.S.-Ukraine relations, because of special representative for Ukraine negotiation Volker's focus on the Donbas conflict. That was one segment of the conversation.

When we got to more general bilateral relations, that was the first time, I mentioned earlier, that I heard directly from Kurt his assertion that Perry, Sondland, and Volker were now in charge of Ukraine policy. He made that assertion to President Zelenskyy.

Coming out of the meeting with the President, he explained how the meeting had gone on May 23 in the Oval Office, that the three officers were the ones leading the charge, and that -- he said that we're working on a phone call with the President.

And Zelenskyy cut him off at that point and said, just a phone call? How about the visit? And Volker said, first a phone call, which this is a conversation happening on July 2. He said, We’ll aim for that perhaps next week, and hopefully that will lead into a meeting by the end of the month, July 29 and 30, which was roughly, I think, the dates that were discussed in the June 18 meeting that Secretary Perry chaired.

Q  Was there any discussion in that meeting in Toronto trying to understand. You have a reputation of loving and cherishing this U.S.-Ukraine relationship and dedicating your life toward strengthening the relationship between the United States and Ukraine. That is something that I've heard. And you get a readout from Lieutenant Colonel Vindman that doesn't have a lot of details, and you don’t try to get any more information about the call. I just want to better understand your mindset that, once you got that readout that was lacking substance, that you chose not to try to get any more information. This is what you've dedicated your life towards strengthening this relationship. And I don't understand that. Can you better explain that?

MR. KENT: I think some people try to be in the middle of everything, and some people try to do their job based on the conditions which they are issued. So, again, I don't work at the White House. There are conversations and meetings that I do not take part in. My job is to represent the State Department and try to promote our national interests through the policies that have been discussed and agreed to in the interagency format and to use the mechanisms that the State Department has under its ability, including programming funded by appropriations from Congress, to pursue those national interests. So that's my job. It's also my job for six countries.

Now, admittedly, Ukraine is the biggest country.

MR. KENT: As I stated earlier, in my 27 years in the Foreign Service, I've never been on a Presidential call, and that is not normal for officials that are at the Embassy or at the State Department. The people who normally are on a Presidential call are staff at the National Security Council and the White House. And I have not served as a detailee to the National Security Council in my career.

MR. ZELDIN: As far as the participants on the call, you testified earlier that you got a readout of the call from Lieutenant Colonel Vindman?

MR. KENT: Correct.

MR. ZELDIN: Was there anyone else on the call who would typically give you a readout of that phone call?

MR. KENT: I would say that it was standard procedure for the director to give a readout to the Deputy Assistant Secretary. So, for instance, it was also Lieutenant Colonel Vindman who gave me the readout in April after the inaugural -- sorry, the election day victory call. So that was standard practice, that the director for a country would give a readout to the DAS so that the policy DAS at State would know the substance of what was discussed so we could make sure that our policy going forward was aligned with the conversations had by the President.

MR. ZELDIN: We only have a couple minutes left, but something that is still outstanding from a previous round I'm Ambassador Yovanovitch at the same time?

MR. KENT: I have not been a part of the meeting with Zelenskyy since this call happened, and since I also -- since I first saw this text 2 weeks ago. And of the meetings that I had with Zelenskyy previously, the meeting in March of 2019, which is when he was running as a candidate that was Under Secretary Hale, Ambassador Yovanovitch, and myself, when I came back in May, when he was President-elect Zelenskyy, Ambassador Yovanovitch had already been recalled. So the only meeting that was in the room at the same time with Ambassador Yovanovitch and Zelenskyy was in March, and the principal in the meeting was Under Secretary Hale.

MR. ZELDIN: Did you have an opportunity to observe any direct interaction between President Zelenskyy and Ambassador Yovanovitch?

MR. KENT: I only saw when he was Candidate Zelenskyy with her, and at that point, the focus was on Under Secretary Hale as the ranking visitor.

MR. ZELDIN: So no indications from that exchange that would help us understand that statement from President Zelenskyy with regards to loyalty to a previous President and not accepting Zelenskyy?

MR. KENT: I have no way of explaining why he said that, no.

MR. ZELDIN: Why weren't you on the July 25th call? President Zelenskyy says something back --

MR. ZELDIN: You're looking at page 4?

MR. KENT: Right.

MR. ZELDIN: There is a full paragraph of President Zelenskyy in the middle of the page, and towards the bottom of that paragraph, President Zelenskyy speaks about Ambassador Yovanovitch?

MR. KENT: Yep.

MR. ZELDIN: And in it, part of what President Zelenskyy says, quote: Her attitude toward me was far from the best as she had admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as the new President well enough, end quote.

Do you know where President Zelenskyy would have developed the belief that Ambassador Yovanovitch was loyal to a previous President?

MR. KENT: I have no idea because I do know that President Poroshenko thought she was not a fan of him.

MR. ZELDIN: And I recall you testifying to that earlier.

MR. KENT: Yeah.

MR. ZELDIN: That President Poroshenko had targeted Ambassador Yovanovitch, which is why I wanted to ask you about this particular quote from President Zelenskyy. Did you have an opportunity to meet with President Zelenskyy and particular meetings.

MR. ZELDIN: The United States policy towards Ukraine over the course of the last couple of years with regards to aid, support for Ukraine, would you assess it as getting stronger?

MR. KENT: I would say that, thanks to the appropriators on the Appropriation Committee, the amounts made available for assistance to Ukraine has increased yearly since 2014, yes.

MR. ZELDIN: And how important is it to Ukraine to have access to Javelin.

MR. KENT: I am the son of a submarine captain. I'm not the son of an Army cav or infantry officer, but I understand from my colleagues who do have such experience -- and our Belarus desk officer was an officer who used Javelins -- is that they are incredibly effective weapons at stopping armored advance, and the Russians are scared of them.

MR. ZELDIN: Earlier on, in one of the rounds, I believe this morning, there was discussion with regards to the firing of Ambassador Yovanovitch, and later on, you testified that you read the July 25th transcript. Do you recall the part of the transcript where President Zelenskyy is speaking about Ambassador Yovanovitch?

MR. KENT: I have the transcript here, and yes, I believe somewhere our President says something, and then cases. Was there a person, an office, that you would communicate with?

MR. KENT: The Ambassadors, I believe, collectively, the G7 Ambassadors, plus the EU Ambassador, when they had a meet with President Poroshenko, my understanding is this was the type of issue that was raised. Again, starting in August 18, I was back in Washington, so I did not participate in those meetings. The trend line and the deterioration started about the time I came back here to Washington.

MR. ZELDIN: When communicating with Ukraine with these lists, was Lutsenko or any of the people from his office present in any of those meetings?

MR. KENT: I can't say for certain. I do not think it was normal for the prosecutor general to be attending the meetings when, you know, eight Ambassadors come in to see President Poroshenko. It's not like they met that often. Prosecutor General Lutsenko, in my experience, occasionally, would summon Ambassadors or Embassy representatives to have meetings with him for sort of exchange on the situation, the current status of rule of law in the country.

MR. ZELDIN: It's a possibility that somebody representing Lutsenko might be present at any of these meetings?

MR. KENT: Again, this trend line started last summer about the time I came back, so I don't know who was in any the names associated with the cases?

MR. KENT: On any given month, there would have been perhaps cases that rose to the fore as being emblematic of the direction. For instance, last December, 2018, one of the candidates for President, Anatoliy Hrytsenko, was assaulted in a parking garage in the city of Odesa. A former Defense Minister running for President was assaulted by thugs, and there was no effort to investigate that. That is a classic example of intimidation, and the lack of an investigation is a suggestion that those in power were not interested in holding the people to account because the accounts indicated that they were probably connected to the power organizations.

MR. ZELDIN: Did you keep track of these individual cases that we were engaging Ukraine with?

MR. KENT: The Embassy, as part of its advocacy, would have no doubt kept a running list and, in my experience from when I was there, would have discussed this extensively with the other likeminded Ambassadors. And there was a collection of Ambassadors to the G7 countries, plus the Ambassador to the EU, met almost weekly. And the issue of the deterioration of the rule of law and the lack of accountability and impunity for these attacks was a frequent topic.

MR. ZELDIN: With regards to this list of cases, who would you speak to on the Ukraine side about the individual the case of Katia Handziuk became a clarion example of the failure for the country to move forward in the same way that the murder of Georgiu Gongadze in 2000 encapsulated the failure of then President Kuchma to move the country forward.

MR. ZELDIN: But this would be a case that Ambassador Yovanovich would be very familiar with?

MR. KENT: This is a case that was under great discussion. The initial attack occurred in the summer of 2018, I believe, that the activist eventually died in roughly November of 2018.

MR. ZELDIN: Yeah, I just don't want to put any words in your mouth, that's why I'm asking the question. This would be a case that Ambassador Yovanovitch would have been very familiar with?

MR. KENT: I would imagine so, yes.

MR. ZELDIN: And were there many other cases that you have recall of individual names of cases as you sit here today, without having to go through the entire list?

MR. KENT: I honestly -- the number of uninvestigated assaults on members of civil society, the media, and the opposition, as I said, eventually reached 100, and that was a trend line and a message to everybody. So I cannot cite all 100.

MR. ZELDIN: I wasn't asking. I just wanted to ask, though, if necessary, there are many cases that you recall the media, and members of the opposition.

In the year before President Poroshenko ran for reelection, there were over a hundred such attacks against civil society, the media, and occasionally political opponents, none of those were prosecuted by Yuriy Lutsenko.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you recall the names of -- any of the names of the individual cases that you spoke to or Ambassador Yovanovitch spoke to Ukraine about?

MR. KENT: I would say that, in the last 3 years, the most prominent case was this anti corruption activist that I mentioned. Her name is Katia Handziuk, H-a-n-d-z-i-u-k. She was in a town in Kherson, and according to activists, civil society, and journalists, there were politicians connected to President Poroshenko, which was also Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko's party, as well as the party connected to Yuliya Tymoshenko. And despite this general knowledge, there was no firm action taken by the prosecutor general.

MR. ZELDIN: And this was a case important to you and Ambassador Yovanovitch?

MR. KENT: This was a case important for the rule of law under a President who had run to change Ukraine, starting with the Revolution of Dignity. So, if you were to ask a Ukrainian over the last year, if they had to cite one case that encapsulated the failures of President Poroshenko and his team, which included Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, prosecutor in Ukraine about any of the Ukraine cases?

MR. KENT: During the period of time when Yuriy Lutsenko was prosecutor general, and he became prosecutor general before Ambassador Yovanovitch arrived at post in August 2016, the U.S. Government had concerns that Ukrainian law enforcement, prosecutorial, and intelligence services were occasionally harassing and investigating without merit civil society activists, members of the media, and political opponents.

And so it was a matter of concern that those in office were using that office not to prosecute criminals but to put pressure on civil society, the media, and political opponents. In that context, yes, both the Ambassador and I raised concerns specifically about action taken without evident merit to pressure civil society, the media, and political opponents.

MR. ZELDIN: Was this a conversation solely in general, or were there discussions about specific cases?

MR. KENT: When, in a country whose leading journalist was murdered on the orders of a President in 2000, when journalists are attacked, when an anticorruption activist has acid thrown in her face at the orders of people that were politically connected and after 12 operations she died, yes, we raised specific cases of concern regarding the misuse of state office to go after civil society activists, members of

MR. ZELDIN: Assistant Secretary Nuland's name has come up a few time, Kathy Kavalec?

MR. KENT: Kathy Kavalec.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware of Assistant Secretary Nuland instructing Kathy Kavalec to speak to Christopher Steele during the 2016 campaign?

MR. KENT: I was in Kyiv, and Kathy Kavalec was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Russia, and so I was not aware of what the nature of engagement between Assistant Secretary Nuland and Deputy Assistant Secretary Kavalec would have been, no.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware of Ambassador Yovanovitch ever having conversations with Ukraine officials on specific individual cases before the prosecutor?

MR. KENT: When you say "specific cases," what do you mean?

MR. ZELDIN: In any of the prosecutor's cases, any of the Ukraine's prosecutor's cases, are you familiar with any conversations Ambassador Yovanovitch had with that Ukraine prosecutor about any of those cases?

MR. KENT: Which prosecutor are you referring to?

MR. ZELDIN: Well, I was referring to the state prosecutor, but with regards to Ukraine's state prosecutor or any cases within the Ukraine Government, are you aware of Ambassador Yovanovitch having any conversations with any terminology "when Volker released his tweets"?

A  I should have said WhatsApp messages; I'm sorry.

Q  And so I just wanted to circle back to that, that I don't believe Ambassador Volker has released anything himself. He provided documents to the committees, and then, you know, the committee -- is that your understanding?

A  I do not know how that information made it into the public domain.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  I do not engage the media and have studiously avoided the media before coming here. I cannot say that's been Kurt's approach.

Q  Okay. But you're not aware of him releasing his text messages like affirmatively on his own?

A  I do not know how his WhatsApp messages made it into the public domain.

Q  I mean, it's conceivable that somebody on the Hill side, I know that might come as a shock, would push certain messages out. Is that something that --

A  That's one option.

Q  Okay. So you think that maybe he's pushing his own messages out on his own?

A  I do not know.

Q  Okay.

MR. CASTOR: Mr. Zeldin. with this, and that was the mechanism.

Q  You don't have concerns with that, do you?

A  That sounds like an appropriate centralized way of gathering documents from many people.

Q  So the function of the State Department collecting the documents and going through the documents, organizing the documents, and producing them to Congress is what you understand to be ordinary course?

A  Well, my role as an identified record collector was to go through all of my records and identify information and provide that information. So that's what I did. What happens after that is a process that I don't have --

Q  Okay. You don't have a lot of experience with that?

A  This is the first time that I've gone through this process, yes.

Q  Okay. So you're not in a position to evaluate whether the process undertaken here has been irregular or improper?

A  This is the first time I've done this type of process where I've had to go through all my handwritten notes and other forms of communication to find evidence that might be responsive to the subjects that were listed in the subpoena.

Q  Okay. And then a couple times you used the weeks was, the State Department did that automatically, but there were these other records that would not have been accessed automatically, and those included memos that were written but never logged and sent to a principal like the Secretary, handwritten notes, or other communications.

Q  Okay. Did I understand your testimony that you were concerned about the integrity of the document collection process?

A  What I said was, when we had our meeting on the 3rd of October, based on instructions that had been prepared by others that I presumed were in our congressional liaison in the legal office, that when they identified potential chief record collectors, that there were individuals that were not included that were in the listing, and, therefore, there were additional people that were asked to check for records.

Q  Okay. And I may have heard this incorrectly, but it's not your understanding that the State Department officials look for documents and then send them in to Congress individually, right?

A  It was clear in the instructions that, as part of the process of collecting documents, the records should be identified, and then there would be a central repository for the processing of those documents. And that's in an office that is under our what's known as the A Bureau, the Administrative Bureau. So I guess there's a unit that deals testimony or your testimony?

A  I have not talked to Masha since Friday, no.

Q  Okay. And to the extent you reference her testimony, it's the prepared statement?

A  It was made available and, I read it online, I think The New York Times.

Q  Okay. This morning, we were talking about the State Department's record collection procedure and responding to the subpoena. Have you ever been involved with a congressional records request?

A  The only previous record request that I have seen, although I was not specifically named as a record collector, was the Senate's Select Intelligence Committee's request for documents related to Paul Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik.

Q  How did the -- as far as you know, the ordinary process work for producing documents to Congress?

A  Well, again, I have been present or seen the process happen twice, once when I was at an Embassy and, the other time, the past 2 weeks at the State Department. At the Embassy, there was a mechanism where our information management resource, our specialists who work with the information systems, went through and were able to extract from the system of backups any emails that had reference to the individuals listed.

And what was different about this search the last 2

Q  Did you have any communications with anyone at the State Department about your testimony here today, other than the ones you've described with the lawyers and --

A  Well, I described early on a communication about the document search. Subsequent to that, I did not have any discussions or coordination about what I would say personally. The conversations with the counsel, legal office counsel, then went through counsel with words redacted                      . I got several letters that were signed by Under Secretary of Management Brian Bulatao, and then there were a number of conversations that words redacted                       had, which I did not participate in.

Q  But nobody has tried to influence your testimony. Is that correct?

A  No. That is correct.

Q  And did you talk to Ambassador Yovanovitch after or before her testimony with us?

A  When you say "talked," what's your timeframe? What are your time --

Q  Since she appeared, which was last Friday?

A  I have not had any conversations with her since then. My wife, I believe, has because of the health of her mother. And my wife visited her mother in hospital and then had a conversation with Masha.

Q  Okay. But you didn't speak to her about her been the same week and certainly was within the same month. He came over from Joint Chiefs at the end of the summer of 2018.

Q  Do you know when his detail was up?

A  Generally, again, I've never worked at the NSC, but my general understanding is it's 1-year renewable. And generally, because of the budget and staffing patterns, they ask for detailees, which the host agencies pay for. And generally they come from State, Office of Secretary of Defense, or JCS in the Intel Community, and Treasury also provides individuals. Under Secretary Tillerson, when he had our staff freeze, he tried to limit all detailees. So, as a result, the number of State Department officials on detail at the NSC dropped dramatically, and that required, in order to staff it at similar levels, an increase in detailees from the Intel Community, the Pentagon, and JCS.

Q  Do you know when his detail is up?

A  Well, he's obviously in his second year now, and I get the sense that there are mechanisms to allow for renewable, even though that's not standard. Those jobs are incredibly draining, so most people are happy to do 1 year and move on. But he clearly got an extension to a second year, but I've never discussed that issue with him. But my presumption is that, at some point, it was extended by a second year. Vindman's interactions with your staff?

A  Yes. He would reach out -- I'm the Deputy Assistant Secretary, but there's an office that works on Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus, and those are three countries for which he had responsibility within the NSC, although he was actually recruited to work on Russia, but he ended up working on Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus, so he is a staff of one for those three countries. So it was natural that he would turn to an office that had multiple people working on those countries to see if they could be supportive.

Q  Okay. And you explained that he had, from time to time, made a lot of requests of your staff?

A  From time to time, he asked for -- a very short fuse -- detailed documentation that the members felt, first of all, was impossible to meet on his deadline and, second of all, distracted them from the work they had to do. And usually they would raise their complaints to their office director, words redacted                       . And words redacted               , if he did not feel his conversations with Alex could provide sufficient relief, he would ask me to weigh in.

Q  How long has this he been going on?

A  Well, I mean, I believe that Alex came on to the account at the end of the summer of 2018. So my return from Kyiv, I started work the day after Labor Day in September 2018, and his arrival to the NSC staff may have Catherine doing her 1-year stint, she had worked at the Ukraine desk at the State Department. And there was an officer named words redacted                       who had been working at the Embassy in Kyiv, and he came back and did a year stint at NSC.

So my principal interlocutor when I would go to the NSC to have conversations generally was the State Department director, words redacted

Q          words redacted                                                                            Generally, directors at the NSC do not travel on their own, but they often accompany principals. I can say that Victoria Nuland was Assistant Secretary, sometimes Celeste Wallander and Charlie Kupchan would travel with her to countries, whether that would be Russia or Ukraine.

Q          words redacted                                                                            And, again, I spend most of my life in support of others, and so it hurts me to say this, but generally people remember who the principal on the trip was and not all the staff who actually do most of the work.

Q  You talked earlier about Lieutenant Colonel almost all of which were Ukrainian, in the black book.

Q  Would it be fair to say that there were some Ukrainians that were trying to influence the outcome?

A  I honestly do not know. I was in Ukraine, and so I was not privy to whatever activities may have been happening here in the United States.

Q  words redacted

words redacted

words redacted     words redacted

words redacted     words redacted

words redacted     words redacted

words redacted     words redacted

words redacted     words redacted                                                                                                when I would go to the NSC, the person I would normally talk to directly was the State Department detailee, the woman I mentioned previously, Catherine Croft, who has been working with Kurt Volker, she was a director at the NSC for Ukraine. And prior to

Q  Who was the Deputy Assistant Secretary at the time?

A  It would have been Bridget Brink, my predecessor.

Q  So, other than this, you know, reading this story, you did not ever come into any firsthand information relating to words redacted                       ?

A  No.

Q  Or learn about any initiative on behalf of the DNC to promulgate some of this information?

A  No.

Q  The story walks through Serhiy Leshchenko's role in publicizing the Manafort ledgers.

A  The so-called black ledgers, yes.

Q  What do you recall about that?

A  About the black ledgers?

Q  Yeah.

A  I recall that those were documents apparently found at the former estate of the previous President who fled to Russia, Viktor Yanukovych, and it indicated individuals who had been receiving payments by the former ruling party.

Q  And at the time Leshchenko, at least it's reported here, suggested that his motivation was partly to undermine Trump?

A  He's a Ukrainian citizen. I don't know what his motivations are. I know that he was an investigative journalist, and there were, as I recall, hundreds of names,

[5:37 p.m.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  And when you read this article, did you do any followup, communicate with anybody at the State Department about the validity of this?

A  I was in Ukraine. They were in Washington. And I presumed that people had read it. But it's an article by two journalists that I don't think I've met. But, you know, it was -- obviously, people were talking about it because of the allegations --

Q  Are you familiar with the Embassy's posture during this time period with Ambassador Chaly?

A  Again, at this time, which we're talking about the period of the election, which is November 16, and this article coming out the month of the inaugural in 2017. I was in Ukraine, Kyiv, not here in Washington. That said, I do know Ambassador Chaly. I met him for the first time in the fall of 2004 when he was the think tank --

Q  And he had written an op-ed, I guess, that said some less than positive things about Candidate Trump?

A  It's possible. I mean, "he" being Ambassador Chaly?

Q  Yeah.

A  If you say so. Honestly, again, I was in Ukraine focused on that end of the relationship. to some things just and ask you whether you have any awareness or ever remember this issue coming up. I'm not going to ask you to, you know, adopt the article as, you know, personal endorsement or anything.

Were you aware that a Ukrainian American named words redacted                       was, you know, a consultant for the Democratic National Committee and had made some overtures to the Ukrainian Embassy?

A  I was not aware of that. I did at the time read this article nearly 3 years ago now. But, yes, I read this article.

A  What I said --

Q  Could you just go through that again?

A  Right.

Q  I haven't heard that name lately.

A  That was a message -- that was described in the shorthand of the desire to have -- this was the Gordon Sondland messaging of what the Ukrainians need to say in shorthand 2016. And in shorthand, it was suggested that the Ukrainians needed -- Zelenskyy needed to go to a microphone and basically there needed to be three words in the message, and that was the shorthand.

Q  Clinton was shorthand for 2016?

A  2016, yes.

Q  Okay. Are you aware of the narrative that there were some Ukrainians that tried to influence the outcome of the election?

A  I recall reading a Politico article to that effect in the spring of 2017, yeah.

[Minority Exhibit No. 4
Was marked for identification.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Okay. I'm going to mark as exhibit -- what are we up to, 4? These guys love this article. This is a Politico article by Ken Vogel dated January 2017. It’s, like, 18 pages. It goes into some depth. I'm just going to point you she said, why? And he says, that's how I communicate. So if you want to communicate with me, the prime minister of Ukraine, you need to go back to the embassy and have them download those apps.

So she came back to the embassy. We checked with our communications and Diplomatic Security specialists. The assessment was that Viber was not as secure as WhatsApp, and that we were authorized to use WhatsApp for communications as long as records were saved.

Q  Okay. So the use of WhatsApp by U.S. official, State Department official, White House official, presents no problems as long as everything is saved?

A  I didn't say that, but at least we're in --

Q  Like, what kind of problems would it present as long as everything is saved?

A  Well, I think there always is a challenge with the integrity of data. And, for instance, Minister Avakov of Ukraine, who I've referenced several times, minister of interior, told me and another member of the staff, in 2018, that there were now ways, thanks to Israeli code writers, of cracking the alleged encryption of text messages on WhatsApp. So for people who thought they were encrypted and therefore safe, at least the text messages, the texts as opposed to the voice could be accessed by people.

Q  Okay. Moments ago you referenced the name Clinton? actively promoting the request for Ukraine to open these investigations.

Q  Okay. And it would be inconsistent with your understanding if these investigations were for Ukrainians to open matters into misdeeds by Ukrainian -- genuine misdeeds by Ukrainians, whether it relates to Burisma or 2016?

A  We obviously want Ukraine to have effective law enforcement and justice sector institutions. That's in order to be able to investigate, prosecute, and judge any criminal acts. Again, as I said, I think the issue for what we ask them to do in certain cases should start from whether there's a criminal nexus in the U.S. because that's our role as the U.S. Government, not to dictate that you should investigate this person because it's in our political interest.

Q  Okay. You've mentioned WhatsApp a few times. That's a completely standard messaging application to use for State Department officials, correct, as long as everything is saved first?

A  In certain countries it’s almost required for business. And I'll give you the example of how I ended up first using WhatsApp. When Ambassador Yovanovitch had her first meeting with the then new prime minister of Ukraine, Volodymyr Hroysman, who is 41 years old, and she arrived in August, so I'm presuming it was late August or early September, he asked if she were on WhatsApp and Viber. And We both wanted the best for Ukraine. We both wanted the best for U.S.-Ukraine relations. He saw Rudy Giuliani as an issue to be addressed, and potentially an ally to be incorporated to get the U.S. President to where we wanted our relationship to be, which is having a meeting.

My concern could be summed up by the means don't necessarily justify -- you know, the ends don't necessarily justify the means, that if we're trying to put trade space on the table of an investigation, that can violate a principle that undermines what we're trying to do on a matter of policy.

Q  My understanding of what -- how he looked at Rudy was that he thought Mr. Giuliani was amplifying a negative narrative, meaning a false narrative, meaning that whatever Rudy Giuliani was communicating, you know, about to the President was something that needed to be fixed. And since the President and Rudy Giuliani had communications on a somewhat regular basis, he thought that it was a relationship he had to try to work on if he could.

A  Yeah. That is my understanding of his rationale for engaging the former mayor of New York.

Q  Okay. And by no means was he adopting the narrative that Rudy Giuliani was proselytizing?

A  I don't know what Kurt's view was about the narrative. What I know is that by September, Kurt was inconsistent with your understanding?

A  Well, I think I can only share the conversation I had with Kurt, and the conversation was framed differently.

Q  Okay.

A  But, again, I wasn't here. I haven't seen the transcript of what he said to you. So I can only share my recollection of my conversations with him.

Q  Sure. And did he communicate that differently, or did you just maybe understand it differently, or is there a possible disconnect there, or are these two different things?

A  I think that there are two people who -- we're talking at this point about a conversation that took place 3 months ago, that neither of us were taking notes. We were standing up. And so, I would say that, you know, he has shared his recollection of the conversation, and I shared mine.

Q  Okay. But your recollection was that they were pushing for political investigations that had no merit?

A  When he said that he was going to engage Rudy Giuliani about Ukraine, because Rudy Giuliani was clearly influencing the President's views of Ukraine, I reminded him what Rudy Giuliani was doing in Ukraine and about Ukraine, about which I had concerns.

That's why I say that I think Kurt was approaching -- in my understanding, he was approaching this issue tactically.

Q  But he thought that it may have -- that the aid may be contingent on this?

A  I have subsequently seen his tweets, which -- or not his tweets, the WhatsApp messages that Kurt Volker issued. And so it appears to me, having seen those WhatsApp messages, that he was sharing his concerns with Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Volker.

MR. GOLDMAN: Okay. I think our time is up. So we will yield to the minority.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  When Volker was communicating to you about various investigations that would occur in the Ukraine, whether it relates to Burisma 2016, is it possible -- the way I understood his -- you know, we spoke to Volker.

A  Right.

Q  He was in here. The way I understood his -- the way he communicated it was that if there were Ukrainians engaged in misdeeds, corruption, then, you know -- and it could relate to Burisma, it could relate to bringing Hunter Biden on the board, it could relate to Ukrainians doing nefarious things in the run-up to the 2016 election, then the Ukrainians ought to investigate fellow Ukrainians.

A  So you're saying that's what Ambassador Volker said to you and the committee?

Q  That was my understanding of what he said. Is that Ukraine is known as the YES Conference. That used to stand for Yalta European Strategy back when Crimea and Yalta were under Ukrainian control.

And it was going to happen, start in a couple of days. I flew out to Ukraine to take part in that conference as did Ambassador Volker. And Charge Taylor indicated that Ambassador Sondland was pushing a line that included having President Zelenskyy give an interview potentially with CNN during the YES Conference that weekend in which he would send this public signal of announcing a willingness to pursue investigations.

Q  And did Ambassador Sondland discuss a White House visit in the context of that statement?

A  I think the anticipation or the hope was that sending that signal would clear the way for both the White House visit as well as the resumption or the clearing of the administrative hold on security assistance, which had been placed by 0MB. Although, Charge Taylor asserted to me that both Tim Morrison and Gordon Sondland specifically said that they did not believe that the two issues were linked.

Q  What was Ambassador Taylor's reaction to this whole conversation?

A  He told me he indicated to Gordon, he said, This is wrong. That's what I recall him saying to me, again, orally reading out of a conversation of which I was not a part. And Gordon had told him, Tim, and Tim told Bill Taylor, that he, Gordon, had talked to the President, POTUS in sort of shorthand, and POTUS wanted nothing less than President Zelenskyy to go to microphone and say investigations, Biden, and Clinton.

Q  And in return for what?

A  That was not clear to me. I wasn't part of this exchange. But Bill Taylor then followed up with a video conference, our normal Monday call in which he elaborated on his conversations with both senior director Morrison on the 7th as well as with Ambassador Sondland on the 8th.

Q  And what did he say?

A  He said that Morrison indicated that Rudy Giuliani had recently talked to the President again, and he said, as you can imagine, that creates difficulties managing the Ukraine account.

On his conversation with Ambassador Sondland on the 8th, I believe they went into more detail about Ambassador Sondland's efforts to try to facilitate a proper approach, in his view, to open up the possibility of a visit to the White House.

Q  So can you explain a little bit?

A  Well, this was taking place -- this conversation was taking place with Ambassador Taylor and I on the 9th of September. The biggest annual conference on Ukraine in Colonel Vindman or his boss, which was Fiona Hill and then now has become Tim Morrison.

Q  Right. And I thank you for that clarification. So official U.S. policy remain the same, but there's sort of a secondary or shadow policy that was now being perpetrated by U.S. officials? Was that what you learned?

A  I had growing concerns that individuals were pushing communications with Ukrainians that had not been discussed and endorsed in the formal policy process, yes.

Q  Now, it sounds like you went on vacation right after you wrote this memo to file, which, just as an aside, I assume you also provided to the State Department --

A  I did.

Q  -- to turn over.

Did you have any subsequent conversations with anyone about this revelation that you had?

A  Well, I believe -- I went away. I came back after Labor Day. The next communication or data point that I can recall was a WhatsApp message that Charge Taylor sent me on September 7, which would have been, I think, the Saturday after Labor Day.

Q  And what did that WhatsApp message say?

A  Charge Taylor indicated that he had talked to Tim Morrison, who is the senior director for Europe, who replaced Fiona Hill. And Tim indicated that he had talked to Gordon. Presidents is never easy. President Poroshenko spent several years also trying to get a visit to the White House, and that was more happenstance, the visit he made in June 2017. So I have an appreciation that just because a leader of a country wants to visit Washington and have an Oval Office visit doesn't mean it that happens.

So I would say there was one track of trying to get a visit. There was another track of what we were engaging Ukraine formally through normal channels. And then this particular moment was the time where not just what I read on tweets by private citizens, but a greater understanding of actions taken by U.S. officials, in this case, Ambassador Volker, that my concerns grew.

Q  And just so we can understand, you sort of described just there kind of two parallel tracks of official U.S. policy. Is that an accurate assessment?

A  I think official U.S. policy are policies that are determined and endorsed. And in this administration there's the National Security Presidential Memorandum 4 that was issued in April of 2017, and that actually is what determines the formal policy process for formulating U.S. policy on any issue or country.

And what we're talking about now are issues and approaches that were not discussed in the interagency process as staffed by the NSC and the person of either Lieutenant

A  Those align with the Rudy Giuliani tweet. I think it was June 21, as well as some of the other story lines from earlier in the spring before President Zelenskyy was elected.

Q  Right. I just want to be clear that when you say politically motivated investigation --

A  That is what I'm referring to, yeah.

Q  -- that's what you're referring to. Okay.

Were you aware of efforts to convince the Ukrainian Government to issue a statement a couple days before the August 15 time period?

A  I was not aware of the effort to negotiate the text of the statement that came out as a result of Ambassador Volker's testimony here, and the tweets that he released, no, not until I had read those.

Q  So you were completely unaware of those discussions related to a possible statement about investigations?

A  Correct.

Q  Now, at that point, on August 15, when you look back on the previous 2 months, let's say, the readout from the June 28 call that you got from Ambassador Taylor, the conversation that you had with Ambassador Volker in Toronto, did you have a different view on what this White House visit and the interplay between a potential White House visit and these investigations?

A  As I mentioned before, arranging visits between

And so after having had these two conversations, I wrote a note to the file saying that I had concerns that there was an effort to initiate politically motivated prosecutions that were injurious to the rule of law, both in Ukraine and the U.S.

I informed the senior official still present and the European Bureau at 7:30 on a Friday night in the middle of the summer, which was Michael Murphy, and informed him of my intent to write a note to the file, which he agreed was the right thing to do.

Q  And when you say politically motivated investigations, are you referring to investigations that were also referenced in that July 25 call record?

A  At the time, I had no knowledge of the specifics of the call record, but based on Bill Taylor's account of the engagements with Andriy Yermak that were the engagements of Yermak with Kurt Volker, at that point it was clear that the investigations that were being suggested were the ones that Rudy Giuliani had been tweeting about, meaning Biden, Burisma, and 2016.

Q  And I understand you didn't know the contents of the call record, but now being able to read the call record as you have, you are referring to the Biden investigation that the President mentioned, as well as the CrowdStrike 2016 investigation. Is that right? what I described to Catherine the day before, which is the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty option. And I told Bill Taylor, that's wrong, and we shouldn't be doing that as a matter of U.S. policy.

Q  What did he say?

A  He said he agreed with me.

Q  Now, had you had any conversations with Ambassador Taylor after July 25 and prior to August 16 about this issue?

A  Not that I can recall.

Q  Had you had any conversations with -- well --

A  About this issue, I mean, we had a --

Q  Yes.

A  -- regularly scheduled weekly teleconference that involved teams, and if there were anything sensitive, we could finish up in a one-to-one. We also had a relationship that if there were needs, just like with any ambassador, they could call me up, you know, for an unscheduled conversation.

Q  And that never occurred in that 3-week span?

A  I do not recall us having a conversation specifically, you know, if you will, out of the regular schedule until Friday, August 16. And I say it's a Friday, because I was scheduled to get on a plane, leave my house at about 6:00 a.m. to go to the airport, fly out to California to go hiking in Yosemite with my family. So I had a very time-bound limit. ideas. Some of them are great; some of them are not so good. And part of the role of the special assistant as well as people like me is to ensure that the ideas stay within the bounds of U.S. policy.

Q  And what was her response?

A  She took that onboard.

Q  But why was that conversation important to you to crystalize what was going on?

A  Well, because there had been a lot of talk, you know. Frankly, what a private citizen tweets is an exercise in one way of First Amendment rights, but when you have U.S. Government employees, or in this case, a special U.S. Government employee potentially seemingly to align to that view, that's when it became real for me and a matter of concern.

And that was, as I said, I said the 15th and 16th, because the next day, I had a conversation with Charge Taylor in which he amplified the same theme. And he indicated that Special Representative Volker had been engaging Andriy Yermak; that the President and his private attorney, Rudy Giuliani, were interested in the initiation of investigations; and that Yermak was very uncomfortable when this was raised with him, and suggested that if that were the case, if that were really the position of the United States, it should be done officially and put in writing, essentially mouth, but there was a significance to August 15 and 16. What was the significance to those dates in your mind?

A  On August 15, the new special assistant to Special Representative Volker, Catherine Croft, came to my office and asked me, said she was trying to find out some information on behalf of Kurt. And she said, you, George, know about our relations with Ukraine, particularly in law enforcement. Have we ever asked the Ukrainians to investigate anybody?

And I told her, I said, well, Catherine, there are two ways of looking at that question. If there is a crime that was committed in the United States and any nexus for us to take action, we have two mechanisms: We have the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, and we have the legal attaches at the embassy, and that's the way a law enforcement investigation should engage the Ukrainians.

The other option, which I -- from the context of what has been spoken about in the press, maybe what you're asking is the political option. And if you're asking me have we ever gone to the Ukrainians and asked them to investigate or prosecute individuals for political reasons, the answer is, I hope we haven't, and we shouldn't because that goes against everything that we are trying to promote in post Soviet states for the last 28 years, which is the promotion of the rule of law.

And I also then told her, I said, Kurt has a lot of

Q  Understood. But given everything that you knew, and you certainty have indicated today that you were aware of the public narratives --

A  Yeah.

Q  -- what did you understand him to mean?

A  I had presumed at the time, and I may have put in my notes just in parentheses, Giuliani, and that was the way I interpreted what he said. But, again, he was very uncomfortable having the conversation. He initiated the conversation, but it was very clear he was uncomfortable sharing this limited summary, including not going into the detail of the call itself.

Q  Did you come to learn whether or not Ambassador Volker -- in real time, at the time, did you come to learn that Ambassador Volker did meet with Mr. Giuliani?

A  Kurt told me he was going to meet, and so, I had every reason to believe that he then followed up on what he said he was going to do. But he did not share with me the exact contents of his discussions with the Mayor, no.

Q  Did you know at any point whether Ambassador Volker had introduced Andriy Yermak to Mr. Giuliani?

A  I believe I became aware of that in mid-August.

Q  So you said that earlier, a few minutes ago, you said that August 15, 16 time period was when you seemed to confirm that -- well, I don't want to put words in your

A  That's as much as I recall. But, again, as I said, it was a conversation that had a personal component that had nothing to do with work, and then part of the conversation had to do with work.

Q  So when did you become aware that President Trump and President Zelenskyy were going to speak on July 25?

A  I believe I was informed by Lieutenant Colonel Vindman on July 24, the day prior. And as I mentioned before, that's when I sent a message to the embassy suggesting that they test the line to make sure the call went through.

Q  And I believe you said the only readout you got from the call was from Lieutenant Colonel Vindman?

A  Correct.

Q  When you described that readout in addition to emphasizing how Mr. Vindman was uncomfortable and the sensitive nature of the call, so he wasn't comfortable talking about it, you did say, I wrote down here, that he mentioned that there was a -- that President Trump had discussed the extreme narratives that had been discussed publicly. Is that --

A  At that point, I don't think he said that President Trump discussed. What I recall is that he said at this point the conversation went into the most extreme narratives. And that was him making a summary without providing any detail. any conversations with the Chief of Staff Mulvaney on this topic?

A  As I mentioned before, it was clear to me that Ambassador Sondland had a direct connection with Chief of Staff Mulvaney, and that's actually how the May 23 readout was put on the President's schedule. It was not, to the best of my knowledge, done through the national security staff and Ambassador Bolton. It was done Ambassador Sondland directly to Chief of Staff Mulvaney.

Q  Right. But I'm asking now in July. When Dr. Hill talked to you and voiced concerns about Sondland, did she mention anything about Sondland's relationship with Mr. Mulvaney?

A  She may have, but I do not remember.

Q  Okay. Do you recall anything else that she said about Ambassador Sondland in that meeting -- was it a meeting or a phone call?

A  It was a conversation, but I will say that it was also not entirely about work. We have a mutual friend whose wife died of cancer, and he is a Foreign Service officer and studied in St. Andrews with Fiona, and that's where he met his wife. And so she had passed away. So part of the conversation was just about our mutual friend who died.

Q  And the part that was about Ukraine, was there anything more that -- call or a meeting, discussion. But, again, I don't remember the content, and also, keep in mind that we had responsibilities -- I only had responsibilities for six countries. She had responsibilities for many more.

Q  Right. Okay. So you don't remember if she voiced any concerns about what was going on with Rudy Giuliani or anything related to that?

A  I honestly can't remember the content of that conversation apart from I know that she had some concerns about nonstandard actors. I believe, in that conversation, she expressed concern with Gordon Sondland's approach.

Q  What concerns did she express with Gordon Sondland?

A  To the best of my recollection, she had concerns possibly based on having been in conversations in the Oval Office that he made assertions about conversations that did not match with what had actually been said in the Oval Office.

Q  Can you elaborate with any more detail?

A  I was not in those conversations, so --

Q  I'm just asking what she told you. I understand you weren’t in them.

A  I think she may have been as direct as saying that Gordon Sondland lies about conversations that occur in the Oval Office.

Q  Did she indicate to you that Gordon Sondland had

A  Yes.

Q  -- for production to Congress and pursuant to the subpoena?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. So let me just make sure I understand. You heard from Ambassador Taylor at the end of June that there was -- correct me if this summary is wrong -- that at the end of June, that there was a conversation with Taylor, Ambassador Sondland, Volker, and Secretary Perry where they discussed the need for President Zelenskyy to initiate some -- I think you said investigations was the readout you got in that call?

A  Well, sending the right signal without the details of the --

Q  Without the details. And the Ambassador Volker reaffirmed that to you directly before the meeting with President Zelenskyy in Toronto?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay. Up until the July 25 call, from July 2 to July 25, did you have any more discussions with anyone about the notion of Ukraine pursuing these investigations either specifically or more generally in terms of cooperation?

A  I do not recall any additional conversations that I had in July. But I can't rule it out. Again, I had a conversation with Fiona, I remember that, a sort of farewell

A  It was different than the State Department assessment, and it was different than the assessment of Secretary Perry, Sondland, and Volker.

Q  Okay. But the President was listening to the Giuliani, Orban, Putin contingent --

A  I don't know.

Q  -- according to Dr. Hill?

A  According to Dr. Hill, in assessing the change from late April to late May, but then we had also the instructions coming out of that meeting leading to the signing of the letter on May 29 and the efforts to help Ukraine particularly in the energy sector.

Q  Dr. Hill told us that she departed on July 19, and that prior to leaving, she had a conversation with you.

A  That -- again, I recall us speaking sometime in July. I honestly don't recall the content of that. One reason why I recall more specifics from May is that as I was looking through my notes to find records to provide to the State Department to be responsive to the subpoena, I found notes that I took when I talked to her in May. When I was going through my notes I did not find notes of our conversation in July. But, yes, I do recall that we talked in July.

Q  And did you provide the notes from that May call to the Department --

Q  And did Dr. Hill think that that had an impact on President Trump's outlook?

A  I cannot recall what she said in that meeting besides giving me the brief readouts of those two meetings, but that was my takeaway, and that those two world leaders, along with former Mayor Giuliani, their communications with President Trump shaped the President's view of Ukraine and Zelenskyy, and would account for the change from a very positive first call on April 21 to his negative assessment of Ukraine when he had the meeting in the Oval Office on May 23.

Q  And it was your understanding that Sondland, Perry, Volker, when they came back from the inauguration they were very positive about President Zelenskyy. Is that right?

A  That is correct.

Q  And that generally the State Department had a positive outlook on President Zelenskyy?

A  We were cautiously optimistic that this was an opportunity to push forward the reform that Ukraine needs to succeed in resisting Russian aggression, building a successful economy, and, frankly, a justice system that will treat American investors and Ukrainian citizens equally before the law.

Q  But the message from Orban, Putin, and Giuliani was different than the message that the State Department was relaying. Is that right? Security Council?

A  She was scheduled to leave at the end of July. I don't recall which particular day of which particular week.

Q  Did you have a meeting or a conversation with her before she left?

A  Yes, I did.

Q  And did you discuss any of these issues that we've been talking about today with her?

A  Yes, but to be honest, I don't recall the last time we had a conversation, and when we had the conversation would be important to what we talked about. A conversation that I recall, and I took notes actually dated to mid-May in which we talked about the change of attitude and approach towards Ukraine, and that was in the wake of meetings that President Trump had, a meeting with Viktor Orban, the leader of Hungary, as well as a call he had with Russian President Putin in early May.

Q  And what was the change following those two conversations with Orban and Putin?

A  Fiona assessed the conversations as being similar in tone and approach. And both leaders, both Putin and Orban, extensively talked Ukraine down, said it was corrupt, said Zelenskyy was in the thrall of oligarchs, specifically mentioning this one oligarch Kolomoisky, negatively shaping a picture of Ukraine, and even President Zelenskyy personally. any activities with regard to the advocacy for these investigations?

A  We are, in your exploration of a timeline, not yet to the point where that became apparent to me that this is where U.S. policy -- or not U.S. policy, where U.S. engagement was headed.

Q  Okay. And we'll probably get there, but when would you say that time is?

A  Well, I think in retrospect, from the release of the WhatsApp messages, it started earlier than I was aware.

Q  When were you ultimately aware?

A  I would say that the middle of August, specifically August 15 and 16, was when I became aware that this was actively in play.

Q  Okay. So did you get -- we're going to get there, but did you get a readout from that July 10 meeting from anybody?

A  I do not recall. I was on the road for -- because it was a multi-country trip. I was on the road for more than a week. I saw the picture that was tweeted out, maybe from Kurt Volker, maybe from Gordon Sondland, that had the two Ukrainians, which were Oleksandr Danylyuk and Andriy Yermak, close assistant and associate to President Zelenskyy, as well as the Americans.

Q  Do you recall when Fiona Hill left the National

A  I wouldn't say that I was cut out of the loop. As I indicated, Kurt and I continued to have a back and forth. I was aware that obviously other players had come into the picture. And you had Secretary Perry convening a meeting with a number of State Department officials.

You had Gordon Sondland giving a public interview that the three amigos were now in charge of Ukraine, and by that he meant Perry, Sondland, and Volker. I heard Volker say that to President Zelenskyy in Toronto, but I was in that meeting.

Q  Volker called them the three amigos to Zelenskyy?

A  No. Sondland, in a public interview, called themselves three amigos. Volker just stated that coming out of the meeting with President Trump at the Oval Office, that those were the three officials that would be taking the lead on our policy towards Ukraine.

Q  Were you speaking regularly with Bill Taylor in June and July?

A  Yes. There’s a schedule of -- every Monday there is a generally scheduled secure video conference. It's not just one-on-one. Usually it's with office director, deputy director from my side, and members of the country team on his side. That was the schedule that dated back --

Q  Well, let me rephrase the question. Did you speak to Charge Taylor about the three amigos, or Rudy Giuliani or and lower my profile in Ukraine.

Q  Who told you that?

A  The message was relayed from my supervisor, Acting Assistant Secretary Reeker message relayed from Under Secretary Hale.

Q  Do you know if it became from above Under Secretary Hale?

A  All I know is that Assistant Secretary Reeker, after a meeting with Under Secretary Hale said that Under Secretary Hale had directed me to keep my head down and a lower profile in Ukraine.

Q  And what did you understand a lower profile in Ukraine to mean, given that you oversaw the policy for the State Department on Ukraine?

A  Well, I oversee policy for six countries, and this was a day or two before I was going on leave to go visit -- attend my daughter’s words redacted                       and go hiking in Maine. And so I said, Fine, you're not going to hear me talk about an; country for the next week and a half. And I did cancel sot public appearances on Ukraine in June, sort of think tank sessions around Washington.

Q  And at that point, did you sense that you were cut out of the loop in terms of State Department policy discussions and dealings with Ukraine given this Volker, Sondland, Perry triumvirate? I have since been made aware by seeing the WhatsApp messages that Kurt released that he said he had breakfast with Giuliani on July 16th, so it would make sense that my conversation with Kurt happened before then -- July 19th -- because he was telling me that he would reach out to Mayor Giuliani .

Q  Did you discourage him from reaching out to Mayor Giuliani?

A  I asked him what his purpose was, and that's when he said, as I relayed earlier, that because, clearly, former Mayor Giuliani was an influence on the President's thinking of Ukraine that he, Kurt Volker, felt it was worthwhile engaging --

Q  Right. I know. But did you think it was worthwhile engaging?

A  What I understood was Kurt was thinking tactically and I was concerned strategically.

Q  Did you have any discussions with anyone else at the State Department by mid-July, any time up to mid-July or prior to, about Mr. Giuliani's potential influence on the President and the fact that what he was advocating may be contrary to official U.S. policy?

A  I did not, in part because after Giuliani attacked me, as well as Ambassador Yovanovitch and the entire embassy, in his late May interview, I was told to keep my head down a dinner for heads of delegation to which Kurt was invited. I was not because there was just one U.S. attendee. So, for instance, whatever the anchor night was, he went to the leaders meeting, and I met with other Ukrainians who were there.

Q  Are you familiar with a July 10 meeting at the White House involving senior Ukrainian officials and senior American officials?

A  I saw pictures tweeted outside after the meeting. At the time I was on a multi-country swing that included, among other countries, Moldova and Ukraine.

Q  So you were unaware -- prior to the meeting occurring, you were unaware that it was happening?

A  I knew that there was going to be a meeting. The principals for that meeting were Ambassador Bolton and Oleksandr Danylyuk, who'd been appointed the head of the National Security and Defense Council in Ukraine, which doesn't have an analogous role to our National Security Council but has a name that sounds similar. And Oleksandr Danylyuk is a Ukrainian official well-known to many of us who have worked on Ukraine.

Q  Now, just to be clear, the conversation that you had with Kurt Volker, even if you aren't sure that it was in Toronto, it occurred before your European swing?

A  I can't tell you for certain when in July it was. the rule of law. And that was the nature of the exchange, at some point in July, either at Toronto or perhaps, more likely, mid-July in the State Department.

Q  Now, Ambassador Volker is a longtime, you know, Foreign Service officer, right?

A  He is.

Q  What was his reaction when you said that this would undermine the rule of law and everything that we stand for?

A  I do not recall him giving a verbal response.

Q  Okay. And so presumably you and Kurt Volker were in Toronto for some time, right?

A  We arrived, to the best of my recollection, on the 1st and departed late afternoon of the 3rd. We did not travel together.

Q  Did you spend any time together there?

A  We were in many meetings together, yes.

Q  Did you spend any meals together?

A  I do not recall us having working meals together, but it was a hectic trip and generally, his -- or hectic, not trip, but set of meetings. There were a lot of Ukrainians there, and I had a lot of sidebar meetings with attendees at the conference.

Q  So --

A  I should also say that there was a -- because Kurt was head of delegation, the Canadian foreign minister hosted the meeting.

Q  And what was your reaction to the ask as you understood it from Volker at the time?

A  At the time, I was interested to see where this thought pattern would go. I do not recall whether the follow-on conversation I had with Kurt about this was in Toronto, or whether it was subsequently at the State Department. But he did tell me that he planned to start reaching out to the former Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani.

And when I asked him why, he said that it was clear that the former mayor had influence on the President in terms of the way the President thought of Ukraine. And I think by that moment in time, that was self-evident to anyone who was working on the issues, and therefore, it made sense to try to engage the mayor.

When I raised with Kurt, I said, about what? Because former Mayor Giuliani has a track record of, you know, asking for a visa for a corrupt former prosecutor. He attacked Masha, and he's tweeting that the new President needs to investigate Biden and the 2016 campaign.

And Kurt's reaction, or response to me at that was, well, if there's nothing there, what does it matter? And if there is something there, it should be investigated. My response to him was asking another country to investigate a prosecution for political reasons undermines our advocacy of cooperation with President Trump?

A  What I was aware of was that there was an interest, and Kurt was sending a signal of a desire to have Zelenskyy be cooperative, but I did not know the details of what the ask was on that date, July 2.

Q  Okay. Did Kurt Volker explain to you what he discussed with President Zelenskyy in that pull-aside afterwards?

A  No. But he explained -- he was, I would say, relatively transparent beforehand. This is what I'm going to do, and this is my message and this is why.

Q  And how did you -- what did he say the why was?

A  Well, I think his goal, to my understanding, based on my conversations with him, he was trying to get through what seemed to be a hiccup in the communications, and wanted to get President Trump and President Zelenskyy together, counting on Zelenskyy's personal interactive skills to build rapport and carry the relationship forward.

Q  Okay. But that's the why he was doing it?

A  That was my understanding, based on what I heard from Kurt prior to the meeting, yes.

Q  And what did he tell you after about the meeting?

A  It was, you know -- it was a several-minute exchange, and so I just presumed that he had said and raised the ask in the way that he had described to me right before signaling something in his cooperative attitude towards something the President was interested in.

Q  And at that point you did not know what the President was interested in?

A  At that point, Kurt Volker did not say, nor was I aware of what the President was interested. Rudy Giuliani was tweeting what Rudy Giuliani thought, but Rudy Giuliani was and is -- remains a private citizen, not an official of the U.S. Government.

Q  Right. Did you understand why Kurt Volker needed to have this in a private pull-aside -- have this conversation in a private pull-aside meeting rather than with everyone there?

A  Well, it was clear that he both wanted to restrict knowledge of it, and considered the matter sensitive. But, again, I had not been on the June 28 conference call. I heard about that subsequently from Charge Taylor.

And I had also not been involved in any of the conversations that had gone on. I wasn't there at the June 18 nor the May 23. So sometimes I can get readouts officially of meetings, but if you're not there, you miss the sidebar conversations that can take place.

Q  So it's your testimony that you did not -- you were not aware at that point of what the sensitive issue that Kurt Volker needed to talk about related to President Zelenskyy's on July 2 about the investigations that Rudy Giuliani had been promoting?

A  There was not a discussion in the full format of everyone on both sides of the table. However, prior to the meeting, Ambassador Volker told me that he would need to have a private meeting separately with the President, that he would pull him aside. And he explained to me that the purpose of that private conversation was to underscore the importance of the messaging that Zelenskyy needed to provide to President Trump about his willingness to be cooperative.

And that happened -- as the meeting broke up, he announced that he needed to have a private meeting. He went around to the Ukrainian side of the table and pulled Zelenskyy, his chief of staff, Bohdan, and the translator. I was standing about 10 feet of the way, introducing myself to Andriy Yermak and talking to him. So that was -- Volker had several minutes with Zelenskyy, his chief of staff and the interpreter.

Q  You said the messaging about the willing -- or cooperation.

A  Yeah.

Q  Cooperation about what?

A  The details at that point were not clear to me. I would say that Kurt Volker had not provided additional details. It was more that President Zelenskyy needed to be Georgia is a country which Congress appropriates over $100 million a year. And so I am juggling responsibilities for these six countries and traveling to all six countries. So we are focusing on one of six countries today for which I have responsibility. So I do not live, breathe every single second of my life focused on Ukraine, no.

MR. GOLDMAN: I think that's time.

Ambassador Kent, you've been here a long day and I'm sure --

MR. KENT: I'm not Ambassador.

MR. GOLDMAN: I'm sorry. Mr. Kent. The members are going to have to go vote I think in about 20 minutes. So I know you've just sat through another hour and a half. Would you like to take a 5-minute break --

MR. KENT: I'd appreciate that.

MR. GOLDMAN: And then we'll come right back. Okay. Let's do that.

[Recess.]

MR. GOLDMAN: Back on the record. It's 6:20, and it's the majority's round. Mr. Kent, thank for your patience and diligence today, we are nearing the end.

Mr. Mitchell.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  Sir, in the last round, you mentioned security assistance. Can you just generally describe what Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative is?

A  Well, that is a specific term that refers to money appropriated in the Defense budget as opposed to the State Department budget. Traditionally, foreign assistance was appropriated under what's known as foreign military financing in State Department budget. Several years ago, Congress started appropriating monies in the Defense budget. And so the Ukraine Security Initiative is monies that are made available in the Defense budget. And that is something that was started maybe 3 years ago and has grown in scope. The fiscal year 2019, which just concluded, it was $250 million.

Q  Are you generally familiar then with both USAI and FMF?

A  Generally familiar, but I did not ever have line authority over security assistance in the way I had for a rule of law and justice sector assistance.

Q  And when you say "authority," do you mean both when you were in Ukraine as well as in your current position?

A  The way security assistance works, regardless of what budget it is appropriated in, the monies are executed by agents usually affiliated in the case of Ukraine with European Command, and we have an Office of Defense Cooperation in the Embassy. And the direction in how we spend that money is usually determined in a joint military commission between EUCOM and the Ukrainian general staff administrative heads.

Q  Are you generally familiar with the way in which, the process by which USAI funds are released?

A  Are you now talking about a budgetary process here in Washington?

Q  So, for example, does Ukraine need to meet certain benchmarks before those funds can be released?

A  The authorizers in Congress have put conditionality for the last several years on the second half. So, for instance, this past year, $250 million, there was a conditionality on the second $125 million. In a previous year, I don’t know if it was the previous year -- I don’t know if it’s the previous 2 years ago or the first year 3 years ago -- there was that conditionality, but the appropriators did not appropriate as much money as the authorizers authorized. So the conditionality did not kick in. But, yes, generally the authorizers and appropriators worked together to put conditionality on the monies in the USAI.

Q  And what was your involvement, if any, on determining whether the conditionality had been met?

A  The conditionality is set by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. My counterpart, Laura Cooper, plays a principal role in that, and the determination to Congress is made by the Secretary of Defense.

Q  And is there an interagency process that takes place with regard to the release of the funds?

A  Once the funds are in the hands of the U.S. military -- and specifically, I believe, they are held with the Defense Security and Cooperation Agency -- the State Department does not have a role, no. On the front end, discussing what might be appropriate conditions, there is a discussion, but ultimately that is a process, and the specific conditions, and whether they have been met, is determined by the Office of Secretary of Defense.

Q  What about with regard to FMF, how does that work?

A  Foreign military financing, the State Department has a greater role in determining what the policy goals are and how that money would be applied, but that is also very much a collaborative process. And, ultimately, the FMF is also cut over to the U.S. military, specifically, the DSCA is the executive military agent. We don’t spend and implement the programming the way that we would, say, for law enforcement programming. It, again, is monies where we have a greater policy role upfront and voice, but in the end, it’s executed by U.S. military components.

Q  And what is your personal involvement in FMF then?

A  I have frequent conversations with my counterpart, Laura Cooper, not just about Ukraine. She covers more countries, but there’s a lot of assistance going to Georgia, and so we have conversations about multiple countries, and we also talk about the conditionality in Ukraine.

Q  Did you attend any of the PCC or sub-PCC meetings in July regarding security assistance for Ukraine?

A  Yes.

Q  Which ones did you attend?

A  The first one where this issue came up was July 18th. It was a sub-PCC, to the best of my recollection, and the intended topic was words redacted                                                                    .

Q  Was there any discussion of the meeting at the sub-PCC level on July 18th about any sort of freeze of the security assistance to Ukraine?

A  Yes.

Q  Can you describe that discussion?

A  It was described as a hold, not a freeze. There was a representative of the Office of Management and Budget. I was at the State Department in a security video conference, I did not recognize the face. And I believe the individual representing OMB at the time was not normally the person who did. It was the summer vacation cycles. And he just stated to the rest of the those participants, either in person or video screens, that the head of the Office of Management and Budget who was the acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, at the direction of the President had put a hold on all security assistance to the Ukraine.

Q  Mulvaney had put a hold at the direction of the President. Is that what you heard?

A  That is what the representative of the Office of Management and Budget stated in the sub-PCC on July 18th, yes.

Q  Was there any discussion following that announcement?

A  There was great confusion among the rest of us because we didn’t understand why that had happened.

Q  Did anyone ask at that sub-PCC meeting why that happened?

A  We did. And the individual said that he apologized, that he normally did not deal with these issues, but this was the message he was asked to convey and he conveyed it.

Q  And the individual being this gentleman from OMB?

A  The representative from the OMB in that particular meeting, yes.

Q  Was that the end of that discussion on this topic?

A  Yes.

Q  On that day?

A  Yes.

Q  Did you have any internal discussions at the Department of State on or about July 18th after this pronouncement had been relayed to you?

A  I did.

Q  And who did you have those discussions with?

A  Tyler Brace, our schedule C political appointee, former staffer for Senator Portman, who understand budgetary processes in great detail.

Q  When did you have that conversation?

A  I believe I had it subsequent to the sub-PCC, same day.

Q  And can you just describe what you talked about?

A  We discussed what the significance of that was because none of us could understand why. Since there was unanimity that this was in our national interest, it just surprised all of us.

Q  When you say "unanimity" that it was in our national interest, what do you mean by that?

A  I believe that it is a factually correct statement to say that there’s broad support among both parties in Congress, both Houses in Congress, and among the State Department, the Defense Department, Joint Chiefs, and other elements of the U.S. Government for the security assistance programs.

Q  Prior to this July 18th meeting, had you gotten any sort of wind or idea that this aid would be frozen or held?

A  No.

Q  And it was your understanding on July 18th that all conditions had been met?

A  For?

Q  To release funds.

A  That was my understanding. You’re talking about the funds for USAI and the FMF fund?

Q  Correct.

A  That was my understanding, yes.

Q  Has your understanding since changed?

A  Well, eventually, the hold was released on September 11th, and the funds were then apportioned by OMB to the extent that it was possible to spend them by the end of the fiscal year, yes.

Q  So do you know anything that changed between July 18th and when they were actually released in September?

A  When you say what changed?

Q  Any sort of conditions.

A  In Ukraine?

Q  Anywhere.

A  My understanding of what happened after that date was that Senior Director Tim Morrison started going up the chain of the interagency process according to National Security Presidential Memorandum 4, and that meant holding a policy coordinating committee meeting, which he scheduled for July 23rd, followed by a deputy small group meeting, which I believe may have occurred on July 26th. And then Senior Director Morrison was looking to schedule a principal small group meeting that would involve the Secretary of State personally, Secretary of Defense, and Ambassador Bolton so they could discuss the issue and then take it to the President.

Q  Were you present for the PCC meeting on July 23rd?

A  I believe I was, yes, as a back-bencher. I was not the principal.

Q  I should have asked you. On the 18th, did you take any notes of that meeting?

A  I did.

Q  And are those among to notes thank you provided to the Department of State to produce to Congress?

A  They should be. I photocopied quite a lot of notes, but certainly the statement of conclusions should be included, although now I’m thinking -- I’m not sure if sub-PCCs have statement of conclusions. Those may be only for PCC meetings. But to the extent I took notes on that meeting, I would have included them, yes.

Q  For July 23rd, you said were you a back-bencher at the PCC meeting?

A  Yes.

Q  And was this topic of the hold of the Ukraine aid discussed at that meeting?

A  That was the purpose of the meeting.

Q  What was discussed?

A  To the best of my recollection, the conversation was everybody going around the table and saying they supported the lifting of the administrative hold so that the State Department and the Office of Secretary of Defense, Pentagon, could move forward. We were ending -- approaching the end of the fiscal year, and I believe that Laura Cooper, speaking on behalf of the Pentagon, indicated that the DOD comptroller had determined that they needed to move forward by August 6th in order to spend the money and meet Congress’ intent.

Q  Was there any discussion of the legality or illegality of the hold?

A  There was discussion about the standing of OMB to put an informal hold. Normally, the conversations with OMB prior to notification to Congress is a courtesy, not something required under law. And that is why the position was expressed by Laura Cooper, to the best of my recollection, that DOD counsel had determined that they would move forward by August 6th regardless. And I recall Senior Director Morrison suggesting that the State Department also review its legal requirements and be prepared to have that briefed at the next meeting, which he set 3 days later, as a deputy small group meeting.

Q  So, if OMB did not move forward by August 6th, what would be the implication?

A  Again, this is about an account that was not appropriated to my department nor executed in my department, so I would defer to my colleague, Laura Cooper. But to the best of my recollection, what she said in that meeting was that, according to DSCA, they may not be able to execute all of the requirements by the end of the fiscal year. My understanding is that USAI monies are 1-year monies. The monies in the State Department FMF account are 2-year monies.

Q  What did OMB say, if anything, in response to Laura Cooper’s --

A  OMB’s position was what it had been on the 18th, that they were under the direction of their boss to put -- hold all security assistance to Ukraine.

Q  Did they provide a reason?

A  They said it was at the direction of the President.

Q  Who was present for the July 23rd meeting?

A  That would be a matter of record because that was a PCC, and there’s a statement of conclusions. And in the statement of conclusions, on the first page, there’s a listing of all participants in the meeting.

Q  Did you receive a copy of the statement of conclusions for this meeting?

A  I believe I did, and that would have been provided to the document request.

Q  Did OMB provide any reasoning beyond simply it was at the direction of the President?

A  Not to my recollection, no.

Q  So they didn’t describe why the President had placed this hold?

A  There was a lack of clarity.

Q  What do you mean by that?

A  The participants who up until that point had thought that there was unanimity that this was in our national interest did not receive an explanation for why this particular action was taken.

Q  Okay. So, to your knowledge, no one at the PCC meeting on July 23rd knew why the President was making the decision or at least they didn’t express it at that meeting?

A  I do not recall any coherent explanation, no.

Q  Was there any explanation at all, coherent or incoherent?

A  OMB placed a hold on a process that -- traditionally, that is the office that has a voice on how the executive branch spends money.

Q  Was that unusual, in your experience?

A  According to, in my conversation with Tyler Brace, who again has worked here as a staffer, the previous cycle, OMB head, Acting Chief of Staff Mulvaney, had attempted a rescission at the end of the year, and indeed the next week, at the beginning of August, he sent out a data call with the intent potentially to execute a rescission involving billions of dollars of assistance worldwide, not just Ukraine.

Q  Okay. So, in your experience, though, was this unusual?

A  I had read about Mr. Mulvaney’s attempt to push a rescission at the end of the last fiscal year. My understanding was that Secretary Pompeo protested vigorously, and the effort to have a rescission was then suspended.

And, ultimately, the same thing happened this year, this overall greater effort to have a rescission held up the process for much of August, but it was also lifted, and that left us with just the hold on Ukraine assistance.

Q  The Ukraine assistance that you just mentioned, is that FMF, or is that the USAI?

A  It affected both accounts, the Department of Defense $250 million, and the $141 million under FMF.

Q  Okay. And you said that that was still being held in August?

A  That hold, the OMB-directed hold, was lifted on September 11th.

Q  What happened at the July 26th deputies’ meeting?

A  I did not participate in that meeting. Under Secretary Hale represented the State Department, and I cannot recall the exact outcome. That would also be documented in the document call, but it did not change the ultimate situation.

Q  Did you see a readout of that particular meeting?

A  I did.

Q  And is it in a similar form as the statement of conclusions?

A  To the best of my knowledge, yes.

Q  And what do you recall from that readout?

A  The main takeaway for me was that Senior Director Morrison was trying to find out when Secretary of State Pompeo and the Secretary of Defense would both be in Washington so they could have an in-person principal small group meeting to discuss the same issue and then take it to the President.

Q  Was there any discussion at the July 26th deputies’ committee meeting about the reasons for the hold?

A  I honestly cannot recall if there was any detail. The bottom line was the hold remained, and we needed a principal small group to carry the process forward.

Q  But it’s your understanding at the July 26th meeting that, again, there was unanimous support to release the funds to lift the hold. Is that right?

A  With the exception of OMB, yes.

Q  Then you mentioned that there was planning to have a meeting on July 31st. Did that meeting actually take place?

A  I didn’t say that, but I believe that may have been one of the dates that Senior Director Morrison was attempting to schedule a principal small group meeting.

Q  Was there a principals meeting at any point?

A  To the best of my knowledge, because of the travel schedules of the two Secretaries, no.

Q  So what happened next, as far as you know, with regard to the lifting of this hold?

A  I am aware that many Senators, particularly from the Republican side, who had traveled to Ukraine from the relevant committees, called and talked to the President. I’m aware that -- I saw an email that Senator Inhofe had had about a 20-minute conversation. He had visited twice when I was in Ukraine because Oklahoma National Guard was doing training at the main training base. Senator Portman called, including the day it was lifted. And my understanding is that Senate Majority Leader McConnell also called.

Q  Was there any discussions at State between July 31st and when the funds were actually released about the freeze that you partook in?

A  The State Department was concerned. Obviously, we wanted to get the hold lifted so that we could get the money apportioned by OMB and then obligated. And so we were -- at the direction of Senior Director Morrison, exploring what was the absolute minimum amount of time that would be necessary to obligate the money once the hold was lifted. So we were preparing for a decision so that we could ensure that the money could be obligated before the end of the fiscal year.

Q  When was the first time that you heard that the security assistance might somehow we be linked to this White House visit or investigations conducted by Ukraine?

A  Because everyone was unclear why this had happened, I think, in the vacuum of a clear explanation, people started speculating. So there was a coincidence of timing, but as I referenced earlier in the communication with Charge Taylor, he indicated to me that, in his communications with both Senior Director Morrison and Ambassador Sondland, and this would have been the weekend of the 7th and 8th of September, that both of them insisted that there was not a direct link.

Q  And that was based on what?

A  This was a conveyed conversation. That was their assertions. According to Charge Taylor, separately, Senior Director Morrison, with whom he had a conversation on the 7th of September, and Ambassador Sondland, with whom he had a conversation on the 8th of September, had asserted that the two were not directly linked.

Q  And how do they know?

A  I cannot answer for them. That would be the question to direct to Senior Director Morrison and Ambassador Sondland.

[6:44 p.m.]

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  They didn’t provide any information as to their source?

A  I was not part of that conversation. I was having a conversation with Charge Taylor.

Q  And this conversation with Charge Taylor, was that over WhatsApp or was that in person or --

A  That was a part of our regularly scheduled Monday secure calls, video conferences. And that part of the conversation we ask all of our staff to leave, so it is just one on one in a secure communication.

Q  Okay. And what else did Charge Taylor tell you about these conversations that he had had?

A  I recounted to the best of my knowledge what those conversations were. That was Senior Director Morrison talking about his concern that Rudy Giuliani had had another conversation with the President, as well as what Sondland relayed Rudy to be his interaction.

Q  And did you memorialize that conversation that you had had?

A  Yes. That was part of a note to the file which I provided to the document collection process.

Q  Did you talk to anyone else at the Department of State about what Charge Taylor told you?

A  I believe I shared my concerns with my colleagues in the European front office. That would be the ones immediately near my office. Included Deputy Assistant Secretary Michael Murphy, who oversees our relations with the Baltics and Nordics and NATO. And for large stretches of time earlier in 2019 it was our senior Bureau official and also the deputy assistant secretary, words redacted                       , who oversees our relations with Western Europe, and that includes relations with Ambassador Sondland and the mission he leads in Brussels.

Q  When you said you shared concerns, what do you mean by that?

A  I shared the -- I shared the sense that I had heard from Charge Taylor that Ambassador Sondland was engaged in the types of conversations that he was engaged in on Ukraine even though that was not part of his portfolio as our ambassador to the European Union.

Q  And again, was this a conversation that you had with Deputy Assistant Secretary Murphy and Fisher in writing or in person?

A  Their offices are between 5 and 10 feet away from my office and so I -- this was a direct conversation in their office.

Q  And what was their reaction?

A  They were aware of the challenge of dealing with Ambassador Sondland who has a, I would say, track record of freelancing, would be one way of putting it, but working on issues other than the reason why he was sent to Brussels to work our relationship with the European Union.

Q  Did they indicate that they would try do anything about it?

A  I don’t think there is anybody at the level of deputy assistant secretary of state who can do anything about what Gordon Sondland chooses to do.

Q  Do you know when they escalated the issue?

A  I do not.

Q  At any point were you given a reason why the hold was put in place?

A  Not that I recall. Well, I believe, at least in relation to the USAI, there were some concerns expressed in the Pentagon, Office of Secretary of Defense, did a review and responded that they felt that the conditions and concerns that we had had been met and that the programming should go forward. But that was a specific review about USAI, which is not State Department controlled, and so that was an issue between the Pentagon and I guess the White House and NSC.

Q  Do you know whether a similar review was conducted with regard to FMF?

A  We were not asked for a similar review. The media coverage was focused on the 250 million of USAI. If you look at those articles at the time they were not mentioning $391 million, which would have been the total FMF plus USAI.

Q  Do you know whether a similar review of FMF has since been conducted?

A  The hold was lifted on September 11th and we moved forward with notifying Congress and ensuring the funds were obligated before the end of the fiscal year. We were not asked and we proceeded with what we needed to do in order to obligate the funds as to meet the congressional intent in appropriating them.

Q  Okay. So to the best of your knowledge, you have no knowledge of any plan to conduct any such review?

A  We did not see it necessary nor were we asked to do so.

Q  All right. Now, when you were in Ukraine, Ukraine was receiving USAI and FMF funds at the time, correct?

A  They were receiving FMF, yes, and I believe the start of USAI was while I was there. I do not recall specifically which fiscal year USAI funds started to be appropriated.

Q  Okay. So based on your experience in Ukraine, as well as your experience here in Washington, D.C., how important are these funding programs for Ukraine security?

A  I would assess that they are critically important. The Ukrainian defense establishment was unprepared to fight a war with Russia when Russia began its war in 2014. And therefore, the training that we do, which is probably the most valuable in training Ukrainians to fight, as well as the equipping that we do, have been critical to the success of the Ukrainian armed forces in defending their country.

At the same time I would say that we probably derive more benefit from the relationship than the Ukrainians do.

Q  How so?

A  That would be something to discuss in a classified manner, particularly with my colleagues from the defense and intel agencies.

Q  But suffice to say that it was in both Ukraine’s national interests as well as the United States’ national interest that these funds be released to the Ukraine?

A  Very much so.

Q  And that’s true not just for the time period that you were in Ukraine but also for 2019 when you were back here in D.C.?

A  Correct.

Q  Have you had any conversations with anyone about what the Ukrainians’ perspective was on the freeze?

A  They were confused, to the best of my understanding.

Q  Okay. And how did you get that understanding?

A  Charge Taylor was in Ukraine trying to figure out how to explain what went on. My most recent trip to Ukraine, I arrived on September 11th. Fortunately that was the day that the hold was lifted. So by the time I started engaging Ukrainians in person, it was a good news story.

Q  Had you prepared to answer their questions about the hold?

A  I was prepared for the possibility that it would not be lifted and therefore the conversations would be very difficult and I would not be able to provide an adequate understanding or answer.

Q  Did you try to get an adequate understanding or answer prior to your trip?

A  Fortunately, I didn't have to worry about that hypothetical because it was resolved essentially as I arrived in Ukraine.

Q  Right. But prior to you arriving in Ukraine did you attempt to find out why the hold was in place so that you could actually have a meaningful conversation with the Ukrainians about this issue?

A  We -- it was very clear that this issue was only going to be resolved they very highest level, and that's why Tim Morrison wanted to have Secretary Pompeo and SecDef Esper in the same place at the same time to have that conversation.

That was the level at which the conversation needed to happen. It didn't matter what the deputy assistant secretary or an assistant secretary or an under secretary or a deputy secretary thought.

Q  Okay. To the best of your knowledge, did that meeting happen?

A  To the best of my knowledge, there was never a principal small group meeting on this issue.

Q  What did Taylor, Charge Taylor, say to you about his conversations with Ukrainians about the hold?

A  I honestly don't recall in detail. I think it was clear starting, if not from July 18th, certainly from July 23rd, that this was an issue that had to be resolved in Washington, and it was a tough nut for everyone to crack without a lot of clarity.

Q  It was your understanding at the time, though, that the issue had to be resolved at the principals level?

A  Once we cleared the deputy small group meeting, which I believe was July 26th, it was clear it had to be resolved at a principals level and above. And so that was clear I think to everyone after July 26th.

Q  Okay. And when you say above, you mean specifically the President of the United States?

A  Well, the principal small group, members of the Cabinet, who then could take the issue to the President.

Q  And again there was never a PCC as far as you know?

A  There was a PCC on July 23rd. So in the sort of climbing the ladder we started with a sub-PCC on the 18th. There was a policy coordinating committee on the 23rd. There was a deputy small group on the 26th. And there was an attempt to schedule but lack of principals subsequent. That was Tim Morrison driving the interagency policy review process in the way it was intended.

Q  So to the best of your knowledge, this issue ultimately was not resolved by the principals, it was resolved by the President?

A  Correct.

Q  You testified earlier about August 15th and August 16th. At the time did you think that the aid might in any way be linked to the investigations that were being pushed by Mr. Giuliani or that were discussed by the President in the July 25th call?

A  I personally did not associate them, no.

Q  Has your thinking changed in any way since then?

A  This is a personal opinion. It strikes me that the association was a meeting with the White House, at the White House, not related to the security assistance. But again, that's just my personal opinion, other people may have different opinions.

Q  What was Charge Taylor's opinion?

A  I think there is the WhatsApp exchange where he expressed concerns that it might be linked.

Q  But what did he tell you?

A  I don't recall having a conversation where he expressed the same opinion to me that he shared in the WhatsApp messages that apparently were leaked, but in any case were handed over by former Special Representative Volker.

He did in one conversation with me share a conversation he had with Ambassador Sondland in which Ambassador Sondland, who had told him that there was no quid pro quo with the security assistance, said, on the other hand, you know, the President's a businessman and if you're going to sign a check for $250 million why not ask somebody for something.

Now, that was sort of an informal comment that Ambassador Sondland made to Ambassador -- to Charge Taylor and that he conveyed to me. But the same person, Ambassador Sondland, said there was no quid pro quo on security assistance.

Q  When did Charge Taylor relay this conversation that he had had with Ambassador Sondland?

A  I cannot recall if it was in our secure conference call that I described on September 9th or, since I then flew to Ukraine and stayed with him over that weekend, whether he may have shared that with me in person. But I believe I did write that note up and share it with the records. So it's part of the records that were collected by the State Department.

Q  And the Ukraine trip was on or about September 11th?

A  I arrived in Ukraine on September 11th, that's correct.

Q  What did you do with the -- this memo that you wrote up on or about the 9th of September or 11th of September?

A  I added it to the note on file that I had initially written on the 16th of August and then subsequently amended it with the conversations I had with Charge Taylor in person in Ukraine.

Q  And who did you give that memo to?

A  It was a note to the file, so it stayed as a note to the file until I submitted it to the document collection when those were requested.

Q  Okay. When you say to the document collection, you're talking about -- were you referring to the subpoena?

A  I am referring to the subpoena.

Q  Okay. So you didn't specifically give this memo to Deputy Assistant Secretary Murphy, for example?

A  To the best of my recollection, when I returned from Kyiv I wrote the note to the file and I orally briefed Deputy Assistant Secretary Murphy, Deputy Assistant Secretary Fisher, and Acting Assistant Secretary Reeker.

Q  It is a different brief than the ones we were talking about earlier?

A  Correct. The previous time when I talked -- yes, because this is sequential. So I had two conversations with two individuals on the 15th and 16th of August. That was the first time I wrote a note to a file. I had subsequent conversations with Ambassador -- Charge Taylor on the 9th of September, another note to the file. And then travel to Ukraine, conversations there, return, note to the file, oral brief.

Q  Okay. And the oral briefing was with Fisher, Reeker, and Murphy?

A  To the best of my knowledge, yes, but I did -- I know that I included in my note to the file the officials whom I briefed orally. So I wrote it up and then I briefed and I added that as a note in the file that I -- precisely whom I had oral briefed.

Q  Was this one oral briefing or multiple oral briefings?

A  It was -- it would have been sequential because those are three different individuals. And so two of them, again, offices are collocated with mine, then Acting Assistant Secretary Reeker's office is across the hall.

Q  And what were their reactions?

A  At this point it was clear the nature of the interactions that Special Representative Volker and Ambassador Sondland were having, so it was more confirmation of the conversations that had been clearly ongoing between Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Volker with Ukrainians.

Q  And do you recall what Reeker's reaction was specifically?

A  I do not recall precisely. I think they were all concerned.

Q  Did they commit to doing anything about this?

A  Not that I recall.

Q  Did they say that they were going to escalate the issue?

A  I do not recall.

Q  You testified earlier this afternoon about a conversation that you had with Charge Taylor about Zelenskyy making some sort of TV interview or address, public address.

A  I mentioned what Ambassador Sondland had told Charge Taylor and that he conveyed to me, yes.

Q  Okay. And when did Charge Taylor have that conversation with you?

A  I believe that's what I conveyed to you regarding the conversation I had with Charge Taylor on the 9th of September, referencing his conversation with Ambassador Sondland that occurred on the 8th of September.

Q  Did you have any further conversations with Charge Taylor about this topic after September 11th, I guess it was?

A  Yes.

Q  And when was the next conversation?

A  The next conversation would have happened at the breakfast table Sunday morning, which I believe was September 15th.

Q  And where were you at that time?

A  I was his house guest in the ambassador's residence in Kyiv.

Q  Okay. Can you describe -- who else was at that --

A  That was just Ambassador Taylor and me. He went out for a run, and I went down to breakfast, and we met and talked 7:30 in the morning more or less.

Q  What did you talk about?

A  We talked about the meeting that ambassador -Charge Taylor and Special Representative Volker had had the night before with Andriy Yermak, the close personal aide of President Zelenskyy.

Q  And what were you told?

A  Well, that meeting was the one meeting on Kurt's schedule in Ukraine that he felt uncomfortable with me joining. He said that it was because of numbers. It was not clear whether it would be just Yermak or whether he would also bring a gentleman named Novokov (ph), whom I have not met, and who is responsible for U.S. relations in the Presidential office.

Kurt said he felt that having three Americans on one Ukraine was too much, and he said if there were a second Ukrainian I could come. I decided not to push it since we were involved in another event, as well as anticipating that there was going to be an awkward conversation, which there was. And Charge Taylor provided me the details of that conversation over breakfast.

Q  Which were?

A  Well, besides -- the main part of the conversation was about negotiations with the Russians, and I won't mention that and that's not germane.

But the more awkward part of the conversation came when Special Representative Volker made the point that the Ukrainians, who had opened their authorities under Zelenskyy, had opened investigations of former President Poroshenko, he didn't think that was appropriate.

And then Andriy Yermak said: What? You mean the type of investigations you're pushing for us to do on Biden and Clinton?

And at that point Kurt Volker did not respond.

Later on in the conversation, when it came to the potential for Zelenskyy and President Trump to meet, according to Charge Taylor, Special Representative Volker said: And it's important that President Zelenskyy give the messages that we discussed before.

And Charge Taylor told me that he then said: Don't do that.

Q  Who said don't do that?

A  Charge Taylor.

Q  So Taylor was concerned about the way in which this conversation took place?

A  My understanding is that he was concerned. And when Kurt made a suggestion that Charge Taylor felt was inappropriate he weighed in with his own personal opinion, which that was not appropriate.

Q  And Volker was directly linking the White House meeting and the investigations that were being pushed by the President. Is that correct?

A  It was an elliptical readout that -- by the readout that I heard from Charge Volker -- sorry, Charge Taylor -that Kurt, Special Representative Volker, was referring to prior conversations that he had with Yermak and prior advice, meaning you should deliver the messages as we've discussed before.

Q  Do you know what those messages were?

A  This goes back to the signaling for a public appearance. The hoped-for interview with CNN with Zelenskyy did not happen during the conference. Fareed Zakaria was one of the hosts, but there was no special interview. So there was discussion that President Zelenskyy would have an interview with CNN the week of the U.N. General Assembly leaders meetings, which was the week of September 23rd to 27th.

Q  And the message that Mr. Volker wanted President Zelenskyy to provide during the CNN interview was what?

A  That Zelenskyy should message that -- his willingness to open investigations in the two areas of interest to the President and that had been pushed previously by Rudy Giu1iani.

MR. MITCHELL: I think my time is up at this point.

MR. GOLDMAN: Yield to the minority.

MR. CASTOR: We don't have any questions at this point.

We might subsequently.

MR. GOLDMAN: I think we're almost finished. So we'll take it back for a few minutes.

MR. CASTOR: Thank you.

MR. GOLDMAN: And then give you an opportunity at the end.

MR. CASTOR: Okay.

MR. GOLDMAN: Okay?

We are nearing the end. Just 1 second.

[Discussion off the record.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  A few wrap-up questions here.

That breakfast meeting that you had on September 15th that we were just discussing, did you memorialize that as well?

A  I wrote that to note to file when I returned to the U.S., yes.

Q  When you get back to the U.S.?

A  Subsequent to Ukraine, I went to Belarus, where I was in Belarus for 2 days, including the three-quarter day visit of Under Secretary Hale.

And then after that I went to Lithuania to outbrief our Lithuanian allies about the advances in the U.S.-Belarus relationship, because we -- Under Secretary Hale announced that we were going to return an ambassador to Belarus, which we have not had since 2008.

So I returned to the U.S. in the evening of the 19th of September, I was in the office on Friday, the 20th, and then took a train up first thing Monday morning to be in New York for the U.N. General Assembly meetings.

Q  Were there any conversations that week on the -- in the U.N. General Assembly week -- that you were aware of or were present for or that related to these investigations into Biden in 2016 that we've been discussing?

A  No.

Q  You had neither had any nor heard of any?

A  I was not involved in any meetings, no -- of that nature, no. It was very much focused on the intense engagement of many foreign leaders who were there at that time.

Q  Because you said that as of September 15th there was still a hope, for example, that President Zelenskyy would give an interview with CNN when he was in New York for the General Assembly and specifically mention those investigations, right?

A  That was my understanding of what Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Sondland were requesting of the Ukrainians, yes.

Q  But you don't know whether anything came of that?

A  To the best of my knowledge, President Zelenskyy did not give an interview to CNN while in New York with that sort of messaging, no.

Q  Did you have any meetings with any Ukrainians officials during that September 11th to 15th timeframe yourself where they expressed -- where they discussed these investigations at all?

A  The only meeting that I was a part of where this came up obliquely was with the foreign minister, Vadym Prystaiko. And that was a meeting with Kurt Volker, Charge Taylor, and myself in which the foreign minister said: You guys are sending us different messages in different channels.

Q  And what did you understand that to mean?

A  Well, in that meeting all three of us, Kurt Volker, Charge Taylor, and I, all reiterated that it would not be appropriate for the Ukrainians to engage in any activity that could be construed as interfering in the U.S. election.

Q  And so what was the conflicting message that they were receiving?

A  Well, I would suggest that what was said later on that night, in the meeting I was not a part of, to Andriy Yermak was the conflicting message. And as I recounted, there were two messages, there was what Ambassador Volker said and what Charge Taylor said, and those themselves were conflicting messages.

Q  Because -- just to be clear -- because Ambassador Volker was saying not to investigate Poroshenko?

A  No. Ambassador Volker suggested that Andriy Yermak should ensure that the agreed-upon messaging was delivered by President Zelenskyy. And Charge Taylor said: Don't do that.

Q  I see.

You made some reference to Yermak responding to something that either Ambassador Volker or Charge Taylor said about Poroshenko a few minutes ago.

A  Yes.

Q  Explain that conversation again. I didn't quite catch the whole thing.

A  So this was -- again, I did not go into detail about the bulk of the conversation because that was about negotiating tactics vis-à-vis the Russians.

As the conversation was moving away from that into a new set of issues, according to Charge Taylor, based on his notes, I didn't participate in the meeting, one of the issues that Kurt wrote -- raised -- was the fact that there were a series of investigations being opened by Ukrainian authorities against former President Poroshenko. And Kurt advised Yermak that was not a wise way forward for the country.

Q  And what did -- how did Yermak respond, according to Charge Taylor?

A  According to Charge Taylor, his response was: Oh, you mean the types of investigations you're asking us to open against Clinton and Biden?

Q  And it would seem that as someone who was responsible for anti corruption efforts that that's exactly the message that you would be concerned about on this. Is that accurate?

A  As I've stated here previously, it's my belief that it is inappropriate for us to ask another country to open up an investigation against political opponents, whether it is political opponents domestically in the U.S. context or, in the case of countries like Ukraine or Georgia, opening up selective prosecutions against perceived opponents of those in power.

Q  And did you think it was appropriate for Vice President Biden to condition the release of the loan guarantees on the firing of Prosecutor General Shokin?

A  Prosecutor General Shokin was an impediment to the reform of the prosecutorial system, and he had directly undermined in repeated fashion U.S. efforts and U.S. assistance programs.

And so, because we had a strategic interest in seeing the Ukrainian prosecutor system reformed, and because we have a fiduciary responsibility for U.S. taxpayer dollars, it was the consensus view that Shokin needed to be removed so that the stated goal of reform of the prosecutor general system could move forward.

Q  And so when you mentioned that that connection was a quid pro quo, you're not saying that that was an improper quid pro quo?

A  I didn't say that it was a quid pro quo, but it is the case that both the IMF and the U.S. Government do use conditionality for assistance, whether it is macroeconomic assistance provided by the IMF or, in the case of our sovereign loan guarantees, we put conditionality that related to management of the gas system, meeting macroeconomic stability goals proposed by the IMF, social safety nets, and issues related to anticorruption. And that involved the National Anticorruption Prevention Council, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, as well as the prosecutor general's office.

MR. GOLDMAN: Okay. Mr. Malinowski has a few questions.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Thank you.

MR. GOLDMAN: One thing.

And just to be clear, what Vice President Biden was doing was very fundamentally different than any advocacy for a politically oriented investigation. Is that your assessment?

MR. KENT: The request for the dismissal of Shokin was related directly to him, to his actions in the diamond prosecutors case, in his undermining of our assistance to Ukraine.

MR. GOLDMAN: And that's distinct from your concerns that you've raised today about advocacy for an investigation into Biden or the 2016 election?

MR. KENT: That's how I would look at the two issues, as distinct, yes.

MR. MALINOWSKI: The distinction is between conditionality to advance the national interest and conditionality to advance a personal interest.

MR. KENT: One might say national interest versus partisan interest, yes.

MR. MALINOWSKI: I just have a couple of other subjects that I wanted to ask you about. And thank you so much for your patience and precision today and for the integrity that you have shown in every part of your career, Mr. Kent.

You mentioned at one point a conversation with Fiona Hill in which she had relayed to you that the President had had phone conversations with Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, and Putin in which she told you that they had both, I think you said, talked down Ukraine to the President.

Can you say a little bit more about that? What do you recall of that?

MR. KENT: Well, to the best of my recollection, Fiona gave me a readout of both conversations at the same time. It was a phone call with President Putin on or about May 3rd.

It was a meeting at the White House, so it was an in-person meeting on or about May 13th. The President's engagement of Orban included a 1-hour one-on-one, and then subsequently the Hungarian foreign minister, Szijjarto, and Ambassador Bolton joined.

MR. MALINOWSKI: In your judgement, what motivation would Orban and Putin have had to try to talk down Ukraine, Zelenskyy, to President Trump?

MR. KENT: Well, Putin's motivation is very clear. He denies the existence of Ukraine as a nation and a country, as he told President Bush in Bucharest in 2008. He invaded and occupied 7 percent of Ukraine's territory and he's led to the death of 13,000 Ukrainians on Ukrainian territory since 2014 as a result of aggression. So that's his agenda, the agenda of creating a greater Russia and ensuring that Ukraine does not survive independently.

Viktor Orban’s beef with Ukraine is derived in part to his vision, in my opinion, of a greater Hungary. And there are about 130,000 ethic Hungarians who live in the trans-Carpathian province of Ukraine.

And ahead of next year, which is the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon, post-World War I, which resulted in more ethnic Hungarians living outside Hungary than inside, this issue of greater Hungary is at the top of Orban's agenda.

And so he has picked this particular issue and, for instance, blocked all meetings in NATO with Ukraine at the ministerial level or above because of this particular issue. So his animus towards Ukraine is well-known, documented, and has lasted now 2 years.

MR. MALINOWSKI: So both of these leaders would have an interest in the United States and the President of the United States ending or diminishing our support for an independent Ukraine?

MR. KENT: I would say that that's Putin's position. I think Orban is just happy to jam Ukraine.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Okay. All right, okay. And then finally on the broader corruption issue. You know Ukraine extremely well. You were also responsible for anticorruption efforts in EUR for some time.

Imagine that the President of the United States were to call you in. President Trump, his predecessor, and that he said: George, look, I really, really believe this is a fundamental issue for the United States in Ukraine. The corruption is the obstacle to the transformation to this country that we seek. And I am prepared to use some leverage to do something about corruption in Ukraine, maybe even hold up a meeting, maybe even condition some assistance on the Ukrainians really taking this seriously. George, what would be the three or four or five top things we should be demanding, we should be asking the Ukrainians to do if we really wanted to get serious on this issue, what would be -what would you say, what would be on your list?

MR. KENT: I think for Ukraine as well as other countries that have never prosecuted any large-scale crook, putting one of the big fish, so-called big fish in jail would be a great start as a signal that there isn't impunity. And that's, again, not unique to Ukraine. I think that's the biggest one.

I think demonstrating that there's integrity in the prosecutor general's office is absolutely critical, particularly for post-Soviet countries. There were two institutions that were the instruments of oppression in the Soviet Union. It was the prosecutor's office and the KGB or the secret police. And those two institutions in many of these countries are fundamentally still not reformed 28 years later.

So if you want to see the successful transformation of any of the post-Soviet countries, reform of the security service in Ukraine, that's known as the SBU (ph) , and reform of the prosecutor general's office are the fundamental keys to transforming the country.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And some of these might require legislative changes, legal reforms?

MR. KENT: Yes.

MR. MALINOWSKI: More than just go after this person or that person?

MR. KENT: Yes.

MR. MALINOWSKI: To your knowledge, then -- well, let me ask you, if that is going to be your policy, if you're going to condition something that a country wants in exchange for that country doing something that we want in our national interest, it's logical that we would then tell that country, here are the things that we want you to do if you want to get your meeting, if you want to get your aid, or whatever it is worth conditioning, correct?

MR. KENT: Correct.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Okay. To your knowledge, did any of the so-called "three amigos," if we can call them that, ever in their engagements with the Ukrainian authorities, especially in conversations around getting this meeting with the President or perhaps getting the aid restored, ever urge the Ukrainians to pursue those deeper anticorruption measures, reforms that you just referred to?

MR. KENT: What I referred to is strategic and institutional, and what they were working on was tactical. And that was what it would take to send a message to send a meeting.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And it wasn't reform the security services, it was not reform the prosecutor's office, it was one investigation -- well, two investigations, 2016 and the Biden --

MR. KENT: Signal of intent to open an investigation.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Which is not anticorruption.

MR. KENT: In and of it itself is not anticorruption, no.

MR. MALINOWSKI: It is basically selective prosecution or investigation.

MR, KENT: That was the phrase I used, yes.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And you've worked in and around a lot of dictatorships in your life, Uzbekistan, Thailand now, you know, not Ukraine, but certainly a country struggling to build democracy. Is it not a very common feature of authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes that they selectively prosecute people for corruption for political purposes?

MR. KENT: Unfortunately that is the case, yes.

MR. MALINOWSKI: The people who you know in Ukraine who are dedicated to fighting corruption, the activists, the reformers, and who saw the United States of America as a champion of their cause, do they see the United States of America as a champion of their cause today?

MR. KENT: I still believe they count on the U.S. as their best hope to get through very difficult times, yes.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Thank you.

MR. GOLDMAN: Before I go to Chairman Engel, I just have two quick questions for you.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Are you familiar with someone by the name of Sam Kislin or Semeon (ph) Kislin?

A  I am familiar with the name only recently and only based on what I've read.

Q  You have no individual or other than press reports you're not aware of this individual?

A  Correct.

Q  And you, much earlier today, I think you were describing what may have been a conversation that you had with former Ambassador Yovanovitch about the July 25th call.

A  Right.

Q  And I think you said that you may have discussed some aspects of it and that you don't recall what her response was. Is that accurate?

A  To the best of my recollection. And if there is other information that people want to provide context to try to trigger additional information, I'm open to that.

Q  So you -- it appears to us at least as if, A, you took a lot of notes about these events, and, B, you may have reviewed them prior to coming here today to testify. Is that --

A  That's accurate. I would not have -- no, I did not review them before coming to testify. In order for the Department to respond to the subpoena for document collections I went through my notebooks to find any notes from meetings that would be responsive to those -- that document request. That's why I reviewed them, as information.

Q  Did you have any notes from your discussion with Ambassador Yovanovitch about the July 25th call?

A  I did not and would not because that would have happened informally, not in the office.

Q  So if she has a different recollection as to what you guys discussed, do you think that that --

A  That's possible. She could have been much more specific about a conversation we had and the issues we've been discussing. My timeline starts several years earlier than hers. So I do not rule that out.

MR. GOLDMAN: Okay.

Chairman Engel, would you like to?

MR. ENGEL: Yeah. Well, I guess in closing I want you to know I stumbled in here before they told me Clark Kent was here. So I thought he was you.

But, anyway, thank you so much for your testimony. And thank you for what you -- not only for what you're doing now, but for what you've done through the years.

It's really so critical that we learn the facts and your detailed, very careful testimony today, it's just so important, so important for our country, so important. And it should also not be used by the administration or the Department of State to retaliate against you or anybody else.

I have been very much chagrined over the fact of the way employees at the Department of State have been treated for the past couple of years. Morale is down. It's just unconscionable. And I think it takes people like you who have not only had commendable records through the years, but who have the guts to come in and speak from the heart. It really helps all of us moving forward.

And of course we will move forward. We have to move forward. And what you're doing, sir, is a tremendous accomplishment and tremendously important for the State Department and for the country as a whole.

I know that Chairman Schiff already explained on the record earlier today why any retaliation against you or anybody else would be unlawful and just wrong. Your service to our country for nearly three decades is commendable and I hope it continues without harassment or undue interference from the Department you have honorably served.

So let me just again thank you as the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, thank you personally, and let you know that I and the Foreign Affairs Committee will hold the Department accountable to treat employees properly and with the respect you deserve.

Thank you.

MR. KENT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. GOLDMAN: All right. I believe that's it from the majority, we used 20 minutes in this record. So I yield to the minority if you would like any further questions.

MR. ZELDIN: I know we stepped out. Did we have -- did our side have a round while we were out voting or was that the majority the whole time?

For the record, one thing of concern is Chairman Schiff appropriately earlier made a disclaimer to all Members and all staff that we are in a deposition, that deposition rules apply, and that there should not be any leaks. This is something that the minority side takes extremely seriously, and it has been disappointing that during the brief time that we stepped out to go vote that we are reading on Twitter substance from today's deposition being cited by name to Chairman Schiff and to Gerry Connolly.

It's really important that if the deposition rules apply, where Members are not allowed to talk about the substance of what is discussed today, that that is applied equally to both the majority and minority, and I want to state that for the record.

We are also still waiting a ruling we started two depositions ago with a request -- actually it was the second deposition -- a request as to what rule is governing this entire process. We still have not received an answer as to what House rule governs any of this process.

The start of the last deposition we had a phone call with the House parliamentarian which started with a question of what House rule is governing any of this entire process. We are reiterating that we still have not received an answer. The minority whip, Steve Scalise, just made that request on the House floor and was not provided an answer.

And we would be very interested in knowing, and if that answer can't be provided now, at the start of tomorrow morning's deposition, what House rule is governing this entire process for this impeachment inquiry.

MR. BITAR: For the record, your interest is noted.

MR. JORDAN: Mr. Secretary, let me just go back. So on the July 25th call between President Trump and President Zelenskyy, just to walk through it again, you were not on that call.

MR. KENT: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: Lieutenant Colonel Vindman was.

MR. KENT: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: And at some point subsequent to that call you were on a call with the lieutenant colonel or you had some kind of meeting with him?

MR. KENT: It was a call and he gave me a very limited readout, correct.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. And on that limited readout on that call with the lieutenant colonel did he tell you not to talk about what you discuss with anyone else?

MR. KENT: I don't recall how he characterized it. It's just that he said that the information obviously was of very sensitive nature and that's why he could not give me the normal readout of the full content that he normally did.

MR. JORDAN: And the call you had with Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, was that the 26th, the 27th? What day with a that?

MR. KENT: It was a subsequent day. I do not -- I cannot say for certain which day he called. Normally I kept my notes in a notebook. On this particular occasion I grabbed a piece of paper and started writing. So it was not in a sequential notebook day by day.

MR. JORDAN: Was it within a week or was it in August?

MR. KENT: It was within a week, to the best of my recollection.

MR. JORDAN: So most likely some time in July?

MR. KENT: If the call happened -- the earliest it could have been was the 26th. To the best of my recollection, there were several days. So my guess is the 27th. There's a weekend in there somewhere. I'm not sure which the weekend was. So I would say the last week of July would be the best I could bound it.

MR. JORDAN: And then you discussed what Lieutenant Colonel Vindman told you with whom?

MR. JORDAN: I cannot recall the exact content, particularly since I didn't get as much content as I just got a tonal poem. So I can't recall directly.

MR. JORDAN: Did the lieutenant colonel tell you, look, I'm sharing this with you but no one else, or did you get the impression that he had shared this information with other people maybe in the State Department or other people in our government or anyone else?

MR. JORDAN: I am not aware of who else he might have given a readout to. In the general course of readouts of that nature, I would be the natural person for him to give a readout at the State Department.

MR. JORDAN: Is the fact that he -- okay. So normally you would get a readout. So was this the normal process that Lieutenant Colonel Vindman would let you know about this call or was this somehow different?

MR. KENT: It was the normal process. He had given me a similar readout for the April 21st call. What was different was that -- his concern that he did not feel at liberty to share all the substantive details of the call. That was what was different. But the readout, that he was giving me a readout, was the normal procedure.

MR. JORDAN: And why wouldn't he share everything with you if it's the normal process that you get briefed, you get a readout of calls between the President of the United States and foreign heads of state in your area, your area of the world that you're responsible for and that you deal with? And on the April call he gave you a full readout. Is that right?

MR. KENT: Correct, although it was a short, nonsubstantive conversation.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. Well, were there other occasion where Lieutenant Colonel Vindman gave you a readout from calls between President Trump and foreign heads of state?

MR. KENT: To the best of my knowledge, these were the only two calls between President Trump and a head of government of the six countries for which I have responsibility.

MR. JORDAN: Got it. Got it. So you have these two. And you got a full readout from the April 21st call or April call, but you didn't --

MR. KENT: In July, correct.

MR. JORDAN: And did you find that unusual?

MR. KENT: He made clear his extreme discomfort that there was discussions in the call that were -- what he described at the beginning was the majority of the call was very sensitive and he would not be giving me a full readout.

MR. JORDAN: And, well, I guess I'm trying to figure out if he's supposed to give you a readout, why didn't he give you the full readout?

MR. KENT: Again, all I can describe is his discomfort in sharing what he shared without -- with his disclaimer right up front that he was not going to give me the full normal readout.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. Thank you.

MR. ZELDIN: In an earlier round we were discussing individual cases where the United States Government had spoken with the Ukrainian Government with regards to cases under the jurisdiction of Ukraine. You cited one case specifically as possibly the highest profile case that you were tracking.

MR. KENT: After --

MR. ZELDIN: Or one of highest profile cases?

MR. KENT: For that period of time, the second half the 2018, yes.

MR. ZELDIN: Were any of these conversations with the Ukraine Government about corruption cases that we felt Ukraine shouldn't prosecute?

MR. KENT: I’m not aware of us ever telling Ukraine not to prosecute a corrupt individual or a person believed to have engaged in corruption, no.

MR. ZELDIN: Is it true that Ukraine prosecuted cases that were classified as a corruption case but were inappropriately classified as such?

MR. KENT: I will give you a specific example. The National Agency to Prevent Corruption was set up to review the asset declarations of the initially top 1,000 and then they expanded to even more Ukrainian officials.

In the first year of their operations they went after two individuals. One, the reformist head of customs who paid herself an $18 bonus on Women's Day when all the women in her office got it. And they also had launched an investigation of Serhiy Leschenko, the aforementioned member of parliament and former investigative journalist, who purchased an apartment. And those were the only two investigations that they did, and they were both reformers who were also critics of people who were not engaged in reform.

And there were dozens of billionaire oligarchs and other individuals, and there were no investigations of people whose reputations were that they had engaged in corruption for years.

MR. ZELDIN: So that I understand your testimony correctly, you cited two cases where two individuals were accused of corruption but shouldn't have been.

MR. KENT: As far as I recall, those are the only two individuals or officials of Ukraine that the National Agency to Prevent Corruption went after based on the asset declarations of high ranking officials and members of parliament.

MR. ZELDIN: And to be clear, you just used the word Ukrainian officials. Is there a different answer with regards to Ukrainian citizens or when you said officials did you mean Ukrainians at large?

MR. KENT: I was just trying to give a very specific example for a new institution that we initially helped stand up to help contain corruption based on asset declarations. And instead of using the asset declaration system to identify those who may have used public office to enrich themselves they went after two reformists who were noted critics of the lack of reform in certain parts of the Ukrainian Government.

MR. ZELDIN: And what was the timeframe for this answer?

MR. KENT: I believe the NAPC, as it was known, was stood up in 2015, and so this would have been 2015, 2016.

MR. ZELDIN: I understand that in a recent round you were answering questions based off of information that you obtained from others related to aid from the United States to Ukraine and the allegation of a quid pro quo. Do you have any firsthand knowledge of United States aid to Ukraine ever being connected to the opening of a new investigation?

MR. KENT: I do not have direct knowledge, no.

MR. ZELDIN: Thank you. That's it.

MR. GOLDMAN: Is that it? All right.

Two more things, 2 minutes.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  I just wanted to touch upon your -- some of the documents that you have been discussing today.

Do you have an understanding as to whether there may be emails or other documents in the custody of the State Department that reflect expressions of concern about some of the topics that we discussed today, separate and apart from your memos to file or other emails that you have referenced?

A  I would have imagined that there are quite a number of emails, yes.

Q  You discussed having two specific conversations with Fiona Hill, one in May and one you remember less of in July. And obviously you had other conversations with Lieutenant Colonel Vindman and Tim Morrison.

Were you ever aware of whether there was a separate either individual or individuals at the National Security Council who were providing information to the President on the Ukraine matter outside of ordinary channels?

A  I did not hear about it and have no information about that, no.

Q  Are you familiar with someone by the name of Kash Patel?

A  I am not aware that I've ever met anybody by that name, no.

Q  Have you ever heard that name?

A  I think Patel is a fairly common South Asian last name.

Q  How about Kash?

A  I -- less common. I do not -- I cannot imagine -or I can not recall any time where I was either in the presence of or heard a reference to Kash Patel.

MR. GOLDMAN: Okay. Thank you.

I think we are done. And thank you very much, Mr. Kent, for a long day. Really appreciate it.

And we're adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 7:42 p.m., the interview was concluded.]

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman Deposition

PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE,
joint with the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM and the
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
WASHINGTON, D.C.

DEPOSITION OF: LIEUTENANT COLONEL ALEXANDER S. VINDMAN

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Washington, D.C.

The deposition in the above matter was held in Room HVC-304, Capitol Visitor Center, commencing at 9:33 a.m.

Present: Representatives Schiff, Himes, Sewell, Carson, Speier, Quigley, Swalwell, Castro, Heck, Welch, Maloney, Demings, Krishnamoorthi, Nunes, Conaway, Wenstrup, Stewart, Stefanik, and Ratcliffe.

Also Present: Representatives Iordan, Armstrong, Cloud, Connolly, Cooper, DeSaulnier, Higgins, Kelly, Khanna, Lawrence, Lynch, Maloney, Massie, Meadows, Miller, Norman, Norton, Plaskett, Raskin, Rouda, Roy, Sarbanes, Tlaib, Wasserman Schultz, McCaul, Allred, Bera, Burchett, Cicilline, Connolly, Costa, Curtis, Deutch, Espaillat, Fitzpatrick, Guest, Houlahan, Keating, Levin, Lieu, Malinowski, Mast, Meeks, Omar, Perry, Reschenthaler, Sherman, Spanberger, Titus, Yoho, and Zeldin.

Appearances:

For the PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE:

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For the COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM:

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For the COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS:

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For LIEUTENANT COLONEL ALEXANDER S. VINDMAN

MATTHEW STANKIEWICZ, SENIOR ASSOCIATE

MICHAEL VOLKOV, CEO

THE VOLKOV LAW GROUP

2200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

4th Floor East

Washington, D.C. 20037

THE CHAIRMAN: Good morning. Colonel Vindman, and welcome to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which, along with the Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees, is conducting this investigation as part of the official impeachment inquiry of the House of Representatives. Today's deposition is being conducted as part of the impeachment inquiry announced on September 24, 2019.

In light of attempts by the administration to direct witnesses not to cooperate with the inquiry, including efforts to limit witness testimony, the committee had no choice but to compel your appearance today. We thank you for complying with the duly authorized congressional subpoena.

Colonel Vindman has served our country as a distinguished officer in the United States Army for more than 20 years. He has served several tours abroad, including a deployment to Iraq, where he was wounded and awarded a Purple Heart. For the last decade, he has served as a Foreign Area Officer focused on Eurasia, including work for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and, most recently, at the National Security Council.

Colonel Vindman, we thank you for your many dedicated years of service to our Nation. We are grateful for your courageous service to the country.

Finally, to restate what I and others have emphasized in other interviews, Congress will not tolerate any reprisal, threat of reprisal, or attempt to retaliate against any U.S. Government official for testifying before Congress, including you or any of you colleagues.

It is disturbing that the White House has sought to prohibit employees from cooperating with the inquiry and have tried to limit what they can say. Thankfully, consummate professionals like Colonel Vindman have demonstrated remarkable courage in coming forward to testify, obey their oath to defend the Constitution, and to tell the truth.

I do want to say also, Colonel, how deeply dismayed I was with the vicious personal attack on you on FOX last night, and I hope it will be condemned by all Americans. We are very grateful for your service. You represent what's best about this country.

Before we begin the interview, I want to invite Ranking Member Nunes or, in his absence, a minority member of the Foreign Affairs or Oversight Committees to make any opening remarks.

MR. JORDAN: Thank you, Chairman.

Colonel, we want to thank you for your service to our country and for being here today.

Just two things I wanted to get on the record that trouble the minority, I think, more importantly, trouble the American people. The first is the statement the chairman made Sunday morning I believe on CBS. Each day we leave this -- I think we're now on our eighth or ninth deposition -- each day we leave, the chairman admonishes every single one of us in this room not to go out and share substantive materials or information from the substance of the deposition.

And yet, on Sunday morning, the chairman on, again, I believe CBS, said: I already know from the testimony of others that this is someone who has, you know, concern that the people in the State Department, Ambassador Sondland and others, Mulvaney, were cooking up a drug deal. And by that, he meant a corrupt deal involving withholding White House meeting or perhaps withholding aid as well.

That is directly from testimony of a witness in this committee. And if we're going to get the admonishment from the chairman, it seems to me the chairman should follow his own instructions to the rest of us.

Second, as I mentioned yesterday, the minority is troubled and, more importantly, I think the American people are troubled by the fact that there are 435 Members of Congress and yet only one, only one Member knows the person who started this whole thing and, more importantly or as importantly, the handful of people who gave that individual the information that formed the basis of this entire charade that we've been going through now for 5 weeks. And so I think those are important facts, important concerns that we have and, as I said, most importantly, I think the American people have.

With that, I'd be happy, if the chairman's okay, letting -- yielding to the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee.

THE CHAIRMAN: I'm happy to yield to Mr. Nunes.

MR. NUNES: Well, I'll just say we look forward to whatever the new construct of the impeachment committee is going to look like. And, of course, welcome to Lieutenant Colonel Vindman today, and hopefully your testimony will be honest and forthright.

And, with that, I yield back.

THE CHAIRMAN: I thank the gentleman.

I'm not going to respond to the false statements from my colleague, Mr. Jordan. I don't want to take up the witness' time that way. So I'll recognize Mr. Goldman.

MR. JORDAN: Can you tell me what's false, Mr. Chairman?

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Goldman, you are recognized.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

This is a deposition of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman conducted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence pursuant to the impeachment inquiry announced by the Speaker of the House on September 24, 2019.

Colonel Vindman, could you please state your full name and spell your last name for the record.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Alexander Semyon Vindman, last name spelled V-i-n-d-m-a-n.

MR. GOLDMAN: You may also have to spell your middle name.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: It goes by Simon, but the proper I guess is S-e-m-y-o-n. I don't use it very often. So Alexander Semyon Vindman, S-e-m-y-o-n, last name V-i-n-d-m-a-n.

MR. GOLDMAN: All right, thank you. We understand it’s a bit of a nerve-wracking environment, and we thank you for your testimony here today.

Along with other proceedings in furtherance of the inquiry to date, this deposition is part of a joint investigation led by the Intelligence Committee in coordination with the Committees on Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform.

In the room today are majority staff and minority staff from all three committees, and this will be a staff-led deposition. Members, of course, may ask questions during their allotted time, as has been the case in every deposition since the inception of this investigation.

My name is Daniel Goldman. I'm the director of investigations with the HPSCI majority staff. And I want to thank you again for coming in today.

Let me do some brief introductions. To my right is Daniel Noble. He's Senior Investigative Counsel for the Intelligence Committee. Mr. Noble and I will be conducting most of the interview for the majority.

And now I'll let me counterparts from the minority introduce themselves.

MR. CASTOR: Good morning. I' m Steve Castor with the Republican staff of the Oversight Committee.

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MR. GOLDMAN: This deposition will be conducted entirely at the unclassified level. However, the deposition is being conducted in HPSCI secure spaces and in the presence of staff with appropriate security clearances.

It is the committee's expectation that neither questions asked of you nor answers provided by you will require discussion of any information that is currently or at any point could be properly classified under Executive Order 13526. You are reminded that E0-13526 states that, quote, "in no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified," unquote, for the purpose of concealing any violations of law or preventing embarrassment of any person or entity.

If any of our questions, however, can only be answered with classified information, please inform us of that fact before you answer the question and we can adjust accordingly.

Today's deposition is not being taken in executive session, but because of the sensitive and confidential nature of some of the topics and materials that will be discussed, access to the transcript of the deposition will be limited to the three committees in attendance.

Under the House deposition rules, no Member of Congress nor any staff member can discuss the substance of the testimony that you provide today. You and your attorney will have an opportunity to review the transcript.

Before we begin, I'd like to go over the ground rules for the deposition. We will be following the House regulations for depositions, which we have previously provided to your counsel. The deposition will proceed as follows: The majority will be given 1 hour to ask questions. Then the minority will be given 1 hour. Thereafter, we will alternate back and forth between majority and minority in 45-minute rounds until questioning is complete. We will take periodic breaks, but if you need a break at any time, please let us know. Under the House deposition rules, counsel for other persons or government agencies may not attend.

You are permitted to have an attorney present during this deposition, and I see that you have brought two.

At this time, if counsel could please state their appearances for the record.

MR. VOLKOV: Michael Volkov, Volkov Law Group.

MR. STANKIEWICZ: Matthew Stankiewicz, Volkov Law Group.

MR. GOLDMAN: There is a stenographer taking down everything that is said here today in order to make a written record of the deposition. For the record to be clear, please wait until each question is completed before you begin your answer, and we will endeavor to wait until you finish your response before asking the next question.

The stenographer cannot record nonverbal answers, such as shaking your head, so it is important that you answer each question with an audible verbal answer.

We ask that you give complete answers to questions based on your best recollection. If a question is unclear or you are uncertain in your response, please let us know. And if you do not know the answer to a question or cannot remember, simply say so.

You may only refuse to answer a question to preserve a privilege recognized by the committee. If you refuse to answer a question on the basis of privilege, staff may either proceed with the deposition or seek a ruling from the chairman on the objection. If the chair overrules any such objection, you are required to answer the question.

Finally, you are reminded that it is unlawful to deliberately provide false information to Members of Congress or staff. It is imperative that you not only answer our questions truthfully but that you give full and complete answers to all questions asked of you. Omissions may also be considered as false statements.

Now, as this deposition is under oath, Colonel Vindman, would you please stand and raise your right hand to be sworn. Do you swear that the testimony provided here today will be the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I do.

MR. GOLDMAN: Let the record reflect that the witness has been sworn and you may be seated.

Colonel Vindman, if you have an opening statement or your attorney has any matters to address with the committee, now is the time.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, thank you for the opportunity to address the committee concerning the activities related to Ukraine and my role in the events under investigation.

I have dedicated my entire professional life to the United States of America. For more than two decades, it has been my honor to serve as an officer in the United States Army. As an infantry officer, I served multiple tours overseas, including South Korea and Germany, and deployed to Iraq for combat operations. In Iraq, I was wounded in an IED attack and awarded a Purple Heart.

Since 2008, I have been a Foreign Area Officer specializing in Eurasia. In this role, I have served in the United States Embassies in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Moscow, Russia. In Washington, D.C., I was a politico-military affairs officer for Russia for the Chairman of the Doint Chiefs, where I authored the principal strategy for managing competition with Russia. In July 2018, I was asked to serve at the National Security Council.

The privilege of serving my country is not only rooted in my military service but also in my personal history. I sit here, as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army, an immigrant. My family fled the Soviet Union when I was 3 and a half years old. Upon arriving in New York City in 1979, my father worked multiple jobs to support us, all the while learning English at night. He stressed to us the importance of fully integrating into our adopted country. For many years, life was difficult. In spite of our challenging beginnings, my family worked to build its own American Dream. I have a deep appreciation for American values and ideals and the power of freedom. I am a patriot. It is my sacred duty and honor to advance and defend our country irrespective of party or politics.

For over 20 years as an Active Duty United States military officer and diplomat, I have served this country in a nonpartisan manner, and I have done so with the utmost respect and professionalism for both the Republican and Democratic administrations.

Before recounting my recollections of various events under investigation, I want to clarify a few issues. I am appearing today voluntarily, pursuant to a subpoena, and will answer all questions to the best of my recollection.

I want the committee to know I am not the whistleblower who brought this issue to the CIA and the committee's attention. I do not know who the whistleblower is, and I would not feel comfortable to speculate as to the identity of the whistleblower.

Also, I will detail herein I did not convey -- I did -- I'll say again. As I will detail herein, I did convey certain concerns internally to national security officials in accordance with my decades of experience and training, sense of duty, and obligation to operate within the chain of command. As an Active Duty military officer, the command structure is extremely important to me. On many occasions, I've been told I should express my views and share my concerns with my chain of command and proper authorities. I believe that any good military officer should and would do the same, thus providing his or her best advice to leadership.

Furthermore, in performing my coordination role as Director on the National Security Council, I provided readouts of relevant meetings and communications to a very small group of properly cleared national security counterparts with a relevant need-to-know.

When I joined the White House National Security Council, I reported to Dr. Fiona Hill, who, in turn, reported to Ambassador John Bolton, National Security Advisor. My role at the National Security Council includes developing, coordinating, and executing plans and policies to manage the full range of diplomatic, informational, military, and economic national security issues for the countries in my portfolio, which includes Ukraine.

In my position, I coordinate with a superb cohort of interagency partners. I regularly prepare internal memoranda, talking points, and other materials for the National Security Advisor and senior staff.

Most of my interactions relate to national security issues and are, therefore, especially sensitive. I would urge the committees to carefully balance the need for information against impact that disclosure would have on our foreign policy and national security. I have never had direct contact or communications with the President.

Since 2008, Russia has manifested -- so I'm going to go into the geopolitics behind this. I apologize. Since 2008, Russia has manifested an overtly aggressive foreign policy, leveraging military power and employing hybrid warfare to achieve its objectives of regional hegemony and global influence. Absent a deterrent to dissuade Russia from such aggression, there is an increase of further confrontations with the West. This situation -- in this situation, a strong and independent Ukraine is critical to U.S. national security interests because Ukraine is a front-line state and a bulwark against Russian aggression.

In spite of being under assault from Russia for more than 5 years, Ukraine has taken major steps toward integrating with the West. The U.S. Government policy community's view is that the election of President Volodymyr Zelensky and the promise of reform to eliminate corruption will lock in Ukraine's Western-leaning trajectory and allow Ukraine to realize its dream of a vibrant democracy and economic prosperity.

Given this perspective and my commitment to advancing our government's strategic interests, I will now recount several events that occurred.

When I joined the National Security Council in Duly of 2018, I began implementing the administration's Ukraine policy. In the spring of 2019, I became aware of outside influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the entire interagency. This narrative was harmful to U.S. Government policy. While my interagency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic about Ukraine's prospects, this alternative narrative undermined U.S. Government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.

On April 21st, 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was elected President of Ukraine in a landslide victory. President Zelensky was seen as a unifying figure within the country. He was the first candidate to win a majority in every region of the country, breaking the claims that Ukraine would be subject to perpetual divide between the Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking populations. President Zelensky ran on a platform of unity, reform, and anticorruption, which resonated with the entire country.

In support of U.S. policy objectives to support Ukrainian sovereignty, President Trump called President Zelensky on April 21st, 2019. I was one of several staff officers who listened to the call. The call was positive. The President expressed his desire to work with President Zelensky and extended an invitation to visit the White House.

On May 21st, 2019, I was directed by Ambassador Bolton and Dr. Hill to join the delegation attending President Zelensky's inauguration. When the delegation returned, they provided a debriefing to the President and explained their positive assessment of President Zelensky and his team. I did not participate in this debriefing.

On Duly 10th, 2019, Oleksandr Danylyuk, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council for Ukraine, visited Washington, D.C., for a meeting with National Security Advisor Bolton. Ambassadors Volker and Sondland and Energy Secretary Rick Perry attended.

The meeting proceeded well until the Ukrainians broached the subject of a meeting between the two Presidents. The Ukrainians saw this meeting as critically important in order to solidify the support for their most important international partner. Ambassador Sondland started -- when Ambassador Sondland started to speak about Ukraine delivering specific investigations in order to secure the meeting with the President, Ambassador Bolton cut the meeting short.

Following the meeting -- this meeting -- there was a scheduled debriefing during which Ambassador Sondland emphasized the importance that Ukraine deliver the investigation into the 2016 elections, the Bidens, and Burisma. I stated to Ambassador Sondland that the statements -- that his statements were inappropriate, that the request to investigate the Bidens and his son had nothing to do with national security, and that such investigations were not something that the NSC was going to get involved in or push. Dr. Hill entered the room shortly thereafter and asserted to Ambassador Sondland that his statements were inappropriate.

Following the debriefing, I reported my concerns to NSC’s legal counsel, lead legal counsel. Dr. Hill also reported the incident to lead legal counsel.

On Duly 21st, 2019, President Zelensky's party won Parliamentary elections in a landslide victory. The NSC proposed that President Trump call President Zelensky to congratulate him.

On Duly 25th, that call occurred. I listened to the call in the Situation Room with colleagues from the NSC and Office of the Vice President. As the transcript is in the public record, we all are aware of what was said.

I was concerned by the call. I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications to the U.S. Government's support of Ukraine. I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would be interpreted as a bipartisan play, which would undoubtedly -- I'm sorry. I'm going to restate that. Sorry. I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play, which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained. This would all undermine U.S. national security. Following the call, I again reported my concerns to NSC's legal counsel.

In conclusion, the United States and Ukraine are and must remain strategic partners, working together to realize the shared vision of a stable, prosperous, and democratic Ukraine that is integrated into the Euro-Atlantic community. Our partnership is rooted in the idea that free citizens should be able to exercise their democratic rights, choose their own destiny, and live in peace.

It has been a great honor to serve the American people and a privilege to work in the White House and on the National Security Council. I hope to continue to serve and advance America's national security interests.

Thank you again for your consideration, and I would now -- I am now happy to answer your questions.

[The information follows:]

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THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Colonel.

I'll turn it oven to Mr. Goldman for 1 hour of majority questions.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you again, Colonel Vindman.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  You said in your opening statement, or you indicated at least, that there's a fairly consensus policy within the interagency towards Ukraine.

Could you just explain what that consensus policy is, in your own words?

A  Yes. I'm just -- I'm going to be careful to not cross over into any classified.

What I can tell you is, over the course of certainly my tenure there, since July 2018, the interagency, as per normal procedures, assembles under the NSPM-4, the National Security Policy Memorandum 4, process to coordinate U.S. Government policy. We, over the course of this past year, probably assembled easily a dozen times, certainly at my level, which is called a subpolicy coordinating committee -- and that’s myself and my counterparts at the Deputy Assistant Secretary level -- to discuss our views on Ukraine.

Certainly, as it became apparent that President Zelensky was preparing to take office and his platform became clear -- he was running on a unity platform. He was running on an anticorruption and reform platform. And if he, in fact, fulfills his platform -- and all indications right now are that he is, and those indications became relatively clear pretty early -- this is -- you know, this is in the United States' interest.

So that is, throughout the course of my tenure there, we had been monitoring the situation, how the trajectory is taking, the fact that it was actually completely aligned with the U.S. Government policy in terms of strengthening democracies and also, you know, strengthening front-line states as a bulwark against Russian aggression.

Q  Now, you said that in the spring -- in your opening statement, you said in the spring of 2019, you became aware of outside influencers promoting a false narrative that was inconsistent with this uniform policy. Can you explain what you mean by the outside influencers promoting a false narrative? Who were the influencers and what was the false narrative?

A  So I will tell you that this is as a result of closely monitoring everything to do with the countries in my portfolio, including Ukraine. As a habit, I get constant updates from interagency colleagues, from the Intelligence Community, from the Embassy.

And I would say that this particular -- these particular concerns emerged from a combination of open source -- following the press reporting, there were a couple of articles in The Hill that emerged in the March timeframe that, frankly, painted a significantly divergent view of the country, at least the orientation it was taking or likely to take under Zelensky. He was not yet President, but it was clear that he was on the upswing.

And at that point, you know, that's probably the first time I was sensitized to this issue. I was not really aware of, you know, some of these -- some of the theories that were behind it until that point.

Okay. And I guess, you know, the stories pertained to a prosecutor general in Ukraine at the time, Mr. Lutsenko, who was at that point in -- for the purpose of self-preservation for himself and the President at the time, President Poroshenko, was advancing a narrative undermining the Ambassador in Ukraine, Ambassador Yovanovitch.

So, at the time, that was probably -- the key influencers were the Ukrainians that were looking to preserve their position in power, retain -- gain reelection, looking to basically undermine Ambassador Yovanovitch and the Embassy that was critical of recent reports of corruption.

Q  And were there any American outside influencers?

A  So those probably occurred a little bit later. I'd say in the April timeframe is when I, frankly, became aware of Mr. Giuliani, Mayor Giuliani, also being involved in this particular narrative.

Q  And just this narrative as related to Ambassador Yovanovitch, or were there other false narratives that were being promoted as well?

A  So this narrative, as the narrative developed, it became clear that it had to do with the 2016 elections and Ukrainian -- supposed Ukrainian involvement in partisan support of candidate Clinton and in opposition to President Trump. That was the key element of that particular narrative that developed.

Q  And are you aware of any factual basis for that narrative, based on your training, experience, and knowledge of Ukraine?

A  I am unaware of any factual basis for the accusations against Ambassador Yovanovitch, and I am, frankly, unaware of any authoritative basis for Ukrainian interference in 2016 elections, based on my knowledge.

Q  Did these Hill articles also reference potential issues related to the Bidens and a company called Burisma?

A  As the narrative began to unfold, there were claims of corruption involving Mr. Biden, Hunter Biden, and eventually the President also, as a means to cover up an investigation into Burisma and Hunter Biden's association with the firm.

Q  You said the President. Who do you mean?

A  I'm sorry. The Vice President, Biden.

Q  Okay. Now, we're going to go through in some detail the narrative over the last year or so, but I want to pick up on a couple of particular incidents that you mentioned in your opening statement.

You discussed in your opening statement a July 10th meeting between Oleksandr Danylyuk and Ambassador Bolton. Can you describe -- well, where was that meeting held?

A  That was in Ambassador Bolton's office.

Q  And can you tell us who attended that meeting?

A  So Ambassador Bolton, Dr. Hill. I guess I'm not -- if I'm not certain about her name, I prefer not to mention it. I guess I don't want to speculate. But then from the -- you know, from the true principals, it would have been Ambassadors Sondland, Volker, Secretary Perry, Oleksandr Danylyuk, Andrey Yermak. Please let me know if I need to spell those --

Q  No, we got that name.

A  Okay. And then I think -- actually, I know that the senior adviser for Oleksandr Danylyuk was also there, Oleksii Semeniy.

MR. VOLKOV: You better spell that.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So Oleksii, the Ukrainian spelling would be O-l-e-k-s-i-i, S-e-m-e-n-i-y.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  What was the purpose of this meeting?

A  This would be -- this was the inaugural meeting between the -- Ambassador Bolton and his counterpart, the equivalent of a National Security Advisor for Ukraine.

The purpose was, first of all, to build rapport, give Ambassador Bolton an opportunity to make his own assessment on the key elements of President Zelensky's team, and Oleksandr Danylyuk being one of the key elements, and a very well-regarded, actually, technocrat that had been serving Ukraine for some years, and allow him to make his own assessment of what these people are like. Is it worth it to pursue this engagement? You know, are these credible individuals? And then, frankly, to chart a course for bilateral cooperation.

Q  Did you have an understanding as to why Ambassadors Sondland, Volker, and Secretary Perry attended this meeting?

A  So, certainly, they had been involved in Ukraine since the Presidential delegation on -- they were the seniors attending the Presidential delegation in May, and they had, from that point on, taken an active role in Ukraine and supporting Ukraine.

I think every one of those individuals recognized the unique opportunity presented by the election of Volodymyr Zelensky, and a willing partner that was going to lock in the reforms, root out corruption, that would allow Ukraine to prosper and further integrate into the Euro-Atlantic community. And all of those individuals were looking to advance, you know, a relationship between Ukraine and the United States.

Q  Approximately how long was this meeting?

A  It was in the ballpark of about 35 to 40 minutes.

Q  And you say in your opening statement that it went well until the Ukrainians broached the subject of a meeting between the two Presidents. What did the Ukrainians bring up in connection to that?

A  So I think it's important to note that the Ukrainians had been seeking a meeting, a White House meeting with the President, for some time already at that point. There was -- and it was based on the President during the phone call on April 21st extending an offer to meet with President Zelensky and, you know, a correspondence also offering a meeting. So the Ukrainians were attempting to figure out when they could actually do this meeting.

From the Ukrainian perspective, their -- you have a brand new President, is not from the political establishment. He is trying to, you know, develop his bona fides and continue to gain support so he can implement his agenda.

His agenda includes rooting out corruption, and corruption certainly for decades has been endemic in Ukraine. And what he was looking to do was, you know, to face off against entrenched elites, political elites, oligarchs. And in order to do this, he needed -- he needed some support.

In this case, what he was looking to do is, specifically, there was a Parliamentary election to be held in May, May 21st, and he was looking to potentially -- his team was looking to secure a meeting so it would bolster his credibility going into the Presidential -- I'm sorry, Parliamentary election. In reality --

Q  May 21st or Duly 21st?

A  Duly 21st, yeah. There are a lot of 21sts in here for some reason, so -- why that date is important.

But so July 21st. So this is only about 11 days before. And even if they weren't able to actually get a meeting, because that's not likely, given the President's schedule, he's extremely busy, he has -- and his meetings are scheduled way ahead of time, the securing of a date sometime after would have been still useful.

So they were attempting to pin down a date so that he went into the Parliamentary elections strongly. And it turns out he didn't really need it because he won by a landslide anyway, based on the fact that he was credible with his population.

Q  And so, after the Ukrainian officials raised the idea of this meeting, what happened next? What was the response?

A  So we had had a very substantive conversation up until that point, kind of laying out, you know, the necessity of working with Ukraine. There was a discussion of -- you know, of the Ukrainian proposals on how we could cooperate more substantively.

When the Ukrainians raised this issue of trying to figure out what the date would be for the Presidential meeting, Ambassador Sondland proceeded to discuss the deliverable required in order to get the meeting, and he alluded to investigations.

Very quickly thereafter, Ambassador Bolton terminated the meeting, pleasant and professional, but he said: It was a pleasure meeting with you, looking forward to working with you.

And we -- you know, he still had the -- we still did a photo to, again, bolster the Ukrainians. There was quite a nice photo that was taken outside the White House that ended up getting published. And that's how the meeting ended.

Q  Was this the first time that you had heard about these investigations in connection with a White House meeting?

A  This is the first time that it didn't come from, you know -- this wasn't a -- this had developed mainly -- my situational awareness into this developed initially through open source and then, you know, professional communications to determine what was the substance behind some of this. But this was the first time that it emerged kind of with a government official discussing it.

Q  I'm going to circle back to this, but what happened after Ambassador Bolton abruptly ended the meeting?

A  So we did the photo. Again, the intention was to strengthen his counterpart's position. And then Dr. Hill joined Ambassador Bolton for a meeting in his office. And we had preplanned a post-meeting discussion just to see if there was any do-outs that we would need to follow through and --

MR. VOLKOV: What's a do-out?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: A do-out would be -- so, if there was a task that needed to then be coordinated through the interagency, the idea would be that we would discuss it and figure out how to move forward as a next step.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Who attended that briefing?

A  So Ambassador Sondland, Ambassador Volker attended that meeting. There were some staffers. I think Ambassador Sondland's staff was there. Yeah, Perry. So, actually, frankly, Perry, I think he had some testimony, and if he was there, he was there for just a brief minute, but his chief of staff remained. And then --

Q  Who was his chief of staff?

A  It will come back to me. Mr. Brian McCormack.

Q  Where was this debriefing?

A  It's a space called the Ward Room in the White House, West Wing.

Q  Were the Ukrainian officials there?

A  They were -- they were there for the -- for a part of the post-meeting, yes.

Q  And then what was discussed at that post-meeting debriefing?

A  So Ambassador Sondland relatively quickly went into outlining how the -- you know., these investigations need to -- or the deliverable for these investigations in order to secure this meeting. Again, I think, you know, I may not have agreed with what he was doing, but his intent was to normalize relationships with -- between the U.S. and Ukraine, and this was -- as far as I understand, this is what he believed the deliverable to be.

Q  Who did he believe -- or let me -- withdrawn.

Do you understand how he came to believe that this deliverable was necessary?

A  So I heard him say that this had been coordinated with White House Chief of Staff Mr. Mick Mulvaney.

Q  What did he say about that?

A  He just said that he had had a conversation with Mr. Mulvaney, and this is what was required in order to get a meeting.

Q  Did he explain what the investigations were that were needed?

A  He talked about the investigations, which -- I guess I'll refer to my statement. So, I mean, it was the 2016 -- these things tended to be conflated at some point. So he was talking about the 2016 elections and an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma.

Q  What do you mean "they tended to be conflated"?

A  So, initially, there was a -- the narrative was just about 2016. As time moved on through the spring and summer, the narrative had changed to both the preceding, I guess, issues that -- with Ukraine and interference to also the Bidens and their involvement in, you know, any misdealings there.

Q  And when you say "the narrative,” what do you mean?

A  So I saw this unfold, a lot of this unfold, frankly, in the press. And the initial story line was on, you know, on -- the initial story line was focused on Ukrainian interference in 2016 elections.

And then, subsequently, it was the Bidens began to be incorporated into this narrative and that Hunter Biden, who was on the board of this firm Burisma, was involved in some misdealings. There was an investigation into Burisma, and the story goes that the Vice President had the prosecutor general that was responsible for this investigation removed to terminate this investigation into Burisma.

Q  This was the narrative that was out, is that what you're saying?

A  Yes.

Q  Now, you had said a moment ago that this, as you just said, is a narrative, but when Ambassador Sondland mentioned these investigations, I think you referred to that as the first time there were professional communications related to that. What do you mean by that?

A  Government officials that were -- so that was the first time I've heard firsthand a government official talk about these investigations and the fact that this investigation was a do-out for anything --

Q  What --

A  -- or deliverable for anything.

Q  Did Ambassador Sondland -- were the Ukrainian officials in the room when he was describing the need for these investigations in order to get the White House meeting?

A  So they were in the room initially. I think, once it became clear that there was some sort of discord amongst the government officials in the room, Ambassador Sondland asked them to step out of the room.

Q  What was the discord?

A  The fact that it was clear that I, as the representative -- I, as the representative of the NSC, thought it was inappropriate and that we were not going to get involved in investigations.

Q  Did you say that to Ambassador Sondland?

A  Yes, I did.

Q  Did anyone else other than you or Ambassador Sondland participate in this discussion related to the investigations?

A  One more time, please.

Q  Did anyone other than you or Ambassador Sondland participate in the discussion about these investigations?

A  There were other people in the room, yes. Did they participate?

Q  Did they say anything?

A  Did they say anything? I think mainly people were listening at that point. It was kind of an uncomfortable conversation, so people were just listening to it unfold.

Q  What did Ambassador Sondland say in response to you telling him that this was inappropriate?

A  He at that point started to, I guess, moderate what he had been calling for. First, I think, as I recall, he brought in the fact that, you know, this is per his conversation with White House Chief of Staff's Office.

And then when I said -- well, I explained to him, actually, I'm not a politician, I don't, frankly, know how these things work, and I didn’t think it was appropriate. I think, you know, he stopped pushing it, and about the same time is when Dr. Hill came in from her meeting with Ambassador Bolton.

Q  Why did you think it was not appropriate?

A  I just -- I thought it was inappropriate to have -- to call for an investigation -- to call a foreign power to investigate a U.S. citizen. In my mind, I had spent quite a bit of time in that part of the world. I understand how the justice system works. It's not a rule of law that governs.

These could all be orchestrated to achieve some sort of objective. And, in my mind, I thought it was, you know -- if they thought that this was in their national security interests and they could potentially get away with it -- you know, I'm not talking about the Ukrainians; I'm talking about foreign powers in general -- and if they thought that it was in their national security interests -- and this is a country that's fighting a war against Russia -- and they could get away with it, I mean, why should they really care that much about domestic politics at a different country? They're going to do what they need to to protect and advance their own national security interests.

And, you know, this would not be -- if they chose to do it, they could potentially tip the scales, and this would not be a fair investigation, and it would provide, you know, compromising or maybe even fabricated information, if need be. So these things, these thoughts were all going through my mind.

Q  What did Dr. Hill say when she walked in?

A  I -- in about, you know, 5 or 10 seconds, I quickly kind of caught her up on what the conversation had been. And she had just returned from Ambassador Bolton' s office, and, you know, she was -- she was irritated, and she basically backed up the position that I had laid out, which is that this was inappropriate and that we would -- you know, the NSC -- it had nothing to do with national security and that the NSC was not going to get involved in it.

Q  And what happened next?

A  We relatively quickly broke up from there. I brought the Ukrainians in, and I took them back out, so through -- up to the security checkpoint, said goodbyes. You know, I had met Mr. Danylyuk a couple times, so we exchanged some pleasantries and, you know, said something about looking forward to working with him and seeing him in the future, and escorted him out.

Q  Did Ambassador Sondland respond to Dr. Hill in any way?

A  I apologize. So these -- that' s the normal format. I think that's what played out in this case, in terms of me escorting him out. I also vaguely recall a brief conversation that we -- with Dr. Hill that we needed to follow up on this matter also. Somewhere in that process, we also had that, you know, just a quick --

Q  Just you and Dr. Hill?

A  Yes.

Q  And that you both wanted to follow up?

A  That we had -- we need to discuss, you know, the matter and, you know, what we do from there.

Q  Okay. Just going back a minute to when Dr. Hill came in and said it was inappropriate, did Ambassador Sondland say anything in response to her?

A  I, frankly, do not recall exactly what he said. I -- to the best of my recollection, I think he just, you know, said, you know, we'll follow up on it later or something like that.

MS. SEWELL: Were the Ukrainians in the room when you admonished Ambassador Sondland?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Probably not for the -- I mean, I wouldn't characterize it as admonishing him. He's an, you know. Ambassador, which is --

MS. SEWELL: When you expressed your concern.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I think that -- ma'am, if I could say, that was more accurate. So I just expressed my concerns. And the Ukrainians would have been in there for part of it, but, again, as that -- as the discord between the National Security Council and Ambassador Sondland unfolded, I think they were asked to leave relatively quickly. So they heard -- they probably heard some of it, but I'm not sure how much of it they heard.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Was Ambassador Volker in the Ward Room for this conversation?

A  He was.

Q  Did he say anything?

A  I don't recall him saying much, no.

Q  Did he seem surprised to hear what Ambassador Sondland was saying?

A  I'm not sure if I could -- I'm not sure if I took particular note. I think, if anything, he certainly would have been surprised by the -- kind of the expression of concerns, you know, and the fact that we were having this conversation, something of that nature, but I can't recall specifically.

Q  Was Secretary Perry there for this conversation?

A  I don't think he was there for this part of the conversation.

Q  But his chief of staff, Brian McCormack, was?

A  He was, because I mentioned, I think -- you know, he was there for the pre-meeting we had, and everything normal, no issues. We discussed policy. And I think he said that he had a Hill testimony or Hill encounter and that he would not be able to stay, and he was represented by Mr. McCormack.

Q  Was anyone else there from the American side?

A  I think there were some staffers, but I apologize, I don't recall who the staffers were.

Q  What did you do to report this up the chain?

A  At that point, I -- I know that both Dr. Hill and I had concerns. I believe -- let me -- just trying to think through the timeline. That occurred -- that meeting occurred in the late afternoon. I mean, I very quickly went and spoke to the senior White House -- or senior National Security attorney and, you know, relayed the incident, the fact that, you know, this investigation that had previously emerged in open source and had certainly been connected to the -- what Mr. Giuliani was pushing, was now being pulled into a, you know, national security dialogue. And I relayed these elements.

Q  Okay. Before I get there, what did you understand Mr. Giuliani's relationship to the President to be?

A  I don't -- I have never met the President. I have never met Mr. Giuliani. As far as I know, it's just what's in the news, which is that he's his personal attorney.

Q  Who did you report this incident to?

A  So, on that occasion -- yeah, on that occasion, I spoke to John Eisenberg, the NSC legal counsel.

Q  And I may have missed this, but when was that conversation?

A  That occurred in the afternoon, and I spoke to him the same day in the afternoon.

Q  Just the two of you in that conversation?

A  In that one, yes.

Q  And did you take any notes to memorialize this meeting and then debriefing in the Ward Room?

A  So I took notes on the official meeting that we had scheduled, as per normal practice, but I didn't take any meetings from the -- any notes from the Ward Room. Frankly, probably, the most accurate notes would be what Mr. Eisenberg would have taken down during our conversation.

Q  And do you recall that he took down notes?

A  Yes.

Q  So explain what you said to Mr. Eisenberg.

A  I think -- I believe I can't go further into that.

MR. VOLKOV: I think if we can, I don't have a problem with him sort of just summarizing it, but it's a privileged conversation in that he's counsel. So, if he can just summarize it generally. It's not a very long conversation.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  That's fine if you want to summarize it generally, Just to be clear, I don't necessarily agree with the privilege assertion, but if we don't need to get there, then maybe that's best.

A  Sir, I think I -- I mean, the top line I just offered, I'll restate it, which is that Mr. Sondland asked for investigations, for these investigations into Bidens and Burisma. I actually recall having that particular conversation.

Mr. Eisenberg doesn't really work on this issue, so I had to go a little bit into the back story of what these investigations were, and that I expressed concerns and thought it was inappropriate.

Q  And what did he say to you?

MR. VOLKOV: If I can object just at this point, and we can work -- we can talk about this at a break, but I believe it's privileged.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Well, let me ask you this: Rather than what he said to you, did he indicate to you that he was going to do anything with your information?

A  You know, I'm not sure. Frankly, what I was doing is I was reporting something to the chain of command, a concern I had. You know, what he did with that information is probably above my pay grade.

Q  No, no, I understand. Did he say anything to you, that, all right, I'm going to do anything with it?

A  I vaguely recall something about: I'll take a look into it.

You know, there might not be anything here. We'll take a look into it, something of that nature.

But -- and then he offered to, you know, if I have any concerns in the future, you know, that I should be open -- I should be -- feel free to come back and, you know, share those concerns.

Q  Did either he or anyone from the legal staff circle back to you on this issue?

A  No.

MR. HIMES: Just for clarity. Counselor, are you asserting privilege on behalf of your client or on behalf of someone else?

MR. VOLKOV: Well, he's seeking -- on behalf of my client in the sense that he's seeking advice. It's as if he was in a company, and the company counsel is telling him "here's what we're doing" -- my concern with this is he is seeking advice from in-house counsel. And I believe that the advice that he got, the substance of it -- I don't have a problem with sort of "here's the communications that I did,” but in terms of the response and any detail about that., I think that's privileged as to him being -- working at the White House, and it's the White House's privilege. We could talk about it, but it's not worth wasting a lot of time on.

MR. HIMES: Yes, let's defer that conversation until when it becomes necessary to have.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Colonel Vindman, did you -- after this meeting on July 10th, either the meeting with Ambassador Bolton or the post-meeting debriefing, did you have a subsequent conversation with Ambassador Bolton about any of this?

A  I did not.

Q  How about with -- other than the short conversation you had with Dr. Hill where you agreed to report it up the chain, did you have any additional conversation with her?

A  I did, yes.

Q  Can you describe those -- was it one or more conversations?

A  I mean, it could have been more than one, but, frankly, I remember one --

Q  Describe that conversation.

A  -- conversation. And in it, she relayed to me that Ambassador Bolton was -- was very irritated by the meeting, and that's why he ended it abruptly, and that, you know, we discussed the fact that -- I think I told her at that point that I had already reported it to legal counsel, and she said she was going to do the same thing.

And we also discussed the fact that we thought it was inappropriate and, you know, had nothing to do with national security, and we were not going to get involved in it.

Q  I want to move ahead to a couple weeks later, and we're going to spend a little time --

A  Sir, maybe if you don't mind, I think it's also important to note that, you know, I made my report to the chain of command, but I also had a role in terms of coordinating advancing U.S. policy. So this is not something that we spent a lot of time dwelling on.

We -- I thought I'd handled it appropriately, and I moved on to my job of advancing U.S. national security interests by, you know, looking to the next engagement, figuring out what we need to do next step. There's always constantly something. The National Security Council has busy days, lots going on. And, you know, frankly, we just moved on to the next thing that we needed to do in order to do our jobs and advance the national security interests.

Q  And is it fair to say that encouraging Ukraine to conduct investigations related to domestic U.S. politics was not in the U.S. national security interests?

A  In my view, I don't think it was. And it had inherent risks in that -- it had inherent risks in that, frankly, if Ukrainians took a partisan position, they would significantly undermine the possibility of future bipartisan support.

Losing bipartisan support, they would then lose access to potentially, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance funds. The amount of money that we're talking about here, $400 million, might not mean much, you know, in terms of the U.S. budget. For a normal person it does, but for a U.S. budget it's, you know, a fraction of a fraction.

But for the Ukrainians, it amounts to about 10 percent of their military budget, roughly. And, you know, that is -- that actually amounts to a significant portion of their GDP because the Ukrainians also spend about 5 to 6 percent of their GDP on defense because they're fighting an active conflict against the Russians.

So this is not a negligible amount and, you know, we're basically trying to continue the relationship and advance the U.S. national security interests. And losing bipartisan support would have a significant cost.

Q  We may circle back to this a little bit more later, but I want to fast-forward to the July 25th call. How did that call come about?

A  So just like the July 21st call, we --

Q  You mean, the April 21st?

A  Yeah. Apologize. Thank you.

Q  No problem.

A  Just like the April 21st congratulatory call, which occurred on the actual election day, Ukrainian election day, we had proposed a congratulatory call again for President Zelensky's party winning. And the expectation actually at that point was pretty clear, that he was going to do quite well.

The discussion was whether he was going to get an outright majority, whether he was going to have to develop a coalition faction in order to advance his agenda of rooting out corruption, implementing reforms. And we thought it would be -- it would be a good signal of support to him and his party and his agenda to organize another congratulatory call, and this one was going to occur sometime in the timeframe of July 21st.

Q  Do you know who was involved in prepping President Trump for the call?

A  I'm not sure. I mean, "prepping," could you clarify? What do you mean by "prepping"?

Q  Well, did President Trump receive any reading materials prior to the call?

A  Yes.

Q  And who provided those?

A  So, typically, the way this works -- and this is what happened in this case -- is I drafted read-ahead materials, the talking points. All the materials, it goes through a staffing process, and then it gets forwarded from Ambassador Bolton to the President and Executive Secretary.

Q  Were you aware of whether the President or the chief of staff had any conversations with Ambassador Sondland prior to this call?

A  I am not. I wouldn't.

Q  Did you include anything in your talking points about investigations into the 2016 election or the Bidens or Burisma?

A  Definitely not.

Q  Did Ambassador Bolton say anything to President Trump, to your knowledge, about those investigations?

A  To my knowledge? I'm not aware.

Q  And so were you aware of whether anyone from the State Department spoke to President Trump prior to the call?

A  No.

Q  Is that -- would that be ordinary practice; it would all come from the NSC usually?

A  So I could only speak about my, you know, experiences. It's -- it's unclear, but it wouldn't be necessarily abnormal that the President would consult with appropriate senior officials for these type of things, but I have no knowledge of whether that happened.

[10:32 a.m.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  And did you or anyone on the NSC talk to any Ukrainian officials in advance of the call about the call?

A  So the calls -- what we would do in this case is we would alert the embassy, meaning our U.S. Embassy and Ambassador, that a call would occur, and then a coordination would occur through, you know, the communicators, White House communicators to U.S. Embassy communicators to the Ukrainians to make sure that all the switches and so forth were in place.

Q  So that's more of a technical, procedural --

A  Technical logistics.

Q  But nothing substantive, as far as you knew?

A  In terms of substantive, we certainly told, you know, our U.S. Embassy there that, you know, the congratulatory call was on, and that's probably about it, frankly.

Q  Are you aware of whether either Ambassador Sondland or Ambassador Volker spoke to any Ukrainian officials about the substance prior to the call?

A  I was not.

Q  Well, let me ask you, were you aware at the time of whether they did?

A  No.

Q  Okay. Now, you said in your opening statement that you listened to the call. Where were you listening to the call?

A  In the White House Situation Room.

Q  Okay. And who was in the Situation Room with you listening to the call?

A  So to the best of my recollection, I think the Deputy National Security Advisor was in there. My immediate supervisor, Tim Morrison, was in there. Lieutenant General, retired, Kellogg was in there. He's the Vice President's National Security Advisor. My counterpart on his staff.

Q  On whose staff?

A  My counterpart on the Vice President's staff.

Q  Who is that?

A  I mean, it's a staff officer. Jennifer Williams.

Q  Okay.

A  And then, let me see, I think NSC press was there also. A representative from NSC press was in there.

Q  Do you know who that was?

A  Yeah. You know, I know I probably need to name some names, but it's just really uncomfortable. We're talking about working-level people, and I -- you know, it's kind of a big show here. And so I apologize for the hesitancy. It's just that --

Q  So you'll have an opportunity to review the transcript.

A  Okay.

Q  And if you or your counsel would like to recommend, you know, redactions for national security reasons or other reasons, you'll have that opportunity. But we do need to know who the names are.

A  I understand. It's just uncomfortable that, you know, somebody else could be brought into this that really didn't have anything --

[Discussion off the record.]

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I understand. words redacted                          was the press officer that was in there. I think that accounts for everybody that was in the room.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  And where was the President when he made this call?

A  I don't know.

Q  Okay. But did Ambassador Bolton listen to the call?

A  He wasn't in the room. I believe he was traveling, and I don't know if he listened in on the call.

Q  Okay. Do you know whether he had any concerns about the call in advance?

A  I think, I guess, in general, there were some concerns about the kinds of interactions the administration could have with the Ukrainians just after, you know, the stories that were reverberating through U.S. media. And certainly after the July 10 meeting, there was some concerns that, you know, there could be some stray voltage in these calls, so, yes.

Q  Sorry, what did you say?

A  Stray voltage.

Q  What does that mean?

A  It means things that had -- it's a term of art where, you know, things that had nothing to do with, you know, the substance at hand could somehow be brought into the discussion. So, yes, I think there were some concerns.

Q  And how was this call memorialized in realtime?

A  So, you know, frankly, I didn't really dig deep into this process, didn't really fully understand it until it unfolded. But what I typically see is what's called a TELCON. It's a telephone communication. It's not quite a transcript, so it's not verbatim, but it's pretty close to it.

Q  Before we get there, I just want to understand, in the Situation Room, were there stenographers or people or recording, or how does it work?

A  So certainly the staff officers would take their notes, and the reason for that is that you need to make sure if there’s a do-out that you're able to pass that on to the appropriate department agency for coordination to advance U.S. national security policy. So people were taking notes.

But in terms of the way these things are traditionally memorialized, there's a transcript that's produced -- or, you know, a transcript seems to imply that it's completely verbatim. Something along a transcript that -- very accurate, but not maybe flawless, that catalogs what's been discussed and then that goes into a staffing process to try to make sure it's accurate.

Q  And what does that process entail?

A  So typically what ends up happening is the transcript is produced by the White House Situation Room. It goes to the people that were in the room, maybe not even always all the people in the room, but the relevant people, like the director, senior director for the directorate in which the country falls, legal. And then you review the transcript to make sure it's accurate, because, again, it's not verbatim. It's not recorded or anything of that nature, as far as I understand.

Q  Did you have the opportunity to review the transcript and compare it to your notes?

A  I did.

Q  Did you make any changes or suggestions?

A  I did make a couple of changes and suggestions.

Q  Okay. Now, let me -- I'm going to give you the call record now, and we'll mark this as Exhibit 1.

[Majority Exhibit No. 1 Was marked for identification.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Now, this has now obviously been declassified and publicized. Have you, prior to coming here today, have you had an opportunity to review this carefully again?

A  I have.

Q  Okay. And you obviously saw this in realtime, correct?

A  Yes, sir.

Q  At the time, would you have -- so just explain the process to me. So you make your own edits or suggestions, and then what happens after that?

A  So the transcript is produced. It goes through the executive secretary from the National Security Council. It gets pushed out to the appropriate people for review. It goes through legal review, and then it goes to leadership for their final review, and then it goes into, you know, the historical record.

Q  And is it disseminated among the cabinet-level officials or others who would need to know?

A  I don't know.

Q  You don't know that.

So do you ever then see the final version after you make your edits?

A  Normally it would. In this case, the way it was managed, I didn't see the final version after my edits. And, frankly, under normal circumstances, I would put my edits in and then, you know, if those edits were deemed appropriate by my leadership or legal, they would enter the record; if they weren't, you know, I basically provide my contribution, but it doesn't -- you know, I'm not the final say on how the transcript looks.

Q  But ordinarily you'll make your contribution. It goes to the full process to be finalized, and then the final version does come back to you?

A  It doesn't, but I do have the ability to -- you know, if I wanted to, I could go into the system and take a look at it, make sure all the changes were made, you know.

Q  And you said that normal process did not occur here?

A  It didn't. It did not.

Q  What was different?

A  As opposed to going into the standard communications system, it went into a different type, a different, more secure system. And in this particular system, while I did have an account, it was not functioning properly, so I had to go analog and take a look at -- get a hard copy of it, make some -- annotate some changes to it, return it, and, you know, I guess it went through a paper process.

Q  So even in the editing process that you normally do, that was done in a different way?

A  Yes.

Q  In other words, it was on a different system and you had to use a different process to put your edits in?

A  Yes.

Q  And how long after the call is this process done?

A  It's usually -- the effort is to expedite it and make sure you have an accurate, you know, recitation of the call within a fairly short period of time. We're talking about days.

Q  So do you recall how soon -- or do you recall when you first learned that this call was placed in the more highly classified system?

A  That conversation occurred alongside the conversation with Mr. Eisenberg in which I voiced concerns about the July 21 call.

Q  Before we --

MR. VOLKOV: July 25.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  July 25.

A  25th, yeah.

Q  But before we get to that, I guess, I am just wondering, because you -- when you made your edits, it was already in that system?

A  So, yes. It was already shifted over to that other system.

MR. VOLKOV: Can we just to clarify the record make clear, when you're talking about "this" system --

MS. CAREY: Can you speak into the mike, please.

MR. VOLKOV: Oh, I'm sorry. Just to clarify, can you just -- because we're talking about "this" system, "that" system. What is this system it got put into, the acronym, just so it's clear when it went into that. And he was present for a conversation about that. So --

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  I understand. We'll get to that. I'm just curious as to sort of -- I want to go through the process of finalizing the transcript first, and then we'll get to your conversation with legal, which you referenced in your opening statement.

But the question is just that, was it already in this -- was it already routed differently by the time that you were taking a look at it for the first time to add your edits?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. Now, what we see here in Exhibit 1, is this a standard MEMCON on -- yeah, MEMCON, memorandum of telephone conversation for Presidential phone conversations?

A  It is.

Q  It is the standard version?

A  Yes, that's what they typically use --

Q  Is there a word-for-word transcript that is produced of these conversations?

A  I don't believe so.

Q  Okay. So this is usual?

A  Yes, completely normal.

Q  Now, and is there an audio recording?

A  I don't believe so.

Q  At least not in the U.S.?

A  True.

Q  So you've now had an -- let me -- sorry. Withdrawn.

Did you ever look at the final version that was placed in the highly classified system?

A  So the version I saw was still the one that was in staffing. I did not have a chance to see, you know, the end result, which is what was released after I made my edits.

Q  And is the end result what you understand to be Exhibit 1 that was released on September 25?

A  Yes, correct.

Q  Okay. Now, let me ask you this question: Did the end result incorporate all of your edits?

A  So there were probably some, you know, nonsubstantive edits that I don't recall what I necessarily put into it, but there were a couple of things that were not included.

Q  And can you point us --

A  Sure.

Q  -- to what those were or are?

A  Yeah. So page four, bottom of the first paragraph, let's see, okay, so that ellipses where it ends with "it," there was a comment about there are recordings from the President. He said that "there are recordings" of these misdeeds.

Q  Okay. And that ellipses substitutes for there are recordings?

A  Correct.

Q  To your recollection?

A  Yes. This is what's in my notes also.

Q  From the --

A  So it’s not just the recollection. I took notes from the call.

Q  Okay. And are you still in possession of those notes?

A  They're in my highly classified notebook.

Q  Got it. All right.

So if you could just read the sentence that you're referring to starting with "The other thing."

A  Yeah. Biden went into bragging that he stopped the prosecution --

MR. VOLKOV: No. No.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I'm sorry. How far back do you need? Okay. Let's see. Okay. Got it.

The other thing., there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out -- to find out about that. So whatever you can do with the attorney general, that would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it. There are recordings -- in my -- the way I had it. It sounds horrible to me.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Okay. So "there are recordings" substitutes for the ellipses --

A  Correct.

Q  -- that we see here?

Okay. Was there anything else that was different?

A  There's one other substantive item in the next paragraph from Zelensky, where it says, "He or she will look into the situation specifically to the company" -- it shouldn't be "the company." It should be "to Burisma that you mentioned." Because I think, you know, frankly, these are not necessarily folks that are familiar with the substance. So President Zelensky specifically mentioned the company Burisma.

Q  All right. So why don't you do this, first, just read the sentence as it is in this exhibit.

A  "He or she will look into the situation specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue."

Q  And then read -- can you restate it with what you recall Zelensky saying?

A  "He or she will look into the situation specifically into Burisma," and I think that's, you know, that's where it ended.

Q  Okay. So --

A  And it continued on --

Q  So this call record substitutes the following phrase, "the company that you mentioned in this issue," for what Zelensky said, "Burisma"?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay.

A  Again, it's in my notes. That's what I took down as the call was occurring.

Q  Understood.

Is there anything else that you recall as being substantively different?

A  Substantively, I think those are the only two items.

Q  Now, I believe that there are other ellipses in here. On top of page three, for example, the President -- President Trump says: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine. They say CrowdStrike, dot, dot, dot, ellipses. I guess you have one of your wealthy people, dot, dot, dot, again, another ellipses. Do you know whether those ellipses replaced other substantive statements?

A  To the best of my recollection, I think at the end of CrowdStrike, "they say you have it," was said.

Q  "They say you have it"?

A  Yeah.

Q  So the President says, "They say CrowdStrike, they say you have it."

A  Uh-huh.

Q  "I guess you have one of your wealthy people"?

A  Yeah. I don't recall frankly. Oh, you know what? So, frankly, it covers it. So I don't -- if you look, you know, a couple more words down, it says, the server, they say Ukraine has it. So that's covered. I don't recall what those ellipses are.

Q  But generally speaking, when there are ellipses here, do they replace words?

A  Not always. Like I said, in my notes, if it was a Ukrainian word or something that required some content and it was not in there, I'd replace it, but not every ellipses has something else with it.

Q  Okay. Now, you stated in your opening statement that you were concerned by the call. Can you explain a little more what you were concerned about?

A  Yes, sir. So, I guess, I think, frankly, the statement captures it adequately, but I'm happy to go over it again. I was concerned about the fact that there was a call to have a foreign power investigate a U.S. citizen, and I didn't think, you know, that was -- first of all, I didn't think that would be a credible investigation, and, you know, in any way would necessarily reflect reality. It could be a country advancing its own interests.

And then I also was concerned about the fact that, you know, there seemed to be a lot of leaks. And, frankly, if this was -- as this story was unfolding, as this narrative was unfolding, I'd periodically talked to the Ukrainian officials at the U.S. Embassy here.

And I would say -- when they would ask me, you know, what do we do in this situation, I’d give them the same counsel consistently. The counsel I'd always give them is it's a domestic issue, stay out of U.S. domestic issues. It could fracture your bipartisan support. So this was -- you know, this was not something that was new to me. This was also, as this conversation was unfolding, this thought was coming through -- flowing through my mind.

You know, during the bilateral meetings with the President of Ukraine in which it was -- you know, on the 21st of May, you had Secretary Perry that was leading the delegation, the two things I said to Ukrainians, really one of them is probably appropriate to mention here, you know, please stay out of U.S. domestic politics. Don't involve yourself in this issue. This is something that was completely consistent throughout, you know, this period of time as the story unfolded. So that's what was going through my mind.

Q  And we'll get back to the fact that -- that conversation in May that you had with the Ukrainians. But did you understand that these investigations that the President was asking for may be to his own political benefit as well?

A  Yes.

MR. GOLDMAN: Okay. I think our time is about up.

THE CHAIRMAN: Let's take a 5-minute break to use the facilities and resume in 5 or 10 minutes.

[Recess.]

[11:11 a.m.]

THE CHAIRMAN: Let's go back on the record. 1 hour to the minority.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Good morning, sir. Thank you for your service, both in war and peace.

I want to go back to the Duly 10 meeting in Ambassador Bolton's office. Can you just tell us precisely, what did Sondland say that caught your concern?

A  So for that meeting, frankly, I was very focused on the substance, the national security content for the meeting. And I do recall him talking about investigations, but my reaction, you know, was probably relatively subdued.

What very quickly unfolded thereafter was that Ambassador Bolton ended the meeting, and, you know, something to the extent of, well, it was nice meeting you, looking forward to working with you, went out for the phone call and that was it. So --

Q  You mean the photo?

A  Photo, correct. Thank you.

Q  Okay. Do you recall the specific words Ambassador Sondland used?

A  For that one, I do not recall the specific words --

Q  Okay.

A  -- because, frankly, in my view, it seemed -- it was -- he was talking to the room. You know, it was not something that I was very, very focused on. But in the following conversation, it was a conversation between the two of us, and that one I do recall.

Q  I'll get to that in a second. So in Ambassador Bolton's office, you remember him using the terminology "investigations"?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. Did he use the terms "2016"?

A  I don't recall.

Q  Okay. How about the Bidens?

A  I don't recall.

Q  Burisma?

A  I don't think so, no.

Q  So the terminology "investigations," what gave you concern about that word?

A  Like I said, on that one I was maybe not completely attuned to everything that was going on in term -- I was not attuned to this particular element. I was, again, more focused on the fact that there was still some content that we needed to get through.

You know, without getting too much into the detail, I was very focused on, you know, what this bilateral cooperation framework would be, and I was more worried about how we -- even though we segued into this conversation on meeting, you know, that we still had some more substance to get through maybe to get back on track.

But since we did discuss this, Ambassador Sondland came in with the notion that the Ukrainians had to do an investigation. My understanding -- and correction. My recollection is the idea is to pin down a --

Q  No I'm just talking about what Sondland said though.

A  Right. So that -- I'm sorry. So the idea was -- I know what he was doing.

Q  Okay. But at the time the President had a deep-rooted view of corruption in Ukraine. He was skeptical, correct?

A  Correct.

Q  And the U.S. officials in the room knew about that skepticism, right?

A  Correct.

Q  So there was issues with the prosecutor general in the country at the time, Lutsenko, correct?

A  Correct. He was --

Q  And he was going to be removed?

A  Yes, correct.

Q  Replaced?

A  Yes.

Q  And is it true that the new incoming administration was going to conduct some audit of the investigations to find out if there were any matters pending during the Lutsenko or Shokin eras that needed to be reopened?

A  So what I found, I guess, concerning is that there were --

Q  No. No. I'm just asking --

THE CHAIRMAN: Can the witness please answer the question?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I guess what I found concerning is when this matter of investigations came up, the part that I recall is that there were no active investigations into Burisma. So he was calling to continue an investigation that didn't, in fact, exist.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  But I thought you said you couldn't remember if he mentioned the word Burisma.

A  Well, he didn't mention the word Burisma. But when he said investigations, this was part of the narrative at the time. There was -- and you couldn't differentiate between the two. There was the 2016 interference element and then there was the Burisma element. They were all -- they were part of the same investigation, discussion, or the narrative.

Q  Right. But if he just used innocuous words like "investigations” that weren't tied specifically to Burisma or Biden, what caused the concern?

A  So for me, I knew that there was no investigation, so it was not clear what a benign use of the word "investigation" would be. He's not an expert in Ukraine, and frankly this is the only thing that was in the narrative in terms of investigations. There was a significant amount of reporting on this. And if that was not clear in my mind just yet, it became apparent in the following meeting.

But like I said, you know, the part that maybe is, I apologize, in my view, more significant is I didn't terminate the meeting. Ambassador Bolton was, for some reason, you know, having whatever analogy did -- thought it was time to end this meeting because it was inappropriate.

Q  Right. So, no, I'm just trying to get your firsthand account of --

A  Sure.

Q  -- if a generic term like "investigations" was used, we're talking about a country that had a history of corruption, had a history with their prosecutors not genuinely prosecuting things --

A  Correct. Correct.

Q  -- why that caused alarm?

A  Because the request was to continue investigations that didn't exist.

Q  Continue or reopen?

A  Continue.

Q  Okay.

A  Because that was the -- I guess, the -- my recollection is it was continue an investigation that did not, in fact, exist.

Q  Okay. Sondland made the statement to continue investigations that didn't exist?

A  No. He said to conduct -- again, to the best of my recollection, to conduct these investigations or continue these investigations. And my immediate reaction was, what investigations? There's no active investigation.

Q  Okay. And then the second time Sondland referenced investigations was in the Ward Room?

A  Correct.

Q  And what do you recall specifically of what Sondland said to the Ukrainians --

A  Right.

Q  -- in the Ward Room?

A  So that is right, the conversation unfolded with Sondland proceeding to kind of, you know, review what the deliverable would be in order to get the meeting, and he talked about the investigation into the Bidens, and, frankly, I can't 100 percent recall because I didn’t take notes of it, but Burisma, that it seemed -- I mean, there was no ambiguity, I guess, in my mind. He was calling for something, calling for an investigation that didn't exist into the Bidens and Burisma.

Q  Okay. Ambiguity in your mind is different from what you --

A  Sure.

Q  -- actually heard?

A  Right. Correct.

Q  What did you hear Sondland say?

A  That the Ukrainians would have to deliver an investigation into the Bidens.

Q  Into the Bidens. So in the Ward Room he mentioned the word "Bidens"?

A  To the best of my recollection, yes.

Q  Okay. Did he mention 2016?

A  I don't recall.

Q  Did he mention Burisma?

A  My visceral reaction to what was being called for suggested that it was explicit. There was no ambiguity.

Q  I'm just saying, did he mention like investigations generically?

A  No. It wasn't just investigation generically.

Q  Did he mention 2016?

A  This was all part of the same consistent narrative, 2016 elections --

Q  Just what you heard though, in the Ward Room.

A  Again, based on my visceral reaction, it was explicit what he was calling for. And to the best of my recollection, he did specifically say "investigation of the Bidens."

Q  Okay. But not Bidens and Burisma?

THE CHAIRMAN: Counsel, you're being a bit repetitive. The witness has been asked this question now five, six times.

[Discussion off of the record.]

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That's right. So --

MR. CASTOR: These are two different meetings though we're talking about.

THE CHAIRMAN: I understand.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So the meeting that occurred in the Ward Room referenced investigations into the Bidens, to the best of my recollection, Burisma and 2016.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Okay. So 2016 was mentioned in the Ward Room?

A  To the best of my recollection.

Q  Okay. And then Dr. Hill comes into the meeting at some point?

A  She did. After she completed her meeting with Ambassador Bolton, she joined the meeting.

Q  Now, when she joined the meeting, were the Ukrainians still in the meeting or had they --

A  They had stepped out.

Q  They had stepped out?

A  Yes. Ambassador Sondland had --

Q  And what did Dr. Hill say to you in that Ward Room?

A  So as soon as she came in, I took the opportunity to very quickly lay out that there was a discussion on these investigations that Ambassador Bolton was attempting to kind of lay out the deliverable --

[Discussion off of the record.]

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yeah. Good. Thank you. Ambassador Sondland, yes, she had returned from the meeting with Ambassador Bolton. I very quickly caught her up on the conversation I was having with Ambassador Sondland, in which he was laying out the deliverable. And as soon as she heard it, she said the same thing I said, this is inappropriate. It had nothing to do with national security.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Okay. When did the photo happen?

A  That happened between the post meeting and the meeting in Ambassador Bolton's office.

Q  Okay. So Ambassador Bolton ends the meeting abruptly?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. He didn't go ballistic, did he?

A  No.

Q  He was professional and courteous?

A  He was professional and courteous.

Q  So he ends the meeting?

A  Correct.

Q  Was it earlier than scheduled, or was it on time?

A  Just a few minutes -- oh, probably -- I said the meeting went for about 30, 35 minutes or so, so we allocated about 45 for this. So he did end it a little early.

Q  Okay. And are you 100 percent certain that he ended it because he was uncomfortable, or he may have ended it because he had another calendar appointment?

A  He ended it abruptly. And at that time, I frankly didn't know exactly why he ended it. It became clear from what Dr. Hill told me later that he was actually fairly distressed by what had occurred.

Q  Okay. Dr. Hill told you Ambassador Bolton was distressed?

A  Yes.

Q  What did she tell you?

A  She said that he was upset with what Ambassador Sondland was attempting to orchestrate. And in her account to me, she did specifically say, you know, he was a live hand grenade, or something to that extent.

Q  Who was a live hand grenade?

A  So, I guess, let me complete that logic. So that Ambassador Sondland was trying to orchestrate an investigation being called by Mayor Giuliani who was a live hand grenade.

Q  Okay. So that's what Dr. Hill related to you?

A  Correct.

Q  Relating something Ambassador Bolton told her?

A  That's right.

Q  Okay. So the meeting ended. Then the parties went out for the photograph?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay. And then Ambassador Bolton went to his next calendar appointment or he --

A  He pulled Dr. Hill into a short meeting.

Q  Was she in the picture?

A  She was not.

Q  Okay. Where was she during the picture?

A  She was off to the side, and I was off to the side.

Q  Okay. So she was out there with you?

A  Yeah. All of us were out there. So I was actually taking the photo, so I was, I guess, less focused on what she was doing. It's possible -- I mean, you know, I've been there for a year and a half. It's quite possible she stayed behind and --

Q  Okay. I'm just trying to --

A  -- talking to the exec sec -- the upper suite folks to, you know, determine what else she had on the plate. I don't know. But I don't recall exactly what she was doing, frankly.

Q  Okay. So then the parties went to the Ward Room?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  And then at some point Dr. Hill joined you?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. Did she instruct you at that point to go talk with John Eisenberg?

A  At that point we were still --

MR. VOLKOV: Excuse me, which point?

MR. CASTOR: After the meeting.

MR. VOLKOV: Okay. After the meeting, okay.

MR. CASTOR: Yeah.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Yeah.

A  So after the parties broke up and I was getting ready to, if I recall correctly, escort our Ukrainian guests out, we had a short conversation, and I think we agreed that, you know, there was something to talk about. And I do believe she told me to talk to Mr. Eisenberg.

Q  Okay. Did she tell you to talk with Mr. Eisenberg in the Ward Room or after you had escorted the Ukrainians out?

A  I think it was after we were escorting the -- so you exit the Ward Room. You're going out of the White House West Wing, and, you know, that's not a very long walk, but there's enough time to have a short conversation. So in that period of time we had a brief conversation, and as far as I can recall, that's when she said we should talk to legal, I think.

Q  Okay. And then how did you get to Eisenberg?

A  I think --

Q  Did you just walk into his office? Did you get an appointment?

A  No. I'm not 100 percent certain if he was immediately there right after the -- you know, he's also quite busy. So I think after I made it back into the building I went into legal to see if he was available, and I don't recall if I got a meeting with him -- I mean, I didn't have to schedule it. I just --

Q  Sure.

A  It's kind of informal. I either met with him right there and then or very shortly thereafter.

Q  Okay. And who was in the meeting with you and Eisenberg?

A  Just me and Mr. Eisenberg.

Q  So Mr. Ellis was not in the meeting?

A  No.

Q  Okay. And how long did the meeting last?

A  Probably about 15 to 20 minutes.

Q  Now, were you like reporting a crime? Were you reporting that you felt uncomfortable? Were you reporting misconduct by Ambassador Sondland?

A  I was not -- I did not believe I was reporting a crime. What I was doing is what I normally would do in a situation where I felt uncomfortable, felt something was inappropriate. I'd voice my concerns with the appropriate, you know, people in the chain of command.

Q  Okay. So at this time you didn't think it was illegal. You just thought inartful?

A  I thought it was wrong. I thought it was wrong to call -- to basically have -- to organize a situation in which you're asking a foreign power to investigate a matter. Again, it wasn't an active investigation, so they would have to start an investigation and then, you know --

Q  Was it starting an investigation or continuing an investigation?

A  -- in exchange for a meeting.

Q  Okay. Was it starting an investigation or continuing an investigation?

A  There was no investigation, so they would have to start -- I guess, I apologize. I don't know what the right answer would be from a legal perspective. There was no active investigation, so you could call it restart or continue. At the time, I wasn't aware of any active investigation, and this is something I looked into because I needed to get a handle on what the issues were.

Q  Now, you mentioned your view of Ambassador Sondland that he was acting -- I mean, he thought he was doing the right thing?

A  I think so, yes.

Q  Okay. So is it possible that his moves here were, you know, he thought this is the way things are done? I mean, he is not an experienced diplomat.

A  I think that is very possible that he thought he was doing the right thing. And, you know, again, with the best of intentions, he was attempting to normalize a relationship between the Russian -- I mean, I've got a lot of Russia experience in my background, so -- he was attempting to organize a meeting between the Ukrainian and the U.S. President, so he was doing what he thought he needed to to get the Ukrainians off the ax, normalize the relationship.

Q  So at this point it's possible that Ambassador Sondland was being inartful, he was being, you know, not elegant?

A  Yeah. Well, I can tell you, sir, that I felt it was inappropriate, and I voiced my -- as I recounted a couple times, I thought it was inappropriate and I then proceeded to express my concerns to my chain of command.

Q  Okay. After you spoke with Eisenberg, who else did you communicate to about this meeting?

A  So my kid brother, my twin brother is on the White House National Security Council legal team. And I --

Q  Is he your kid brother or your twin brother?

A  He's 9 minutes younger. He’s my kid brother, whether he likes it or not. I told him I was going to get that in there.

MR. VOLKOV: Just for the record, his twin brother who has told the --

MR. CONNOLLY: Use the microphone.

MR. VOLKOV: Dust for the record, his twin brother, you can tell them apart because he wears the glasses. The twin brother doesn't. He is actually the chief ethics counsel on the NSC.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So for me, frankly, it seemed both as my twin brother and, you know, my most trusted person in my life besides my wife, you know, being able to bounce an idea off of him, who's also the chief ethics official, it seemed completely appropriate. I wanted to get his professional, you know, view on the situation and see if he had anything to --

MR. CASTOR: Okay. What's your brother's name.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yevgeny.

MR. VOLKOV: Eugene. For the record, he goes by Eugene.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: He goes by Eugene or Yev, Y-e-v or Y-e-v-g-e-n-y. Nine minutes younger.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Was he the next person you spoke to about this meeting?

A  That's it.

Q  Okay. So you spoke with Dr. Hill. You spoke with Eisenberg. You spoke with your brother.

A  Right.

Q  Anybody else? Did you subsequently speak to Dr. Hill about your communications --

A  Yes.

Q  -- with your brother --

A  Yes.

Q  -- with Eisenberg?

A  I don't know if I specifically mentioned my brother, but I definitely spoke to Dr. Hill about this. And that is the point in which she kind of laid out the irritation that Ambassador Bolton felt about this situation, and that's when she relayed kind of the, you know, the Giuliani narrative, live hand grenade type of thing.

Q  Was there any game plan here at circling back with Ambassador Sondland to --

A  Afterwards? Oh --

Q  No, just to communicate NSC's concerns.

MR. VOLKOV: To your knowledge.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: To my knowledge, I don't recall. I'm thinking, I know I've had a couple of interactions with him. He's not in my portfolio. Our interactions were because of the fact that he took an active role in Ukraine. So, I mean, I think we were pretty clear in the Ward Room with our position.

I don't know -- and I guess it wouldn't necessarily have been my place at that point to circle back with him because there are senior people that typically interact with him that could circle back. I just wanted to make sure that, you know, he understood, I guess, my concerns.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  But did any of your superiors make a point to communicate with Sondland that there's a disconnect here, and what Sondland said was not something that the NSC officials condoned?

A  So I recall probably -- I mean, I certainly recall it. I can't pin it down exactly the timeframe, but we did talk about Ambassador Sondland and his, you know, while good-intentioned propensity to, you know, do things that were not typical, conduct, you know, a normal coordination and his willingness to just go directly over the NSC folks.

Because the Ambassadors typically do one of two things: Our U.S. Ambassadors in a foreign country do one of two -- typically they'll either work through the director responsible for their country or they'll work with the senior director, which in certain ways is the more appropriate level of interaction.

That did not -- while that might be the case in normal business throughout the rest of the Europe portfolio, that was not necessarily the case for Ambassador Sondland who more often than not would go over the directorate and either reach directly to Ambassador Bolton or go to the chief of staff's office. He had a pipeline.

Q  I'm just wondering whether there was a plan that Dr. Hill would communicate with Sondland or whether Ambassador Bolton would or --

A  I'm not aware of such a plan.

Q  Like did NSC have a plan to change the course here with Sondland?

A  I don't --

[Discussion off of the record.]

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yeah. To my knowledge, I don't think so. I don't think, frankly, the thinking was that there was a way to -- because of his access, which is not a bad thing, an Ambassador that has access has a lot more credibility with the host nation and is able to carry the President's message more effectively, so that's not a criticism.

But because of his access and, you know, his desire to leverage that access that, you know, it was necessarily reasonable to try to -- certainly at our level.

I am aware that over the course of Ms. Hill's tenure, Dr. Hill's tenure, she had attempted to talk to Ambassador Sondland and, you know, kind of bring him into the process on a more habitual basis. And my impression is that she was frustrated with her lack of success in that regard.

Q  So at this point, NSC officials, yourself, Dr. Hill, Ambassador Bolton are just noting their concern for the record?

A  That's right.

Q  Okay.

A  I mean, I don't know if there was any forethought on doing it for the record, like a cover your, you know --

Q  Well, I wasn't suggesting that. I was just -- you're just noting your concern?

A  Right.

Q  Okay. Anybody else you talked to about this event other than your brother, Dr. Hill?

A  So in the normal course of my duties, I would, for all the countries in my portfolio, I'd make it a habit to read out appropriate material to the embassy teams.

Q  Okay?

A  So, frankly, I know that at that time we were having regular conversations with the Ambassador, Ambassador Taylor. He's the Charge d'affaires, but title-wise he's Ambassador. We were having quite regular conversations with Ambassador Taylor, you know, if not multiple times a week, certainly on a weekly basis to catch him up on what's going on because of the various issues that were relevant.

Q  If I may, who did you speak to about Sondland's comments that made you feel uncomfortable? The Sondland comments that made you feel uncomfortable, who did you speak to?

A  Who else did I speak to? I don't recall a specific conversation. Frankly, I'm not one to, you know -- if it's in the course -- I go into work. I sit behind my desk. I do my job. I don't socialize. You know, that's -- I focus on what I need to do. So in terms of like, you know, going over and talking to people, hey, you should hear what happened at this meeting, that's not something I do.

So I don't specifically recall, you know, having conversations, but it's quite possible that in the course of my normal coordination, the people I speak to on a normal basis to read out key meetings would be George Kent, the DAS for State, you know, the appropriate representatives within the Intel Community.

Q  Who is that?

A  There are a number of folks that I communicate on a regular basis.

Q  Who?

A  You know --

MR. VOLKOV: Wait. Well, there's a concern that I have. I don't want him to go into specific individuals in the Intelligence Community.

MR. CONNOLLY: Would you use the microphone, please?

MR. VOLKOV: Oh, I'm sorry. I apologize again.

My concern, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking Member, I do not want him to get into specific names of people in the Intelligence Community. I know there's been a lot of controversy about who the whistleblower is or et cetera, but I think, as he said in his statement, he is not comfortable speculating as to it, guessing to it. We're not going to -- I'm not going to allow him to go down a list of names or anything like that. So --

MR. CASTOR: I'm not asking a list of names. I'm asking what about who he had communications with about the 7/10 meeting?

THE CHAIRMAN: Excuse me. Excuse me. Let me just state this for the record. The whistleblower has a statutory right to anonymity. There are concerns about -- and I'm --

MR. MEADOWS: Mr. Chairman, point of order.

MR. SWALWELL: Hey, Mr. Meadows, he's the chairman. He finishes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Meadows, when I'm finished --

MR. MEADOWS: I have a point of order.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Meadows, you may make your --

MR. SWALWELL: He's the chairman. He finishes.

MR. MEADOWS: Shut up.

THE CHAIRMAN: Hey, Mr. Meadows, you --

MR. MEADOWS: I have a point of order. Mr. Chairman, I have a point of order.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Meadows, you'll be recognized after I finish what I have to say.

I am concerned about a bad-faith effort -- I'm not accusing anyone in this room. I am concerned about a bad-faith effort to out a whistleblower who has a statutory right to remain anonymous. And I would urge you or I would certainly accept your desire not to be a party to the outing of the whistleblower.

And so you have every right to refuse to answer a question that would identify an Intelligence Community employee, detailee, or contractor. We will not be a party to the attacks on the whistleblower. We will not put this whistleblower's life at risk or anymore risk than it already is.

If you have a parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Meadows?

MR. MEADOWS: I appreciate the chairman. The statute, the whistleblower statute --

MR. GOLDMAN: Sorry. Can you speak into a microphone, Mr. Meadows? Sorry.

MR. MEADOWS: You couldn't hear me?

MR. GOLDMAN: I can always hear you, but --

MR. MEADOWS: I would refer the chairman to the statute. The chairman's issue of a condition of anonymity is not accurate, and I would point that out having been involved with literally hundreds of whistleblowers.

The statute does allow for the lack of retaliation, and I would clarify that. But to make that statement, I would ask that the chairman, for the record, clarify his remarks.

THE CHAIRMAN: If the parliamentary inquiry is an objection, the objection is overruled.

The witness may --

MR. MEADOWS: I appeal the ruling of the chair.

THE CHAIRMAN: The witness may refrain --

MR. MEADOWS: I appeal the ruling of the chair.

THE CHAIRMAN: The witness may refrain from identifying any employee, detailee, or contractor of the Intelligence Community.

MR. JORDAN: Mr. Chairman, just a second? Mr. Chairman? Our counsel was not asking about the whistleblower. He wasn't even asking about the call, the July 25 call. He was simply asking the witness who he talked to subsequent to the July 10 meeting.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Jordan, I made my ruling. You may continue with your argument, but it will take up a portion of your questioning time. The clock continues to run.

MR. JORDAN: Well, we would like the time restored that you took up from our time. What we’ve said will count against our time; we understand it. But the time you took from us, we would like to restore it. He is simply asking about the July 10 meeting, nothing about the call.

THE CHAIRMAN: I'm happy to restore the time that I spoke, but any further time will be deducted from questioning.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  I think we're jumping ahead here. I' m simply asking whether you related the Sondland comments from the July 10 meeting with any other individual?

A  I don't recall specifically. I was just merely outlining the counterparts that I talked to about key meetings on a habitual basis. I don't recall --

Q  Did you read out Kent?

A  Quite possibly, yes.

Q  Okay. And then who else did you read out or may have read out?

MR. VOLKOV: I'm going to object. It's not may. Does he recall who he read out to? I'm sorry.

Does he recall who he read out to? Let's ask precise questions. And I don't want to have speculative questions of who he might have talked to or whatnot. The question has to be, who did you recall talking to? It's either a yes -- you know, you have somebody or you don't. Okay?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I don't recall specifically who I read out on this particular meeting.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  In the ordinary course of business, who would you ordinarily read out with significant events?

A  Sure. Principally, it would be the State Department. It would be the -- on a regular basis, it would also be the Embassy in Kyiv, or I would ask the State Department to circle back with them and just make sure that they were informed on the conversation because everybody is busy. If it was a defense-related matter, it would be representatives from the Defense Department, Intelligence Community, and frankly, that's about it.

Q  Okay. Now, the Intelligence Community, is that somebody words redacted                          ?

THE CHAIRMAN: Counsel, we've gone through this.

MR. JORDAN: Mr. Chairman, his lawyer can serve as his lawyer. You can just serve as the chairman. We can ask the questions we want to ask.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Jordan, we have an obligation to protect whistleblowers.

MR. CASTOR: Is the whistleblower words redacted                  ?

THE CHAIRMAN: We have an obligation -- well, we’re not going to have him go through every agency, counsel. That would be bad faith. And so that's not going to be permitted. You may continue with the advisory that pursuant to the instructions of the witness' counsel, he will not go into questions about Intelligence Community employees, detailees, or contractors.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Anybody else you would ordinarily read out?

A  I covered it. I think those are the principle folks that I talked to.

Q  Okay. And you don't remember reading any of those out?

A  I don't specifically recall reading out this particular meeting.

Q  Okay. Did the events of the 7/10 meeting subsequently ever come up again with Dr. Hill, with Ambassador Sondland, anybody else?

A  So I could tell you that I'm -- I've kept myself apprised of what's going on here, and I do recall seeing something about Ambassador Taylor referencing this particular matter at some point, this particular call, the 7/10 call.

Q  But you didn't have a discussion with the Ambassador?

A  I don't recall. I don't recall having that conversation, frankly. I do recall having a conversation with Ambassador Hill -- I mean, sorry, Dr. Hill and the Ambassador. But, I guess, I don't recall specifically reading out this particular call.

Q  Okay. When --

MR. VOLKOV: When you say call, you mean meeting?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes. Yes.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  When Dr. Hill left, replaced by Tim Morrison, did you ever have any communications with Morrison about the 7/10 meeting?

A  I do not believe so.

Q  Okay. Did you ever have any calls with Morrison and somebody else about the 7/10 meeting that you can recall?

A  I've had numerous calls with my boss, Tim Morrison, and counterparts, but not specifically discussing that 7/10 meeting.

Q  Okay. So you don't remember doing a call with Tim Morrison and the Ambassador, Ambassador Taylor?

A  I’ve done multiple calls with the --

Q  About the 7/10 call?

A  Not about the 7/10.

Q  Okay. Turning the attention back to the 7/25 call record, I believe there's a question of where the President was during the call. And I think on the record it indicates he was in the residence?

A  Okay.

Q  Is that your understanding?

A  At the time, I wasn't aware of that, but that's what’s in the record.

Q  Okay. And you gave us a roster of folks that was in the situation room?

A  Yes. I think that we covered that, but I could -- I'm happy to go through it again.

Q  I'm not asking you to.

A  Okay. It's in the record, I believe, sir.

Q  Yeah. I'm not asking you to go through the list again. Were the stenographers or the officials that make the record of the call in the Situation Room too?

A  The kind of the logistics behind this is not something that I guess I've really looked into. My understanding is that somewhere in the White House Situation Room somebody is, you know, taking notes or whatever the modality is to capture the call.

Q  Okay. But in this Situation Room at the time of the call, did you like identify every person in the room?

A  No.

Q  Okay. Like how many other people were in the room?

A  To the best of my recollection, there were, I think, five of us.

Q  Okay. So it sounds like you did identify everyone in the room?

A  Well, I mean, I relayed the people -- inside the room that I was physically in --

Q  Yes.

A  -- I think I covered the people that were in there, yes, and that's in the record.

Q  And from the U.S. side of the call, do you know what other points of access there may have been for the call?

A  I did not. I do not. I actually still don't know, frankly, everybody that was party to it. I just was aware of who was in the Situation Room with me.

Q  Okay. And so the officials that capture the record, they don't use a court reporting device, do they?

A  I don't know. I have no idea.

Q  Okay. Do they use one of the devices that they speak into as the call's appearing?

A  Don't know.

Q  Okay. But these officials are in the room?

A  No, they're not.

Q  Okay. And where are they listening from? Do you know?

A  The White House Situation Room, you know, office space.

Q  Okay. So it's an adjacent room?

A  I don't know, to tell you the truth. Somewhere in that space probably.

Q  Okay. How many of these types of calls have you participated in?

A  I've probably participated in three or four, I'd say.

Q  Okay. And so when you were walking us through the process of how the transcript gets compiled, that's based on three or four calls?

A  That's based on my knowledge of, I guess, things that I have learned since the call about the process, because there's been a significant amount of discussion on the process. It' s a small -- my bureau or directorate is relatively small, so I've also -- you know, I'm well abreast of how the process works, because over the course of my tenure there there have been dozens of calls. So I understand how that process works. From there, I think it's multiple different inputs to understand how the call process works.

[11:49 a.m.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Okay. But you've been a part of four of them where you might be called upon to suggest edits?

A  Yeah, three or four.

Q  Okay. And you walked us through the editing process?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  Ordinarily you indicated that you go on online or, you know, onto the server to get the document and put suggested edits in electronically?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  But in this instance you couldn't do that?

A  Yes. Yes, counsel.

Q  But in this particular instance you couldn't do that?

A  So this would have been the first time I was in -- I was participating in a TELCON review, a telephone conference review, where it was outside of the kind of the -- what I understood to be the normal format.

Q  Okay. How many TELCON reviews have you been a part of?

A  At least the three or four that I had been involved in, yes.

Q  And so how did this process diverge from the other two or three?

A  Just in the fact that there's a standard system in which the Presidential -- the President's correspondence, whether that's meeting or telephone, gets entered into the standard system and then it goes through a review process within the NSC.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  I apologize. Did I answer?

Q  And you mentioned your two edits weren't reflected in the ultimate product?

A  Yeah.

Q  Who would have decided not to incorporate your edits?

A  I'm not sure if it was, you know, if there was any forethought necessarily in including them or not including them. I think it could have simply been, in this case, there was a paper version of it that was -- maybe even multiple paper versions of it, not in the digital system.

In the digital system I would go in, I would make the edits, I would do it in a kind of a track change format and then somebody else would choose to accept them or not accept them. And this one I just wrote it on paper referencing my notes to the transcript, made those edits, and then handed it back to -- you know -- I recall handing it to my leadership, Tim Morrison, to take a look at, and I think after that I took it over to the executive secretary for them to do. But there could have been other copies that were also being reviewed, I don’t know.

Again, I apologize, I don't think anybody intentionally necessarily did something by not putting them in there, but they just didn’t make the final version.

Q  Okay. So you have no concerns that these two edits weren't incorporated?

A  No, not really. No.

Q  Okay. And if the word Burisma had been inserted instead of the word company, would that have changed anything in your view?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. So that would be significant?

A  It would be significant.

Q  Okay. And why?

A  Because -- because, frankly, the President of Ukraine would not necessarily know anything about this company Burisma. I mean, he would certainly understand some of this -- some of these elements because the story had been developing for some time, but the fact that he mentioned specifically Burisma seemed to suggest to me that he was prepped for this call.

Q  Okay.

MS. STEFANIK: I just want to drill down on the -- on your knowledge of the typical call. So you said three and four. There are two calls here, what were the third and fourth?

MR. VOLKOV: First off, I don't know who you are, if you could identify yourself for the record. But second off, could you be specific as to two calls? We're talking about one call here.

MR. CASTOR: This is Representative Stefanik.

MS. STEFANIK: I'm on the House Intelligence Committee.

MR. VOLKOV: Okay. I don't know who you were. I apologize --

MS. STEFANIK: Yeah. I'm from New York. I'm a third term member.

MR. CASTOR: There's no staffers talking except for me and the Members.

MR. VOLKOV: I understand that and I appreciate that, I just didn't --

MS. STEFANIK: get asked this a lot.

MR. VOLKOV: Oh, that's good.

MS. STEFANIK: No, it's not good. But I will continue my line of questioning, which is, the witness testified --

MR. VOLKOV: When you said two telephone conversations --

MS. STEFANIK: Right.

MR. VOLKOV: We’re talking about one.

MS.STEFANIK: Let me start from the beginning.

MR.VOLKOV: Okay.

MS.STEFANIK: The witness just testified that he had experience with three or four calls of this nature. So Heads of State calls. There are two here, April 21st and the July 25th call. I'm asking --

MR. VOLKOV: When you say here, what are you referring to? You're referring to a document. This is one conversation. We're not talking about two calls.

MR. JORDAN: She's talking about his opening statement. The April 21st call between President Trump and President Zelensky, the July 25th call between President Trump and President Zelensky. The witness has said there are one or two others. She wants to know what those one or two others are.

MR. VOLKOV: Okay. Thank you. That makes it clear.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So for my portfolio I cover other countries. And for Presidential phone calls, I've sat in on other conversations with other State leaders. Heads of State.

MS. STEFANIK: Sure. And those additional two calls, were they prior to the April 21st call?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes.

MS. STEFANIK: Okay. And just to clarify on the editing. The first opportunity you had to edit, this was your testimony, was on either the April 21st or the July 25th call?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: You know, the April 21st call is notable in my mind because it was actually a very good call. It was exactly what we had -- we were hoping for. So I don't, frankly -- I'm sure I had to -- actually, now that I think about it, I do recall reviewing that transcript, but there was nothing normal, it was just -- everybody was happy, high-fiving from that call because we were moving in the right direction for Ukraine. I did review the transcript for that one.

MS. STEFANIK: And no edits on that one. That was your first opportunity to edit?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I don't recall if I put any edits in there. There could have been -- sorry, I'm a heritage speaker and a linguist in Russian and Ukrainian, and Mr. Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, he carried on his conversation in Ukrainian. He attempted to use Russian -- I mean, I'm sorry, English in the first one. He did a pretty good job for somebody that didn't speak the language. So I think I probably made some notations in the record to make sure, you know, that whatever he was saying was accurately translated, it was in the actual historical record.

MS. STEFANIK: Okay. Yield back.

MR. JORDAN: Can I just -- I still don't think you answered her first question -- Ms. Stefanik's first question. Who were the other one or two calls that you were on?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I mean, so it was with -- it was with the President of Russia.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  So when you're listening to the call, you --

A  I'm sorry. Correction. So there was -- these calls the way they're organized, they also include sometimes -- it also includes Ambassador Bolton having similar conversations. So I think when I said three or four, I think at least one of those I recall now, you know, we can say -- it was between the National Security advisors also. So that would be -- it would kind of follow a roughly similar pattern where you'd also take a look at the call and make sure it's accurate.

Q  So we've got two calls between the President Trump and President Zelensky, right?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  And then a third call you just said --

A  Yes.

Q  Then a third call that you've been involved with where you listened on the call and then you had an opportunity to supply edits --

A  Uh-huh.

Q  -- was a call that Ambassador Bolton was on?

A  That's the one that I specifically recall., yes.

Q  With one of his counterparts with Russia?

A  With his Russian counterpart, yes.

Q  Okay. And can you remember a fourth call --

A  Um --

Q  -- that you listened in on, that you had an opportunity to supply edits?

A  Over the course of the year -- frankly, I don't recall specifically.

Q  Okay. Fair enough. When you are in the Situation Room on July 25th listening to this call, at what point during the call did you first experience concern?

A  Actually, pretty early on in the call. You know, I guess the first thing I'd note is that the tone between the April 21st call and the July 25th call was very different. And besides, you know, the first couple of paragraphs that talk about, congratulations and exchange of pleasantries, it goes very quickly into the President saying that the U.S. has done -- which is accurate, the U.S. has done a lot for Ukraine -- the Europeans haven't done more. I started to get, I guess -- this was not in the preparation material that I had offered.

So, you know, I guess once we strayed from that material, not that the President is in any way obligated to follow that, he' s the President of the United States, he can sets the policy, but I kind of saw increasing risk as we moved on.

Q  But when did you become concerned about something you heard on the call, not something that, you know, the talking points were being diverged from?

A  Quite early on I guess. Let me review the transcript quickly and I can tell you. Okay. In the middle paragraph of page 2, the last sentence: I wouldn't say that it's reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good, but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine.

Q  Okay. And what concerned you about that?

A  This was straying into the territory of -- this narrative -- this unproductive narrative that was emerging from what I referred to in my statement as influencers, external and nongovernmental influencers.

Q  Okay. And anybody else in the room at that point have concern that you know of?

A  It would be speculation I guess on my part.

Q  Did you exchange glances or pass a note?

A  I'd say at some point, you know, I thought that maybe Mr. Morrison also was becoming concerned.

Q  Okay.

A  But at that time he only joined the team a week ago, so, you know, I'm not sure.

Q  Okay. At any point during the call did you detect that other persons in the room were concerned or shared your concern

A  Certainly at the end of the call when we were doing -- when we were doing the review of the press statement that's going to be doing released, we had one that was based on kind of the national security content, it went through all the things we were hoping to discuss, and basically we struck almost all the materials from that statement because we hadn't covered any of the terrain that we thought we were going to.

Q  But during the course of the call did you exchange a glance or pass a note to anybody in the room expressing concern?

A  I certainly didn't pass a note. I'm also diligently trying to take notes on this call.

Q  Okay.

A  And it's not moving slowly, so I'm focused on doing that.

Q  Fair enough. Did you detect anyone -- did anyone have any non-verbal reactions, any grimaces, or facial expressions that would indicate to you somebody else in the room was concerned during the call?

A  The only person that I, you know, occasionally would take a glance at would be my boss.

Q  Okay.

A  And I perceived, at least, that he was also potentially concerned.

Q  And how did you perceive that he was concerned? Just by the look on his face?

A  Yes.

Q  But nothing from Kupperman, Kellogg, Williams, or words redacted         ?

A  I wasn't paying that close -- I just wasn't paying attention to what they were doing.

Q  Fair enough.

A  I was taking notes.

Q  Okay. After the call, did you have any discussions with Mr. Morrison about your concerns?

A  After the call I -- per the exercise in the chain of command and expressing concerns, I immediately went to the senior NSC legal counsel and shared those concerns.

Q  Okay. Back to John Eisenberg?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. Who was in that meeting?

A  It was my twin brother and I and then --

Q  How did your twin brother get there?

A  Because I also pulled him in.

Q  Okay.You picked him up on the way to Eisenberg?

A  It's roughly adjacent offices. A couple offices in between.

Q  Okay. So you have a meeting with your brother, Mr. Eisenberg. Anybody else in that meeting?

A  At some point Michael Ellis, the deputy, John Eisenberg's deputy joined.

Q  Okay. You didn't have any discussions with Morrison prior to engaging Eisenberg's team?

A  I didn't.

Q  Okay. The call ended, I think, at 9:30 in the morning, 9:33?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  How soon did you make your way to Eisenberg's office?

A  It was probably, you know, within, I would guess it was probably within an hour I was talking to Mr. Eisenberg.

Q  Okay. And in between that time you hadn't shared your concerns with Morrison?

A  I did not.

Q  Okay. Eisenberg was the first person that you talked to after the call?

A  Correct.

Q  And what did you communicate to Ellis, Eisenberg, and your brother?

A  I recounted, and I had my notes, I went through my notes and recounted the call, which is in front of you

Q  Okay. Now, did you -- were you concerned at this point that something improper had occurred on the call?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. Did you think anything illegal had occurred on the call?

A  I wasn't prepared to necessarily make that kind of judgment. I thought it was troubling and disturbing, but, you know, I guess, I guess I couldn't say whether it was illegal. I'm not an attorney.

Q  Okay. So something more than inartful. You thought it was wrong?

A  I thought it was wrong, yes.

Q  What exactly did you communicate to Eisenberg that you thought was wrong about the call?

A  I mean, I went through the content of the -- through my notes without having the full transcript, I went through the transcript.

Q  Right.

A  And, you know, the parts that were particularly troubling was the references to conducting an investigation. The references to having Zelensky speak to Mr. Giuliani and the Attorney General to, again, conduct an investigation that didn't exist.

Q  Okay. You know, are you sure at this point in time that the President was asking Ukraine to investigate Americans?

A  Well, I mean, he talked about the Bidens.

Q  Is it possible that he meant investigate Ukrainian's influence on the Bidens. So misdeeds by the Ukrainians?

A  I mean, that seemed -- I mean, he's my Commander in Chief, I'm not trying to, you know, be overly critical of the President. What I was trying to do, in speaking to Mr. Eisenberg, was express my concerns about something that I viewed to be problematic, and also within the context of already relating to him concerns about a July 10th call --

I mean, yeah, July 10th meeting, as well as everything that I understood about this narrative and how it had been developing, and the cost that it had potentially imposed on, you know, Ambassador Yovanovitch, and things of that nature.

It wasn't difficult for me to kind of understand what had been going -- and I also noted that President Zelensky mentioned the company Burisma. So that, again, solidified in my mind that this was -- there was not really a lot of ambiguity, sir.

Q  Okay. But if there were ambiguities, it was filled in in your mind by your experience with Sondland in and the 7/10 meeting and so forth?

A  That, all of the content around the past several months, yes.

Q  Okay. I'm running out of time here so I want to make sure Mr. McCaul is recognized.

MR. MCCAUL: Thank you. Colonel, thanks for -- I just had a couple quick questions. Ukraine has, and you know the country well, has a long history of corruption. Is that correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Correct, Congressman.

MR. MCCAUL: And Poroshenko basically lost on corruption?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: He did, yes.

MR. MCCAUL: And that's why Zelensky came in as the anticorruption fighter?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I think that is a correct assessment.

MR. MCCAUL: So going to the July 25th phone call, the Congress passed under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative a legal obligation to certify the that corruption is being decreased?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Correct.

MR. MCCAUL: So this is on the mind of, I guess, everybody at the

NSC and certainly the White House and the President, and it's also required under the National Defense Authorization Bill that Congress passes to ensure, before we give foreign assistance, security assistance to a country, that we're not giving it to a corrupt nation. Correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Correct.

MR. MCCAUL: So if the President brings up, hey, can you look into these corruption matters, and specifically a DOJ investigation conducted by the Attorney General into the 2016 election, wouldn't that be consistent with this corruption issue?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, I would say that your characterization of the state of corruption in the -- the endemic corruption that had been going on for several months -- or for decades actually, is accurate.

I would say that the consensus view of the interagency, and I guess myself as the point man for coordinating the interagency, is that under Zelensky they were moving in the right direction. And the reports that we were providing were all about the Ukrainian Government, under Zelensky, moving in the right direction and making the proper steps.

You referred to USAI, Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funding. The Department of Defense has to certify in order to release those funds, and they had consistently provided the certification to release those funds. You know, I'm not by any means trying to mischaracterize the fact that, you know, Ukraine was, you know, a utopia by -- there's still a lot of work to do.

What I'm suggesting is that everything had been moving in the right direction. Coming back from the Presidential delegation, the read-out that my colleagues provided, my seniors provided, was positive. And I guess --

MR. MCCAUL: And I guess if the President brings up corruption in his phone call, which I think he’s -- and certainly as the Commander in Chief should do, and when Congress has these requirements. I don’t -- I guess I’m not quite understanding why that’s inappropriate?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I think it’s the -- what I had, I guess, difficulty with is the fact that he was calling for an investigation, not the continuation of an investigation, but starting a new investigation because there was not an active one.

MR. MCCAUL: Well, there’s an active DOJ investigation. And do you know with respect to Burisma with respect --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, I apologize. I just wanted to finish that thought. I apologize.

MR. MCCAUL: Okay.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: And the fact that this was an investigation into a U.S. citizen by a foreign power, as I said in my statement.

MR. MCCAUL: Right. But with respect to Burisma, you said it was not being actively pursued. Do you know if it had been actually closed?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: To the best of my recollection there was no active investigation, and my understanding is that it was closed.

MR. MCCAUL: But you’re not certain if it had been dismissed?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Dismissed is maybe a different, you know, I guess a different characterization. There was no active investigation that I was aware of.

MR. MCCAUL: Well, yeah, it could be on hold but not dismissed. But having said that, I don’t think -- and I’ll close with the President bringing up corruption issues in a historically corrupt country, where Congress has required anticorruption efforts. I don’t understand why that’s entirely inappropriate, and I yield back.

MR. JORDAN: Colonel, your direct report is Mr. Morrison?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: And after the July 25th call did you talk to him?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I did not.

MR. JORDAN: You did not talk?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: No.

MR. JORDAN: Why did you not go to your direct report and go straight to the counsel?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Because Mr. Eisenberg had told me to take my concerns to him.

MR. JORDAN: Mr. Eisenberg had told you --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes, if I have concerns of this nature, I should feel free to come to him.

MR. JORDAN: When did he say that?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: During the -- following the July 10th conversation, I think I said that in the record also, that he said, you know, if you have any concerns, please come back to me. So I was exercising, and he’s the senior legal official, I wanted to, I guess, talk the matter through with him and see if there was something --

MR. JORDAN: Did Mr. Eisenberg tell you not to report -- go around your direct report and go straight to him?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Actually, he did, at a later point, say that, I shouldn’t talk to any other people.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. Who else did you talk to following the July 25th call?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I talked to -- again, Congressman, my role is to coordinate U.S. Government policy, so I reached out to a words redacted                      group of counterparts and informed them of a call. And, frankly, the reasoning behind it, I don’t think I could talk about in this context.

MR. JORDAN: I’m not asking you the reason behind it, I asked you who?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I talked --

MR. SWALWELL: Mr. Chairman I want to object that the question calls to reveal the whistleblower, and if there’s no other --

MR. JORDAN: I’m not asking about that, I’m just asking who this gentlemen shared this information with.

THE CHAIRMAN: The gentleman is -- other members are --

MR. JORDAN: We have two counsel sitting right beside him. I’m asking who he shared the call with. We know he didn’t share it with his direct report.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Jordan, the minority may not care about protecting the whistleblower, but we in the majority do.

MR. JORDAN: We fully care about protecting the whistleblower.

THE CHAIRMAN: You know, we in the majority do. But I know the President --

MR. JORDAN: In fact, you’re the only one who knows who these people are who started this whole thing.

THE CHAIRMAN: You keep making that false statement, Mr. Jordan --

MR. JORDAN: It isn’t false.

THE CHAIRMAN: It doesn’t make it anymore true the tenth time you said it than the first time, it just means you’re more willful about the false statement?

MR. JORDAN: It’s true. No, no, no, it just means the whistleblower talked to your staff, not our staff.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Jordan, your side of the aisle may not care to protect the whistleblower, but ours does.

MR. JORDAN: I do care to protect the whistleblower.

THE CHAIRMAN: So the witness understands the --

MR. JORDAN: But I also care that you keep interrupting us and we have questions. He has counsel who can tell him he’s not to answer that.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Jordan your time has expired.

MR. JORDAN: No, it’s not, we have extra minutes.

MR. VOLKOV: If I could just say, we would be happy to say where the person was associated with, the agency or whatever, we just don’t feel comfortable providing the name. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with us saying, I talked to this person from State, and we’ll disclose that name, and I talked to somebody else.

MR. JORDAN: Yeah. The bottom line is when you’re under subpoena you have to answer the question. And the question is, who did Mr. Colonel Vindman talk to after the July 25th call?

MR. VOLKOV: And I’m instructing him and I’m allowing him to say words redacted                          --

MR. JORDAN: Why are you instructing him that way, counsel?

MR. VOLKOV: Because --

MR. JORDAN: I don’t care what you say Mr. --

THE CHAIRMAN: Excuse me., Mr. Jordan, you’re not recognized.

MR. JORDAN: It’s our time.

THE CHAIRMAN: You are not recognized, and your time has expired.

MR. JORDAN: You told us you were going to give us extra time, what you took from us.

THE CHAIRMAN: And you’ve used it. And you’ve used it.

MR. JORDAN: There’s a question on the table, Mr. Chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN: It is the ruling of the chair that the witness shall not identify employees, detailees, or contractors of the intelligence agency, or provide information that may lead to the revelation of the identity of the whistleblower, someone whose life has been put at risk. The majority cares about this, and we are determined to protect the right of that whistleblower to remain anonymous. And we will not allow bad faith efforts to out this whistleblower.

We will now be at lunch for 30 minutes.

MR. JORDAN: Mr. Chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN: We’re adjourned for 30 minutes.

[Recess.]

[1:00 p.m.]

THE CHAIRMAN: All right. Let’s go back on the record. Colonel, I want to ask you a couple of questions before I hand it over to Mr. Noble. First of all, I just want to get some clarity. You were asked about some of the calls that you have sat in on or listened to, and I was a little unclear whether you described listening into a call between President Trump and President Putin, or was it between Advisor Bolton and his Russian counterpart?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So, Chairman, the call that immediately came to mind when we expanded past the Ukraine content referred to in my statement was to a conversation, again, I, frankly -- this is -- I don’t think this is in the public record, but a phone call between Ambassador Bolton and his counterpart in Russia. But, in fact, as I thought about it, there have been other transcripts that I’ve had in my capacity as director for Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and Russia, I have looked at other transcripts to kind of familiarize myself with the conversation. It was less in the review context, but in the fact that it’s in my portfolio, somebody else attended, I still had a need-to-know, so I had a chance to take a look at it.

So I specifically could say there are three that I had an active part or a key part in reviewing, but there have been more that I have also looked at, you know, from a substantive standpoint.

THE CHAIRMAN: Just for clarity, though, you did not sit in on a call between President Trump and President Putin, then; it was between National Security Advisor Bolton and his Russian counterpart?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Thank you. You described in your testimony, in response to the minority questions, when you began, as you were listening to the call on July 25th between the two Presidents, to be concerned when President Trump started to bring up the subject of reciprocity because it was at that point in the call that the President began deviating from what you and others had prepared him for on the call. Is that right?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes. But I guess the fact that he was deviating from what was prepared wasn’t in itself the concern. He’s the President. It’s his prerogative to handle the call whichever way he wants. It’s when he started -- was heading in a direction of content, and, Chairman, as I pointed out, quite quickly, we’re talking about a really -- yeah, I’m just seeing how many exchanges there were. You know, by the second exchange or so, he was already saying that Ukraine hadn’t been very good to the United States. So that, you know, I knew -- that and the atmospherics, the tone, indicated that this was not going to be as positive a call as the April 21st call.

THE CHAIRMAN: And then you became more concerned as the call went along and it got into a discussion in which the President was asking his Ukrainian counterpart to conduct these investigations?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That is correct, Chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN: I want to ask you, though, in light of that, what had been prepared for the President to discuss? What was the plan going into that call that ended up going by the wayside?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So it was a congratulatory call. Some of that subject matter very quickly in the first exchange did occur. But unlike the first call in which it went on for almost the entire duration, congratulatory, there were other things that we wanted to -- and, frankly, I think this is still classified, my talking points, background material is still classified, so I could only talk about it very broadly.

THE CHAIRMAN: If you could talk about it in broad unclassified form; otherwise, we will move on to a different topic. But can you give us a very general idea?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So, in fact, the kind of things that have repeatedly come up would be consistent with the kinds of talking points that would be -- that we had prepared for him, and that would be, you know, making sure that the Ukrainians deliver on reforms, making sure that they deliver on the anticorruption agenda was still a priority because, yes, Zelensky at that point was already starting to implement his agenda, but there were and there still are concerns that haven’t been addressed. So those types of, you know, harder points that we would want him to, you know, reinforce with his counterpart, Mr. Chairman.

And we also certainly identified that the Ukrainian -- and this is because -- this has been discussed multiple times, that the Ukrainians were looking for a Presidential bilateral meeting at the White House. So we covered those types of things.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, a couple things about that. My colleagues in the minority asked you, well, what’s wrong with the President asking about corruption? And people can correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe the President actually ever uses the word "corruption" in this call. He refers to the Bidens. He refers to 2016 and Crowd Strike. He never actually asks the Ukrainians to investigate corruption itself. Is that your understanding of the call?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I would have to -- if you wish, I could more thoroughly study the transcript, but the transcript is accurate. And I think what you’re pointing out, Mr. Chairman, is accurate.

THE CHAIRMAN: And you can distinguish, can’t you, between urging a foreign government to attack problems of corruption, on the one hand, a very legitimate U.S. policy interest, and asking a foreign President to investigate a political rival, a very illegitimate ask? You can distinguish between those two things, can’t you?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Mr. Chairman, without, I guess, characterizing legitimate or illegitimate, I could certainly distinguish between the two, yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And I think you said that you found the President’ s raising an investigation of a U.S. citizen when there was no ongoing investigation, you found it troubled you. You couldn’t say, because you’re not a lawyer, whether it’s a crime, but you found that problematic. Is that right?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That is correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. At this point, let me yield to Mr. Noble.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Colonel Vindman, I want to ask you a few more questions about a call. If you could turn to page 4 of the transcript, one other matter that President Trump brings up with President Zelensky is Ambassador Yovanovitch, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  And you see at the top of page 4 in that first paragraph, that President Trump says: The former Ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news, and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news. So I just want to let you know that.

And then he goes on to reference the Bidens. And then, later in the call, in the third paragraph on that page. President Trump says: Well, she’s -- referring to Ambassador Yovanovitch -- going to go through some things.

Did those comments about Ambassador Yovanovitch by the President of the United States strike you during the call?

A  Yes, they did.

Q  Why?

A  Because my professional interaction with Ambassador Yovanovitch -- and, frankly, all of my counterparts and colleagues in the national security apparatus -- have been positive. I have nothing negative to say about Ambassador Yovanovitch or, frankly, anybody else I’ve worked with. And, you know, I’m aware of the fact that she was removed, and I thought that was troubling.

Q  And Ranking Member McCaul had asked you about or asserted that President Trump was generally concerned about corruption in Ukraine. Do you remember that line of questioning?

A  Yes.

Q  What’s your opinion of Ambassador Yovanovitch’s record on anticorruption reforms in Ukraine and pressing for those on behalf of the United States Government?

A  So, as far as I know and in my direct experience, exemplary.

Q  Did you have any reason to believe that Ambassador Yovanovitch -- or there was any basis for Ambassador Yovanovitch to be removed from Kyiv?

A  As far as I know, there was not.

Q  Were you aware of a dossier of materials, derogatory materials, that Rudy Giuliani had compiled and sent to the State Department in an envelope that was marked that it was from the White House?

A  I’m not.

Q  You weren’t familiar with that. Are you familiar with that today?

A  I’m not. I’m still not clear on what you’re referring to.

Q  Okay. Was there any discussion about the campaign to remove Ambassador Yovanovitch at the National Security Council?

THE CHAIRMAN: If I may, before you leave the call record completely, I did want to ask you about one other part of the call. And that is, at the bottom of page 2 of the call record, President Zelensky says: I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps. Specifically, we’re almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.

Can you tell us a little bit about why the Ukrainians are interested in Javelins, what they use them for, what their importance is?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So, Mr. Chairman, the Ukrainians continue to engage in what they would call a war -- and I’m not sure if you could, you know, and in certain ways, you can’t dispute that characterization -- with Russia, defending not just Ukrainian territory against Russian aggression but, in my view, defending Europe and, in certain ways, defending the United States.

As I said in my statement, Russia has been engaged in an ongoing aggressive campaign in which it seeks to carve out a regional hegemony and also assert great power status globally. And, in fact, absent an adequate challenge, Russia would continue to pursue this particular strategy. So what we -- in helping Ukraine, we are helping ourselves. In helping Ukraine with defensive munitions with Ukraine security assistance funding, with FMF and so forth that the Congress has identified, we’re helping Ukraine but also helping ourselves.

The Javelin system in particular -- and I could speak on this; I was an infantry platoon leader, company commander -- is a very capable system. In the numbers that they have received the system, it is effective in terms of influencing the Russian decision calculus for aggression. The Ukrainians want to purchase significantly more systems so that they could increase the deterrence against further Russian aggression.

So this is a -- is it an absolute game-changer? Probably not. Frankly, they need air defense capabilities there’s overmatch in air defense capabilities between the Russians and the Ukrainians. The Russians -- and I can talk about this because it’s also, you know, there’s plenty of nonclassified literature. Electronic warfare, there’s a mismatch there. UAVs and, in general, ISR, they could use all of these systems.

THE CHAIRMAN: But what do they use the Javelins for?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Javelins, in particular, would be used to -- we certainly call it defensive, but it would be used to defeat Russian or pro-Russian force attacks on Ukrainian territory.

THE CHAIRMAN: Because they’re an antitank weapon?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: They’re more than just an anti-tank system. They’re anti-tank -- they could be used -- anti-armor, antitank, you could use antipersonnel to destroy bunkers. It has a capability to take down low-flying aircraft. There’s a whole bunch of different ways. It’s a significant system.

THE CHAIRMAN: And in terms of the defensive weapons that we have been willing to sell Ukraine, is it one of the most important to Ukraine?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes, in terms of the lethal -- defensive lethal munitions the U.S. provides, it is certainly one of the most important ones, yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And, you know, immediately after President Zelensky says, “We’re almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes;” the President says, “I would like you to do us a favor, though.” What was your reaction when you heard the President ask for a favor in the context of President Zelensky saying they were almost ready to buy more Javelins?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So, in my recollection, I would say that that particular line in itself and connecting it to the Javelins, it makes sense logically, but that’s not probably the portion of the call that was more alarming. It’s the subsequent portion in which it talks about the investigation into a U.S. citizen. Chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN: And both those parts of the call, the request for investigation of Crowd Strike and those issues, and the request for investigation of the Bidens, both of those discussions followed the Ukraine President saying they were ready to buy more Javelins. Is that right?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: There was a prior shipment of Javelins to Ukraine, wasn’t there?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So that was, I believe -- I apologize if the timing is incorrect -- under the previous administration, there was a -- I’m aware of the transfer of a fairly significant number of Javelins, yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. I’ll yield back to Mr. Noble.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Sticking with the call, I believe you testified that President Trump’s demeanor or tone was different on the July 25th call than it had been on the April 21st call. Is that right?

A  Correct.

Q  Can you explain what you mean? How was it different?

A  So the call that occurred on April 25th was complimentary.

Q  April 21st --

A  April 21st, correct. April 21st was complimentary, positive. He repeatedly praised President Zelensky for the significant landslide victory he had achieved. And, in general, I think there was, you know, probably a little bit of humor exchanged. As you may know, President Zelensky is a comedian. So he tries to put in a couple of, I guess, lighter lines in there to help him build rapport. I think he -- frankly, President Zelensky attempted to do that in this case also. It just didn’t seem to carry with the President.

Q  And can you describe President Trump’s tone during the July 25th call?

A  I mean, I guess the concrete is he spoke lower. I’m not there in the room with him, so I -- and I in no way have had significant interaction to somehow assess what he’s like or anything of that nature. But just it was -- based on the comparison between the two calls, it just seemed -- it was -- the atmospherics and the tone were not the same.

Q  In between the April 21st and July 25th calls, are you aware of whether President Trump had any conversations with Vladimir Putin?

A  Sure. There were, if I recall correctly -- and I think this was also publicized -- there was a phone call during the summer about the wildfires, and the President called President Putin to talk to him about the wildfires.

Q  Did you review any of the transcripts or the memoranda, the summaries of those calls?

A  I don’t recall reviewing the TELCON. I did get a readout of the call, though.

Q  Do you know whether the topic of Ukraine ever came up in any of those conversations?

A  I apologize. I’m just trying to remember. When you say "review," to me that means like I actually took it and looked at it for content because I’m the principal. I do vaguely recall actually reading through the transcript and then getting a readout from -- because, again, I have a role in that; it’s part of my portfolio. But it wasn’t like a review for accuracy or anything of that nature.

Q  Right. Do you recall any discussion of Ukraine between President Trump and President Putin?

A  I do not.

Q  Are you aware of a meeting that President Trump had with Viktor Orban of Hungary on or about May 13th?

A  I am.

Q  Did you participate in that meeting?

A  I did not.

Q  Did you get a readout from the meeting?

A  I did.

Q  Do you do know whether President Trump and Orban discussed Ukraine in that meeting?

A  They did.

Q  Do you know what they discussed about Ukraine?

A  So President Viktor Orban has on multiple occasions publicly criticized Ukraine for everything from a -- criticizing him for corruption to, frankly, probably the more relevant issue, the fact that the Ukrainians, under the previous President, President Poroshenko, had moved in a direction of strengthening Ukrainian nationality but also by doing that through mandating use of Ukrainian language. And there are a number of minorities in Ukraine, and President Orban believed that these -- the language policies were not friendly towards the minorities. So he was highly critical about that.

And what I, I guess, found, you know, interesting and troubling about President Orban is, at this point, President Zelensky had had a number of positive interactions with world leaders. You know, again, in my role as a coordinating interagency policy, I get reports from colleagues from foreign -- representatives of foreign capitals telling me about the interactions they had. And in all cases, they were positive. And, frankly, Victor Orban’s was in great contrast to that.

Q  Do you know whether Ambassador Bolton opposed the meeting between President Trump and President Orban?

A  My recollection is I believe that that is the case, yes.

Q  Do you know who set up that meeting?

A  So my recollection is that the Ambassador, Cornstein, basically leveraged his capital with the administration to try to schedule that meeting.

Q  Do you know whether Mick Mulvaney had any role in setting up the meeting, scheduling the meeting?

A  According to my recollection, I believe he did.

Q  Do you believe that the conversation that President Trump had with President Orban in any way shaped President Trump’s views toward Ukraine?

A  Frankly, I don’t -- I don’t know if I could -- that would be complete speculation on my part.

Q  Fair enough. Do you know why Ambassador Bolton opposed the meeting?

A  According to my recollection, and this would have been probably -- most certainly as a result of a discussion with Dr. Hill, the kind of information that President Orban was communicating was not just inaccurate, but it also would undermine efforts to organize our national security policy in a more constructive manner.

Q  Toward Ukraine?

A  Toward Ukraine.

Q  I want to go back to the conversation that you had with Mr. Eisenberg, you said within an hour of the July 25th call. Do you remember that?

A  To the best of my recollection, yes.

Q  Did you ever have any additional meetings with Mr. Eisenberg, Mr. Ellis, or any other White House lawyers about the July 25th call?

A  I didn’t -- my little -- kid brother, he’s an attorney, so I speak to him at least two or three times a day in general. I don’t recall any specific conversations, but this may have come up certainly as the whistleblower’s complaint became apparent. I probably had conversations with him about it, but, again, it’s more, you know, at that point it’s more the personal relationship.

I think maybe if I’m -- if I understood your question correctly, I did not get any followup from either Mr. Ellis or Mr. Eisenberg, nor was I necessarily entitled to it. And, you know, I think, out of kindness, Mr. Eisenberg, on a couple of occasions, just kind of said, "Hey, how are you doing," and, you know, asked if I have any concerns or anything of that nature, and I didn’t have anything else to communicate at that point, so it was more kind of a courteous type of -- courtesy.

Q  Okay. In the meeting that you did have with Eisenberg and Ellis where your brother was also present, can you describe for us what happened?

A  So I recounted my -- I recounted the -- excuse me -- I recounted the content of the transcript based off my notes, and then, frankly, I don’t recall -- you know, I recounted the, you know, content of the call.

Q  Uh-huh. Was there any discussion of what should be done about the call summary or the transcript?

A  There was.

Q  Can you describe that conversation for us?

A  Sure. So I, frankly, don't recall how the conversation originated, but I was a party to the conversation. I just don't recall who was the first person to raise this issue. But as it came up, there was a discussion about the sensitivity of the, you know, the matter. And there was also a discussion of the fact that the -- there are constant leaks and that it was appropriate to restrict access for the purpose of the leaks. And, you know, at this point, I'm not sure if it's what I may have read afterwards, but I do vaguely recall some conversation about needing to preserve the integrity -- I think the attorneys were talking about preserving the integrity of the transcript or something of that nature.

Q  Okay.

A  And then there was a decision made by Mr. Eisenberg to put into this words redacted            system.

Q  Do you recall who brought up the belief that the contents were, as you said, sensitive?

A  I don't recall who brought it up, but I certainly weighed in on the fact that, you know, it was apparently sensitive, and I thought it was, you know -- I'm trying to remember -- I didn't think it was necessarily wise to treat it separately or differently than any other type of communication, but I'm not an attorney, and I don't recall what I said, but I know at the time I was thinking that, you know, if there is something troubling about it, we should probably -- the right thing to do is just do the right thing and treat it as you would anything else.

Q  Does the fact that it was viewed as being sensitive necessarily mean that it was classified, that it should be classified or put into a system for very highly classified information?

A  So, sir, I would say that the use of the system is at the discretion oftentimes not of the legal shop or the senior legal counsel; it's oftentimes actually at the discretion of the directors. And if they want to limit access to it, because they think it's sensitive or they don't want it to go out to a broader community, will do that. Whether that's what it was designed for, you know, it seems it might not be, but that's not unusual that something would be put into a more restricted circulation.

Q  And I'm still trying to understand why it was viewed as being sensitive? Was it sensitive because of national security reasons, or was it sensitive because of other reasons? Was the discussion of the Bidens sensitive to national security, in your mind?

A  From a foreign policy professional perspective, all of these types of calls would inherently be sensitive. This one may be more so because it could somehow undermine our relationship with the Ukrainians. So, from that standpoint, you know, I guess -- in my mind, it could be justified to put it in the system because, again, if it went out, it could harm our relationship. I think ultimately that call was made -- I'm not sure -- the call was made by John Eisenberg, the senior NSC lead counsel, and he did it based on his experience and judgment.

Q  Okay. And why, in your mind, would it be damaging to U.S./Ukrainian relations if this call were to get out?

A  Because it, again, would implicate a partisan play. You know, then there's doubt about how the Ukrainians are going to react to it, whether they're going to act on a request or so. This whole -- sir. I'll say that this whole episode has probably not been helpful to our bilateral relationship with Ukraine. I think the fact is, if our relationship was to promote a strong sovereign Ukraine, this process is undermining that. I mean, I know that there are bigger issues in play here; don't get me wrong. But this is not helpful toward our bilateral relationship with Ukraine because Ukrainians don't know how to handle the situation. And, you know, they don't know if they still have the ironclad support that we've attested to on numerous occasions. So I think having something of that nature out there is problematic.

Q  In the conversation with the attorneys, can you recall who first raised the idea of placing this call summary into I believe it's called the words redacted           system?

A  If I recall correctly, it would have been Michael Ellis.

Q  And what did Ellis say about it?

A  He said if it's sensitive -- frankly, I don't even think he -- because he wasn't there for the part of the meeting in which I went over the content of the call; I think he came in later. And he just, you know, just on the mere fact that it was sensitive without necessarily diving deeper into why it's sensitive or of that nature, he was like, why don't we just put it into this restricted system, and then we can deal with it later. I don’t think there was any malicious intent or anything of that nature.

Q  You said but ultimately it was Eisenberg's decision?

A  He was the senior person in the room, and he gave the go-ahead., yes.

Q  Are you aware of any other call transcripts or summaries that were placed into the more restricted system?

A  I mentioned that, you know, this is not entirely unusual. It doesn't happen regularly, I think most of these types of things handle -- occur in the normal channels, but I am aware of other communications that have been -- yeah -- so, without going into the specific incidents, I guess, these are other classified materials.

Q  Do you know if any call summaries or meeting summaries of communications between President Trump and President Putin were placed into the words redacted          system?

A  I'm not sure if it's appropriate to answer that if it's classified.

Q  Do you know if --

MR. VOLKOV: I'm going to instruct him not to answer that. I just don't think it's, I mean, it calls for classified information.

MR. NOBLE: Is the fact of whether the transcripts were put into the system itself classified?

MR. VOLKOV: I'm going to, I mean, I just would feel more comfortable if it's not.

MR. NOBLE: I mean, do you know if the -- were the calls put into the system for reasons of political sensitivity -- between Trump and Putin?

MR. VOLKOV: Is that like -- if you're asking for, is it a definition of classified to say something is politically sensitive, he can answer that, you know, in terms of what are the -- what goes into making something classified. Otherwise, I don't really -- I don't think it's productive to go down there.

MR. NOBLE: Yeah, I'm going to move on.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  I'd like to go back in time to May 20th to the U.S. delegation to Zelensky inauguration. You were a member of that delegation, correct?

A  Correct.

Q  Do you know how the other members of the delegation were selected?

A  Yes. As I recall, the State Department provided a recommendation for a Presidential delegation, and I used that as the basis to make a recommendation to Ambassador Bolton for the final Presidential delegation.

Q  And who were the members that were on that list?

A  So I don't recall everybody who was on the list. I can tell you who he whittled it down to; there was a cut line. We basically -- the State Department list probably had about 10 names or so, maybe even more, depending on how large it was going to be, and some of this is governed by aircraft and so forth, and we just whittled it down to really four or five people.

[1:34 p.m.]

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  And who ended up going?

A  So it was Secretary Perry, was the head of the delegation, Ambassador Volker, Ambassador Sondland, and myself that were coming from outside Ukraine, and Joseph Pennington, who was the acting Charge d’affaires.

Q  And did you say Senator Johnson was part of this?

A  Senator Johnson -- informally, he was part of the delegation. We made it a point to incorporate him into all of our engagements and basically treat him as a member of the delegation, but formally he was not part of it, because, you know, they basically limited it to the people I just outlined.

Q  Was Ambassador Sondland initially removed from the list?

A  I recall that he was.

Q  Who did that?

A  I think that Dr. Hill may have possibly removed him, because of the understanding that she didn't think that Ambassador Bolton wanted him on the delegation.

Q  Yeah. Do you know why not?

A  Because it was outside of his portfolio, and he tended to go off script so there was some risk involved.

Q  What does that mean, he tended to go off script?

A  He's not a professional diplomat. And this is not critical of him, but he didn't necessarily act as a diplomat and he wouldn't necessarily, you know -- if we had a consistent position and a consistent set of talking points, he would not necessarily be consistent with our -- with the rest of the consensus view.

Q  Do you know how Sondland got back on the list?

A  I don't recall.

Q  Was Vice President Pence originally supposed to lead the delegation?

A  He was.

Q  Do you know why he didn't go?

A  It would be speculation as to why he didn't go.

Q  Did anyone tell you why he didn't go?

A  I don't recall specifically. It would have been -- my rather vague recollection is this was about the same time as some, you know, major changes in the narrative on Ukraine corruption and the investigation into the Bidens and whether the Ukrainians were cooperating, and that there was a story that had unfolded within a couple days of us receiving notification that the inauguration was set.

So we found out about it on Thursday, which I believe is the 17th, and then the inauguration was going to be on -- Thursday, we only had Thursday and Friday to prep for it, and the inauguration was on Monday.

So we very -- we -- I was aware of the fact that Secretary Perry was interested in leading the delegation, because he was involved in advancing U.S. interests with regard to energy. And we quickly found him and lined him up to be the head of the delegation.

Q  Did you say something about there was a story or information about whether the Ukrainians were going to cooperate with an investigation of Biden?

A  This was open source, but this was kind of -- there was some speculation I think, frankly, from within the office on -- as to why, you know, the Vice President was pulled off the --

Q  And who was involved in those communications? When you say "the office," you mean the National Security Council staff?

A  Yes.

Q  And they were speculating that Vice President Pence may have been pulled from the delegation because there had been reports that the Ukrainians may not be interested in investigating the Bidens. Is that the gist of it?

A  The story that I recall was Mr. Giuliani talking about how Ukraine and Zelensky's inner circle had enemies of the administration.

Q  Are you referring to the New York Times article that was on or about, I think, May 10th or 11th, where Giuliani announced that he was cancelling his trip to Ukraine?

A  So this would be a follow-on, I think, story. And if I recall correctly, I thought it was to FOX News or something like that, a FOX interview or something like that.

Q  Are you aware of a May 16th article by Bloomberg in which Prosecutor General Lutsenko said that he had no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son, that Hunter Biden did not violate Ukrainian laws, but had promised to pass information about Burisma to Attorney General Barr. Is that the May 16th article?

A  I do recall that, yes.

Q  And so tell us about the discussions you had with your fellow NSC staff members about why Vice President Pence was removed from the delegation?

A  I think I covered it. I think it's, frankly, you know -- I don't think anybody had a firsthand account or deep insight into why that happened, but I think there was some speculation that it may have had to do with, you know, the fact that Ukraine was seen as an enemy or something of the administration.

Q  Let's talk about the trip to Kyiv itself. Did you have meetings with President Zelensky while you were there?

A  I did.

Q  Did you have any communications with or conversations with President Zelensky yourself?

A  I did, yes.

Q  Can you tell us what you discussed with him?

A  So there was a -- you know, a relatively quick meet and greet, and I think there's actually a picture floating out there of me talking to him just on the -- I don't recall? I think it was at actually the end of the bilateral meeting, where I briefly, you know, said, hey, I'm a -- I kind of told him who I was and my background, and we marveled on the connections there and so forth.

And the more substantive engagement was the -- during the bilateral meeting, when we were covering I guess the relevant material of implementing reforms, fighting corruption, I had an opportunity to speak. Secretary Perry was very courteous and inclusive in making sure that other people, you know, if they had something to share had the opportunity to do so.

And I -- the points that I delivered were on being cautious with regards to Russia and the fact that Russia was likely to take advantage of, you know, the inexperience of the Ukrainian leadership team, and specifically also staying out of the domestic politics in the United States.

Q  And why did you feel the need to raise that latter point about staying -- warning President Zelensky to stay out of the domestic politics in the United States?

A  It was a relevant issue. And the perils of taking a partisan stance, in my view, were -- would likely harm bilateral relations.

Q  Did you give him this warning in front of the entire U.S. delegation?

A  Yes.

Q  Did you understand that President Zelensky was aware of this pressure to get involved in U.S. domestic politics at that point?

A  I was aware of the fact that the Ukrainian Embassy in the United States was aware of these concerns, because they had taken these concerns to me. And I was aware of the fact that he would certainly be alert to this issue because there were, in fact, a number of stories.

Lutsenko was, in fact, serving as his prosecutor general at that point, or as soon as he was sworn in would be serving as his prosecutor general, and he was absolutely ridiculously stumbling into something that would be harmful to Ukraine for self-serving reasons. This guy was doing everything he could to preserve his position, to stay in power, to protect himself, and he was harming Ukraine in doing so. He didn't care as long as he was serving his own interests.

Q  You're referring to Lutsenko?

A  Lutsenko.

Q  Can you tell us a little bit about the conversations you had with the Ukrainian Government officials here in D.C.? What were their concerns? What were -- what advice were they asking for?

A  They were just asking, you know, for advice on how to respond to Mr. Giuliani's advances, meaning his call to undertake these -- what would come across as partisan investigations.

Q  And when was the first time that you recall that the Ukrainian Government officials expressed those concerns to you?

A  So I would say that -- I would say that this is probably in the April timeframe, because initially the story was that Lutsenko was developing -- attacked Ambassador Yovanovitch, and then he continued to, you know, advance this narrative that brought in the Bidens and Burisma and all these things. So I would say in the April timeframe, late April timeframe.

Q  Did any Ukrainian Government officials express concern to you about the removal of Ambassador Yovanovitch? Did they have questions about that?

A  I don't recall. I think -- I don't recall, frankly.

Q  In response to these requests for advice from the Ukrainian Government officials, what did you tell them?

A  I consistently told them to not become involved in these -- in these activities, and that we had a robust bilateral agenda that we needed to implement and that we should focus on that.

And I told them that I'm -- you know, I'm not a politician and, you know, this is not something that I can, frankly, be probably particularly helpful in.

Q  And that was essentially the same message you delivered to President Zelensky --

A  Correct.

Q  -- in Kyiv in May?

A  Yes.

BY MR. NOBLE: I think my time is about up.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Which Ukrainian officials were you having discussions with?

A  My primary contact would be the Deputy Chief of Mission at the time, Oksana Shulyar, S-h-l-y-a-r. She's the Deputy Chief of Mission.

Q  What other Ukrainians?

A  So I -- with regard to the specific -- so I also met with the Ambassador, Ambassador Chaly. And I would have -- I'm sure during that course of time I would have had probably at least a contact with the political officer, Andrii -- his name will come back to me. He's actually the Deputy Chief of Mission now. It will come back. It will come back to me. Sorry.

Q  Andrii Telizhenko?

A  No. Different -- Andrii Telizhenko is not -- in my understanding, he's not a credible individual.

Q  Okay.

A  This is -- he is the current Deputy Chief of Mission, and he is -- it will come back to me. I apologize.

Q  Okay.

A  He just recently took over -- Ambassador Chaly left his position as Ambassador in the middle of September, and I have not had a huge amount of time to meet -- I've met him before, Andrii, a very good guy. He's a senior representative now, but, you know --

Q  During times relevant, what other Ukrainians, you know, any Ukrainians that were government officials in the Ukraine?

A  So -- yes. We had delegations from Ukraine come through.

Q  But I mean conversations that you were having specifically one-on-one.

A  Except for these -- the -- per protocol, the Director on the National Security Council is responsible for managing the relationships with the embassies here.

So, per protocol, my colleague -- anybody in the regional bureau maintains relationships with the Ambassador or the Deputy Chief of Mission, the political officer. We do this as a matter of course with any country and certainly probably more closely with allies. I don't know how many times I met with, you know, my German, French, and not just in singles but in groups, to exchange views.

So specifically one-on-one, just for the countries I was responsible for.

Q  Right. I'm just asking about Ukrainians that may have been based out of Ukraine. Any?

A  Based out of Ukraine? I'm not referring to anybody that was based out of Ukraine.

Q  Okay.

A  The people I'm talking about are representatives and officials that are assigned to the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington.

Q  So you weren't having communications with Mr. Yermak?

A  No. The first time I had met Mr. Yermak was on July 10th, and then one, you know, pleasant exchange, email in which he said he's open to working with me. I said, please feel free to contact me. I never had any contact with him outside of those.

Q  Okay. So the universe of Ukrainians that you were dealing with were largely at the embassy, one-on-one communications?

A  Unless they were -- unless they were delegations, official delegations that came through. And Ukraine is considered a significant partner, so we make it a point to keep our doors open to them and making sure that, you know, if they have something they want to share with us, they share it with us. So there were probably, you know, at least a half a dozen different delegations that would have come through.

Q  Okay. We'll probably get into it in a little bit more detail later, but after the aid was put on hold during the July 18th and subsequent time period leading up to September 12th, were you having any communications with any Ukrainian officials?

A  So the Ukrainians were not actually aware of the fact that -- as far as I know, the Ukrainians were not aware of the fact that aid was put on hold until probably closer to sometime the beginning of August, beginning the middle of August.

So did I have my normal official standard contact with the Ukrainians? I did throughout this period, but it wouldn't have been in the context of specifically talking about security assistance or assistance.

Q  When did you first learn they were aware the security assistance was on hold?

A  I think they didn't learn this, frankly, until probably -- you know, like I said, probably the first stories emerged in the open source, you know, in the mid August timeframe, early to mid August timeframe.

Q  Okay.

A  And that's -- you know, then that's when I started getting queries.

Q  And if the first story didn't emerge until August 28th or 29th, is that possible too?

A  I don't -- I don't think it was that late. I'm -- I recall having a conversation earlier than that.

Q  Okay.

A  But I mean --

Q  Can you remember what outlet reported that?

A  I don't.

Q  Okay. There was a Politico story on August 28th or 29th reporting the aid.

A  I'm aware of that one, but I'm also aware of some other kind of, you know -- the story didn't pick up traction. I think there were some other things that the Ukrainians became aware of at some point, not much earlier but earlier than the end of August.

Q  Okay. Turning back to the July 25th call, you related your concerns to John Eisenberg and the group that you described in the NSC counsel's office. What other people did you express your concerns to that you can remember? And if you're not going to identify a person, let's just, you know --

MR. VOLKOV: I want to object there. And I want to object there because I think this is a question that may elicit some concern with regard to intelligence officers. So --

MR. CASTOR: Can you let me finish my question here?

MR. VOLKOV: You know the objection already, so if you want to --

MR. CASTOR: If you can let me -- if you --

MR. VOLKOV: If you want to keep going down this road, we're going to just keep objecting, okay? So --

MR. CASTOR: You didn't hear me finish.

If you don't want to identify the person or where they work, can we just call them person number one, and this is what I said to person number one?

MR. GOLDMAN: I think this gets to the same point. We're not in a position to rule on this. There are no Members here right now. What we would ask you to do is to table this line of questioning until Members can return and we can do it.

Just to be clear, words redacted

words redacted

words redacted                                                                       the concern that the chair has expressed is that we need to steer clear of doing that.

So if you have another reason why you want to know what he told other individuals about the call that you can elaborate on or you can explain., then certainly we would consider that and take that to the chair.

MR. CASTOR: I'm just trying to better understand who the universe of people the concerns were expressed to, and if there's somebody --

MR. GOLDMAN: Why?

MR. CASTOR: Because it goes to articulating his -- how he experienced the events.

MR. GOLDMAN: Okay, go ahead. If we could come back to this line of questioning later, though, I'd be appreciative.

MR. CASTOR: There's a little bit of a disconnect, because in your statement you say you don't know who the whistleblower is, and now all of a sudden we're asking who you had communications with. And --

MR. VOLKOV: Wait, wait, wait. Look, the reason we're objecting is not -- we don't want -- my client does not want to be in the position of being used to identify the whistleblower, okay?

Now, our objection to that is we don't want -- it's purely a matter of intelligence professionalism that he not be put into that situation. And the fact that what he said as a way to identify the whistleblower or whatever is just not relevant to him. It may be relevant to you, but it's not relevant to him.

MR. CASTOR: Okay.

MR. VOLKOV: And based on the chair's ruling, as I understand it, he's not required to answer any question that would tend to identify an intelligence officer.

MR. CASTOR: Okay. Did you express concerns to anybody, you know, that doesn't fall under this category of someone who might be the whistleblower, or is Eisenberg the only --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: No. In my coordination role, as I actually said in the statement, in my opening, it's the part where I say that I've got -- furthermore, in performing my coordination role as Director on the National Security Council, I provide readouts of relevant meetings and communications to properly cleared national security counterparts with a relevant need to know.

MR. VOLKOV: And I do believe -- just to facilitate this a little bit, I do believe that he mentioned that he did speak to Kent.

MR. CASTOR: Okay. So we got Kent, we got Eisenberg, and then we've got --

MR. VOLKOV: Right. And so he can recount the Kent conversation, if you like.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I'm sonny, was there a question?

MR. VOLKOV: What did you say to Mr. Kent?

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Can you provide testimony on what you told Mr. Kent about the call?

A  Sure. The appropriate elements of the call, the ones that had to do with policy issues, you know, what you have to understand is from George Kent's perspective, he's responsible, he's the Deputy Secretary responsible for the region, and he has -- he' s also the former Deputy Chief of Mission in Ukraine. So, in his position, he knows -- he understands the entire landscape in Ukraine.

Q  What did you say to Kent?

A  So right, so hang on. Right. I know. Sure.

So what I did was I communicated the points that he needed to know to understand how the Ukrainians were going to react. So that's basically, you know, the fact that this investigation was raised. I relayed that to him.

I certainly covered the tone of the call and the fact that it was not a positive call that kind of advanced this idea of building rapport between the Presidents on got us any closer to, you know, resolving various issues from everything from the meeting to the security assistance issue that, again, the Ukrainians might not know about, but if they had a successful call and they kind of moved past that issue may have alleviated some of the President's concerns.

So none of that -- I mean, these are the topics we discussed.

Specifically, other elements, you know, he -- again, based on his position, he understood, you know, the background on these CrowdStrike allegations. He understood the background on Burisma --

Q  When you spoke with George Kent --

A  I know. The --

Q  I'm just asking you what you told him.

A  It's important, because I also wanted to get his expert view on whether he thought there was anything there, and then to understand, you know, what kind of -- you know, how this could unfold further.

Q  Okay. And what did Kent tell you?

A  He told me that there was no substance behind these -- you know, this CrowdStrike issue. We confirmed the fact that there was no active investigation. You know, he certainly took note of the fact that, you know, there was a call to investigate the Bidens. He took note of the fact that we did not make any headway on building rapport between the Presidents and, you know, frankly, we basically were probably worse off after the call than we were before.

Q  Okay. Now, you had previously told us that you reported your concerns to John Eisenberg about the 7/10 meeting, the 7/25 call. Now you're sharing your concerns with the State Department?

A  I am coordinating with the State Department, in accordance with NSPM-4 and my role.

Q  And so, right. So I'm just wondering whether -- did you ask Kent whether there was any initiative inside the State Department to deal with this situation, you know, whether Sondland was going coloring outside the lines on whether, you know, this Rudy Giuliani element was starting to cause problems?

A  I'm going to have to think about that one for a second. I don't think -- I don't recall, frankly, having a conversation about what actions the State Department was taking. It was more along the lines of reading out the call, being sensitive to what -- how this could unfold rather than, you know, specifically -- I don't know if -- I think getting this back in the box, I don't recall if we took the conversation in that direction.

Q  Okay. In your communications with any State Department officials about this situation, not just the 7/25 call but the issue of Sondland, Rudy Giuliani, the aspects that you were concerned about, the investigations, did you ever have any communications with State Department officials about how to right the ship?

A  So I did voice to Ambassador Volker the concerns about engaging with Mr. Giuliani, and I thought that there was more risk involved. And I want to say that I recall Dr. Hill had similar concerns. But I expressed the concerns on probably a couple of occasions, that there was a lot of risk involved with trying to deal with Mr. Giuliani, bring him back inside, and with -- yeah.

Q  Okay. Did you ever have any communications with the Ambassador, Ambassador Taylor --

A  Ambassador Taylor --

Q  -- serving as the Charge at the time.

A  Yeah. I mean, I had constant communication. Is there, I guess --

Q  About this topic, was there concern with going outside the ordinary channels of diplomacy?

A  So this is not something that I, frankly, recalled initially, but I certainly didn't miss the fact that Ambassador Taylor recounted to us, you know, an engagement in which Fiona, Dr. Hill and I spoke to him and kind of, you know, laid out the substance of the July 10th discussion --

Q  Okay.

A  -- and, you know, how would we, you know, manage these types of things.

Q  And who -- where was that discussion? Where did that take place?

A  By secure call.

Q  Okay. And who was on the call?

A  Just Ambassador -- as far as from our side, it was just Dr. Hill and myself, and I think -- I am only aware of Ambassador Taylor from the other side.

Q  And roughly, do you remember when this occurred?

A  Again, according to Ambassador Taylor's statement, consistent with my recollection, it would have been about the 18th or 19th. Whatever he had in there sounds about right, because we did have several -- we had had conversations with him.

MR. GOLDMAN: Of what month?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Of July.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Okay. Dr. Hill's last day was July 19th?

A  Yes, that's right.

Q  Do you know what the circumstances were of her departure?

A  I think, you know, as far as I know, her tenure was -- she had been there one of the longest serving officials in the President Trump White House, and she had -- she had on several occasions voiced the desire to leave.

My understanding is that, you know. Ambassador Bolton was looking to make sure he had his team set all the way through the next election so there wouldn't be some disruptive change in leadership somewhere along the way, and that they just -- you know, that's the time that they picked.

Q  Okay. So she decided that she didn't want to stay through the election, so she --

A  That's not my understanding. My understanding is that Ambassador Bolton wanted to have his team set and, you know, in terms of kind of finalizing -- she was in the window, thinking about when she was going to depart. They just, you know, helped kind of set the date with the fact that they wanted to have a team set in the summertime for him.

Q  Okay. But did Ambassador Bolton ask her to leave or was it a mutual decision or you don't know?

A  I don't know. I don't know.

Q  Okay. And then where did Tim Morrison, where did he come from?

A  He came from the W -- Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate on the National Security Council.

Q  Okay. And how long had he been on the NSC before?

A  I think he had joined about the same time I did, in maybe late June-early July timeframe of 2018.

Q  All right. And what's been your relationship with Mr. Morrison?

A  We have a professional relationship, probably no different than with any other director.

Q  Okay. So your relationship with him is just as strong as it was with Dr. Hill?

A  As strong. You know, I worked with Dr. Hill for well over a year and we built a solid relationship throughout that time. I think, you know, at this point, we have a, what I would say would be a relatively strong professional relationship. There's no -- nothing more to it.

MR. CASTOR: I want to make sure that our members get a chance. Mr. Ratcliffe had -- he was trying to ask questions at the end of last round, so I want to make sure I pivot to him.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Mr. Volkov, good to see you again.

MR. VOLKOV: Yes, nice to see you.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Colonel, thanks for being here. I wanted to start with your statement, your opening statement that you submitted for the record, and ask you about the paragraph that a number of members have already covered, but I want to make sure that I clarify.

On page 5, I guess, that starts "election call," and I'm going to ask you about the last paragraph that starts: "I was concerned by the call." Before I do, did you write this statement?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. So these are your words?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Anything about these words you want to change?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: No.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. So in here, you -- in the paragraph before, you reference that: The transcript is in the public record, we are all aware of what was said. I was concerned by the call. I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen.

You said: "I did not think it was proper." You didn't say it was not proper. Were you uncertain?

A  I was not uncertain.

Q  All right. Then do you want to change your statement to say that it was not proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen?

MR. VOLKOV: I'm just going to object. That's -- look--

MR. RATCLIFFE: Well, I'm trying to get to -- go ahead.

MR. VOLKOV: Sir, we're not in front of a jury. I mean, we're not playing games with three or four words. It means the same thing.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Well --

MR. VOLKOV: I know you're a former U.S. Attorney, so I get it.

MR. RATCLIFFE: I think the words that are used in congressional testimony are important. This isn't a trick question. I'm just trying to understand the certainty of the witness. And if the answer is that --

MR. VOLKOV: He answered that, okay? So he doesn't need to change his statement.

MR. RATCLIFFE: All right. So you did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen. You used the word "demand," it was not proper to demand. Where in the transcript do you believe that the President made a demand to investigate a U.S. citizen?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So, Congressman, the power disparity between the President of the United States and the President of Ukraine is vast, and, you know, in the President asking for something, it became -- there was -- in return for a White House meeting, because that's what this was about. This was about getting a White House meeting. It was a demand for him to fulfill his -- fulfill this particular prerequisite in order to get the meeting.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. Well, and I understand that based on that answer that your opinion is that it was a demand. I'm looking for where in the transcript you think there are words used that justify the use of that term, "demand," as opposed to what you just said, which was ask for.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: You know, I guess I didn't -- frankly. Congressman, I didn't parse the words all that clearly. This is, you know -- I'm not -- I guess I -- I'm not an attorney by training. This is -- I just wrote it the way I kind of felt it. And that's the way I described it.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Fair enough. The reason I' m asking you, though, is the word when we're talking about an allegation that there was a quid pro quo has significance, and demand has a specific connotation. And in this case, President Trump has said there was no demand. President Zelensky has said there was no demand. Secretary Pompeo has said there was no demand. Vice President Pence has said there was no demand.

But, Colonel Vindman, it's your opinion that there was a demand, and so I'm asking where in the transcript do you find words used that justify that term?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Sure. I guess, Congressman, I'd go back to the fact that, you know, this whole matter had been unfolding over the course of months. On the 10th of July, this -- it became completely apparent what the deliverable would be in order to get a White House meeting.

That deliverable was reinforced by the President. There was no, oh, it's okay -- you know, I guess in my mind, there was no it's okay, if you don't want to do the investigation we can still do a White House meeting. The demand was, in order to get the White House meeting, they had to deliver an investigation. That became clear as time progressed from how this thing unfolded through the 10th all the way through the conclusion.

That's my -- I mean, that’s just the way I -- it seemed clear to me, and that's my -- that's why I said I think. That's just the way it seemed to me.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. So, again, clear to you, but you cannot point to me a specific place in the July 25th phone call that justifies the use of the word "demand."

LT. COL. VINDMAN: If you give me a minute, Congressman, I'll just --

MR. RATCLIFFE: Take as long as you want.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: And I'll take a look and see if I can find something.

MR. RATCLIFFE: What's the time? I just want to reflect how long the witness is looking for words to justify demand and the record reflect that. What's the time? All right. I'm going to let the record reflect that I've given the witness several minutes to look for words that justify the use of the word "demand."

Have you found anything at this point?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I think so.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. What is it?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So I'm going to read the President's words as they were in this -- as they were transcribed in this record.

I would like you to do --

MR. RATCLIFFE: What page?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: This is page 3, Congressman. I would like you -- top of the page. I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine. They say CrowdStrike. I guess you have one of those -- one of your wealthy people, the server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like you to have the Attorney General call -- I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.

I'll go on. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you do, it's very important that you do it -- that you do it if that's possible.

And then next time he speaks at the bottom of the page, good, because I heard you had a prosecutor --

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. Let me stop you right there, just to address it paragraph by paragraph. In that sentence, does the President mention anything about Biden or Burisma? Does the President mention anything about Biden or Burisma?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: No. No, Congressman.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. Are the President's comments in that paragraph that you just read where he asked for a favor that you're interpreting as a demand relate specifically to the 2016 election and whether or not there was interference involving the DNC server?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Sure, Congressman, I'll simply say -- I'll simply say that the demand, the way I wrote it in the -- my testimony or opening statement is my assessment of the entirety. I just read the first paragraph. It's the entirety of what the President communicated.

And when the President of the United States makes a request for a favor, it certainly seems -- I would take it as a demand.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Fair enough.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: As a military officer, Congressman, as a military officer, if my superiors tell me to do something, I take that not as a request, I take that as a demand.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Again, I don't want to spend too much time on this, and you've made clear that that's your opinion. It's not an opinion shared by either of the Presidents on the call or others, but your testimony, to be clear, is that there's not a specific place, it's the entirety of the transcript that you believe would make it fair to characterize this as a demand by the President of the United States to the President of the Ukraine?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That is, in fact, the case.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. Do you know whether it's proper for a President, whether he is asking or demanding assistance, to investigate a U.S. citizen?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: The -- so, Congressman, when I spoke to Mr. Eisenberg, I was expressing concerns about the entirety of the conversation. I was relaying to him my concerns. Was I making a judgment on anything outside of that, for instance, criminality? No. All I was doing was, through the chain of command, expressing concerns.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Did I in any way foresee that this was going to unfold the way it did and it was going to be in the public record? No. I was just expressing concerns.

And, frankly, there was a reason for this. Because these are senior officials within the Department that provide him counsel. That they could then say, Mr. President, this -- you know, we might want to stay away from this topic. And that's what I'm doing when I provide my best advice.

MR. RATCLIFFE: I appreciate the explanation, but the answer is that you didn't know, correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I thought it was wrong. I thought it was wrong for the President of the United States to call for an investigation of -- call a foreign power to investigate a U.S. citizen.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. But you didn't know -- and I'm not being mean about this, but you're not a lawyer, correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I am not.

MR. RATCLIFFE: You don't have experience in the Justice Department, correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: No.

MR. RATCLIFFE: You're not familiar with criminal law generally or specifically?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Only in that my twin brother is an attorney.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. Do you have any expertise regarding Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties or specifically the one with Ukraine?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I'm somewhat familiar with the MLAT for Ukraine, just because in the course of my duties I had to work through some issues. So, yes, I am familiar with the MLAT.

MR. RATCLIFFE: So are you familiar with what a President is authorized to do in connection with a criminal investigation like the one that was discussed in the paragraph that you just read?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I was not making a legal judgment. All I was doing is sharing my concerns with my chain of command.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. So you get to an important point here, because you go on to say, obviously, that you were concerned and, as a result of that, you reported your concerns to the NSC's lead counsel, Mr. Eisenberg, correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Correct.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. And you just said you reported it because you thought there was something wrong, and I'm trying to find out if you were reporting it because you thought there was something wrong with respect to policy or there was something wrong with respect to the law.

And what I understand you to say is that you weren't certain that there was anything improper with respect to the law, but you had concerns about U.S. policy. Is that a fair characterization?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So I would recharacterize it as I thought it was wrong and I was sharing those views. And I was deeply concerned about the implications for bilateral relations, U.S. national security interests, in that if this was exposed, it would be seen as a partisan play by Ukraine. It loses the bipartisan support. And then for --

MR. RATCLIFFE: I understand that, but that sounds like a policy reason, not a legal reason.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I was making a judgment call as a layman, thinking that it was wrong. I've got 20-plus years as --

MR. RATCLIFFE: I understand. My time is short, and I'm not trying to --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, I'm just saying that, you know, we make -- as military officers, we make judgment calls all the time. Some of them are more important than others. In combat, lives matter. And, frankly, other places I've worked for, maybe even more important. When I was an attache in Russia, every decision you make matters.

So I made a judgment call. I thought this was wrong. My experience has always suggested that if there is -- if you feel like something is wrong, it is your duty to report it to your seniors, and that's what I did.

MR. RATCLIFFE: And I'm not quibbling with that. I'm trying to make sure that we pin down the reason that you reported that you thought this was wrong, whether it was a legal reason, in other words, whether or not you were concerned because I think a crime just occurred or a high crime or an impeachable offense. And I'm hearing you say that that's not the case.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, I apologize. In my last statement, maybe I came across as a little bit heated. I did not know whether there was a crime or anything of the nature. I thought it was wrong. In my mind, did I consider the fact that there could have been other implications? Yes. But that wasn't the basis of -- I wasn't lodging a, you know, criminal complaint or anything of that nature.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Fair enough. What you relayed your concern, though, did sound like it was a policy concern, how this was going to impact the national security policy with respect to Ukraine.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, that's part of it. I think the other part of it was that I made a moral and ethical judgment, and I thought it was wrong and I was relaying that. I also had deep policy concerns.

MR. RATCLIFFE: So who sets the policy?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: The President sets the policy.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. And so you reported this to -- as you said, reported those concerns to Mr. Eisenberg on that day, that you thought there might be something wrong, correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Correct.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Who else did you report -- who else did you report those concerns to?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I certainly, as I said so far, I had a conversation with my identical twin brother. He came in with me into the conversation with John Eisenberg.

And then, frankly, I guess I go back to what I put in my statement on page 2: Furthermore, in performing my coordination role as a Director on the National Security Council, I provided readouts of the relevant meeting -- I provided readouts of relevant meetings and communications to a very small group of properly cleared national security counterparts with a relevant need to know.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. So interpreting that as a relevant need to know, I get that they have security clearances, were they all in the chain of command?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That's not the way the National Security Council works. There is a chain of command that --

MR. RATCLIFFE: I get that. My question is simply, were they all in the chain of command?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So I' m going to attempt to answer it. I'm not trying to be evasive. So when I was making my -- voicing my concerns to Mr. Eisenberg, it was based on the concern that there -- that, you know, that I was concerned about the fact that the President was asking a foreign power to investigate a U.S. citizen.

When I was talking to my counterparts with the relevant need to know, it was in my coordination function. Under the National Security Policy Memorandum 4, I am obligated to coordinate with the appropriate people, and that's what I did in this case. I wanted to make sure that the relevant people, again, the very small group of folks that had the relevant need to know and to act on -- how should I put this? -- implementation of policy or understanding the implications of policy had the required information to understand how things were going to fall out and what actions the Ukrainians were taking.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. I don't want you to name any specific person, but did you have any conversation with words redacted                                                   not in the chain of command?

MR. GOLDMAN: Mr. Ratcliffe, I'm going to interrupt.

MR. VOLKOV: I'm going to object. We've already had a ruling from the chair as to this.

MR. GOLDMAN: Mr. Castor brought up this line of questioning earlier and we agreed to table it until the chair returns, because the counsel lodged an objection. So if you would hold this line of questioning over until the chair can return from votes, we can address it then.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. Then let me move on to something that you said earlier that I want you to clarify for me, Colonel Vindman. You said that -- I wrote down, in talking about the investigations that they -- it was your opinion that they were, quote, "not credible," end quote, that, quote, "there seemed to be a lot of leaks," end quote.

And then you -- and, again, I'm not -- I wrote this down. I want to give you an opportunity to address it or clarify it. That you had conversations with Ukrainian officials about what to do regarding Mr. Giuliani, and I wrote down that your response was that you told them to stay out of U.S. domestic issues, stay out of U.S. politics.

Does that sound like what you said earlier today, or words to that effect?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So yeah. I mean, frankly, Congressman, I think you captured like three or four different responses to three or four different questions there. I don't think those were all, you know, in the same -- same, you know, question.

But I think that I guess, as individual sections, that sounds accurate, yes.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. So on the issue of advising Ukrainian officials to stay out of U.S. domestic issues, is that one conversation, multiple conversations?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I could probably -- I would say that it became an increasing theme as the Ukrainians became increasingly concerned about the narrative that was emanating from Mr. Giuliani, that I would continue to get the same types of questions about what -- you know, what do we do with regard to these calls for an investigation and things of that nature.

My answer would be consistent. I am not a -- you know, a political individual. I'm not a political operative. I'm a professional military officer, a -- you know -- as designated by the National Security Council, a kind of foreign policy expert, though that might be extreme.

I would counsel them that this is outside of my wheelhouse and, frankly, you know, I don't fully understand all the implications; but I would consistently also counsel them that it's important to stay out of U.S. politics. Because if you recall, Congressman, we have Ukraine's neighbor, who is actively engaged in war with them, was involved in 2016 election meddling, and that did not work well for the U.S. -Russian bilateral relationship. If anything, that significantly retarded that relationship.

MR. RATCLIFFE: So --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: And in order to -- Congressman, I apologize. In order to avoid that kind of pitfall for what I considered to be an important ally to the United States and certainly an ally in the struggle to push back against Russian aggression, I counseled them to stay out of U.S. politics.

MR. RATCLIFFE: So after this July 25th phone call, how many of those conversations did you have and with what Ukrainian officials?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So after the July 25th phone call, it was an extremely busy week. I know I didn't speak to any of the Ukrainians that week. I believe in order -- just for good housekeeping -- I was getting ready to go on vacation. I went on vacation -- I was supposed to go on vacation from the 3rd through the 18th of July. That didn't happen. I got called back early.

And I believe, in terms of good housekeeping, there was probably a conversation with the Ukrainians. My recollection is, best recollection is about the 31st of July. It's the middle of that week right before I went on vacation, you know, we had a conversation.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. Who's "we"?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: It would be my standard counterpart, which would be the Deputy Chief of Mission for Ukraine.

MR. RATCLIFFE: And who is that?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Oksana Shulyar. It's in the record, Congressman.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. And were you having that conversation in the course of your responsibilities and duties at the NSC?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Absolutely.

MR. RATCLIFFE: All right. And you had authority to have those conversations?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Absolutely.

MR. RATCLIFFE: So you -- a week following you listening in on a phone call with the President of the United States making a request of the Ukrainian Government to assist in ongoing investigations, a member of his National Security Council subsequently told Ukrainian officials to do just the opposite and to ignore his request and stay out of U.S. politics. Is that what we're to understand from your testimony today?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That's an interesting characterization, Congressman. I was certainly not going against the orders of my Commander in Chief. What I was suggesting is that very superficial -- or at the basic level, staying out of U.S. domestic politics is not a good idea.

Congressman, I apologize, do you think this is --

MR. RATCLIFFE: Let me ask the question.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, do you think this is a good idea to get involved --

MR. SWALWELL: Let him finish.

MR. RATCLIFFE: He has a lawyer here, President Swalwell.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: How could it possibly be a good idea --

MR. QUIGLEY: [Presiding.] Hold on, gentlemen. Gentlemen, let the witness finish answering this question.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, how could it possibly be a good idea to counsel at my level -- I'm certainly not the President of the United States. The President of the United States has the authority to do this, I guess, I don't know. I didn't think it was right. And that is not a criticism against the President. I just don't know how -- a better way to put it, so I apologize.

But I, as a Director on the National Security Council, would certainly not counsel my counterpart to somehow involve themselves into U.S. domestic politics. You could take that as -- I mean, I guess you Could twist that into some sort of specific --

MR. RATCLIFFE: I'm not trying to twist anything.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I guess I misunderstood the question.

MR. VOLKOV: I object to that characterization. It's pretty obvious what you're trying to do, sir.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Let me ask the question.

MR. VOLKOV: I'm representing my witness here and this is my client. And for you to -- I mean, the insinuation -- if you guys want to go down this road, God be with you.

But I'm telling you it's so apparent that -- and it's so -- it's so cynical for you to go down such a road with such a -- with such an individual like this. If that's the game you guys want to play, go at it. Okay? But we're going to --

MR. RATCLIFFE: Let me ask my question, because what I heard --

MR. VOLKOV: You don't have a jury here, sir. You don't have the public here.

MR. RATCLIFFE: I understand that. I'm making a record.

MR. VOLKOV: And eventually you will and you can do it then.

MR. RATCLIFFE: I will.

MR. VOLKOV: Right now we're going to object.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Well, you can object, but I'm going to ask this question, because the witness just testified --

MR. VOLKOV: Well --

MR. RATCLIFFE: Are you going to let me ask a question, Mr. Volkov?

MR. VOLKOV: Yes, I will. Ask a proper question.

MR. RATCLIFFE: All right. Colonel Vindman, you have spent a lot of today talking about the fact that you reported to national security lead counsel that you thought there was something wrong with respect to the conversation between President Trump and President Zelensky, correct?

MR. VOLKOV: Asked and answered. How many times are we going to go through this? I'm asking the chair, how many times are we going to go through this? Are we going to go through this over and over and over again?

MR. RATCLIFFE: Do you have an answer?

MR. VOLKOV: Wait a minute. He hasn't had an instruction from the chair yet. Remember when you're in front of a judge, you wait for the judge.

MR. QUIGLEY: So the question has been asked and answered, the ruling of the chair.

MR. RATCLIFFE: All right. Colonel Vindman, on July 25th, 2019, the President of the United States asked for the assistance of the Ukraine in connection with criminal investigation or investigations.

Your testimony a few minutes ago was that during the week of July 31, following that call, you advised Ukrainian officials to stay out of U.S. politics. Is that correct? I want an answer.

MR. VOLKOV: We've already been down this road.

MR. RATCLIFFE: No, you haven't.

MR. VOLKOV: I object.

MR. QUIGLEY: Just one second.

MR. CICILLINE: May I raise a point of inquiry or point of order?

MR. QUIGLEY: Hold that for a second. So I believe you asked the question in terms of it being criminal, and I'm not sure that was ever anywhere in the President's comments, that he said, I'm asking you to help in a criminal investigation.

The rest of the question has been asked and answered.

And the time is up.

MR. CASTOR: You guys got to give him a few more minutes after all the --

MR. QUIGLEY: No, I don't.

We're going to take a 5-minute break, and by 5 minutes I mean 10 minutes.

[Recess.]

MR. QUIGLEY: We'll resume.

MR. GOLDMAN: All right. We're starting now.

BY MR. MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Colonel Vindman, you've testified a little bit today about some of Ukraine's history of problems, including corruption, right?

A  Correct.

Q  And one aspect of Ukrainian corruption historically was that the leaders of Ukraine would investigate their political rivals. Is that accurate?

A  That is accurate.

Q  And it was and is U.S. policy related to Ukraine to push Ukraine not to investigate their political rivals. Is that right?

A  That is correct.

Q  Because official U.S. policy believes that investigating your political rivals is corrupt activity. Is that correct?

A  That is correct.

Q  I want to go back to the May inauguration in Kyiv, and I have one question, because you indicated that President Zelensky had -- or that you had a conversation with President Zelensky at that point about U.S. domestic politics. And I think -- I believe you said that you told him that he should steer clear of U.S. domestic politics, right?

A  That is correct.

Q  Did you have any sense of -- well, withdrawn.

Did he -- was he surprised when you said that, as if he had no idea of what you were talking about?

A  No, he was not. I didn't believe he was.

Q  So was it your understanding that he knew what you were talking about when you had that conversation?

A  I don't know, but he did not look surprised.

Q  And you had referenced that there were a number of press reports about these investigations to that point. Is that right?

A  That is correct.

Q  What was his reaction to you when you said that to him?

A  I think he probably took it at face value. I'm the White House representative to the Presidential delegation, speaking on behalf of my leadership, National Security Council, and in the same voice, the senior White House rep. I think, frankly, he probably took that at face value and thought it was probably good counsel.

I also believe that the Ukrainians have been savvy in understanding the risks of partisan activity and have also tried to stay clear of any seemingly partisan activity.

Q  In part, because there's pretty consistent bipartisan support for Ukraine here in the U.S. Is that right?

A  That is correct.

Q  Were you aware of a meeting that Fiona Hill had with Amos Hochstein?

A  I am aware of the meeting and maybe just a very, very superficial readout of this meeting, yes.

Q  And what was that superficial readout?

A  So my understanding is that Amos, based on his activities and serving I think at the time -- I'm not sure if he's still in position -- on the board of Naftogaz, was, through his contacts, aware of efforts to do a couple things. One, as far as I recall, was facilitate or I guess that Mr. Giuliani was attempting to facilitate financial transactions, if I recall correctly.

And I just want to make sure I'm not combining a couple of different meetings. I think that's, frankly, it. I think he was -- he spoke to Fiona about the influence into financial transactions, business transactions. I also vaguely recall he may have been the person that identified Ambassador Sondland was also, you know, involved in this somehow.

[2:50 p.m.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Do you recall when this conversation between Mr. Hochstein and Dr. Hill was approximately?

A  My best guess would probably be in the timeframe after Ambassador Yovanovitch left, so May timeframe, maybe as late as June.

Q  And do you know whether he indicated to Dr. Hill that he had had a conversation with either President Zelensky or leading Ukrainian officials about Rudy Giuliani more broadly than Naftogaz or financial transactions?

A  I don't recall.

Q  When you returned from the inauguration, were you aware of an Oval Office meeting with the President on May 23 related to Ukraine?

A  Yes.

Q  Do you know how that meeting came about?

A  So, on the night of the 21st of May, after a successful day of bilateral meetings, we had a discussion. The members of the Presidential delegation exchanged a number -- I'm aware of a conversation, and then we exchanged some emails in which we discussed the idea of providing the President a readout of what we assessed to be a very positive trip. And I said that I'd advance this notion through my chain of command and present a schedule proposal, and I was also told that Ambassador Sondland was going to reach directly to the chief of staff to schedule this meeting.

Q  And was the meeting ultimately --

A  Yes.

Q  -- scheduled?

A  It was, for the 23rd.

Q  Did your process to schedule it go through?

A  It did not.

Q  So how was the meeting ultimately scheduled?

A  It was scheduled through their chief of staff's office.

Q  Via Ambassador Sondland?

A  Correct.

Q  And who attended that meeting, to your knowledge?

A  So it would have been -- I did not attend. It was attended by Secretary Perry; Kurt Volker, Ambassador Volker; Ambassador Sondland; Deputy National Security Advisor Dr. Charlie Kupperman represented the National Security Council; and I believe that Senator Johnson also attended that meeting.

Q  So that was effectively everybody who went to the inauguration except for you?

A  Correct.

Q  Right?

And do you know why you were not included in that meeting?

A  Dr. Hill told me that there was personal risk with me attending that meeting.

Q  Did you ask her what that meant?

A  I did. She explained that there was -- first of all, I'm a director of the National Security Council, so, you know, if there's a more senior person that can go to the meeting. that's fine. But I was told that there was a gentleman that was providing information, representing himself as director for Ukraine, and that I would be confused with this person.

Q  Providing information to whom?

A  That I don't know, but to folks in the White House.

Q  And who is this person?

A  It's a senior director on the National Security Council. She identified him as Kash Patel.

Q  And did Kash Patel have anything to do with the Ukraine portfolio?

A  He did not.

Q  Did you learn anything else about what his involvement was in the Ukraine portfolio?

A  I did not. I didn't really inquire. I just went about my business.

Q  So, just to be clear, Dr. Hill explained that you might be confused for him?

A  Yes. I don't understand the entire mechanics of this. All I know is that she said that there was somebody representing himself as the Ukraine director, and since I'm not the individual providing information directly to the White House, it would be -- there's risk in me going to the Oval Office. And I believe she came to this decision in conversation with Ambassador Bolton. She told me that she had discussed it with Ambassador Bolton. They thought that it was best I don't go.

Q  And just to be clear, other than the President of the United States, everybody else at that meeting knew that you're the director for Ukraine for the National Security Council, right?

A  Yes. I, frankly, don't know who from the Chief of Staff's Office or who else was there outside of the Presidential delegation, so I doubt people in the exterior Oval would know who I am. But the people who were on the Presidential delegation, members of the National Security Council would know that, yes.

Q  Was it your understanding that this confusion would rest with the President?

MR. VOLKOV: If you know.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I mean, I guess, I don't know -- to the best of my knowledge, she just said that there was risk, and there was confusion because somebody was misrepresenting himself or representing himself as a Ukraine director, and there was risk involved, and I shouldn't go, and that was sufficient for me.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Did you ever come across Kash Patel again related to Ukraine matters?

A  I know who he is. I know he's on staff. I've, frankly, not had any interactions with him, so it's not a conversation -- I don't recall any time I've actually had a conversation with him.

Q  And did he -- he had nothing to do with Ukraine prior to that meeting, right, as far as you knew?

A  The only time I've heard his name come up in the context of Ukraine was just what Dr. Hill relayed to me in relation to this Presidential delegation debrief.

Q  Did you get a readout of that May 23rd meeting?

A  I did.

Q  From whom?

A  It went through from Dr. Kupperman, who represented the National Security Council, to my deputy senior director, John Erath. Dr. Hill was on travel at that point.

MR. SWALWELL: Can you spell that last name?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: E-r-a-t-h.

MR. SWALWELL: Thanks.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: And he had a conversation with Dr. Kupperman, who relayed to him basically how the meeting went.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Did Dr. Kupperman put that readout in writing, or was it an oral readout?

A  I think it was an oral readout.

Q  So what did Mr. Erath say to you about what occurred at that meeting?

A  Counselor, I just would want to make sure it's clear that this is like Kupperman talking to Erath talking to me. So there's a couple steps in there, and it's, you know -- I'm just --

Q  Don't worry about that. All we're interested in is what your understanding was as the policy director --

A  Sure.

Q  -- for Ukraine coming out of a meeting related to Ukraine in the Oval Office.

A  Okay. So the meeting didn't go superbly well. The President voiced deep skepticism on Ukraine and its ability to end corruption, that it was a corrupt state, and that they are not friendly towards him. The Ukrainians are not friendly towards President Trump and his administration -- this is what was recounted to me -- and that there was a serious reluctance to engage with the Ukrainians.

I also was told that the concerted efforts of the individuals that had a very positive view of President Zelensky and his team were able to influence the President to give the Ukrainians a chance, and that the leadership that was there was given kind of the mandate to make something happen within the next 90 days with a focal point on energy. And Secretary Perry basically got the marching orders to, you know, show some successes.

Q  In the readout that you got thirdhand, was there any mention of Rudy Giuliani in this meeting?

A  I don't believe so, not that I recall.

Q  So, following this meeting, who took the lead on Ukraine policy for the U.S.?

A  Following the meeting I think that Ambassador Sondland -- Kurt Volker was already heavily involved in managing the Ukraine -- helping the Ukrainians navigate their negotiations with the Russians, so, I mean, he had a consistent role, and Secretary Perry to make something happen in the energy sphere.

Q  You testified earlier that you had some conversations with Kurt Volker about engaging with Rudy Giuliani. Do you recall that?

A  I do.

Q  Do you recall when the first conversation that you had with Ambassador Volker about Rudy Giuliani was?

A  I don't. I think there were probably maybe two conversations at most, and I have the impression that they were later in the summer. I work with Ambassador Volker on a pretty regular basis in his role as the special representative for Ukraine negotiations, so it would not be atypical for me to see him certainly over the course of the summer, you know, some probably less than half a dozen times, but a sufficient amount of times.

Q  Were you aware of whether anyone who was at that May 23rd meeting from the Presidential delegation had a conversation after that meeting with Rudy Giuliani about Ukraine?

A  So I learned at some point that there was -- later in the summer that Ambassador Volker had some contact with Mr. Giuliani. My best recollection is, before he had actually engaged Mr. Giuliani, I vaguely recall a conversation in which I suggested that that's probably not a good idea, and it's possible that Dr. Hill said the same thing, but --

Q  What did he say in response to that?

A  I don't think he said anything. And then --

Q  You don't recall when that conversation was more specifically?

A  I don't.

Q  But it was before he --

A  It would have been --

Q  -- Before he reached out to Rudy Giuliani., whenever that was?

A  Yes, it would have been before because, you know, certainly at some point it became known that he had contact with Mr. Giuliani.

Q  Okay. And then, on May 29th, do you recall that there was a letter sent to President Zelensky from President Trump?

A  Yes, I do.

Q  What do you know about that letter and what went into sending it?

A  So I think all the President's correspondence is confidential. Because it went to the Ukrainians, it wasn't classified, but it's still confidential and privileged. Is it okay if I talk about that?

Q  Sorry, about what went into sending that letter?

A  Well, I mean, I guess, if we're talking about the letter and any content in it, it's a privileged Presidential communication.

Q  The letter is public.

A  Oh, is the letter out now?

Q  Yeah.

A  Okay. I wasn't aware of that. All right. Sorry.

Okay. So I drafted the letter. I actually drafted it sometime the week of the 21st of -- the week prior to the 21st of May. And the idea would be that, you know, the head of the Presidential delegation would provide this letter to the President of Ukraine in lieu of the fact that the President is not there, and it was a very positive letter.

Q  And what was the reaction to it from the President?

A  Okay. So the President didn't sign the letter. It was submitted with sufficient time to get it through the process and actually have it available for the Presidential delegation to move with it. Even though it was a compressed timeline, it was there. My understanding is that it was with staff sec at the White House.

Q  That's staff secretary?

A  Staff secretary at the White House. And no action was taken on it until sometime after this debrief on April -- I'm sorry, on May 23rd. And then my understanding is that it was -- as part of the process of convincing the President it was worth engaging with the Ukrainians, he had signed the letter with the addition of a line at the end that offered an invitation to meet at the White House.

Q  And did you have any conversations with Ukrainians about that letter following the letter up through July until the call?

A  So, of course, in terms of my coordination role, I would let them know that there's a letter coming from -- the Ukrainians have the letter. It was from our President to the Ukrainian President. So I let them know that there's a letter coming.

And then, frankly, the way we did it -- we chose to do it was to empower Ambassador Taylor and give him some credibility by having him deliver the original hard copy to President Zelensky in their first meeting. So that's why I think it went out, you know. We may have even had it available a couple days before. but it went with him so he could travel with it and deliver it.

Q  Let me rephrase the question to be a little more clear. So., from the date the letter was sent at the end of May until July 25, when you spoke to your Ukrainian counterparts in any way, how frequently did they raise the issue or idea of a White House meeting that was referenced in that letter?

A  Every meeting.

Q  And you said earlier today that that July 10th meeting was the first time that you were aware of a U.S. official conditioning that White House meeting on the investigations when Ambassador Sondland mentioned that. Is that right?

A  That is correct.

Q  So you had no conversations with Volker or Sondland or Kent or anyone in June, or Taylor or Dr. Hill, about any concerns that Mr. Giuliani's narratives, as you call them, were seeping into U.S. official representatives?

A  So, Counselor, I did have concerns about the narrative seeping into the Ukrainians. I think the way I'd characterize it is, the first time I heard anybody articulate this scenario in which the Ukrainians would have to deliver an investigation in order to get a White House meeting, that became clear during the July 10th meeting. But before that, there was certainly concerns about, you know,

Mr. Giuliani and the narrative that he was --

Q  So the conditionality wasn't clear until July 10th, but were you aware prior to July 10 that the Ukrainians were feeling pressure to initiate these investigations?

A  Only from press reporting in that this was part of what Mr. Giuliani was saying publicly. You know, he was definitely calling for investigations and looking for the Ukrainians to be cooperative in providing the investigations.

Q  And did you understand that at that point that President Trump's views on Ukraine were informed by Mr. Giuliani's at all?

[Discussion off the record.]

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yeah. I don't know what the President was thinking. I know that he had a negative view of Ukraine, and I don't exactly know why.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Let me rephrase it. You obviously don't know, but did you hear anything from either Ambassador Bolton or Dr. Hill or Dr. Kupperman or any of the other interagency folks that you talked to about whether President Trump shared Mr. Giuliani's views?

A  Yes, I think so.

Q  Okay. And what was the upshot of that?

A  So, I guess, even in the earlier March timeframe, when there were negative narratives emerging prior to, you know, the explicit involvement of Mr. Giuliani, the President was seeing some of the negative press and reacting to it.

I remember looking at, you know, tweets and things of that nature in which him on his family members said something negative about Ambassador Yovanovitch. So I was aware of the fact that this other narrative was reverberating through, you know, senior leadership at the White House.

Q  I'm going to move to the security assistance issue now. And when was the first time that you became aware that there was a hold placed on security assistance for Ukraine?

A  Certainly by about July 3rd. It's possible I had some earlier indications in late June as the departments would alert me to the fact that they were getting queries from the Office of Budget and Management, you know, asking questions that, in their view, you know, were abnormal or something of that nature. But by July 3rd, that's when I was concretely made aware of the fact that there was a hold placed by OMB.

Q  What were the abnormal questions that you can recall?

A  Something along the lines -- and, you know, some of this is, through hindsight, it becomes clearer, but at the time, there were questions about how much funding the Ukrainian Government was receiving, what kind of funding.

Initially, it seemed like the hold might just apply to foreign military financing, the $115 million coming from State, and that it looked like the security assistance from -- the Ukraine security assistance initiative funding from DOD was going to be allowed to move forward, and then, ultimately, all security assistance was put on hold.

Q  What happened on July 3rd that solidified this for you?

A  As I recall, I received a notice from State Department that their foreign military financing congressional notification was being held by OMB.

Q  So explain what that means.

A  So, as part of the process -- and I'm not a budget guy, but as part of the process, in order to obligate the funds, the departments and agencies have to clear congressional notification through the interagency, which I have a role in facilitating that potentially, and then, once it's cleared, that congressional notification moves through a process to the appropriate bodies within the Congress. And I was made aware that OMB had held up this congressional notification.

Q  And did you understand why?

A  I did not initially.

Q  At that time, you did not understand why?

A  Yes.

Q  Did the State Department understand why?

A  Yeah, I'm not sure I know. I don't think there was much clarity as to why it was being held up. And the reason I say that is because all of the work that we had done to that point was about expanding cooperation with Ukraine, ensuring that, you know, we were actually backing the new administration, providing adequate support.

We saw it as seizing the opportunity to work with a willing partner in the form of President Zelensky and his team and locking in the Euro-Atlantic orientation of Ukraine. So the consensus up until that point from the policy community was that we need to do more; we need to be more supportive; we need to make sure that their position is strengthened.

Q  So the consensus of the entire interagency on Ukraine was that -- and, obviously, Congress, which passed the law -- was that the security assistance was a positive thing for U.S.-Ukraine relations?

A  Sure. So I guess, to be a little bit clearer, we had gone through an interagency process to develop a plan to seize the opportunity of working with a Ukrainian Government. And the pillars of that plan were security cooperation, energy cooperation, and economic cooperation were the areas that we chose to focus. So, in going through this process, we firmly said that we need to do more in the security cooperation sphere, which included this whole military assistance piece.

Q  Right. So military assistance was also -- military assistance for Ukraine was also part of official U.S. policy?

A  Yes.

Q  After July 3rd and -- between July 3rd and July 18th, what did you do related to security assistance, and what did you learn?

A  So I think, over the course of that period, there was a short July 4th break or so that accounted for a couple days, but basically we were trying to get to the bottom of why this hold was in place, why OMB was applying this hold.

There were multiple memos that were transmitted from my directorate to Ambassador Bolton on, you know, keeping him abreast of this particular development. And I'm not sure of what actions he may have taken at his level, but we were keeping him informed about, you know, why this is important, what the costs were, and so forth. And there were probably quite a few memos that went forward in that regard and various notes.

Q  Did you come to learn why -- during that period of time why the hold had been placed?

A  So where it became quite apparent is in my sub-policy coordinating committee meeting on the 18th. I think I, frankly, probably had some idea before that because of my contacts, interactions throughout the interagency. So I probably had some sense, but it became crystal clear when OMB staffers reported that the hold came from the Chief of Staff's Office.

Q  And was there a reason given at your --

A  Yeah.

Q  -- sub-PCC meeting on July 18?

A  So initially it was unclear. Eventually it became the -- what I was told is to ensure that the assistance aligned with administration priorities was what was the reason.

Q  What does that mean?

A  I'm not sure, but that's what was communicated, to make sure that the assistance continues to align with the administration priorities.

Q  Okay. But just to be clear, it was certainly an interagency priority for Ukraine policy to provide this security and military assistance, right?

A  Yes. And in this meeting on the 18th, there was absolute consensus from everybody present that we need to move forward, we need to figure out how to, I guess, you know, continue developing this topic through the interagency process. I did it at my level, elevating it to the PCC level, elevating it to inform policymakers of why this is important. That's what we did.

I mean, you know, if there is a direction, and there is, you know -- if there is a direction that we receive from higher, we'll implement it. But in this case, we had a consensus view that seek to inform that this was not the consensus view of the community and elevate that to the proper channels to inform leadership to potentially change that view or inform that view in a different direction.

Q  So, following your sub-PCC meeting on the 18th, was there a PCC meeting on this topic?

A  There was.

Q  Did you attend that?

A  Yes, I did.

Q  And what occurred at that meeting?

A  Same consensus view with, again, you know, OMB identifying that there was a hold in place.

Q  And what was the do-out from that PCC meeting?

A  It was agreed that the matter would be elevated to deputies, the deputies from all the departments and agencies, as quickly as possible to recommend a release of security assistance.

MR. SWALWELL: Mr. Goldman, can you -- I may not have heard. Can you remind me what PCC stands for?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Policy Coordinating Committee.

MR. SWALWELL: Thanks.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So I hold at my level sub-PCCs, Deputy Assistant Secretary level. PCCs are my boss, senior director with Assistant Secretaries. DCs are with the deputy of the National Security Council with his deputy counterparts within the interagency.

MR. SWALWELL: Thank you.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Going back to the July 18th meeting, your sub-PCC meeting, who announced that there was this hold on the Ukraine security assistance?

A  I'm sorry. Which one?

Q  July 18th, the one you ran.

A  July 18. So staffers, my counterparts within OMB.

Q  And do you recall who that was?

A  Yes. There was -- words redacted                          attended the meeting for OMB, words redacted                                      Frankly, another counterpart that I worked with on a regular basis, but I don't know if he -- I can't recall explicitly if he was there, but he was involved in the process, was a gentleman named words redacted                                          .

I think there were a couple of other folks, but, frankly, you know, I don't know if I paid -- I spoke to my counterparts and maybe didn't pay attention to all the representation that was in OMB. I think there was probably one more person at least though.

Q  So, moving ahead, do you recall when the deputies committee meeting was?

A  On the 26th of July.

Q  Did you attend that?

A  Yes.

Q  And what occurred there?

A  It was unanimous consensus on the approach that we had laid out in expanding engagement, the areas of cooperation that we wanted to focus on, and that this should be elevated to a PC as quickly as possible to release the hold on security assistance because we're talking about the end of July, and time these funds were set to expire September 30th, so there was an urgency to it.

Q  And just so everyone understands, which agencies are represented at these either deputies committee meetings or the PCC meetings?

A  The entire interagency.

Q  Entire interagency.

A  So, you know, the principal actors would be State Department, Defense, the Intelligence Communities, Treasury. The entire interagency is represented.

Q  And it was unanimous consensus that the security assistance should be provided to Ukraine?

A  Yes.

Q  At either the PCC meeting or any of these three meetings you discussed, did anyone raise the concerns about the legality of the hold?

A  The matter was raised at various levels, all the way from the sub-PCC to the PCC and even at the deputy small group, on the 26th.

Q  And what do you recall about that?

A  So I'm not a legal expert, but there was a sufficient amount of -- a significant amount of work done to determine whether it was legal for OMB to be able to place this hold.

Q  And was there a general view expressed?

A  I think at the -- so my recollection in the sub-PCC was that the matter was raised; at the PCC, it was tasked for further development; and I think by the time it got to our DSG it was determined that, you know, there was a legal basis to hold.

Q  So the DC meeting was on the 26th, and it was decided at that meeting -- was it decided at that meeting that there needs to be a principals meeting on this?

A  That was what was recommended.

Q  Do you know whether there was a further meeting on this though at the PCC level?

A  At PC, there was not.

Q  PCC.

A  Oh, so there was a PCC on the 31st of July that covered some ground, including, you know, the departments and agencies indicating the urgency to release the security assistance funds, but there were also other topics that are not covered by this.

Q  Dust focusing on the security assistance, what was expressed about the urgency?

A  That the lack of security assistance would significantly undermine the message of support for Ukraine if it became -- if it was revealed, and that this would also signal to the Russians that they could potentially be more aggressive. Those were the views that were expressed by various members.

Q  Colonel Vindman, did there come a time when you were involved in presenting this issue to the President and other principals?

A  So I'm sorry. Could you be more specific?

Q  Did there come a time after July 31st when you were involved in a process of trying to tee this issue up for the President and other principals?

A  So, after I came back from vacation on the 12th, I was instructed, I think, probably on the 13th or 14th, to draft a Presidential decision memo for Ambassador Bolton to be able to take along with his principal counterparts to the President for a decision.

Q  And what's a Presidential decision memo?

A  It is a memo that lays out -- it ends with a recommendation, but it also has a discussion about why this is -- and I remember this one being relatively cursory, but it basically laid out the case of why we should be doing this.

It had the -- as one of the documents included, it had the consensus views from the entire deputies small group with their recommendations, and then it recommended that the security assistance be released.

Q  And did Ambassador Bolton present this to the President, to your knowledge?

A  So my understanding, the readout that I received is that, ultimately, it was presented to the President.

Q  Do you know when?

A  I believe there was travel, and it was when the President was outside of the White House and the principals, Ambassador Bolton, I want to say, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of State were meeting with the President.

Q  Where?

A  I don't recall, but I believe it was not at the White House. There was some travel involved.

Q  Do you know what the date was -- well, do you know the date of the memo?

A  So the memo was produced on the 15th of August.

Q  And do you know when the date of this meeting was?

A  If somebody had a calendar, I think it was that Friday or the adjacent Friday to the 15th. So that might have been -- actually, I produced it on Thursday. If the 15th, if I recall correctly, was a Thursday, then Friday is when I was supposed to go to the President.

Q  Okay. And who provided you a readout of the discussion with the President on the Presidential decision memo?

A  I don't recall definitively, but I think, you know, because we kept having questions -- did the memo get presented? What was the readout? -- I believe, to the best of my recollection, it may have been John Erath that had some information as my senior -- that, in communication with the front office, he received this information.

Q  Did you speak to Ambassador Bolton personally about this?

A  I did not.

Q  Okay. And what did you learn that occurred at the meeting between the President, and Ambassador Bolton, Secretary of State Pompeo, and Secretary of Defense Esper related to the Presidential decision memo that you drafted?

A  So, frankly, there were some conflicting reports. At least one report suggested that the topic never came up, but another report suggested that it did come up and, you know, no decision was taken.

Q  And what does that mean?

A  That means that, amongst the various issues that were discussed, this was also raised, this issue of security assistance was also raised, and, I mean, the President didn't act on the recommendation.

Q  And what was the recommendation?

A  To release security assistance funding to Ukraine.

Q  Okay. Now, at some point, did you come to understand that the security assistance to Ukraine was also conditioned on Ukraine initiating the investigations into the Bidens and the 2016 election?

A  At the time, I did not believe -- I knew that the Ukrainians weren't really aware until sometime in the middle August timeframe, so, I guess, I didn't draw that conclusion at the time.

Q  At the time of the Presidential decision memo?

A  Yes.

Q  How about at a later time, did you come to understand that?

A  Once the news broke of the security assistance funding, later in the August timeframe, that's when it seemed clear that it was also a point of pressure to -- you know, so -- this is my own personal assessment, so I don't really -- I can't speak definitively.

I guess, what I could relay is, once the news broke of security assistance funding being on hold, I started getting, you know, quite a few queries from the Ukrainians about this topic, security assistance -- about this topic, and they asked me, you know, is this true, what do we need to do, type of thing. So my impression is that they were under pressure.

Q  And what did you respond to the Ukrainians?

A  I don't recall, but I do recall that in an effort to preserve relationships, I think I said that there was a review ongoing, which was what we were -- you know, the talking point that we had, and that, you know, there's still time to be able to obligate the funds. It's a review. There's an ongoing review. I think that's what I recall saying.

Q  Did you ever learn whether there was a reason provided why the President didn't sign off on releasing the aid at that meeting with the principals?

A  No.

Q  And you said earlier today, I believe, that you were aware of the Politico article but that you understood that there was -- that the Ukrainians knew before that Politico article came out. What was the basis for your understanding that?

A  So there were what I would describe as light queries about anything -- you know, have I heard anything about security assistance being on hold, things of that nature, based on, again, you know, early reports, early leaks of security assistance being on hold. But I don't think it was substantive until after the news broke right around the time of the Warsaw summit when there was --

Q  So there were some questions about it --

A  Yeah.

Q  -- but nothing definitive?

A  Right.

Q  And then one last question, you said that the talking point you got was that there was a review going on.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  Was that accurate? Were you aware of any review at all?

A  The only review that I was aware of, as the director for Ukraine, was the review process that I had launched to inform the policymaking authorities that this was essential. That's the only review that I'm aware of, but there could very well have potentially been other reviews.

MR. GOLDMAN: All right. I believe our time is up. We'll yield to the minority.

MR. CASTOR: Mr. Stewart, I believe, had a question.

MR. STEWART: Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: I would suggest we have a break after the minority, but if you need a break now --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I'm okay. Chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Forty-five minutes to the minority.

MR. STEWART: If you keep chugging that water there, you're going to need a break.

MR. VOLKOV: No, he has got his twin ready to come in, so --

MR. STEWART: Colonel, thanks for your service. As an Air Force guy, I know the Army guys are down in the trenches doing the hard work. So thank you for doing that.

I have a couple questions, and it won't take long, and these aren't gotcha questions at all. I'm just trying to understand your thinking and getting some insight into what was in your mind, what's in your mind now.

You say a couple things that I think are interesting in your opening statement, and we've talked about them a little bit. I want to dive into it a little further if we could. One of them is you talk about outside influencers. And when questioned on that, you described, I think, The Hill reporting.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That was probably the earliest one, yes, Congressman.

MR. STEWART: Okay. And then I kind of lost you after that. Would you elaborate on what you mean by "outside influencers"?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So when this became -- when this came on my radar was in the March timeframe when Hill -- when a reporter named Solomon wrote about this and started to identify sourcing --

MR. STEWART: And I want to make this easier for you. I'm not asking for specifics. I'm just wondering, in general, are you talking about media?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes, correct.

MR. STEWART: Okay. Anything else other than media?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I can't recall any media or anything beyond media until it actually resulted in Ambassador Yovanovitch being recalled, and that would have been in the April timeframe, and, you know, the discussions that we had around why this was occurring.

MR. STEWART: So, when you say, "In the spring of 2019, I became aware of outside influencers," you're talking only about media?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: In the spring of 2019, so, initially, it was just in the form of media. But then, later on, it became, you know, again, when the Ambassador was recalled, that brought it into the policy process, and then there were some discussions on, you know, was the basis of these claims against Ambassador Yovanovitch, and I undertook the due diligence to understand the issues, the accusations that Mr. Lutsenko was making.

MR. STEWART: Okay. But, again, and I’m just trying to understand what you're saying. You're talking about media, but now you're saying it's the media and what else that would be outside influencers?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So the outside influencers -- well, I guess, the outside influencers were, once Ambassador Yovanovitch was -- her name came up, I specifically recall tweets from government officials and --

MR. STEWART: Such as who? That's what I'm trying to get to, is who you consider to be outside influencers.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Sorry, Congressman. This is just a very uncomfortable topic for me. I remember a tweet from the President's son that was very critical about Ambassador Yovanovitch, and that ended up getting quite a bit of traction.

MR. STEWART: So, by "outside," you mean anyone outside of USG?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Maybe I didn't -- I don't quite understand.

MR. STEWART: By "outside," then you said Mr. Trump's son?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes, these were outside of the U.S. Government, correct.

MR. STEWART: So anyone outside of the U.S. Government is an outside influencer then?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: And that's the way I have it, yes.

MR. STEWART: And I'm asking, is that what you mean to say?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes. Correct. Correct. I understand now.

MR. STEWART: Okay. So you don't have a problem with outside influencers?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I don't necessarily -- I guess, I don't have an outside -- all I'm doing is identifying when we had these -- it became apparent that there were less necessarily outside, because initially it started off with media, and then it became quasi-outside because it was -- then you had the Giuliani connection; the President's son was tweeting about this. So these are not irrelevant players anymore. It's not just a Hill reporter that's talking about it or Ukrainians. Ukrainians certainly would fall into that outside influencer category.

MR. STEWART: Because I think it would be hard to argue the President's son is outside. I mean, he's pretty involved here. And I'm just trying to understand, again, your frame of mind, because your frame of mind is important to me here to understand your motives and what drives you and what concerned you.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes, Congressman.

MR. STEWART: And I'm not going to bore down on this forever, but I do want to understand it because I don't understand it yet. To you, outside influencers is anyone outside U.S. Government. And I'm asking, do you have a problem with someone outside the U.S. Government trying to influence the U.S. policy or decisionmaking?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I don't think so, but the key element of influencer is that it has the effect of influencing.

MR. STEWART: Yeah.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So, if it's, you know, an irrelevant party, you know, that doesn't carry any weight, then it's meaningless. But -MR. STEWART: Who would be an example of an irrelevant party trying to influence --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So, initially, if The Hill story didn't go anywhere, Mr. Solomon's Hill story didn't go anywhere, that would probably be not all that relevant.

MR. STEWART: So you maybe have some sympathy for those who are concerned about fake news. Would that be fair?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I'm aware of the methodology employed by other powers to launch information operations to achieve a desired outcome.

MR. STEWART: Okay. And when you talk about false narrative, it concerns me as well, because I think there is opinion and there is fact. And I'll be honest with you, Colonel, I think you've stated some things as fact that I view as your opinion.

And you may have an opinion, and it may be an informed opinion, but it can't be stated categorically that you know this to be true and that every other option is untrue. And I'm concerned that you maybe have indicated that, and I'll allow you to correct me if you think I'm wrong.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So --

MR. VOLKOV: Wait --

MR. STEWART: When you talk about, for example, that it was illegitimate to want to continue to investigate corruption, and you said that case had been closed or you were unaware of any legitimate concerns of corruption, that seems to me to be your opinion, and yet, you stated it as a false narrative as if it's either true or false, and you are telling us that it's false.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So I think, in this case, as I mentioned, I attempted to do due diligence. Some of these items emerged before my time on the National Security Council. So I consulted with people that actually I considered to be authoritative to determine whether, you know, these narratives were truly false or if there was some underlying, you know, kennels of truth. And in describing it as a false narrative, I identified that there actually wasn't anything credible.

MR. STEWART: In your opinion, or are you stating categorically it is absolutely unequivocal that this is false?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So, Congressman, I guess, I'm the director for Ukraine. I offer my judgments to my senior leadership.

MR. STEWART: Right.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: And my senior leadership view my judgments most the time as authoritative.

MR. STEWART: Okay. And I understand they're authoritative, and I've said to you these are informed opinions.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I was just going to point out, and the way I develop these -- my own judgments and assessments is I take the consensus view; I coordinate the interagency to develop those views. So I consulted with -- if it's a gap, I don't really understand it, I will consult with the right people to determine, you know, what the facts are and then offer that as the kind of coordinated policy.

And in this case, in my due diligence to understand these matters, I made a conclusion that these were false narratives.

MR. STEWART: Okay. So I'm going to ask you one more time. Then I'm going to move on. Are you stating categorically here that you know for a fact and there is no other possible opinion that's viable on this that there was no reason to investigate Ukraine conspiracy or corruption because you have determined unequivocally that that is an illegitimate form of inquiry?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I don't think -- frankly, I cannot be that definitive.

MR. STEWART: Okay. Thank you.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I cannot be that definitive because I also understand that there are multiple layers and that we're dealing with an imperfect state that's in transition, a country that has now made some significant commitments in the form of Ukraine to move forward.

I'm also aware of the fact that there are multiple agendas. Certainly, you know, I educated myself on some of these narratives about the 2016 interference and understand some of the players involved and that there could very well have been, you know, elements that were trying to advance their agenda. So it would be folly to try to be definitive.

MR. STEWART: Well --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: But to the best of my knowledge, I guess, I still stick to the fact that I think it was a false narrative.

MR. STEWART: Okay. And I appreciate that. And as someone who listens to counsel and advisers all the time, I've got to tell you, if someone came in and said, unequivocally, this is true or not, you know, I would be very skeptical of that on something as ambiguous as what we're talking about here.

If I could go on just very quickly, your July 25 phone call as well, there's just one point I think is fair to point out. And, you know, stating your words, you were concerned by the call: I did not think it was proper.

And you said -- I think there were -- in the Situation Room, I think you said there were five or six other individuals with you on that call with you in that room? Is that true?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I think I said five, if I recall properly.

MR. STEWART: Five. And I'm going to limit my questioning to just those five. I'm assuming that you knew them. You named them. You were able to recall and list their names. These are people you work with?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Correct. Yes.

MR. STEWART: Would you say that you -- is there any reason at all that you would question the integrity of these other individuals in the room?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: No. Frankly, Congressman, I go back to my statement. My colleagues are all of them exceptional, and I value their opinion. And I'm not in any way questioning, you know, their competence or their intentions or anything of that nature.

MR. STEWART: No reason to question their integrity or their professionalism, is there? You respect them. Is that fair to say? You've said that.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Correct.

MR. STEWART: And it's curious to me, and I really -- and I'll make my point. I mean, it's curious to me that none of them apparently shared your concerns. None of them went to the counsel. None of them took it, you know, to the level where they felt like they had to go express their concerns about it. Is that true or not true?

MR. CICILLINE: Mr. Chairman, may I again ask the witness be reminded he does not need to accept the factual --

THE CHAIRMAN: Yeah. Many of us would dispute the --

MR. STEWART: The witness is not his counsel. He's free to answer any time he wants.

THE CHAIRMAN: But if you're asking the question --

MR. VOLKOV: Oh, I want him to answer it. I want him to answer it. I have no problem with him answering it.

MR. STEWART: There is nothing inappropriate about this question at all. I'm asking, did anyone else go to counsel --

MR. CICILLINE: But that's not what you asked. That wasn't your question.

THE CHAIRMAN: Yeah. I mean, the problem is when people represent facts that are not in fact true and ask the witness if they're aware of those facts --

MR. STEWART: Mr. Chairman, this was a perfectly legitimate question.

THE CHAIRMAN: Why don't you --

MR. STEWART: It was perfectly legitimate, and it had no intention of -- you said representing facts which are not facts. Let me ask the question. Quit interrupting us. Let me ask the questions, and let us --

MR. NUNES: Are you the inquisitor in every question, and we have to submit it to you before we ask it?

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Stewart, Mr. Stewart, Mr. Stewart, you represented that no one else had raised a concern.

MR. STEWART: I asked a question.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, you represented it as a fact, Mr. Stewart. That's not accurate. It wasn't intentional. I will grant you, it's not intentional.

MR. NUNES: Mr. Chair --

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Stewart, Mr. Stewart, Mr. Stewart, you may ask your question again.

MR. STEWART: No. I'm going to ask the same stinking question, and I'm going to ask it the same way. You don't get to define the questions I ask. You don't get to define how I ask those questions.

The witness is standing there. He's got counsel. They can discuss it themselves. You're not counsel for this witness. You don't get to decide what questions we ask and how we ask them.

THE CHAIRMAN: I can point out if you are asking the witness to confirm things of prior proceedings that are not factually accurate. Mr. Stewart, you may ask the question again. I'm not accusing you of sinister motive here, but why don't you ask your question again.

MR. STEWART: I'm going to ask the same question in the same way I just asked it. Are you aware of any one of those five who went to counsel and shared their concerns or any concerns they might have had about that?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So I would answer it in this way then: I would say, first of all, I'm the director for Ukraine. I'm responsible for Ukraine. I'm the most knowledgeable. I'm the authority for Ukraine for the National Security Council and the White House.

I understand all the nuances, the context and so forth surrounding these issues. I, on my judgment, went -- I expressed concerns within the chain of command, which I think to me, as a military officer, is completely appropriate. I exercise that chain of command.

MR. STEWART: I understand.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I'm sorry, Congressman. And I also am not aware of what other actions were taken. I did not take a poll of other folks in the room, nor did I try to figure out who else may have been in the orbit that listened to it and what actions they took. I could only speak for myself and my actions.

MR. STEWART: So let me ask the question again. Are you aware of any one of those five who went and expressed any concern to counsel about this phone call?

MR. VOLKOV: Okay. And I'm going to object here. I mean, he's already answered it.

MR. STEWART: No, he didn't answer that.

MR. VOLKOV: He said he knows he went -- he doesn't know what anybody else in the universe --

MR. STEWART: That's right. He doesn't know if they did or didn't. I'm asking, can he affirm that --

MR. VOLKOV: And what I'm saying to you is, I'm not going to sit here and listen to asked and answered, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound. It makes no sense, you guys.

MR. STEWART: Okay. I'm going to ask the question one more time.

MR. VOLKOV: And I'm going to object to it, and I'm going to ask the chair to sustain the objection.

MR. STEWART: Are you aware of anyone else who went to counsel --

MR. VOLKOV: He's already answered the question.

MR. STEWART: Okay. I'm going to say the answer is no then.

THE CHAIRMAN: Colonel, you have answered the question already.

MR. STEWART: Okay. So I will conclude now.

THE CHAIRMAN: It is up to you whether you want to answer it again, but I leave it to you.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: It's in the record. I'll just say that I can only speak --

MR. STEWART: It's a yes-or-no question. Are you aware of anyone --

MR. VOLKOV: Excuse me, can the witness be allowed to answer the question?

THE CHAIRMAN: Please allow the witness to answer the question.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: It's not a yes-or-no question, Congressman. It's a question on whether I'm aware of other people. The answer is I am not aware, but I also do not know if other people took a similar action.

MR. STEWART: Okay. That's fair. But what I was trying to get was are you aware of anyone, and you just said no. Thank you.

These are people that you respect.

MR. VOLKOV: Is that a question or not?

MS. STEFANIK: It's our time.

MR. STEWART: Excuse me.

MR. VOLKOV: Excuse me. I'm sorry. It's got to be in the form of a question. If you want to make a speech, we can do that some other time.

MS. STEFANIK: It's our time. We control the time.

MR. STEWART: Excuse me. Excuse me, this is our time, counsel.

MR. VOLKOV: Ask a question.

MR. STEWART: I will do what I want with my time, and I will set up the question how I choose to set up the question.

MR. VOLKOV: That's fine.

MR. STEWART: You don't need to come in here and lecture us on how I will ask my questions.

MR. VOLKOV: I'm going to represent my client.

MR. STEWART: Represent your client.

MR. VOLKOV: And you' re not just going to run over my client. I'm sorry.

MR. STEWART: Then talk to you client and say -- you're free to talk to your client and say: Don't answer that question.

What you're not free to do is to tell me how I can phrase a question to your client. If you don't like that question, advise him not to answer.

MR. VOLKOV: I'm going to object because it's not properly phrased.

MR. STEWART: Then go ahead and object. And by the way, Mr. Chairman, this should not be counted against our time.

Okay. You have said that these were people that you respected. You have said that there's no reason to think that they were unethical or unprofessional in any way. Do you have a possible explanation for why they didn't go to counsel and share those concerns?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I don't know that.

MR. VOLKOV: I'm going to object.

THE CHAIRMAN: Again, this is assuming facts that the witness has said he is not aware of whether or who might else --

MR. STEWART: He said he didn't think they did.

MR. VOLKOV: We're not going to get into speculation, and I'm going to advise him

MR. STEWART: -- yes, he did say that.

MR. VOLKOV: If you want a metaphysical answer, Mr. Chairman, we'll try to do our best.

MR. STEWART: Mr. Chairman?

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Stewart, why don't you try asking the question again?

MR. STEWART: Mr. Chairman, I would like you to remind your members that this is our time and that we are asking the questions. You're free to respond if you want, but you should do it in a more respectful way. And if we laughed at you --

MRS. DEMINGS: You mention respect. Why don't you try showing some to this witness who is here today?

MR. STEWART: Colonel, do you feel I've been disrespectful to you?

MR. VOLKOV: I’m going to intervene. Look, if you guys want to have your spat, we'll step out, okay, and you can spat it out.

MR. STEWART: Okay. I think I made my point. Unfortunately, it took much longer than I hoped it would. And that is this, that these other individuals on the phone call did not share the same concern.

I yield back to --

MR. VOLKOV: Is that a question or a statement?

MR. STEWART: That's a statement. I'll yield back to our counsel.

MR. VOLKOV: Okay. We're not answering that.

MR. IORDAN: Steve Castor.

MR. STEWART: Devin, did you want to say something?

MR. NUNES: No. Steve is going.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  What do you know about Zlochevsky, the oligarch that controls Burisma?

A  I frankly don't know a huge amount.

Q  Are you aware that he's a former Minister of Ecology?

A  I'm not.

Q  Are you aware of any of the investigations the company has been involved with over the last several years?

A  I am aware that Burisma does have questionable business dealings. That's part of its track record, yes.

Q  Okay. And what questionable business dealings are you aware of?

A  I think that's more of kind of a generalization. I'm just aware that it had questionable business dealings, and they were known for that fact.

[3:50 p.m.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Okay. Do you know if they've been involved in misappropriation of energy licenses?

A  I don't know. I don't think I could say that. But I think the general -- the general answer is I think they have had questionable business dealings.

Q  So money laundering, tax evasion, if they were subject to those investigations, that would comport with your understanding of the company?

A  That would my comport with my understanding of how business is done in Ukraine.

Q  Okay. In 2014, they undertook an initiative to bring in some additional folks for their board, are you aware of some of the folks they added to their board in 2014?

A  The only individual I'm aware of, again, after, you know, as it's been reported in the press is Mr. Hunter Biden.

Q  Okay. And did you check with any of your authoritative sources in government to learn a little bit more about these issues?

A  I did not.

Q  Okay. Even when the narrative started to creep in?

A  I did not. I didn't think it was appropriate. He was a U.S. citizen, and I wasn't going to ask questions. Frankly, that falls into the law enforcement sphere. I was not going to go and ask about -- if there was a question about Burisma, I would -- I inquired about it and determined that they had a problematic history, but I did not inquire about a U.S. citizen.

Q  Okay. What other inquiries did you make with authoritative sources regarding Burisma?

A  I think once I drew my conclusion of the company, I moved on.

Q  Okay. What exactly did you do, though, with your authoritative sources to evaluate what was going on with Burisma?

A  I spoke with to my interagency colleagues that were more knowledgeable about this company and asked them for their views, they shared them, I incorporated them into my own personal assessment, and that's it.

Q  Okay. So just a couple telephone calls?

A  Whatever the format of exchange was, I don't recall.

Q  Telephone calls, emails, that type of thing?

A  Something like that, yeah.

Q  Okay. If there was an allegation of wrongdoing by Burisma board directors, that would be something that the Ukrainians could look into, right?

A  I think so. They're a sovereign state, they can choose to do that, yes.

Q  So if there's an American that is operating in Ukraine as a businessman and they are accused of wrongdoing, the Ukrainians can investigate that?

A  Americans are not immune from criminal activity just because they're Americans overseas. So, yes, if there's a criminal activity, they should, yeah.

Q  Okay. And do you have any knowledge as to why Hunter Biden was asked to join the board?

A  I do not.

Q  Did you check with any of our authoritative sources whether he was a corporate governance expert or --

A  Like I said, I didn't -- he's an American citizen. Certainly there is domestic political overtones. I did not think that was appropriate for me to start looking into this particular --

Q  Okay.

A  I drew my conclusions on Burisma and I moved on.

Q  Okay. I mean, is it reasonable to say if this company is subject to corruption allegations that perhaps they would want to add to their board people that might help protect them?

A  Is it reasonable to believe that? I guess so, but I'm not aware -- I just don't have -- I don't know that that's the case. I can't draw any conclusions to that regard. But is it reasonable? Yes, of course, a company would want to try to legitimize itself or something of that nature.

Q  Okay. And in your discussions with our authoritative sources did you get any information that led you to believe Burisma added Biden to the board because his dad was the Vice President?

A  The answer is no, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they attempted to do that to, again, legitimize themselves. That seems in line with the way some of these companies operate.

Q  Okay. And if they did do that because they wanted to protect themselves and they wanted to maybe give themselves some cover for engaging in further corruption, that would be something that would be worthwhile to investigate?

A  I guess --

Q  By the Ukrainians?

A  Maybe what's appropriate here is that in my effort to understand this narrative as it unfolded, I also asked my authoritative sources on, you know, whether they were aware of active investigations into Burisma, that seemed to be the most material element. Was there an active investigation? And what I was told is that there was not.

Q  Okay. But you would agree that if Ukrainians acting with bad intent decided to add certain folks to their board to protect themselves, to allow themselves to continue to operate in a corrupt manner, that might be something worth investigating if those facts came to light, not the board members, but the Ukrainians and the Burisma officials?

A  Yeah. I think in the course of enforcing the rule of law, that's what we're encouraging the Ukrainians to do is enforce the rule of law and identify, expose, end corruption.

Q  Okay. The Ambassador, the Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Chaly into the 2016 time period when President Trump was then candidate Trump?

A  Right.

Q  He was outspoken in opposition to candidate Trump. Is that correct?

A  I'm not sure if I would characterize it that way. I guess I became aware of the fact that -- at least some reporting seems to indicate that he spoke out potentially against the President, but this preceded my service there, so again, it was just in the form of understanding the various factors. I did, I guess, see in reporting that he did -- he was critical or may have been critical.

Q  Okay. Are you aware that he wrote an op-ed?

A  I'm aware of that fact now, yes.

Q  Okay. And in the op-ed he was critical of then candidate Trump?

A  Yes, but actually I do recall this incident even though I wasn't focused on the issue. My understanding was, you know, that he was critical of a statement by the President in which, if I recall correctly, there was a proposal by candidate Trump to, I guess, turn Ukraine -- Crimea back over to -- or I guess grant -- maybe this is a better way of putting it, grant Crimea to Russia.

Q  Is it unusual for a sitting U.S. Ambassador to be critical of a candidate in a major U.S. election?

A  I don't know if it's unusual, I think it's ill-advised, frankly, because it's part of this whole idea of interfering in domestic matters of a foreign state. It just seems ill-advised because you don't know how the election is going to turn out, certainly, in a free and fair election. And you're undercutting your ability to be able to engage with that particular leader.

Q  Okay. So if the President was aware of that op-ed he might feel like there's at least one element of the official Ukrainian Government that's not supportive of him?

A  It seems reasonable.

Q  Are you familiar with a Minister of Internal Affairs named Arsen Avakov?

A  I am.

Q  And what you do know about Mr. Avakov?

A  He is a key power player in Ukraine. He's a survivor. He's managed to -- when other ministers -- this is a clean slate with Zelensky's government, a clean slate in terms of, you know, parliamentarians from his party, a clean state with regard to ministers, he's managed to survive because of the power that he's managed to concentrate in his control cover to Ministry of the Interior and interior troops, as well as actually paramilitary forces.

Q  And he’s one of the unusual Ukrainian officials that was able to stay on after the Poroshenko election?

A  True.

Q  Are you aware of any negative comments Minister Avakov said about the President, then candidate Trump?

A  I'm not aware.

Q  Okay. You know, it’s been on Twitter, he said some negative things, called the candidate a clown. Are you familiar with that?

A  I have become aware through reporting of that, but I wasn't aware at the time or this kind of history, frankly.

Q  I think there was a Facebook post where he used the terminology, you know, misfit, in regard to then candidate Trump. Is that something that you might also lump in the category that you said with Ambassador Chaly was ill-advised?

A  I would definitely lump it into that category, yes.

Q  Okay. So, you know, from President Trump's perspective, he's got a very powerful minister, a very influential minister, a very influential Ambassador, probably the most influential of all the Ambassadors in Ukraine, the one to the U.S., right?

A  Right.

Q  Those were two key people who were against his candidacy?

A  So -- yes.

Q  What do you know about the Ukrainian parliamentarian Serhiy Leshchenko?

A  I know that he was a reporter -- an investigative reporter before he joined President Poroshenko's party and became a parliamentarian.

Q  Are you aware of his role in revealing facts relating to the Paul Manafort matter?

A  I became aware of those facts, again, as this narrative unfolded. I became aware of, I guess, how should I put this -- I don't know if I would call him authoritative, but I guess I was aware of the fact that this was in the reporting stream, that he played a role in it.

Q  That he played a role in publicizing --

A  I would also say that when I inquired about Mr. Leshchenko, I received generally positive assessments of him. That he was a reformer, patriot, attempting to advance Ukrainian interests. So, I mean, these are broad characterizations, but I can't focus on every single personality, and I use these from authoritative sources to determine, you know, who are the relative factors and how they might fit into the, I guess, landscape.

Q  Okay. But you're aware that Leshchenko had a role in publicizing Manafort's Ukraine dealings, right?

A  Yes.

Q  And as candidate Trump is progressing during 2016, that is certainly another element that might give him pause with the Ukrainian Government establishment?

A  I could see that. I guess, frankly, I' m a Russia expert and, you know, what a couple of actors in Ukraine might do in order to tip the scales in one direction or another is very different -- and I'm not categorizing anything about how the outcome, I'm talking about -- I'm deeply aware of what the Russians did to interfere in U.S. elections, and we're talking about a completely different scale of interference.

Q  I'm not trying to make comparisons, I'm just trying to walk through, you know, these elements that might give rise to the President of having concerns about, you know, certain elements of the Ukrainian Government?

A  Okay.

Q  So you can understand that the President might rightly have these concerns?

A  The reason I'm having a hard time with this questioning is., the Russians did far more interference.

Q  Just separating from the Russians.

A  Yeah. Yeah.

Q  You know, we got Chaly, the Ambassador to the U.S., we got Avakov, we got Leshchenko.

A  Okay.

Q  You know, all government officials all doing outward activities to try to, you know, advocate for the defeat, at least, of then candidate Trump.

A  Okay.

Q  So you can understand why the President might -- the now President might have some concerns about elements of the Ukrainian Government as being against him in 2016?

A  Yeah, I think it's speculation, but I think those are reasonable conclusions.

Q  Okay. When you got the read-out of the 5/23 meeting from Volker, Sondland, Kupperman, what was the word communicated from the briefing party about how the President felt about Ukraine?

A  He had negative views.

Q  Okay. And what were those negative views about?

A  He had negative views about corruption.

Q  Did he also have negative views that they were out to get him?

A  I believe so, yes.

Q  Okay. Are you familiar with words redacted                                     , she’s an Ukrainian American. She's been involved with the Democratic National Committee?

A  Just from press reporting.

Q  So you never met words redacted                          ?

A  Not as far as I know.

Q  Okay. And do you know anything about her efforts to work with the embassy to promote, you know, negative narratives about then candidate Trump?

A  I guess I'm assuming that you're talking about the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington?

Q  Yes.

A  I don't know anything about her efforts, just what is in the press reporting.

Q  Okay.

A  But, you know, I think it's also appropriate to see -- some of this might go into -- I don't know if I can get into some of this. In looking into, you know, where some of these narratives emerged, it's unclear whether these are in fact fake news or substantive, and what other parties may have been advancing of these narratives.

Q  Okay. Well, we know Chaly wrote the op-ed, right?

A  Right.

Q  We know Avakov had a number of social media posts?

A  Yes, we do know --

Q  So we know Leshchenko had a role in publishing and publicizing the Manafort role in Black Ledgers, right?

A  I believe so.

Q  None of that is fake news?

A  I don't think so. I guess I'm not familiar with all the facts, but I think that's accurate, yes.

Q  Okay. So the fake news component would be the words redacted                          involvement with the Ukrainian Embassy in the U.S?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. Do you know somebody by the name of words redacted                                      ?

A  The name doesn't ring a bell.

Q  Okay. You mentioned -- we were sort of kicking through the roster of Ukrainian officials that you deal with on a regular basis, and you mentioned Ambassador Chaly at the time, he's since been recalled. Do you have communications with the new Ambassador?

A  So there's no new Ambassador. There's a Charge d'affaires, and that's the name --

Q  Andriy (ph)--

A  Andriy (ph). I can't -- I know the guy, I met with him a few times. I just -- the name -- his last names escapes me at the moment.

Q  No problem. And then Oksana Shulyar?

A  Yes.

Q  Is she still the Deputy Chief of Mission?

A  The last report I heard is that she might not be.

Q  Okay. Who do you communicate currently on a day-to-day basis?

A  Well, I don't -- I guess it wouldn't be day-to-day basis, but probably a weekly basis I communicate with the DCM, so that was previously Oksana and now it's Andriy (ph).

Q  Okay. Any other Ukrainian officials?

A  No, not on a regular basis. Those are the more common folks.

Q  Okay. And about the issues in play that we're discussing here such as the call and some of the Volker, Sondland, Rudy Giuliani matters. Have you had any other discussions with Ukrainian officials that you haven't described outside of official delegations and so forth?

A  Outside of -- I’m just actually thinking about whether there are even official delegations. Outside of official delegations, Ukrainians, I don't recall having any of these kinds of conversations.

Q  Okay. So you don't have telephone calls or emails specifically with, you know, any other Ukrainian officials that you haven't identified?

A  No.

Q  Okay. You don't have any?

A  Not to my knowledge, no.

Q  You don't have any back channels with Yermak or one of Yermak's assistants or anything of that sort?

A  No.

Q  Or any other official close to Zelensky?

A  No. The only official that, you know, I had a somewhat closer relationship, but again, it's just during his official visits would be Oleksandr Danylyuk.

Q  Okay. And do you maintain regular communications with any other Ukrainians that are not part of the government?

A  No.

Q  So there's not outside advisors to the President that aren't officially part of the government that you connect with?

A  No.

Q  Okay. Do you know if President Zelensky has any outside advisors that not part of the government that help him govern?

A  I don't know --

MR. VOLKOV: In the Ukraine or -

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  In the Ukraine.

A  Nobody that -- I guess, I don't know what advisors you might have, but there is nobody I talked to.

Q  That's the question.

A  Yeah.

Q  The hesitancy on the part of the National Security Council to set up the July call --

A  Uh-huh.

Q  Could you just walk us through what the concern was prior to the call?

A  I think it was -- the best that I understand, it was Ambassador Bolton, you know, Fiona and I probably also had some concerns about how the narrative was developing and that there was inherent risk in trying -- in terms of trying to organize a call.

And we were comfortable in certain ways that there was broad interagency consensus on the direction for Ukraine, how we need to work with Ukraine to advance U.S. national security interests, and that we probably -- there's a lot we can accomplish just in that channel. And there was potentially risks that -- the rapport that President Zelensky was trying to build, the ability to obtain a meeting, and develop a close bilateral relationship wasn't going to come to fruition.

Q  Okay.

A  So I think I could speak about that, but I understand that through -- from Ambassador Bolton to Dr. Hill, there were some similar type of concerns from Ambassador Bolton.

Q  And as we understand it, there may have been a concern to postpone such a call until after the parliamentary elections. Is that consistent with your understanding?

A  So there had been a push -- I mean, this was billed as a congratulatory call, so it was going to be on the heels of the parliamentary election -- maybe I'm misunderstanding your question because you --

Q  Was there an effort to try to get the call scheduled by some factions prior to July 25th from Volker or Sondland or --

A  Yes. So this is the idea of assisting President Zelensky with strengthening his position, moving into elections, again, reform, agenda, anticorruption, and his hand could be strengthened if he has this kind of engagement with the President.

Or frankly, or if they were able to pin down a date for a White House meeting. So that was the -- that was the idea, yeah.

Q  Okay. I understand.

A  And those folks were pushing for that.

MR. CASTOR: Okay. Mr. Ratcliffe needs some time here.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Colonel Vindman, I want to get clarification on the issue of security assistance because I'm not sure if I heard different things or not.

Ambassador Taylor, in response to questioning from me, stated his belief that Ukrainians first became aware of a possible hold on security assistance after the August 29th Politico article.

I wasn't in here when Mr. Castor asked you a question about that, and he related that he thought you believed that they knew earlier sometime in mid-August, but then I heard questioning from Mr. Goldman that I was here present for where you talked about light inquiries and Ukrainians saying to you, had I heard anything. I'm just trying to pin down. I'm not trying to trap you or trick you. I want to hear from you when you believe, based on personal knowledge, you believe the Ukrainians were first aware of the hold on military aid?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes, Congressman. So to the best of my knowledge, the Ukrainians, first of all, are in general pretty sophisticated, they have their network of, you know, Ukrainian interest groups and so forth. They have bipartisan support in Congress. And certainly there are -- it was no secret, at least within government and official channels, that security assistance was on hold. And to the best of my recollection, I believe there were some of these light inquiries in the mid-August timeframe.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: About security assistance. But this didn't become a big issue until --

MR. RATCLIFFE: But here's what I wanted clarification on that because I want to go back to the discussion that you and I had earlier about your opinion that there was a demand by President Trump to President Zelensky during that July 25th phone call to investigate a U.S. citizen.

And I just wanted to be clear, is it fair then that when you related that opinion that the withholding of military aid was clearly not part of the demand during that July 25th phone call?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I don't think the Ukrainians were aware of it. So my understanding is this was all about getting the bilateral meeting.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Terrific. Thank you. One other thing I wanted to make sure -- I heard some testimony when I came in about Fiona Hill telling you that you might be confused with an individual named Kash Patel, and that Kash Patel had been misrepresenting himself as a Ukraine director. Did I hear that accurately?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes, Congressman. I will tell you that this whole episode was odd. I didn't, you know, this was a complete total revelation to me because when I showed up, you know, happy as a clam coming back from the Presidential delegation, and we had the meeting in the Oval Office, we thought it was an opportunity to kind of reboot the relationship, have a positive next step and develop a relationship.

So all of this that Dr. Hill relayed to me was something that I had not heard of before. I had, you know, this was kind of like -- what are you talking about? I didn't understand it.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. And I understand -- I understand that a little bit better now. And I'm really trying to ask you about what Dr. Hill told you specifically. I'm trying to understand --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Sure.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Misrepresenting himself as a Ukraine director to who?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: You know, I don't know. I think that the concern was that the President would believe that somebody that was representing himself as the Ukraine director that wasn't me, was meeting with him. Is that maybe a little bit difficult.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Yeah, it sounds like you and I are both not read into this completely. I'm just trying to make sure I understand what Dr. Hill related to you, and you've fully explained that, I think, as much as you can recall?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I'm sorry, Congressman.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Yeah, I'm just asking. Have you fully related to me the details about what Dr. Hill said to you about Kash Patel as much as you can recall?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I think so. I think so. And, frankly, he seems to be in high regard, he's been since promoted to senior director. At the time I knew him as a director.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay. And did you have any follow-up conversations with anyone about that?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: No.

MR. RATCLIFFE: Okay.

THE CHAIRMAN: The time of the gentleman has expired.

MR. RATCLIFFE: I yield back.

THE CHAIRMAN: Why don't we take a 5 or 10 minute break and then we'll resume.

[Recess.]

THE CHAIRMAN: All right. Let's go back on the record.

I just have a few questions and then I'm going to hand it off to my colleagues.

The minority counsel asked you questions about the President's -- asked your views or speculation about the President's thoughts on things vis-à-vis Ukraine, and I think you were asked at one point about whether the President felt that Ukrainians were out to get him.

President Zelensky isn't out to get President Trump, is he?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: In my view, he is not.

THE CHAIRMAN: In fact, President Zelensky wants to have a good relationship with President Trump, doesn't he?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And in the first phone call between the two leaders made every effort to establish a good relationship with President Trump?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes, and even in the second phone call he attempted to be very engaging and witty and humorous to try to build a relationship with him.

THE CHAIRMAN: And that was one of the hopes of the State Department and the National Security Council was that the two leaders would form a good relationship. Am I right?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That is correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: You mentioned, and I don't want to get into anything classified here, but in the context of my colleagues on the minority asking you about these false narratives, you mentioned other parties have an interest in the advancing of false narratives. Is it fair to say that one of those other parties interested in advancing a false narrative about Ukraine is Russia?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Absolutely.

THE CHAIRMAN: And Russia has a vigorous, as we saw in 2016, a vigorous information operation capability, do they not?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Chairman, if I may, the Russians are in a state of war, and they will do everything they can to achieve their objectives, vis-à-vis Ukraine, which is, first of all, fracturing the relationship with the United States, as their biggest supporter, and then., therefore., increasing their influence and pulling Ukraine back into their orbit.

THE CHAIRMAN: And so it would serve Russian interests if false narratives were promulgated that would drive the President of the United States away from Ukraine?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That is correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: In terms of -- let me ask you a couple things.

From the perspective of Russia, are there many issues, many neighbors, of as great a significance to Russia as Ukraine?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: No. The single most important neighborhood Russia has is -- correction, from the former Soviet Union, China is obviously a critical neighbor, and they have to walk a fine line in their relationship with China. They're trying to balance with China against U.S. power and U.S. influence. But in terms of reestablishing Russia as a preeminent power, I think, frankly, paraphrasing Zbigniew Brzezinski, Russia with Ukraine is a power, Russia without Ukraine is a regional player.

THE CHAIRMAN: So the Russians have a paramount interest then in advancing false narratives through social media, throughout outside influencers through any means that they can to drive a wedge between the President of the United States and the Nation of Ukraine?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: They do have that interest, yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And without getting into any specifics, have you seen Russian information operations in fact employed for that purpose?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, you mentioned that during mid-August you started to get light inquiries from Ukraine from the embassy about the aid. Was there a problem with the aid? Was there a hold up with the aid? Is that right.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That is accurate.

THE CHAIRMAN: And that Ukraine is very sophisticated, they know how the Congress works, they know how the appropriation process works, and at some point in August they had reason to be concerned with the status of this vital military assistance?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That is accurate. Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, let me turn to the July 25th phone call between the two Presidents. In that call, the foreign military financing, the two aid packages, were not explicitly brought up, but the Ukraine President did bring up a form of military support, that is the javelins, right?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: The Ukrainian President did bring that up, correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And it was immediately thereafter that the President asked Zelensky for the favor?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That is the correct sequence, yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And it was certainly true by late July that the President understood that the aid to Ukraine had been suspended and withheld. At that point the President was aware because the President had a role in halting that assistance. Is that right?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Could you say that one more time, Mr. Chairman?

THE CHAIRMAN: At the time of the July 25th call, the President, one of those two parties would have been aware of the formal hold placed on the Ukraine funding because it was placed by the President through OMB?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And if that hold persisted, the President would know eventually Ukraine was going to find out about that?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That seems like a reasonable conclusion, Mr. Chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, the President asked for favors of the President of Ukraine. What does it mean to a foreign leader when the President of the United States asks them for a favor?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So I characterize it in my statement, and I stand by, it was a demand that the Ukrainians deliver these investigations in order to get what they have been looking for, which is the presidential meeting.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. I'm going to yield to -- why don't we go down the line, if members have questions. Representative Sewell.

MS. SEWELL: No.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Representative Swalwell.

MR. SWALWELL: Thank you, Chairman. And, Lieutenant Colonel, thank you for your service to our country and for being a part of today's proceedings. I want you to take us into the Situation Room on Duly 25 of this year, and tell me about the President's tone on the call. Can you describe that, because you can't get a sense of that from the call record?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So, Congressman, I don't have an enormous amount of experience I guess, you know, listening to these types of private conversations. So I can't say how consistent it is or -- what I can say is that the tone was significantly different between the first phone call, the congratulatory call on the April 21st, and second phone call on July 25th.

MR. SWALWELL: Well, let me ask you about this about tone. Would you agree that with President Trump, it is obvious to the listener when he is reading, as opposed to when he is speaking with his own words? Do you understand the question?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes, I do understand the question. I think -- yes, it seems that you can tell when he's reading versus when he's speaking in his own voice.

MR. SWALWELL: And on that July 25 call, were you able to interpret whether he was reading from a prepared statement or talking points, or whether you judged he was using his own words?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: This is my own opinion, and it's really -- you know, I'm not sure how valuable it is, but I think he was using his own voice.

MR. SWALWELL: That May congratulatory letter that you referenced, do you know if President Trump actually saw that letter?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: He signed it so he would have seen it.

MR. SWALWELL: When you say he signed it, did you see him sign it?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I did not.

MR. SWALWELL: Is it the practice of the White House to use auto pen? Do you know what that is?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes, I do. I was told that he had signed it.

MR. SWALWELL: Okay. Who told you that he had signed it?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I was just thinking through. It was relayed through our front office, referred to as upper suite that he had signed it, but, I mean, I 'm not sure if that -- and I believe I recall something to the extent of, you know, changes -- the additional line was put into the letter about the meeting, and he signed it. I recall something to that extent.

MR. SWALWELL: In your interactions with your Ukrainian counterparts, did they ever convey to you what our assistance means to them as far as life and death?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: They did not.

MR. SWALWELL: Well, what did you understand our assistance means to them as far as just life and death in places like Donbas and other places where the Russians have invaded?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Sure, Congressman. I mentioned this morning that the amount of aid that the U.S. provides and the kind of U.S. aid the U.S. provides is vital to Ukraine. It amounts to some 10 percent of their military expenditures roughly. And that amounts to, frankly a significant portion of actually their GDP.

U.S. aid would amount to a fairly significant portion of their GDP. And in order to undertake even the basic things like reforms, developing the kinds of skills that they need to more effectively defend themselves against Russian aggression, it was critical. And it's also important to realize that this ongoing war also has relatively frequent flare-ups. You know, some of them are along the line of contact, others are more relevant. The November 25th attack outside the Kerch Strait was considered a fairly significant escalation. And some of the assistance that was being provided was specifically to address critical shortfalls from maritime security, one of their weakest areas. If they had been spending a lot of resources to develop their land forces and so forth, this was an area that they desperately needed some assistance. So it was significant.

MR. SWALWELL: Today you talked about and used words about sense of duty and being a patriot, but also following the chain of command. As a military officer, are you obliged to carry out what you would perceive as an unlawful order?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I am not.

MR. SWALWELL: And, finally, why are you here today? Others from the White House and the administration have defied lawful subpoenas, but here you sit in your uniform.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So I' d say at the most basic level, I maintain that my actions of reporting through the chain of command, expressing my concerns to leadership, were appropriate, were in accordance with my training, were frankly my duty, and it's also out of respect, frankly, for this body of Congress, which is a coequal branch of government.

I was subpoenaed to appear here. You know, absent a subpoena, I would believe I was operating under the President's guidance to not appear, but I was subpoenaed and I presented myself.

MR. SWALWELL: Thank you. Chairman, I yield back.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Quigley.

MR. QUIGLEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Colonel, thank you for your service. I hope that respect you mentioned isn't diminished too much. You were on the call and you have transcript in front of you. Five times in that transcript Mr. Giuliani's name is mentioned in an extraordinary way as the person the President seems to think is going to carry out his wishes here.

Before this time, and you only mentioned him briefly, you must have been curious about his role and what he was doing, and obviously, after this, what he was doing. Did anyone at any time every tell you what his role was? What he was doing as sort of a parallel government? Or did the Ukrainians ever ask you or tell you what they thought?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: The Ukrainians were certainly seeking to understand whether Mr. Giuliani had an official role, and if he was in an official role that would imply, you know, formal requests for assistance.

So I think they were looking for some clarity on that. I think also up until the call there were concerns about Mr. Giuliani and how he could be -- as a key influencer, could be undermining the consensus policy. But, frankly, up until that call, you know, in certain regards he was acting as a private citizen advancing his own interests to a certain extent. It wasn't until that call that it became, that he was pulled into kind of an official role.

MR. QUIGLEY: But at no time before then did anyone in State or in the military or anyone in the administration advise you, Mr. Giuliani is going to be working here, he's going to be doing A, B, or C?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: No.

MR. QUIGLEY: When you're done today, you're going back to Ukraine, correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yeah.

MR. QUIGLEY: I mean, back to your functions in Ukraine, I apologize.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I appreciate the clarification.

MR. QUIGLEY: I meant back to the Ukraine functions.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: As I said --

MR. QUIGLEY: I'm sure you'd still be welcome there.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, as I said, I believe I have something to contribute to advance U.S. national security interests. And I'm not sure if they're realistic, but I'm hopeful that I can continue to serve my Nation, serve the White House and advance our interests.

MR. VOLKOV: Just for the record, he is -- and he's quite modest, he was accepted into the War College beginning in July of next year. So his detail continues at the White House, supposedly, until July, and then after that he goes to the War College.

MR. QUIGLEY: So next July.

MR. VOLKOV: Next July.

MR. QUIGLEY: He's he going to continue to work on -- your understanding, you're going to continue to work on Ukraine issues?

MR. VOLKOV: I expect it -- I expect he'll continue his job.

MR. QUIGLEY: And that has gone on, correct?

MR. VOLKOV: Correct.

MR. QUIGLEY: You've continued to maintain your function on Ukraine?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I am. And to be completely accurate, Ukraine amounts to a portion of my portfolio. I'm also responsible for other elements of national security. I'm responsible for Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, the Caucasus states, and --

MR. QUIGLEY: Finally, so --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: And Russia.

MR. QUIGLEY: In your responsibilities involving Ukraine, you're continuing to communicate with Ukrainians?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: If I needed to, yes, I would -- I wouldn't feel incumbered to communicate with the Ukrainians if there was a reason to do that for --

MR. QUIGLEY: Well, have you still communicated with them?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I have, yes.

MR. QUIGLEY: Okay. And can you -- has their attitude changed toward us?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I perceive that -- I perceive that that our relationship is damaged. I think as this process wears on, I think the relationship will continue to be damaged and undercut. It undercuts U.S. resolve to support Ukraine and certainly puts a question into their mind whether they, in fact, have U.S. support.

MR. QUIGLEY: A trust issue.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yeah, it's a trust issue, and we are their most important ally. So this is not -- this is not helpful in terms of advancing U.S. national security interests.

MR. QUIGLEY: Thanks again for your service.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Malinowski.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Thank you. And thank you, Colonel, for your service and your patriotism. My mother brought me to the United States from Poland in the 1970s, and I ended up serving on the NSC staff myself, and here I am in Congress. I feel a very special kinship with you, and I want to thank you for being here.

MR. VOLKOV: Does that mean he has to run for Congress after this?

MR. MALINOWSKI: Yes. Just not in New Jersey, Seventh District, any time soon.

So I wanted to explore with you this theme of alleged Ukrainian interference in 2016, which has come up and was brought up by some of my Republican colleagues, and kind of take a couple of different pieces of it.

One of those pieces we actually have heard now, I think, in nine straight depositions, and that is this allegation concerning an op-ed that Ukrainian Ambassador Chaly published in August of 2016. And every single time this has been brought up, it has been presented to us as if somehow Ambassador Chaly condemned President Trump personally, interfered in our election, took sides in our election. We haven't actually looked at the op-ed and I've got it here and I’m going to pass it to you in a moment and ask that it be entered into the record. But let me just read a couple of details.

First of all, this was a response to a statement that -- yeah, if you could put it in the record. Do you have it there? Okay. Good.

MR. VOLKOV: I have it here. Is that okay?

MR. GOLDMAN: Go ahead.

[Majority Exhibit No. 2 Was marked for identification.]

MR. MALINOWSKI: This was a response to a statement that President Trump had made in an interview with George Stephanopoulos (ph) in which Stephanopoulos (ph) about reports that he might recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea, to which candidate Trump responded: I mean going to take a look at it. And he added: The people of Crimea, from what I've heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were, and you have to look at that also.

In your judgment as a Ukraine expert, does it surprise you that the Ukrainian Government was concerned about that statement and might have wished to express themselves?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: No, it doesn't surprise me, Congressman. In fact, I don't believe that the population in Crimea was interested. The popularity of the pro-Russian party in Ukraine was somewhere on the order of 4 -- less than 5 percent. Other than that, there was just like the eastern portions of Ukraine, there was a heavy Russian speaking population, the minority ethnic Crimean Tatar population certainly didn't support it, and they're right now being opposed daily by the Russians.

And, in fact, I would say that except for a couple of areas, Sevestapol, which is the Black Sea fleet headquarters, which is heavily Russian with Russian retirees, I don't think that's accurate that the population was interested in --

MR. MALINOWSKI: Understood. Now, looking at the Ambassador's op-ed, if you look at the third paragraph on the first page. I'm just pointing to the places where he comments on candidate Trump. He wrote: Even if these comments are only speculative and do not really reflect a future foreign policy, they call for appeasement of an aggressor and support the violation of a sovereign country's territorial integrity.

Does it surprise you that a Ukrainian ambassador would state that view?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, it would not.

MR. MALINOWSKI: It's actually consistent with the U.S. Government's view under the Trump administration in addition to under the previous administration?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That is correct.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Is that correct? And I think the only other reference --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: But, Congressman, I understand that sometimes when politicians run for office, what they say when they're campaigning is not the same thing that --

MR. MALINOWSKI: Thankfully, yes, in this case.

MR. VOLKOV: He gets immunity. He gets immunity everybody. He gets immunity.

MR. MALINOWSKI: No, I applaud that. And I think the only other reference to then candidate Trump comes at the very end of the op-ed, I guess on page 3. He doesn't actually mention Trump by name, he just refers to these comments after talking about what Ukraine stands for. He writes: Neglecting or trading the cause of a Nation inspired by those values cemented by Americans in their fight for independence in civil rights would send a wrong message to the people of Ukraine and many others in the world who look to the U.S. to be a beacon of freedom and democracy.

Do you see this as interference in the U.S. election as we've currently come to understand that term?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I don't think so. To me it seems like a policy dispute, and he was -- just looking at what we have here, he's respectfully disagreeing with, I guess, a particular candidate.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Kind of as if, you know, imagine now a hypothetical that somebody was running for President of Ukraine or Russia or France, and said that if they won they might recognize that California is part of Mexico because the United States stole it, and that they would, if elected, not recognize U.S. sovereignty over one of our States. Would it be strange for a U.S. Ambassador posted in that country to say, well, we might have a problem with that?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: It would not.

MR. MALINOWSKI: So that's the op-ed. There are a couple of other examples that my Republican colleagues mentioned of alleged Ukrainian interference in 2016. There was a Facebook post by Ukrainian official that referenced candidate Trump in very insulting terms, and I think you agreed that that was inappropriate, as I think all of us would.

But would a Facebook post calling somebody a clown constitute election interference, as we've currently come to understand that term? I think you compared it to Russian interference.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So in my relatively deep understanding of election interference, these are not open public displays. This is a much, much deeper insidious effort to undermine a foreign country's elections, falsify those elections, redirect those elections, completely different.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Understood. And then the third example related to --

MR. SWALWELL: Can you clarify when you say these, which country are you speaking about?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Russian interference in U.S. elections.

MR. SWALWELL: Thank you.

MR. MALINOWSKI: The third example that we heard related to a Ukrainian anticorruption activist and parliamentarian who reportedly publicized some evidence against Paul Manafort. Are you aware that Paul Manafort was prosecuted by the Justice Department and convicted for acts of corruption related to his activities in Ukraine?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes, Congressman.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Is it inappropriate for a Ukrainian anticorruption activist to publicize evidence of corruption by someone who we end up prosecuting successfully?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I don't think so. And Mr. Leshchenko was also a -- prior to joining government he was an investigative journalist, so it seemed to be consistent with his professional background.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Investigated many people, this is just one case. Would this constitute election interference as we currently come to understand that term?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: In my view, I don't think it would.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Okay. So I guess this comes back to the ultimate question, which is that if these are the complaints, would it be appropriate for the U.S. Government, anybody speaking for the U.S. Government, to ask the Government of Ukraine to investigate this op-ed and its author, a social media post and its author, and an anticorruption campaigner who revealed information about Mr. Manafort for interfering in our elections?

I mean, investigate suggests using their prosecutorial powers to potentially criminally investigate people for these three actions. Does that strike you as appropriate? Would it be appropriate?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I don't think it's appropriate, and I also, as my statement, I think it speaks for itself, I have deep concerns over -- or I had concerns over the call to investigate -- a call to a foreign power to investigate a U.S. citizen.

MR. MALINOWSKI: A U.S. citizen, right, which is a separate thing, which in this case -- okay.

And then, finally, imagine that President Trump came to you -- you're his, in effect, chief advisor on Ukraine, and said to you, you know, we really need to take on this issue of corruption in Ukraine. It's a huge problem in that country. Presumably you would welcome that sort of interest from the President of the United States?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Definitely. And that was in fact in the talking points that were provided to reinforce efforts to root out corruption.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Understood. And if the President were to ask you, Colonel, give me your list, steps that the Ukrainian Government should be asked to take to root out corruption in their country, what would be the highlights of your list? How would you respond to that question?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Sure. So, I guess, at a top of the list would be to reduce -- significantly reduce the influence of the oligarchs, it's a form of state capture where the oligarchs, a relatively small group of folks, have the bulk of control, political elites would not operate in accordance with the rule of law and target to extract rents or extract wealth, would target businesses, and target oppositions.

I mean, frankly, Congressman, there are a lot of problems all the way up. Everything from petty graft and the police collecting bribes, all the way out to institutional corruption. So there are a lot of things that need to happen. And, frankly, there are a lot of good templates for the Ukrainians to follow. The Poles, the Georgians have been successful in eliminating some of the more rampant forms of corruption.

So there are a lot of things we can do to help the Ukrainians. There are a number of programs and some of the funding that -- you know, there are a number of programs that are there to support efforts to end corruption.

MR. MALINOWSKI: I take it that --

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Malinowski, if I could just interrupt because I have to head to the floor. When you're concluded with the questions --

MR. MALINOWSKI: I mean, I'm basically done, so I'm happy to yield.

THE CHAIRMAN: Oh, I was just going to recognize because they have been able to be present for most of the day, Mr. Espaillat next, Mr. Cicilline to follow, and then Mr. Welch and Mr. Allred.

MR. ESPAILLAT: Thank you, Chairman. Colonel, is this your first time on the Hill? Have you ever had the experience to come to the Hill or advise us or testify?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, I've had the privilege of being up at the Hill once before, as I recall, in that case I was providing expert assessments of the way we were spending some funds in support of European deterrence, European reassurance and so forth. It was with a number of staffers.

[5:05 p.m.]

MR. ESPAILLAT: But you weren't advised or encouraged back then not to show up here, correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: No. Maybe to a lack of judgment.

MR. ESPAILLAT: But you were -- were you encouraged, advised, or told not to come here?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So, frankly, nobody approached me directly in my chain of command at the White House or other and told me to not come here, come here, or anything. The only, frankly, guidance I had on this was, you know, the letter that the White House counsel proffered about not cooperating and, you know, the instruction that I received from this -- these committees per subpoena.

MR. ESPAILLAT: So that letter instructed you not to come, but you felt compelled to be here before Congress, correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I appear here, Congressman, pursuant to a subpoena.

MR. ESPAILLAT: Okay. Now, Ambassador Sondland was here before, and his testimony and his statement, on several occasions, he spoke about corruption, as you have, spoke about corruption in the Ukraine and that he felt that there were many companies in the Ukraine that were very corrupt.

Is that your view as well? Are there many companies in the Ukraine that are corrupt?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes.

MR. ESPAILLAT: So it's not just Burisma that's corrupt or practices corruption, but there are many others that are involved in that type of corruption. Is that correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That is very true, although that is improving under President Zelensky, and they are targeting certain areas to improve their business environment.

MR. ESPAILLAT: We're wrestling with the potential that perhaps Burisma was cherry-picked because the former Vice President's son was on their board. However, Ambassador Sondland stated that it wasn't until very late that he didn't know that Hunter Biden was part of the board of Burisma.

Do you know if Ambassador Sondland knew that Hunter Biden was a board member of Burisma?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, I do not know what Congressman -- or what Ambassador Sondland knew about Burisma.

MR. ESPAILLAT: Do you know if he expressed particular interest in that particular company being investigated?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I learned of this during the July 10th post-meeting, what I referred to as the Danylyuk bilateral meeting and then the post-meeting.

MR. ESPAILLAT: And when you became aware of these irregular practices and you went before your superiors to complain or make them aware that you felt uncomfortable about these irregular practices, who did you speak to exactly?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, I'm not sure if you mean during the course of my military career, or do you mean specifically with regards to Ukraine and my service to the --

MR. ESPAILLAT: No, I mean following the July 10th meeting, right, leading up to the July 25th call, did you express concern to anybody besides the lead counsel at the NSC?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I had conversation -- so through the, for official purposes, official chain of command, certainly the lead counsel, and then, frankly, my brother as the lead ethics official, and also my identical twin brother, although little brother, I also discussed it with him.

MR. ESPAILLAT: Have you ever felt compelled in the past to complain about any other interaction to any other --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: At the NSC, I have not. But I have also learned during the course of my career that I have been encouraged to speak up if I had concerns in general. I distinctly recall a -- in my previous position on the Joint Staff -- a general officer telling me that I have good instincts and, you know, to exercise judgment, but feel free to express your concerns.

MR. ESPAILLAT: So this was the first time that you ever did that at the NSC?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: At the NSC, the first time I took my concerns to I guess --

MR. ESPAILLAT: A superior.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: -- a superior would have been -- I mean, to be clear, I talked to Dr. Hill on a regular basis. I think we, all along, as this kind of influencer narrative was developing, we had discussed what we were seeing and., you know, tried to figure out what the best way to navigate this minefield was.

But in terms of like concrete items that I felt like I needed to talk to an authority figure or, you know, the lead legal official, that would have been the July -- following the July 10 meeting.

MR. ESPAILLAT: Thank you so much, Colonel. Thank you for your service.

I yield.

MR. SWALWELL: [Presiding.] The gentleman from Rhode Island is recognized.

MR. CICILLINE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, thank you for your extraordinary service to our country and for your patriotism and for your testimony today.

I want to just focus for a moment on the context in which the phone call was made and the state of affairs between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States.

You described in your early testimony that the Ukrainians believed that they were at war with the Russians. Was that an accurate assessment by the Ukrainians?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That is an accurate assessment.

MR. CICILLINE: In fact, they had stolen part of their country,

and they were continuing to kill Ukrainians in the eastern part of the country, correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That is correct. The Ukrainians have suffered over 13,000 killed.

MR. CICILLINE: And would you just -- you're familiar, of course, with the Russian military capability, generally?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes.

MR. CICILLINE: And you are very familiar with Ukrainian military capability?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I am very familiar with both the Russian and the Ukrainian military capability.

MR. CICILLINE: And how would you compare the two in July 2019?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: The Ukrainians are significantly more capable of defending themselves against the Russians -- that's, you know, that's a general assessment -- than they were at any other point in their history. And much of that is the result of the partnership with the U.S. and with other allies to help the Ukrainians develop interoperability and develop a capable force.

In terms of pure military disparity, the Russians are -- remain a much more capable military, and if they applied all their resources, they could crush the Ukrainian military.

MR. CICILLINE: And when you say the Ukrainians are more capable in that period of time than previously, how much of that is a result of U.S. military assistance?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: A significant portion of it, just because the United States has provided -- has, in fact, been the largest provider of military assistance, providing over $1.5 billion in military assistance. The training, partnership training has been significant. And, to be fair, our allies also have contributed measurable -- made measurable contributions to help the Ukrainians.

MR. CICILLINE: So that would have only intensified the power, the leverage of withholding military assistance from the United States at the same time the President was requesting a favor from the new Ukrainian President.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: The Ukrainians need U.S. military assistance. I agree that the Ukrainians need it, and they would feel pressured to ensure that they received U.S. military assistance.

MR. CICILLINE: And, finally, Lieutenant Colonel, you heard a series of questions from Mr. Castor about specific things that were done by individuals, one a Facebook post, one an op-ed, and one I think a Twitter criticism. I think you've already said those don't constitute, in your mind, election interference in the way we've come to understand that, correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Correct.

MR. CICILLINE: And does knowing about any of those three things in any way change the judgment or the conclusions you came to when you listened in on the telephone call and concluded that what you heard the President do was wrong, improper, troubling and disturbing?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I stand by what I said in my statement. I was concerned and felt it warranted report -- it warranted me communicating my concerns to chain of command.

MR. CICILLINE: And you made the ethical and moral judgment, based on your oath of office, your training, to report your concerns to the NSC lead counsel. Is that correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Correct.

MR. CICILLINE: The Nation thanks you for that. And I yield back.

MR. SWALWELL: The gentleman from Vermont.

MR. WELCH: Thank you very much.

MR. SWALWELL: Can you use the microphone, Mr. Welch?

MR. WELCH: Thank you very much. I want to direct your attention to your statement when you're writing about the call. In it, in your third paragraph, this is page 5: I was concerned by the call. I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen.

You chose the word "demand," and I'd ask you to elaborate on why it is you chose that word.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I didn't maybe -- I didn't parse I guess the terminology all that clearly. I was, frankly, trying to get ready for this testimony and wanted to best articulate my views.

And, in total, looking at the transcript, that I saw it as this is a deliverable, this is what was required in order to get the meeting that the Ukrainians had been aggressively pushing for, had been trying to coordinate.

MR. WELCH: Then I understand you've been asked about this, so I won't continue on that. You were asked by Mr. Swalwell that you discerned I think an energetic tone in the President in this call that indicated this was his expression of what he wanted, not something he was just reading. Is that correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, I guess I'm not sure if this could be -- if I could say that in a definitive manner. What I could say is the tone in the call on the 21st of April was very positive, in my assessment. The call, the tone of the call on July 25th was not. It was -- it was -- I'm struggling for the words, but it was not a positive call. It was dour. If I think about it some more, I could probably come up with some other adjectives, but it was just -- the difference between the calls was apparent.

MR. WELCH: You were listening in real time to this call along with President Zelensky when President Trump was speaking?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Correct.

MR. WELCH: And was there any doubt in your mind as to what the President, our President, was asking for as a deliverable?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: There was no doubt.

MR. WELCH: Thank you.

I yield back.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Welch.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Colonel Vindman, you said earlier in this round, I think, that the July 25th call was the first time that you had -- you were aware that the President had specifically invoked Rudy Giuliani's name in the July 25th call. Is that right?

A  I think that's right, yes.

Q  But you were aware, obviously, before then from Mr.

Giuliani's own public statements about what he wanted Ukraine to do, correct?

A  That is correct.

Q  And you were aware that two of the things that he wanted Ukraine to do after the Ambassador was removed, which was a third, was to investigate Joe Biden, Hunter Biden and Burisma, and then also investigate the 2016 election, right?

A  That is correct.

Q  So, when the President specifically referenced the Bidens and matters related to the 2016 election, that was very consistent with what Rudy Giuliani had been pushing to that point, correct?

A  That is correct.

Q  And so, even though you don't -- you were not present for conversations between Rudy Giuliani and President Trump, the request by President Trump on July 15th mirrored Rudy Giuliani's public statements on those two issues, right?

A  Yes. July 25th, yes.

Q  Sorry, that is correct. Okay.

And just to be clear, because I think there have been some aspersions cast about open source reporting or media reporting, when you were observing what was going on with Ukraine and in particular with Rudy Giuliani, you were observing Mr. Giuliani's own statements, correct?

A  Correct.

Q  Through the media?

A  Correct.

Q  So this is not some sort of media spin thing. This is Rudy Giuliani saying these things himself?

A  Correct.

MR. GOLDMAN: I think our time is up, and we will yield to the minority unless you need a break.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I think we're okay.

MR. GOLDMAN: You're okay? Forty-five minutes to Mr. Castor.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  When I was asking you some of these questions about Ukrainians making their opinions known publicly that they did not support candidate Trump, I just want to be clear that it's reasonable, don't you think, that the President was aware that some of these key Ukrainian players were -- you know, had expressed negative attitudes towards him?

A  Counsel, I think that it is fair. And certainly, the influencers that we discussed here multiple times were feeding into that narrative.

Q  So, even after the election was over, you know, whether you want to argue if that amounts to interference or interference of a significant degree, I think we know where certain folks come out on that question, but the President had a negative view of Ukrainian -- of some Ukrainian Government officials for those reasons, correct?

A  That is correct.

Q  And that made it difficult to reboot this relationship?

A  That is correct.

Q  Okay. In the call record, this morning you identified one or two, I think it was two --

A  Yes.

Q  -- potential tweaks that you would have --

A  Right.

Q  -- you would have made or maybe you tried to make and didn't make it into the final version.

A  Sure.

Q  Were there any political appointees that you think intentionally overrode your edits, or do you think it was more of just in the normal course of things that it just didn't make its way in?

A  So I do not think there was malicious intent or anything of that nature to cover anything up. I don't know definitively, but I don't think that's the case. And I think, in general, the people I work with try to do the right thing.

Q  Okay. So, at the top of page 4, "if you can look into it," and then there's the ellipse, and you added that you suggested there are recordings --

A  Yes.

Q  -- of the misdeeds. I mean, I think the President was talking about Doe -- you know, the Vice President, former Vice President Biden had made sort of a swashbuckling speech about what he told the Ukrainians, you know, relating to Prosecutor General Shokin.

A  I think you're referring to the same thing that the President was referring to, yes.

Q  Okay. So that's the video he's referring to, the account former Vice President Biden has given about --

A  Sure. I take it at face value, yes.

Q  Okay. And then the only other tweak was the company to

Burisma, that phrase?

A  Yes. That's the only notable -- I mean, that's really the only notable one. There are a couple of other things, but yes.

Q  Okay. But you don't think there was any malicious intent to specifically not add those edits?

A  I don't think so.

Q  Okay. So, otherwise, this record is complete and I think you used the term "very accurate"?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. So, if we're trying to understand what happened on the call, this certainly is a very accurate record?

A  Correct.

Q  And you were on the call, so --

A  Yes.

Q  -- you're a good person to say that.

There's been some discussion a couple different -- at a couple different points today about whether, you know, when the President used the terminology "I'd like you to do us a favor" constitutes a demand. And, in your mind, it did.

A  That's -- I continue to stand by what I said in the statement.

It's just like when a superior talks to me and tells me he would like me to do something. I take that as, you know, an order.

Q  Okay.

A  So maybe that's as a result of my background, but I -- you know, it wasn't like, hey -- it didn't strike me as there was no cost associated with choosing not to fulfill that deliverable.

Q  You know, as this transcript has been hotly picked over, can you understand that there might be other people that read this, whether it's supporters of the President or neutral parties, which there may not be a lot, you know, might come to the conclusion that the terminology and the utterances of the President on page 3 and then again on page 4 did not constitute a demand?

A  I think there are many people with many different views, and some people certainly do believe that it may not have. The reason I stick to my assertion is because I've watched this unfold over the course of months. Initially, just, you know, again, influencers in more remote -- more remote influencers in the form of Lutsenko and reporters, then Mr. Giuliani, then more significant influencers. And it really all culminated in this July 25th phone call.

Q  The President in the transcript uses some, you know, words of hedging from time to time. You know, on page 3, he says, "whatever you can do." He ends the first paragraph on page 3, "if that's possible." At the top of page 4, "if you could speak to him, that would be great." "So whatever you can do." Again, at the top of page 4, "if you can look into it."

You know, is it reasonable to conclude that those words of hedging for some might, you know, lead people to conclude that the President wasn't trying to be demanding here?

A  I think people want to hear, you know, what they have as already preconceived notions. I'd also maybe point your attention to "whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it if that's possible."

Q  "If that's possible."

A  Yeah. So I guess you can interpret it in different ways.

Q  Okay. With the introduction of the Justice Department component to the call, is it conceivable that the President was, you know, referring the Ukrainians to Attorney General Barr for purposes of, you know, the MLATs or the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act?

A  Certainly, yes.

Q  And if he was trying to do that, would that have been an appropriate avenue to evaluate these issues?

A  I think the -- that would very well significantly change the entire transcript if his attorney, personal attorney that was pedaling this alternative narrative and these investigations, wasn't in it and this was an official -- you know, this was a request through official channels, I think that would completely kind of change the whole nature of the conversation.

Q  We --

A  I think it would, frankly, still be troubling that, you know, the President called a foreign power to investigate a U.S. citizen, but I think, you know, it certainly wouldn't be the same thing as his personal attorney that had been peddling this other alternative narrative.

Q  I mean, it was a U.S. citizen sitting on a board of a company in Ukraine.

A  No, I'm referring to -- could you maybe clarify? I'm not sure what the followup there is.

Q  Do you think the President was trying to get the Ukrainian Government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden?

A  Look, Congressman -- I mean, sorry, Counsel -- I'm used to saying "Congressman." It's all in the future.

I guess, look, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see where the gain would be for the President in investigating the son of a political opponent.

Q  Okay. But he had business dealings in Ukraine. I mean, the Vice President, nobody's -- I mean, the President is not accusing the Vice President of wrongdoing, is he?

A  So, Counsel, if the son is -- and there are many -- I think it's been pointed out that there are many different corrupt entities. If the son of his chief, potentially chief, political opponent is investigated, then that does harm to his political opponent.

Q  And you're quite certain that at no time did the President mean, you know, investigate Ukrainian misdeeds related to naming Hunter Biden to the board, which would be distinct from investigating Hunter

Biden but at the same time could, if it came out in a clumsy fashion, come out as the Bidens?

A  I don’t know, Counsel. I would say that I guess I -- I don't know what was in the President's mind and if that was the intent. And, frankly, all I did was go through my chain of command and report to the lead legal counsel some concerns.

That could have been the end of it. You know, the legal counsel could have then followed up with White House legal and said, "Hey, this is -- this is the perception," or -- I'm not looking for accountability from the President, don't get me wrong. But this issue would have been addressed. But, unfortunately, that's not the way things unfolded. You know, this is now in the public space.

Q  Okay. You know, if you were to come to learn that, you know, John Eisenberg looked at the call record and he didn't have concerns, would that change anything for you, the top lawyer at the National Security Council?

A  Yeah, I think that would -- I think I, frankly, trust Mr. Eisenberg, and if he had followed up with me and said -- I mean, you know, I made my -- I guess I expressed my concerns. That was kind of the end of my actions. If he had followed up with me and said, "Hey, look, there's nothing here, this is just kind of a miscommunication," I don't think I would dismiss his views or his assessment.

Q  Okay. Were you disappointed that he didn't follow up with you?

A  No. I mean, no.

Q  And what if, like, the National Security Division officials from the Justice Department were engaged here to examine the call transcript, if they were called upon to look at this and they determined that there was no wrongdoing here, would that be influential for you?

A  So, Counsel, I'm not -- you know, my judgment is almost irrelevant here. I just made a -- I forwarded my concerns through the chain of command, and the seniors then decide what actions to take. So I guess I am not sure I understand what -- you know, what the followup would --

Q  Well, you know, if the head of the National Security Council, the top lawyer --

A  Yeah.

Q  -- if somebody, if some senior official at DOJ's National Security Division takes a look at the facts and comes back and decides that they don't see any issue here, you know, it may be inartful, but, you know, there's nothing improper or illegal, would that be influential, you know, for you to look at this through a different lens?

MR. VOLKOV: If I can, it's kind of -- it's a little bit of a difficult question. First off, he's not a lawyer. He is not -- you know, we're throwing around terms, National Security Division, DOJ. I mean, okay, so if I told him it was okay, what does that mean? He did what he did, and that's it.

MR. CASTOR: Okay, fair enough.

MR. VOLKOV: And the rest is so theoretical that it's not fair to him. He's not a lawyer. You can ask his twin brother; he's a lawyer.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Don't. I'd rather not.

MR. VOLKOV: I already got him in trouble so --

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  I guess what I'm saying, though, is if somebody -- I mean, somebody like John Eisenberg has a lot of experience with these types of things. If he takes a look at the call record and determines that there's not an issue, I mean, that's a pretty definitive authoritative person to make that conclusion, right?

A  I think that's significant. And certainly, you know, his judgment on whether it was criminal or not would be very persuasive, but I don't know if it would alleviate my kind of, you know, moral/ethical concerns.

Q  Okay. Now, did you -- after you got done communicating to Eisenberg, did you think that -- was that the end of your, you know, flagging of concerns to authorities?

A  I think that's what I had in my mind.

Q  We talked about, and I don't want to go there right here right now, but some of the other people that you raised concerns to, did you ask any of those folks to do anything with the concerns?

A  That was -- that was -- that's -- I don’t think that's an accurate characterization, Counsel. I think what I did was I fulfilled my coordination role and spoke to other national security professionals about relevant substance in the call so that they could take appropriate action. And, frankly, it's hard to -- you know, without getting into, you know, sources and methods, it's hard to kind of talk about some of these things.

Q  Okay. Did you expect any of those officials that you spoke to to take appropriate action?

MR. GOLDMAN: Can we table this? This is now delving, once again, into this area that the chairman has ruled pretty clearly on. He has stated just now that his concerns are really irrelevant. You indicated before that the reason why you're asking these questions is to see what the quality of his concerns --

MR. CASTOR: Well, that's not accurate.

MR. GOLDMAN: So let's just move on.

MR. CASTOR: Let's move on, but we would like to revisit it when the members are back.

MR. GOLDMAN: Fine.

MR. ZELDIN: Steve, can I ask something on that real quick?

MR. CASTOR: Sure.

MR. ZELDIN: All right. So something I'm stuck on. So you said your judgment is irrelevant. You said that a couple minutes ago, correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Maybe that was a poor word choice if I understand where you're going with this.

MR. ZELDIN: If you want to change it, what would you have preferred to have said?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So my judgment on next steps and how this gets adjudicated is irrelevant. I took actions based on what I thought were concerns, legitimate concerns, you know, providing those concerns to the right authorities.

MR. ZELDIN: I' m not familiar with how your chain of command works there. You're uniformed military. Your -- who's your rater? Like, who’s your supervisor in the Army?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So there's no real military supervision, per se. I have administrative control through Fort Meyer. They handle, like, leave and pay issues, whatever, administrative stuff.

I don't have a military chain of command at the National Security Council. I work -- I'm detailed over to the National Security Council, and my, you know, supervision is my senior director and the National Security Advisor.

MR. ZELDIN: Who rates you?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So that would be Dr. Hill rated me, and senior rated me.

MR. ZELDIN: When -- so you have concern. You go to the legal counsel. And then you -- is it true you told the Ukrainians not to investigate? Did I understand your testimony earlier today?

MR. VOLKOV: Wait, wait, wait. First off, there's an assumption that he told the Ukrainians not to -MR. ZELDIN: I think he testified to that earlier today.

MR. VOLKOV: No, that's a mischaracterization. That is a mischaracterization, sir. You can say what you want as to what he said, but we're going to live by the record. You're not going to make statements like that, and I'm going to object every time you do that on the record.

MR. ZELDIN: That's fine. Are you done?

MR. VOLKOV: Yeah, I'm going to be done in a second. He's not going to answer your question.

MR. ZELDIN: You don't even know what my next question is.

MR. VOLKOV: I already heard it.

MR. ZELDIN: My next one?

MR. VOLKOV: No, I heard what you said already.

MR. ZELDIN: My last one. All right.

MR. VOLKOV: I don't need to know --

MR. SWALWELL: Mr. Zeldin, ask your question.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay.

Colonel Vindman, did you have direct communication with Ukrainians about whether or not to investigate?

MR. VOLKOV: Objection. I'm going to object to that. Whether to investigate what, when, where? Be more specific.

MR. ZELDIN: Colonel Vindman, did you have any discussions with Ukrainians about whether or not to investigate regarding the 2016 election and/or Burisma and the Bidens?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I don't recall having any such conversation. So all I said to them --

MR. VOLKOV: Just answer the question, okay? Just answer the question.

MR. ZELDIN: Following the July 25th phone call, there was no conversation -- were there any conversations between you and Ukrainians with regards to investigations at all?

MR. VOLKOV: Wait a minute. I'm going to object again.

MR. SWALWELL: I imagine you're going to say it's vague.

MR. VOLKOV: No. It's, what time period are we talking about?

It's vague. I mean, you've got to ask a proper question.

MR. SWALWELL: Can you just clarify, Mr. Zeldin?

MR. ZELDIN: The time period I said was after the July 25th call.

MR. VOLKOV: No, no, no. Until when?

MR. ZELDIN: Until the present.

MR. VOLKOV: Until today?

MR. ZELDIN: Sure.

MR. VOLKOV: Okay. And can you restate the question now properly? Thank you.

MR. ZELDIN: Have you had any conversations with Ukrainians since the July 25th call with regards to investigations at all?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: The answer I'm quite certain is no. And I think this would actually clarify this. I went -- I told you I went on leave. I said to the committees I went on leave. I had one conversation with a Deputy Chief of Mission sometime I think it was around the 31st. She would not have had a readout of any of the calls, the substance of the calls, and would not -- you know, I would not go into certainly harmful content that was going to undermine their relationship.

So there was no conversation at that point, and that's immediately afterwards. And I don't recall ever having conversation about not, you know, pursuing an investigation. All I would do is I would tell them to not interfere -- not get involved in U.S. domestic politics.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  These outside influencers, do you consider Volker and Sondland outside influences, or is it just Giuliani and the media?

A  I think in certain regards, you could -- you could identify Ambassador Sondland as a bit of an outside influencer.

Q  Ambassador Volker?

A  Ambassador Volker, when he's fulfilling his role as the special -- when he was fulfilling his role as a special representative for Ukraine negotiations, he was working in concert with the interagency. And when he was engaging with Mr. Giuliani, I would say that that was -- that was not the case.

Q  How about Secretary Perry?

A  I'm not aware, frankly, of Secretary Perry taking a contrary -- a position contrary to I guess what we had discussed.

Q  Now, does any of that change if the President had asked them to do this, Secretary Perry, Sondland, or Volker?

A  Yeah, I mean, I don't think it would. I think, frankly -- let me make sure I answer this question correctly. If the President asks somebody to do something, then that's -- you know, he's the President. It' s a -- certainly, to anybody in the U.S. Government, it's -- they take that action, as long as it's legal.

Q  How many communications did you have with Volker during this time period?

A  Probably about half a dozen or so and probably more.

Q  Did Volker ever relate to you that, in his communications with the Ukrainians, the name Doe Biden never came up?

A  I don't recall. I don't recall. I know that we certainly -- there were some discussions about Giuliani and the narrative that he developed, but I don't think we necessarily -- and I said that -- I do recall telling him that I didn't think it was wise to, you know, wade into that discussion. But I, frankly, don't recall -- I'm trying to remember. There were several meetings that Ambassador Volker joined us for, and it's possible that he said something. I just -- nothing comes to mind.

Q  Okay. Are there any elements, of the 2016 sort of category or Burisma category, are there any elements of those two that could be a legitimate avenue worth pursuing or worth advocating for?

A  I think if -- I think rooting out corruption in Ukraine is in Ukrainian interests. And because of the fact that it makes the Ukrainian institution stronger, it's in the U.S. interests. So I think fighting corruption is something that we have been encouraging all along.

Q  Okay. So is it possible, though, that Volker, when he was working with the Ukrainians, he was trying to channel some of these, you know, inartful ideas into a more appropriate --

A  I think that is -- that was exactly his intent was to channel, you know, these -- these -- these efforts into something more closely aligned with the consensus policy objectives and policy efforts. I have no question that him, Ambassador Volker, Ambassador Sondland, and Secretary Perry were trying to do the right thing and build a bilateral relationship between Ukraine and the U.S.

Q  Okay. So Volker had a lot of communications with certain Ukrainian officials, like Yermak, which we --

A  Yes. He had a very large network of contacts.

Q  Yermak is pretty close with the President?

A  He -- with the Ukrainian --

Q  President Zelensky.

A  Yes, he is.

Q  So it's possible Volker was talking with Yermak and trying to target this into something less inartful than what the outside influencers were promoting?

A  I think that's -- I think that's -- that was his objective, yes.

Q  Okay. Did you ever have any communications with former U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine, John Herbst?

A  I have not infrequent but also not regular contact with Ambassador Herbst.

Q  Did you ever have any communication with Ambassador Herbst about the -- some of the issues here?

A  I did not -- I did not discuss any investigations or anything of that nature. If you could be more specific, that would be helpful. I see him relatively frequently --

Q  Okay.

A  -- during kind of, you know, work-related roundtable discussions. And when I say "relatively frequently," probably over the course of a year, you know, I probably had about half a dozen interactions with him. I've hosted him in my office. I think Fiona Hill may have met with him or at least said hello. He's a former Ambassador, and he has some interesting perspectives.

Q  Okay. Did Ambassador Herbst ever communicate to you any information he had about the call?

A  That he had about what call?

Q  The 7/25 call.

A  I am actually not aware of any -- of him having any information.

Q  So you never had any communications with him about the call, whether he initiated it or you initiated it?

A  I don't recall having any substantive conversations with him.

Q  Okay. The -- you mentioned the Orban call, and you used the term -- you know, you mentioned that there is -- you know, the National Security Council' s official position was they didn't want to facilitate that call, and there may have been, I think you used the term "leveraged capital." Do you remember saying that?

A  Yes.

Q  And the U.S. Ambassador to Hungary was trying to promote that?

A  Correct.

Q  And you mentioned Mick Mulvaney was getting involved with that?

A  My understanding -- again, I didn't -- wasn't directly involved -- is that this was organized, Ambassador Cornstein organized this through Mr. Mulvaney.

Q  Okay. Does anything with that fact pattern remind you of the Ukrainian fact pattern, where there were, you know, influencers trying to go outside of the National Security --

A  Sure.

Q  -- Council function?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. Does that happen a great deal, or are they the only two examples that you've ever heard of?

A  I don't think so. I think, frankly, one of the benefits of having political appointees that are well-connected in key locations is that they can use that influence to, you know, to bring in key leadership in order to advance U.S. national security interests.

Q  So you were comfortable with the way Ambassador Cornstein set that call up?

A  Well, I wasn't comfortable with the outcome, because I didn’t think that, frankly, the Hungarian President's position was accurate. And, certainly, if they had concerns, the Ukrainians were willing to potentially resolve those concerns in order to -- I mean, the bigger picture here is that Hungary blocks NATO-Ukraine cooperation, and, you know, not being able to resolve this issue prevents closer cooperation between Ukraine and NATO.

So that was not helpful. That's not just in my view, as the Director of Ukraine, but that was definitely not helpful in the view of my superior, Dr. Hill. And my understanding, also Ambassador Bolton didn't think that was helpful --

Q  Right. But sometimes --

A  -- to advance U.S. national interests.

Q  Sometimes the U.S. Ambassador to a country can leverage his capital to effectuate outcomes that are different than the National Security Council recommends, right?

A  Sure. But I guess the National Security Council's consensus view tends to be the best, most informed judgment across, you know, across the U.S. Government. I think there have, in fact, been, you know, other Ambassadors that have advanced U.S. policy interests. You just happened to point out, you know, a couple that I don't think advanced U.S. policy interests.

Q  I want to turn your attention to the May 29th letter from President Trump to Zelensky. Do you know if that letter was -- a draft of the letter was shown to the President during the 5/23 briefing?

A  My understanding is that it was, but I don't know for certain.

Q  And the initial draft, was that prepared by you?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. And did you hear anybody relate to you how the President evaluated that letter or what he thought about the letter?

A  He signed it ultimately, but initially he didn't. And, you know, I guess what was relayed to me is that -- I was also getting ready to do travel, so I wasn't able to kind of follow this all the way through. I just knew that when I was getting ready to board the aircraft for Ukraine, that the letter wasn't signed and that I had kind of got -- I learned that he wasn't potentially going to sign it or something.

Q  Okay. Do you know if anybody added edits to it from the version that you prepared?

A  I think there were -- so in -- from the version I prepared, it went through staffing. I think I'm guessing my -- Fiona Hill had some edits. People --

Q  Any of the outside influencers?

A  I -- so I know, in the final version that was produced, Ambassador Sondland, in concert with Chief of Staff Mulvaney, added a line inviting the Ukrainian President to Washington for a bilateral meeting, which is, of course, helpful.

Q  Okay. So that was the only edit that you're aware of added by Ambassador Sondland?

A  I think so. That's -- I do recall looking at the various versions and noting that that was the only thing that was -- that seemed to be added.

Q  And did you ever have any communications with Dr. Hill about what happened with the letter?

A  There were some -- we did try to figure out -- because by the time this letter went out, it was way past when we thought we would need it. We still, obviously, thought it was very useful for Ambassador Taylor to deliver it when he showed up, but we thought that the letter had actually gone away. And then, eventually, we learned that the letter was signed, and then we tried to get our hands on the letter to make sure it was distributed to the Ukrainians.

Q  Did you ever hear that the President, you know, ripped up the letter at one point?

A  No. No, I hadn't heard that.

Q  This issue with Mr. Patel, is it possible there was just a misunderstanding?

A  All I know is what was relayed to me by Dr. Hill. So, I mean, I don't really know that much, I don't think.

Q  Like did you ever come into a set of information, you know, indicating that Mr. Patel had been representing himself as a Ukraine director on the National Security Council?

A  Outside of what Dr. Hill relayed to me, I had no other basis on which to make that assessment. That was a single I guess data point. But I'm not sure where -- she's also -- you know, frankly, in my view, she's a credible person. I know her, and I'm not sure how she came by that.

Q  Okay. But that was just one little episode, right?

A  That's right.

Q  Okay. And, to your knowledge, Mr. Patel didn't join the meeting?

A  Not as far as I know.

Q  Okay. But at the time, when you were instructed not to go, you thought maybe he would be in the meeting and --

A  I didn't -- I didn't necessarily think that, because it was clear to me that Dr. Kupperman was going to represent the National Security Council. And, you know, I don't know all of the way -- all the factors to influence the decision, but I do know what Dr. Hill told me is she had this conversation with the National Security Advisor, Ambassador Bolton, and that's what they settled on.

Q  Turning your attention back to the July 25th call, you said that you went and you spoke to Eisenberg. How many other officials at the NSC did you have communications with about the call, other than the Eisenberg meeting that you already --

A  On the 25 July call?

Q  Yeah.

MR. VOLKOV: Just to clarify, you mean at the meeting with Eisenberg, were there other people there or --

MR. CASTOR: After the meeting with Eisenberg.

MR. VOLKOV: Oh, after the meeting, okay.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  How many other discussions did you have with officials about the call where you related your concerns?

MR. VOLKOV: By "officials," you mean NSC officials?

MR. CASTOR: The officials that he's related to us here today.

A  Right. So --

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  I' m just trying to get at, like, how many communications were there?

A  So --

Q  Are we talking 1 or 5 or 10?

A  No, definitely not 10 and maybe not even 5. I -- you know, I pulled my brother into this meeting with me, and it's -- I don't recall, but it's quite possible I would have made sure that, you know, John Erath, Deputy -- I hate bringing his name in here because he really is not involved, but he's probably --

THE CHAIRMAN: Can I just caution again not to go into names of people affiliated with the IC in any way.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I understand, Chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So within -- that's within the National Security Council. And then -- so I didn't really talk to --

MR. CASTOR: And, like, you can say person number one if we don't want to identify people, or person number two.

MR. VOLKOV: Well, wait a minute. We're just talking about national security people. You're talking about NSC?

MR. CASTOR: No, I'm getting back to officials, the --

MR. VOLKOV: Oh, you want to join the issue. Okay, well, we might as well join this issue right now, because we're not going --

MR. CASTOR: Can we evaluate the questions that I'm asking and --

MR. VOLKOV: I mean, you can start the questions, and then we're going to ask the chair to rule, but that's fine if you want to start the questions. They're not going to be answered until we get a ruling from the chair.

THE CHAIRMAN: If the witness has any concern that it may lead to the revelation of the identity of the whistleblower, the witness should feel free to decline to respond to the question.

MR. VOLKOV: Can I just clarify one thing? He doesn't -- my client does not know who the whistleblower is, so --

VOICE: We got that in the statement.

MR. VOLKOV: And out of an abundance of caution, we came here to make sure -- we don't know all the information that you have. We have no idea.

And my concern is, as a former Federal prosecutor, I'm not going to out confidential informants, okay? There's plenty of reason that everybody can do what they got to do, but my client is not going to be engaged in that.

MR. JORDAN: Mr. Chairman, can I have just a clarification. Are you objecting to the witness answering the questions from our side, and particularly the ones Mr. Castor has posed throughout the day, based on a classified concern or just the whistleblower concern?

THE CHAIRMAN: No. My concern is over not jeopardizing the life of the whistleblower. And, of course, there are --

MR. JORDAN: It's nothing to do with classification?

THE CHAIRMAN: It's not an issue of classified information. It's an issue of where the questions appear to be leaded, which is to, by process of elimination, identify --

MR. JORDAN: That's your conclusion, Mr. Chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN: You know, unfortunately, there is a good-faith basis for that concern.

MR. JORDAN: Mr. Chairman, if I could, just for the record here, we just got a resolution that I think is going to be voted on on Thursday, and it says at some point in that resolution, whatever winds up happening here is going to go to the Judiciary Committee. They are going to want to call witnesses at some point.

We would like to give them some help in who they want to call. One of the things you do to determine that is ask the who, what, when, where, why questions of whatever witnesses you allow us to have in here. And all we've been asking is, who did Colonel Vindman talk to after important events that happened this past July? That's all we're asking.

And you're saying you're not going to let him answer, not based on any classification concern, solely because you have some concern that we're trying to get to the whistleblower, which isn't the case. We're trying to get to a list of witnesses that we think will be helpful at some point if, in fact, this goes to the Judiciary Committee.

THE CHAIRMAN: I've made my ruling.

MR. MEADOWS: Mr. Chairman, a point of order then. As you know, the rules require that the only reason for a witness to not actually answer a question is one of privilege under the joint deposition.

And so I would respectfully appeal the ruling of the chair, and, as required by the rules, I'm required to give written notice of that appeal. And so I want to, for the record, submit that objection and ask that the committee certainly resolve this issue by a vote, as the rules dictate.

But I can say, since the witness does not know who the whistleblower is, just mentioning names could not possibly out the whistleblower. But, regardless, I would say the rules are very specific. I would appeal the ruling of the chair, and I'll give this to the Clerk as well as to the chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN: And I would just say, Mr. Meadows, that what you've said -- and it's certainly not intentional -- I don't believe is accurate for the reason that the witness' counsel mentioned, which is it' s not just about what this witness knows. It's what we cumulatively know from the interview of other witnesses. And that's what may allow the outing of the whistleblower, the testimony of other witnesses and the process of deduction and elimination.

And, you know, I would love to have you make a statement, Mr. Meadows, of your support for the ability of the whistleblower to remain anonymous so that we do not discourage other whistleblowers from coming forward. I would love to have you acknowledge that there have been threats made to this whistleblower and that Members should make every effort not to identify the whistleblower. I would love to hear my colleagues express their support for whistleblowers overall. I haven't heard any of that.

What I do hear are questions which -- you know, pardon me for being skeptical -- appear designed to meet the President's goal of outing the whistleblower, and that does concern me greatly. And the witness and the witness' counsel have made it clear they have no interest in being party to that. And I don't have any interest in our proceeding being party to the outing of the whistleblower. But I will consult with my staff.

MR. MEADOWS: With your Parliamentarian.

Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, I mean, there are times when we wish the rules said something different than they actually do. In this case, the rules are very clear -- you can ask your counsel -- that the only exception is one granted of privilege, and that's not being invoked here. And so that's why I respectfully appeal the ruling of the chair.

MR. JORDAN: Colonel Vindman, the question from Counsel Castor is real simple: How many individuals did you talk to after the July 25th call after your meeting with Mr. Eisenberg, and how many times did you talk to them? So that's what we’re looking for, how many people and how many times?

MR. CASTOR: So person one, two, three, four -- just let me finish and then -- person one, two, three, four, or person one, and then communication one, two, three, four. Was it one person, one communication?

MR. VOLKOV: Yeah, and we'll object to that. He's already testified as to one conversation that he did have, which was with the -- Mr. Kent, okay, from the State Department.

MR. CASTOR: Okay. So --

MR. VOLKOV: Wait a minute. That’s one person. What I'm not going to be a party to is we're not going to be a party to any information that can be used to out a whistleblower.

MR. CASTOR: How would it be used to out a whistleblower to say, "I spoke with a person unidentified"?

MR. VOLKOV: The test is, would the information tend to provide identification evidence?

MR. CASTOR: Okay. Can we go one question at a time? How many people are there?

MR. VOLKOV: I'm just telling you I'm not going to go through that.

MR. CASTOR: So we can't even say there's only one person?

MR. VOLKOV: Look, he came here. He came here. He tells you he's not the whistleblower, okay? He says he feels uncomfortable about it. Try and respect his feelings at this point.

VOICE: We're uncomfortable impeaching the President.

MR. VOLKOV: Excuse me, excuse me. If you want to debate it, we can debate it, but what I'm telling you right now is you have to protect the identity of a whistleblower. I get that there may be political overtones. You guys go do what you got to do, but do not put this man in the middle of it.

MR. CASTOR: So how does it out anyone by saying that he had one other conversation than the one he had with George Kent?

MR. VOLKOV: Okay. What I'm telling you right now is we're not going to answer that question. If the chair wants to hold him in contempt for protecting a whistleblower, God be with you. And you guys can go run out there and talk to the press about it and have a great time, but I'm telling you right --

MR. CASTOR: You know, none of us is having a great time.

MR. VOLKOV: Well, look, what I'm telling you is I've never seen either party ever try to out a whistleblower in the same concerted way that is going on in here. It's not going to happen.

MR. CASTOR: We're just trying to find out if it's one person or five people.

MR. VOLKOV: Look, I was a prosecutor for 25 years, sir, okay? I handled confidential informants. I handled very risky situations. What these questions are designed to do, you've already -- you don't need this. You don't need to go down this. And, look, you guys can -- if you want to ask, you can ask -- you can ask questions about his conversation with Mr. Kent. That's it. We're not answering any others.

MR. ZELDIN: The only conversation that we can speak to Colonel Vindman about is his conversation with Ambassador Kent?

MR. VOLKOV: Correct, and you've already asked him questions about it.

MR. ZELDIN: And any other conversation that he had with absolutely anyone else is off limits?

MR. VOLKOV: No. He's told you about his conversations with people in the National Security Council. What you're asking him to do is to talk about conversations outside the National Security Council. And he’s not going to do that. I know where you're going.

MR. ZELDIN: No, actually, you don't.

MR. VOLKOV: Oh, yes, sir.

MR. ZELDIN: No, you really don't.

MR. VOLKOV: You know what? I know what you're going to say. I already know what you're going to do, okay? And I don't want to hear the FOX News questions, okay? Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.

MR. ZELDIN: Listen, this transcript is going to be out at some point, okay?

MR. VOLKOV: I hope so.

MR. ZELDIN: Just for the record so that you understand, Counselor, that the question that Mr. Castor is asking is with zero desire whatsoever to get information to out the whistleblower. Do you understand?

MR. VOLKOV: That's not true. I don't believe you.

MS. SEWELL: The chairman has ruled. Respect the counsel he's paying for on his own dime. The chairman has ruled.

THE CHAIRMAN: The gentleman will suspend. Let's suspend. Counsel has made his position clear. I think his client has made his position clear. Let's move on.

Time has expired. Let's take a break.

MR. ZELDIN: We just spent 8 minutes debating that.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, that was your choice. That was your choice.

MR. ZELDIN: We spent 8 minutes on a filibuster.

THE CHAIRMAN: We will take a 5-minute recess, and then we will resume.

[Recess.]

[6:21 p.m.]

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Let's go back on the record. I recognize Mr. Noble for 45 minutes.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Colonel Vindman, after the July 25th call, am I correct that Mr. Eisenberg instructed you not to talk to others about the call?

A  After the July 25th phone call, he initially did not. The point at which he advised me not to talk to anybody else was after --

Q  Could you move the mike?

A  Sorry. You know, I think we're going to stray into areas that are -- that the chairman has already ruled on actually.

MR. VOLKOV: Well, let me state it this way, and I could proffer what he would say. What he would say is that --

MR. NOBLE: Can you speak into the mike?

MR. VOLKOV: Oh, I'm sorry. That there was a time when Mr. Eisenberg came to him, asked him who he had talked to, and then he told him, do not talk to anybody else.

MR. NOBLE: Okay.

MR. VOLKOV: Okay? And that was the end of all their communication.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Okay. And your notebook that you reference that you said contains classified information, that's the notebook that you used to take notes about the call?

A  That's the notebook I used to take notes about everything, all my meetings, you know, all my day-to-day activities.

Q  But you don't consider your notes about the call or what you've conveyed here to be classified, correct?

A  No, not about the call. But I would just, again, say that this book is -- I'm almost at the end of it, and it's filled with all my contacts, all sorts of different levels of classification, all sorts of sensitive materials.

Q  Okay. In the days following the July 25th phone call, can you explain or describe what the reaction of others at the National Security Council were, kind of --

A  Yeah. So it was -- I may have mentioned earlier, it was an extremely busy week. We went from a -- for me -- from a PCC on the 23rd to the phone call on the 25th to a deputies small group on the 26th. --

I basically -- after I provided my concerns to Mr. Eisenberg, I moved on and continued on trying to work on this issue of, you know, building consensus, assessing the impacts of, you know, the cessation of security assistance, and working through the process and through the chain of command to inform senior leaders so they could make a decision on this.

Q  Okay. And I believe, sticking with the July 25th call, in response to some questioning from our Republican colleagues, you had said something about, if President Trump were to ask about an MLAT assistance, that that might be appropriate. Is that what you said?

A  I guess, I think the question was something closer to, am I aware of what an MLAT is? And I said yes. And then I'm trying to remember, I guess, exactly what I said. You know, I took the actions I did. I explained, I guess, those actions in the statement. Everything else about if this had happened, if that had happened is, you know, hypothetical and speculative. So I guess I'm not sure --

Q  Fair enough. But on the MLAT issue, you said you are familiar with MLATs, right?

A  Yes.

Q  What does MLAT stand for?

A  So multilateral -- now you're going to put me --

Q  I'm sorry. Mutual legal assistance treaty. Is that correct?

A  Yeah, mutual legal assistance treaty. So the context that this had come up, again, during the course of my normal activities and in an effort to assist the Ukrainians with corruption, we were discussing, you know, the exchange of, you know, between the legal counsels, exchange of information to help, I guess, resolve some ongoing issues, either pending legal action against oligarchs or just, in general, cooperation between -- bilateral cooperation.

Q  So is it your understanding that an MLAT is used by the Department of Justice to request evidence that may be located abroad, foreign witnesses, or documentary evidence, electronic evidence for use in U.S. criminal prosecutions and investigations?

A  Right. And then the same thing in reverse for the foreign power to ask for the same types of materials for investigation, yes, sir.

Q  That might exist here in the United States --

A  Correct.

Q  -- that the U.S. could provide to the foreign country --

A  Correct.

Q  -- to assist in their own foreign criminal investigation or prosecution?

A  That might be about as much as I know about MLATs.

Q  Okay. To your knowledge, was there any MLAT request, official DO: MLAT request relating to the 2016 election interference by Ukraine or Burisma or Hunter Biden or former Vice President Biden at the time of the July 25th call?

A  I'm not aware of any such requests.

Q  Okay. Now, you said you went on vacation sometime after the July 25th call. What were the dates of your vacation?

A  From the 3rd -- it was supposed to be through, I think, the 16th or so. I came back a little bit early because there was a lot of things going on, so --

Q  Okay. So are you aware on August 2nd that Rudy Giuliani met with Andrey Yermak in Madrid?

A  I was not aware at the time, no. I learned about it afterwards.

Q  How did you learn?

A  I'm not sure if it was initially press reporting or -- I'm just trying to think if maybe I heard of it from -- Mr. Volker would be the only other person that I think -- Ambassador Volker would be the only other person that logically I may have learned it from., but probably press reporting., I think. I don't know for certain. I apologize.

Q  Do you recall any meetings or discussions with Ambassador Bolton where Giuliani was discussed and particularly his activities in Ukraine?

A  I know of such conversations only as they were relayed to me from Dr. Hill who had such -- at least a conversation. I'm not sure if there were more.

Q  Okay. But you didn't have any one-on-one or group discussions --

A  No.

Q  -- where Ambassador Bolton was present and Giuliani came up?

A  No.

Q  Okay. Were you aware that, around the time that you were on vacation, Ambassador Sondland and Volker were working with Andrey Yermak on a possible statement that President Zelensky was going to release announcing the Burisma and 2016 election interference investigations?

A  I don't think I learned of that until actually, you know, Ambassador Volker's testimony and the release of his text messages, WhatsApp text messages.

Q  So you had no contemporaneous knowledge?

A  No.

Q  Okay. Are you aware of whether any Department of Defense official may have communicated to a Ukrainian Government official on or about August 6th about the freeze of U.S. assistance to Ukraine?

A  I'm not. So I'm just trying to think of -- yeah, I'm not aware. I don't recall anything of that nature.

Q  Okay. Are you aware that the statement that Ambassador Volker and Sondland were working with Andrey Yermak on that was supposed to include Burisma and 2016 elections was ultimately not issued by the Ukrainians? Did you ever see a statement like that?

A  No. I learned of all this, you know, after the whistleblower report and after I think Ambassador Volker gave testimony.

Q  And was there ever any discussion about the Ukrainians not issuing the statement around the time, I believe you said it was August 16th, that the President rejected your recommendation that the assistance be reinstated?

A  I have no knowledge of these events.

Q  Okay. Are you aware of conversations that Tim Morrison had with Ambassador Taylor and Ambassador Sondland, you know, the last couple weeks of August relating to the freeze and the potential White House meeting for President Zelensky?

A  I'm not.

Q  Okay. So Mr. Morrison never looped you into those calls?

A  He didn't.

Q  Okay. So you're not aware of an August 22nd call that Morrison had with Ambassador Taylor?

A  I don't recall being -- I don't recall participating in that call, no. I guess, I mean, there were still times that I was communicating with Ambassador Taylor, but not on this topic, I guess. So there are other relevant issues that we were handling. I don't recall this particular call, but I was still in communication at times with Ambassador Taylor.

Q  Did you ever communicate with Ambassador Taylor about concerns that the Ukrainians were raising about the pressure being put on them to do these investigations or announce these investigations?

A  Sure. So certainly the call on July 19th, in his account. You know, I wouldn't have thought about it, but I do recall having that conversation with Dr. Hill and Ambassador Taylor, so -- and that had to do with security assistance.

Ambassador Taylor was also a participant in sub-PCCs, PCCs, and he was voicing his concerns about how this is going to impact our Ukraine policy, bilateral objectives, and so forth. And so, in that context, yes, we had conversations about it.

Q  Later, in August, or in early September, did you ever have any conversations with Ambassador Taylor where he expressed the concern that the assistance to Ukraine was being conditioned on Ukraine announcing the investigations?

A  Counsel, I guess, I would just say that, you know, at some point in time, I was not involved. I became less involved in these conversations, and, you know, I don't think I have much insight into conversations that Mr. Morrison had with Ambassador Taylor from that -- really, frankly, from about August onward, middle to late August onward.

Q  Okay. So two questions on that, lust first, sticking to my original question, did you have any conversations with Ambassador Taylor about his concerns that the assistance was being conditioned on the investigations that you recall?

A  I guess, I'd return back to what I said just a moment ago, that there were ongoing conversations about the impact of security assistance. I guess, if the question is specifically, you know, the pressure that the Ukrainians were under to provide some sort of deliverable to release security assistance, I don't recall that kind of conversation.

Q  Okay. And then the second followup question is, why do you feel like -- I can't remember exactly the words that you used -- but that you were not as involved in these discussions after you came back from vacation in early August?

A  That would be speculation. I don't know why.

Q  Okay. So Ambassador Bolton traveled to, among other places, Kyiv on August 27th through, I believe, August 29th. Is that right?

A  One more time, please.

Q  I'm sorry, I said Taylor, but I meant Ambassador Bolton traveled to Kyiv in late August --

A  Correct.

Q  -- the 27th through the 29th?

A  Yep.

THE CHAIRMAN: I was just going to see if I could clarify, the point that you mentioned in August when you were less involved in these issues and you weren't able to speculate as to why, how was that reflected? Was it reflected in your not being invited to a meeting that others were on the topic or not being part of conversations? What gave you the impression that you were being excluded from some of those discussions you had been a party to earlier?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So, Chairman, I would say that the trip to Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus, all three countries in my portfolio, that occurred in the August timeframe, I didn't participate in. So I'm not sure why that's the case, but that's -- I don't think that's typical for a director in which there's travel to all those countries to be excluded from that travel and, you know, providing the support that's offered to the leadership at that time.

THE CHAIRMAN: And your exclusion from that trip, that took place after you went to Mr. Eisenberg to express your concerns with the July 25th call?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Answering just factually, yes. But, again, I would not want to speculate as to, you know, what the motivations were or anything of that nature.

THE CHAIRMAN: Did you ever seek an explanation for why you were not included on that trip?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I did, yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And who did you inquire with?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I inquired with the deputy senior director, John Erath, and I believe I inquired with Tim Morrison also.

THE CHAIRMAN: And what was their answer?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So I received different answers, frankly, at different times. But the answers were, you know, there ' s limited space on the plane and, you know, Mr. Morrison had it covered or something of that nature, and that's -- you know, things of that nature, but nothing -- I guess, I don't know. I'm not sure.

THE CHAIRMAN: Were there other ways in which the way you were integrated into Ukraine policy changed after talking to Mr. Eisenberg?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So I understand, Chairman, that, you know, there's a logical connection there. I don't want to be the one to draw it for you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Yeah. No, and I'm just talking chronologically.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Right.

THE CHAIRMAN: But in the August timeframe and September, were there any other ways in which you felt your responsibilities vis-à-vis Ukraine had changed?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So I would request readouts, for instance, of -- in order to be able to do my job effectively, understand kind of the latest state of play, you know, if there was a policy direction or some other element that needed action. I would ask for readouts, and I wasn't able to successfully obtain readouts of those trips.

I did eventually get information through, you know, my interagency contacts and cables that kind of read out some of these things, but it was not directly from Mr. Morrison and -- yeah.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Mr. Noble.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  On the trip that Ambassador Bolton made to Ukraine, did you help prep him for that meeting?

A  That was the reason I came back -- well, let me think through this. So that was the reason that I had come back early is to frankly put together the prep and to get ready for travel, because at the time when I thought I was -- when I was coming back, I thought I was going to be part of the trip.

MS. SEWELL: Daniel, could I ask a question?

MR. NOBLE: Sure, of course.

MS. SEWELL: Colonel, I'm Congresswoman Terri Sewell from Alabama.

How would you characterize your duties and responsibilities currently? Are they the same that they were back in May, in April, May, June, July? Like how would you characterize what you currently do? You said that, in August, you were -- trips that you would normally participate in you didn't participate in. I just want to see how you would characterize your job responsibilities and access to information and to people, you know, now.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Thank you, Congresswoman. So I have other elements in my portfolio. I have plenty of work to do there. And, frankly, there's still plenty of work to do in Ukraine on my portfolio.

I'd say that the -- if I had, in fact, felt that I was being cut out, I think the situation is somewhat normalized to a certain extent, and that, you know, I'm still able to advance U.S. interests and coordinate policy in a lot of ways. There was that period of time where, I guess, you know, where I felt I wasn't having access to all the information and not attending the things that I would typically be participating in.

MS. SEWELL: You don't feel that way now? Let me rephrase. Are there things that you would normally, typically have access to, people, documents, information that would help you best do your job as the person who, you know, basically coordinates interagency responsibilities with respect to a number of countries, including Ukraine?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Right. So I have a pretty strong network of folks that I collaborate with outside the -- I had no kind of degradation in my ability to coordinate with external folks. I think, you know, isolating it just to the NSC, there probably were some challenges in the August/September timeframe, but, like I said, now I feel like, you know, the situation is somewhat normalized.

And, also, Congresswoman, you know, I'm not sure how much of this is just the fact that there's also a natural adjustment period between a change in leadership, Dr. Hill to Tim Morrison, doing, you know, operating in different ways. So, you know, I'm not sure how much of that is unique to me versus, you know, broader.

MS. SEWELL: Thank you.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  When you were prepping Ambassador Bolton for the trip to Kyiv, did he ever express any concerns about not wanting to get involved in politics?

A  So the preparation was in the form of background papers, talking points, and I prepared all that. I did not prepare him, you know, one-on-one or anything of that nature. Yeah, I believed Tim -- Mr. Morrison -- prepared him based on the materials I provided.

Q  Verbally, you mean, had meetings with him?

A  So, again, based off experience, when I traveled with Ambassador Bolton the previous year to meet with the Russian counterparts and to Ukraine, I put together the prep, I traveled with him, and then I provided some prep to him on aircraft and things of that nature.

So I would imagine that Mr. Morrison took that role and provided that prep to the Ambassador. It was a multiday trip, lots of moving pieces, and, you know, with unique activities in each one of those three countries. So I think probably there was more than likely some sort of prep.

Q  Okay. And Mr. Morrison went on that trip with Bolton, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  Are you familiar with a cable that Ambassador Taylor sent to Secretary of State Pompeo on August 29th about concerns that he had?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. Were you on the distribution list for that?

A  Frankly, I don't recall. It's called the first-person cable that you're referring to.

Q  That's correct.

A  I don't recall whether I saw that -- at what point I saw it, but at some point, I did see the first-person cable. And, in general, I think Embassy Kyiv is quite good about collaborating, coordinating, keeping me in the loop about what's going on.

Q  And do you remember the gist of what the cable said?

A  I think it was expressing what I would characterize as a deep concern over the fact that the security assistance was being held up; it was now a public issue; and how this was going to affect our bilateral relationship and national security.

Q  Do you know what, if anything, happened to the cable at the White House?

A  I don't.

Q  Okay. Do you know if it ever made its way to the President?

A  I don't. And, frankly, you know, the fact that you asked the question that way, typically what I would do is it’s a significant event, so I would take this, package it in the form of an information memo and send it forward. I don't remember doing that in this case.

Q  Okay. Do you know if anyone else did that?

A  No, I don't think -- not that I'm aware of.

Q  So I'm going to ask you some questions about a series of events. We're trying to get through -- cover some territory, and if you don't have any knowledge about it, perfectly fine, obviously.

But Ambassador Bolton's trip to Kyiv was leading up to a meeting in Warsaw, a bilat between Vice President Pence and President Zelensky, is that right, in connection with the commemoration of World War II?

A  It was initially scheduled to be a meeting between President Zelensky and President Trump, and then that changed to Vice President Pence when the President was unable to attend because of Hurricane Dorian.

Q  And did you participate in that?

A  I participated in the preparation for it, but, again, I didn't attend the meeting.

Q  Did you help prepare Vice President Pence for the meeting?

A  I helped his -- I assisted his staff with preparing him.

Q  And which staff members prepped him?

A  That would have been Jennifer Williams.

Q  Okay. Was Keith Kellogg involved at all?

A  I'm sure -- I didn't have that interaction, but it would be logical that General Kellogg would be part of the prep, you know, with the actual senior adviser, Jennifer Williams, providing the material, the content, I guess.

Q  Do you know whether in advance of the Warsaw meeting with President Zelensky Vice President Pence had any knowledge of the favor that President Trump had asked of Zelensky during the July 25th call?

A  I do not.

Q  Okay. Do you know whether Vice President Pence was provided a copy of the July 25th call summary?

A  I do not, no.

Q  Is that something normally -- that the Vice President would normally receive?

A  I think that his staff was in the call and provided him a readout and certainly had the ability to, if that wasn't sufficient, follow up with something more detailed.

Q  And by "staff," you mean -- that was Keith Kellogg and Jennifer Williams --

A  Correct.

Q  -- who were in the Situation Room with you?

A  Yes.

Q  Did you ever have any conversations with Kellogg or Williams about them briefing Vice President Pence on the call?

A  On the meeting? Is that correct?

Q  No, on the July 25th call.

A  Oh, I did not.

Q  So you don't know one way or the other if they briefed the Vice President on the call?

A  I don't, no.

Q  Would it have been normal for the staff to brief the Vice President on a call that the President had with a foreign leader that he was about to go meet with?

A  I would -- so just in the idea that his staff participated in it, if they thought that there was something to brief him on, they would. I have no knowledge of whether they did, in fact, do that.

Q  And, I mean, just to be clear, my question was, is that something that a staff would normally do for the Vice President if he's going to meet with a foreign leader that the President has just had a telephone conversation -- or had a telephone conversation with, I guess, a month ago. But would they brief him on that?

A  I think due diligence would suggest that you provide readouts of recent, you know, key leader communications, the President's phone call.

Q  Okay. Did you get any readouts of the Vice President's meeting with President Zelensky?

A  I did.

Q  And can you describe what happened based on your knowledge from the readout?

A  So I don't -- this has not been declassified or anything of that nature, so I can't get into substance, but I can say that Jennifer Williams provided a pretty thorough readout of the conversation.

Q  So there has been some public reporting about the conversation.

A  Right, statement -- there was a statement released. And with regard to the statement, I think the -- what's in the public space is consistent with what Ms. Williams provided me in her readout.

Q  Okay. Do you know whether Ambassador Sondland had any side conversations in Warsaw with Andrey Yermak?

A  I don't -- I'm not aware of any side -- not being party to the trip, I, frankly, don't have a huge amount of insight into what activities may have occurred.

Q  Okay. Are you familiar with any conversations that Ambassador Sondland had with Ambassador Taylor around this time concerning the security assistance?

A  No.

Q  Did you ever -- no., okay.

Do you know anything about Secretary Pompeo's trip to Brussels on September 2nd where he met with Ambassador Sondland?

A  I don't.

Q  Are you familiar with any meetings that Tim Morrison had with Oleksandr Danylyuk in Warsaw?

A  Yes.

Q  What do you know about those meetings?

A  So I know the ones that -- I guess, the ones that we had scheduled or the ones that we had discussed had to do with a topic that's not been discussed in this inquiry. It had to do with basically having the -- and I think this is -- actually, this -- Ambassador Bolton did discuss this, so I think -- I guess I could comment.

At the time, we were working diligently on words redacted

words redacted                                                   , and I am aware of the fact that there were multiple conversations that Mr. Morrison was having to advance this initiative.

Q  Okay. Do you know whether Danylyuk ever asked Mr. Morrison to meet him at his hotel to discuss the frozen assistance to Ukraine?

A  I'm not.

Q  Mr. Morrison never told you about --

A  No.

Q  -- any conversation he had with Danylyuk --

A  No.

Q  -- about that? Okay.

Are you familiar with any telephone calls between Defense Secretary Esper and the Ukraine Defense Minister relating to the frozen assistance on or about September 6th?

A  I don't recall the exact date, but on or about the same time -- and I think -- let's see if this is in the public record -- so, I mean, there was a conversation between the minister -- Ukrainian Minister of Defense and Ambassador Bolton, and I think it was discussed that this Defense Minister was going to have a follow-on conversation with Secretary of Defense. That’s about as much as I know. I'm trying to remember if I even received a read -- I think I did receive a readout of it.

Q  And was the conversation concerning the frozen assistance?

A  That topic did come up, yes.

Q  Okay. Do you recall what the Ukrainian Defense Minister asked and what Ambassador Bolton said?

A  Sure. So, to the best of my recollection, Mr. Zagorodnyuk, the Minister of Defense, indicated the importance of security assistance to Ukraine, and I was looking for information on what was going on and whether that -- I guess, what he could expect with regards to security assistance.

Q  Do you know whether the President's desire for investigations came up during that call?

A  I don't believe so. From the readout, I recall it was, I think -- you know, my understanding is that it was the talking point that was being used. It was part of an ongoing review process.

Q  That was the talking point that was supposed to be used?

A  Yes.

Q  But wasn't the interagency review process over in July?

A  So, I mean, it wouldn't -- the interagency review process, I guess, if you -- I don't think the interagency review process talking point that was being offered, frankly, is consistent with what we were doing in Duly and August. What we were doing in July and August, we were looking to build interagency consensus and determine, I guess, a way to recommend the release of security assistance funding.

The talking point on security assistance being under review is when the information broke. That's when there was, you know, I guess that's when -- in the hope of eventually lifting the hold on security assistance and not harming the relationship that we have with the Ukrainians, that's the way we described it.

Q  Again, some more questions about some things that -- just testing to see what -- not testing but --

A  Sure.

Q  -- figuring out the scope of your knowledge. Are you aware of any conversations that President Trump had with Ambassador Sondland on or about September 7th, September 8th, or September 9th?

A  I'm not.

Q  Did you even get any readouts from those --

A  No.

Q  -- conversations?

A  No.

Q  Do you know whether Mr. Morrison would have known about those calls?

A  I don't know.

Q  Are you familiar with a request by President Trump for President Zelensky to do a televised interview to announce the investigations into Burisma and the 2016 election interference that was being discussed in early September?

A  Just what's come out in terms of reporting based on the activities of this inquiry.

Q  You weren't aware of that at the -- those conversations at the time?

A  No.

Q  Okay. Were you aware that the three committees, the Intelligence Committee, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight, had launched an investigation into the President and Giuliani's activities in Ukraine on September 9th?

A  Yes.

Q  How did you learn about that?

A  We received the notice through our leg affairs folks that this inquiry was being launched.

Q  Leg affairs at the White House or --

A  National Security Council.

Q  Okay. Was there discussion about that investigation at the NSC?

A  I'm trying to remember if there was a discussion. You know, maybe only in the form of like water cooler talk on the fact that this was likely going to, you know -- this might have the effect of releasing the hold.

Q  The hold on the security assistance?

A  Yes.

Q  Why?

A  Just because it was -- there was an inquiry going on, and it would be potentially politically challenging to, you know, justify that hold.

Q  Who did you have those conversations with?

A  I think, if I recall correctly, it probably would have been John Erath.

Q  John Erath?

A  Yeah.

Q  Okay. So the next day, September 10th, I believe, is when Ambassador Bolton resigned. Is that right?

A  I, frankly, don't recall the exact date, so --

Q  Are you familiar with the reasons for his resignation or --

A  There was speculation, but I don't have any kind of deep, unique insight into why.

Q  Was there discussion at the NSC for the reasons -- about the reasons?

A  Yes, there was discussion at the NSC as to why.

Q  Did you have -- did you engage in those discussions?

A  Yes. But I think, you know, it was kind of speculation. You know, this is in the public record. This is after the Camp David Taliban peace effort, so that was identified as a potential issue. I think there was speculation as to -- I'm trying to remember if there was a Syria angle to it, a disagreement on Syria.

This was also not too far after, you know, the -- Ambassador Bolton's efforts to implement a pressure campaign on Iran were, you know, not being fully implemented. And eventually I heard -- and I, frankly, don't recall from whom -- that maybe Ukraine and support for Ukraine may have been a part of it.

Q  Okay.

A  But it's, you know, those are kind of -- you know, I'm relating to you the rumors that were being discussed.

Q  Understood. And you don't have any personal knowledge based on conversations with Ambassador Bolton, for instance?

A  No. No.

Q  Okay. And then the next day, September 11th, 2 days after Congress launches the investigation, President Trump decided to lift the freeze on the Ukraine assistance, correct?

A  Correct.

Q  Did you know the reasons why President Trump decided to lift the freeze on September 11th?

A  No. I know that there was a late evening meeting. The issue was discussed, and the President decided to lift it.

Q  Okay. Did you ever get any kind of explanation for --

A  No.

Q  -- why the freeze was lifted at that --

A  No.

Q  -- particular time?

A  No.

Q  Where did that meeting take place and who participated?

A  I don't know. I think I just really received kind of the absolute wave tops, that there was a meeting on the night of September 11th, and that, you know, the decision was made to lift the hold.

Q  Okay. At that point in time, September 11th, had the administration received any new assurances from Ukraine about anticorruption efforts that they were going to undertake to satisfy the President?

A  No.

Q  To your knowledge, had the Europeans agreed to commit to any additional assistance to Ukraine at that time?

A  Not that I'm aware of.

Q  So, to your knowledge, did any of the facts on the ground change before the freeze was lifted?

A  No, not as far as I know.

Q  Okay. A couple more questions that you may or may not know the responses to. But did you have any knowledge of Secretary Pompeo's call with the Ukrainian Foreign Minister on September 17?

A  I believe I received -- I don't recall the details, but I believe I received the readout, yes.

Q  Do you recall the nature of the conversation?

A  My recollection is that this was closer to just a normal call to kind of reinforce U.S. support, to kind of alleviate residual concerns resulting from the, you know, the hold on security assistance, and kind of try to get the relationship back on track. That's my recollection.

Q  Okay. And then the next day, Vice President Pence had a call to President Zelensky?

A  Yes.

Q  Are you familiar with that call?

A  Yes, I am.

Q  And what did they discuss on that call?

A  It was the same type of kind of back to normalizing the relationship, you know. My recollection of the readout was something along the lines of, you know: We had our conversation. I spoke to the President, and, you know, security assistance has been lifted, continue to implement, you know, delivering the consistent message on reforms and anticorruption, and, you know, looking forward to working with you and so forth.

Q  So was this number of high-level U.S. contacts with high-level Ukrainian officials in such a close period of time normal, on was this part of an effort to try to restore relations after the security assistance was frozen?

A  What I can say to you. Counselor, is that we wanted to move back to a normalized relationship with Ukraine because of the inherent value of Ukraine to U.S. national security, and certainly we encouraged contact at the highest levels to reassure the Ukrainians and to continue to advance our mutual agenda and move to an absolutely normal relationship.

Q  Okay. Did you participate in the United Nations General Assembly meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky?

A  I did not.

Q  So I do want to go back to the July 25th call for just a few more questions based on testimony you provided earlier. I believe you testified that, in advance of the July 25th call, you'd prepared some talking points. Is that right?

A  Correct.

Q  And you also indicated that you drafted a press release in advance of the call?

A  Correct.

Q  That would be the American readout of the call?

A  Correct.

Q  And is that something that you would normally do in advance of a head-of-state call?

A  Absolutely.

Q  But I believe you testified that much of the press -- many of the talking points were not used by President Trump, correct?

A  Correct.

Q  And much of the press release had to be crossed out essentially?

A  Pretty much.

Q  And what did you have to cross out and why?

A  So there were the substantive -- you know, not to sound inflammatory, but there were the substantive aspects for the call. So, besides the congratulatory message that we were, you know, looking to arrange between the Presidents, there was also a returning back to some of the other relevant issues.

As I recall, there was a talking point on, you know, broader reforms, broader anticorruption efforts. I want to say that there was a talking point on this effort that we had launched to words redacted                                                                                                                      I know that certainly was, as time went on, that became a more significant element. So it was in later talking points, but I think that was also an element of it. You know, I don't recall what elements were crossed out.

Q  Okay. But the release was never put out, correct?

A  I think there was -- I believe we provided a short release on the call.

Q  Are you sure about that?

A  I believe. As I said, I believe --

Q  Where would we look for it if we wanted to find the American readout of the President's call on July 25th with President Zelensky?

A  Yeah. So it would have been on the -- that's interesting. I guess, you know, if that's the case, that would have been something that I would have missed. We had a readout. It was ready to go. We made the fine-tuning adjustments to it after the call with the expectation it was going to get released.

I don't always follow up because, you know, once it's in the pipes, it might take some time to release it, but it happens. So it's possible that it didn't happen in this case.

Q  Who normally does the release or releases it?

A  It would go through NSC press to White House press, and then it would go out through White House press channels. I think, it would be -- it should be easily google-able or something.

Q  And do you recall the sum and substance of what it said?

A  It just -- we did say that there was a congratulatory -- you know, the President conducted a congratulatory call with President Zelensky. And, you know, I guess, I don't recall, but there’s probably at least one or two other elements in there.

Q  Did it mention the Bidens?

A  No, it did not.

Q  Did it mention the server?

A  It did not. But these things wouldn't typically be in -- we wouldn’t get to that level. It would be just the top line, so, no, it wasn't.

MR. NOBLE: I believe Chairman Engel has some questions.

MR. ENGEL: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Colonel, you have to be highly qualified to serve on the NSC. Am I correct about that?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: In all cases but mine, Congressman.

MR. ENGEL: Have you received commendations and awards for your prior service?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I have, Congressman.

MR. ENGEL: Okay. Can you name them?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I'm wearing most of them. So I --

MR. ENGEL: That looks pretty good to me.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yeah. On this side would be the various unit awards that I received, service on Joint Staff, service in Moscow, service with my combat unit. On this side are my personal awards. The Purple Heart is the senior one, so it's the most recent one -- or at the top. But then you have the Joint Meritorious Service medal that I received from my time on the Joint Staff. Another Joint Meritorious Service medal from my time in Ukraine. You know, there's an Army Meritorious Service medal further back. I'm just going sequentially. And then, you know, other various awards and decorations.

But those are -- I mean, I'm not sure if that fully attests to my expertise. I guess, if anything speaks to that, it'd be the fact that I'm working on the National Security Council.

MR. ENGEL: Have you ever had your honor or integrity publicly attacked prior to your brave decision to come and testify here today?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Only by the Russians.

MR. ENGEL: Do you believe that it is because you've come forward to tell Congress the truth about how the President's conduct has threatened our national security and Ukraine's in an effort to get help in the 2020 election?

MR. VOLKOV: If I can intervene here, I'd rather he not sort of weigh in on that. I don't think it's really appropriate to ask him, you know, that type of question.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I was going to not answer anyway.

MR. VOLKOV: Well, but I just don't --

MR. ENGEL: Well, I ask these questions because I'm really just appalled by what I heard before, by what I'm told has been going on here today. I just want to thank you for your service to our country. It's quite clear from your sterling record that you've dedicated your life to protecting and advancing American interests, and your presence here today is very much in keeping with that record.

It would have been much easier for you to have stayed out of this. Your bravery in coming forward should be publicly commended by all of us in this room and by the entire country.

And as the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee with the work I've done to protect and support the men and women of the State Department, I know how much the work that keeps our country safe and advances U.S. interests is being done every day by public servants and career officials such as yourself.

So I'm just sickened to see how some are trying to discredit and retaliate against you, including some disgusting attacks in the media that accuse you of dual loyalty. Dual loyalty kind of resonates with me because I'm also a Jewish American of Ukrainian descent.

And your life story resonates to me on a personal level. And to hear that kind of baseless, xenophobic slander is downright disgraceful. It's counter to everything this country stands for, and anyone pedaling that sort of ugly attack ought to be ashamed.

And I want to also underscore for the record that I stand in full solidarity with Chairman Schiff and others in the room here today. We must and we will resist any efforts to expose the identity of the whistleblower whose urgent concern relates to the matter we're discussing today or for that matter any other whistleblower facing similar risk of retaliation. Such efforts are really shameful and irresponsible.

Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Our time has expired.

We are going to go to 45 minutes for the minority. Do you have a sense of how much longer you all have? Do you think you'll use the full 45 minutes? Just to give the witness an estimate.

MR. CASTOR: I know Mr. Zeldin and Mr. Perry have some questions.

MR. ZELDIN: I think so. Do you want to take a break?

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, I'm ready to go forward, unless the witness would like a break. I was just trying to give the witness a sense of how long we're going to be. I think we're pretty much done. We may have some followup to what you ask, but -- so the end is in sight. Forty-five minutes to the minority.

MR. CASTOR: Mr. Zeldin. I have some things too after Mr. Zeldin and Mr. Perry.

MR. ZELDIN: Colonel Vindman, I believe you testified earlier that around the middle of August you started to receive inquiries from Ukraine with regards to assistance. Is that correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That's accurate, yes.

MR. ZELDIN: Who did you hear from in Ukraine?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So the inquiry that I'd be referring to would be from the Ukrainian deputy chief of mission, the person that I' d speak to in general most often from the Ukrainian -- you know, Ukrainian side.

MR. ZELDIN: Was it just that one person who reached out to you?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: And that was around the middle of August?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: To the best of my recollection, that's correct.

MR. ZELDIN: Was that a phone call? An email? Something else?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I would typically choose not to speak on the phone, and I tried to meet with countries that I'm responsible for, you know, a short conversation or something of that nature. So the answer is it would be face to face.

MR. ZELDIN: And what did --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Although, you know, to be completely accurate, some of this would be coordinated by phone, by email, and then we would follow up with -- you know, I wouldn't get into substance until we met face to face.

MR. ZELDIN: Was there just one substantive interaction in person?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I would say that my door was always open to any of the countries in my portfolio. And while I don't recall any specific instance, there was at least one; otherwise, you know, I wouldn't be talking about it. But there could have been more than one also.

MR. ZELDIN: And what did your counterpart ask you about regarding aid?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So I think at that time, the story hadn't broken. I said it was kind of like soft queries. You know, do I have anything to say about these rumors about aid being withheld, security assistance aid being withheld.

MR. ZELDIN: Did your counterpart know that there was a hold on aid, or was he trying to find out whether there was a hold on aid?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: It probably was maybe that, and that, you know, she was -- she had heard rumors and she was trying to determine whether, in fact, this was the case.

MR. ZELDIN: When you say, "I believe it was that" --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: What you said. It would be the latter, which is that she was attempting to determine, you know, if I had anything to offer on the rumors that she's hearing, because, like I said, these were soft kind of inquiries. The news hadn't broken.

MR. ZELDIN: I believe earlier in the day you testified that you started to believe aid was conditioned on investigations in late August. Is that correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I don't think that's an entirely accurate characterization. I would say that the pressure of withholding aid, certainly after the story broke and at the national level, it was not -- it was no longer a question about it. That would apply additional pressure to obtain the deliverable.

I think that's a much more accurate way of putting it, as opposed to, you know -- because, again, at that point, the Ukrainians didn't know that there was -- that aid was being withheld. But once it became apparent it was, it was an added pressure point to obtain the deliverable.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware of any communications where the United States told Ukraine that aid would be conditioned -- that the hold on aid would only be released if these investigations -- these investigations, these specific investigations, were pursued?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, it is my belief that the message -- and, again, this is my belief -- but that the message was clear. The Ukrainians had been attempting to obtain a bilateral meeting for several months in spite of the fact that one had been offered and a couple phone calls and a letter, and they hadn't managed to obtain that.

They had a conversation on the 25th of July in which, again, going back to it the way I characterized it, the President demanded an investigation and they still haven't achieved the meeting, and now they're learning about a hold on security assistance.

So I cannot -- you know, the logic there seems inescapable that this would be their view -- and I understand the Ukrainians. I understand their, you know, their national security needs and so forth, that they would believe that this was another point of pressure.

MR. ZELDIN: And do you have any firsthand knowledge of that being communicated to Ukraine?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: No. And I'm trying to remember if there was anything that may have emerged since. Certainly Ambassador Taylor's testimony, you know, seems to draw that conclusion, but I'm not aware of anything specific.

MR. ZELDIN: Speaking of --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: But I also wasn't involved in a lot of things towards the end of August.

MR. ZELDIN: Speaking of Ambassador Taylor and the end of August, how did you know that he had sent a cable to Secretary Pompeo on August 29th?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Well, I mean, I learned about the first-person cable afterwards. Like I said, I don't recall exactly when. The normal pattern would be something as significant -- because I'm now recalling specifically another first-person cable that came from another ambassador. I packaged it and flagged it and sent it to my chain of command.

I don't recall doing that in this case. So, at some point I learned about it, but I guess it probably wasn't, you know, immediately -- you know, it wasn't for that specific date because I didn't take action to pass it forward.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you recall how you learned about the August 29th cable?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I don't recall.

MR. ZELDIN: So, just to be clear, you don't recall how or when you learned about the August 29th cable?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Certainly, you know, the -- as Ambassador Taylor's -- as kind of the leaks associated with Ambassador Taylor's testimony unfolded, I saw that cable, but I also believe I had seen it some point previously.

MR. ZELDIN: On page four of the transcript where President Zelensky says, quote, "he or she will look into the situation specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue," I believe earlier in the day you testified that as you were listening to the call you believe that President Zelensky said "Burisma"?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That is in my contemporaneous notes. That is what President Zelensky said.

MR. ZELDIN: So, if that's true, then President Zelensky knew that the Biden reference was a reference to Burisma?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That is correct.

MR. ZELDIN: And you testified earlier, I believe, that you thought it was significant that President Zelensky mentioned Burisma specifically because he wouldn't have otherwise known about the Burisma issue. Is that accurate?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Could you restate that?

MR. ZELDIN: So we've been here for several hours, so, if at any point in asking a question or if you don't remember what you testified to, feel free to --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Thank you.

MR. ZELDIN: -- just tell us whatever is on your mind. But earlier in the day, I believe you testified that you felt it was significant that President Zelensky mentioned Burisma specifically because he wouldn't have otherwise known about Burisma.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I think that's accurate. That's what I said. That's what I reported earlier.

MR. ZELDIN: And you believe that -- do you believe that President Zelensky knew about Burisma because President Trump was interested in Burisma or for some other reason?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That's speculation. It could be that, or it could be -- frankly, at this point, I'm trying to remember if -- so I wasn't party to this, but it's possible that, you know, this element was coordinated, that President Zelensky knew what he had to kind of deliver in order to get his meeting.

But, you know, frankly, when I heard Burisma, that's what went through my mind, you know. Why is he talking about Burisma? He's the President of Ukraine. You know, there was something there that I didn't really know what to attribute it to, whether it was the fact that he was prepped or that he had been following, you know, the Giuliani narrative, and that's how he knew about it. But there was something there.

[7:20 p.m.]

MR. ZELDIN: Are you familiar with the corruption case against Burisma and Zlochevsky?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I'm aware of the fact that at some point in the past there was a corruption case that wasn't active as of the time of the call, and hadn't been for an extended period of time.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware of just how many investigations have taken place by the Office of the Prosecutor General and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine against Burisma's owner, Zlochevsky?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I am not, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were numerous companies. As I mentioned, you know, in certain ways Burisma was notorious as a corrupt entity, and the oligarch responsible also.

MR. ZELDIN: Earlier you testified that significantly reducing the influence of oligarchs was connected to the anti-corruption effort in Ukraine. Is that accurate?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That is accurate.

MR. ZELDIN: But do you know why -- do you know what was being investigated in this corruption case against Burisma and Zlochevsky most recently?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So most recently would be going back some time because there was no active case against them, but I believe, if my memory serves, going back a few years, I think even as far back as, you know, 2016, there was an investigation into Burisma, and I frankly don't recall, there may have even been some sort of Hunter Biden exercise I don't recall. But we're going back a few years, and it's not something that I monitored very closely.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you familiar with the name Zlochevsky?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Not in any substantive way.

MR. ZELDIN: So you're not aware that he headed Ukraine's Ministry of Environmental Protection from June 2010 to April 2012?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: No, my background is solidly on Russia and, frankly, having a good depth of knowledge in Ukraine, that’s why they assigned me to it. But I was not following Ukraine and Ukraine internal matters closely until I arrived to the National Security Council, besides the war.

MR. ZELDIN: Earlier at today's testimony there was a reference made to a John Solomon article, and I don't want to put words in your mouth. Did you say that you believed that was a false narrative?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: And that was based on authoritative sources?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: And what were those authoritative sources?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I talked to my interagency colleagues from

State and the Intelligence Community, and asked them for some background or if there was anything substantive in this area.

MR. ZELDIN: And did they state that everything was false or did they just say that parts of it were false?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So the parts that were most problematic were claims -- I'm trying to remember now because it unfolded over two periods, March and then again in April, which resulted in Ambassador Yovanovitch being recalled. So there was an element in which Ambassador Yovanovitch proffered a no prosecute list, which frankly, based on my experience with her, seemed preposterous.

There was the claim that, you know, this ludicrous claim of the fact that she was embezzling funds, withholding some $4 million from Lutsenko and the reform funds to reform the prosecutor general's office. But really, frankly, all of this began because in the March timeframe, very close to the Presidential election. Ambassador Yovanovitch became highly critical of President Poroshenko and the justice system because one of Poroshenko's closest aides, a member of the National Security and Defense Council, his son was implicated in a corruption scandal in which they drastically inflated the cost of military goods that were then, you know, given to the cash-strapped -- that were sold to the cash-strapped Ministry of Defense for use on the front. The whole thing just was, you know, it smelled really rotten.

MR. ZELDIN: Did your sources, though, say that everything was false or just parts of it were false?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I think all the key elements were false.

MR. ZELDIN: Just so I understand what you mean when you say key elements. Are you referring to everything John Solomon stated or just some of it?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: All the elements that I just laid out for you. The criticisms of corruption were false.

MR. ZELDIN: You mentioned --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Were there more items in there, frankly, Congressman? I don't recall. I haven't looked at the article in quite some time, but you know, his grammar might have been right.

MR. ZELDIN: Were any of your -- are you saying that every substantive statement made by John Solomon was false or are you saying --

MR. NOBLE: If you want to put the article in front of him so he can review it, then do that. But he just said he doesn't remember.

MR. ZELDIN: Well, the last answer seems to indicate that everything other than -- everything substantive was false, I just wanted to clarify.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I've been a little light-hearted about 8 hours into this, so I apologize. Is this a record?

Not yet. Okay. But anyway, I apologize, Congressman. I joke around a little bit, so I apologize.

But as far as I recall, the key elements that Mr. Solomon put in that story that were again proffered by Lutsenko, a completely self-serving individual to save his own skin, and to advance the interest of the President, more than likely actually with the backing of the President of Ukraine, and extremely harmful to Ukraine's own interests, all those elements, as far as I recall, were false.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. And I don't want you to repeat any other answers, I was specifically asking about your last comment, which was funny, we all laughed. I just wanted to be clear. Are you saying that everything unrelated to grammar and commas that your sources said were false?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I think the most accurate way to do this is, I believe I thoroughly vetted this issue, and maybe the best thing to do would be to take a look at the story and we can identify if there's something in there that's accurate.

MR. ZELDIN: Were any of your sources outside of government?

MR. VOLKOV: Dust to clarify, do you mean people or the media or --

MR. ZELDIN: The reference to authoritative sources, Colonel Vindman spoke about State Department and IC, I'm just wondering if any of his authoritative sources were outside of government?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So the truly authoritative sources would be government -- governmental folks that I trust, they have a clearance, they have the depth analysis. In fact, I would use every available data point to help inform my assessments. So when I say that, I'm talking about Ukrainian language press, U.S. press, you know, discussions with foreign officials, Ukrainian or other -- I'd use all of this information to develop a clear picture of what was going on.

MR. ZELDIN: And on page 4 of the July 25th call transcript, the middle paragraph from President Zelensky. Towards the bottom of the paragraph, President Zelensky references Ambassador Yovanovitch as, quote, a bad Ambassador. Says, quote: Her attitude towards me was far from the best, that she admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as a new President well enough. End quote. Do you know what President Zelensky was basing that position on?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I don't, and I didn't necessarily sense the fact that she was resistant to President Zelensky. I think, in general, probably the broader interagency community that I kind of chaired or pulled together had a more conservative view in terms of, you know, whether President Poroshenko was going to win or whether President Zelensky was going to win. She had an established a relationship with President Poroshenko, maybe that was perceived by now President Zelensky that he didn't get adequate backing or something of that nature.

As a matter of fact, as I'm talking through this, I remember at least two occasions in which the first time she met with President Zelensky she offered a positive assessment of him. But, I mean, his perception is obviously different, but she offered a positive assessment, and then subsequently, a couple weeks later, she offered another positive assessment more so saying that he's a very quick learner, you know, inexperienced, but he's sharp.

MR. ZELDIN: Now, earlier you testified that as this process wears on, our relationship with Ukraine will be damaged. Is that accurate?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I believe so. That's my assessment.

MR. ZELDIN: When you say as this process wears on, are you referring to this impeachment inquiry?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes, Congressman.

MR. ZELDIN: Your opinion is this impeachment inquiry is damaging our relationship with Ukraine?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I think so, Congressman.

MR. ZELDIN: Where were you late 2015, early 2016, what was your position, location at the time?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So one more time, the timeframe is what?

MR. ZELDIN: Late 2015, early 2016.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So are we talking about -- so I know where I was throughout that entire period, but we're talking probably December through February of 2016, is that the period you're inquiring about?

MR. ZELDIN: Yes.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So I was assigned to the staff of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs as his Russia pol-military officer. As far as I recall -- so let's see. Is that the time -- that could have been -- that could have been supporting travel -- I would have to double check the dates, but the chairman had engagements with his counterpart, Gerasimov, and if I was out of the country, it would be for that. But I think this is might still be early on in my tenure and I was probably just in the bowels of the Pentagon somewhere.

MR. ZELDIN: Did you have Ukraine in your portfolio then?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: No.

MR. ZELDIN: When did you -- remind me, when did you take your position in charge of the Ukraine portfolio at NSC?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: July 2018.

MR. ZELDIN: And who did you take it from?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I took it from a State Department staff officer, and Congressman, to be -- just to be completely forthright, I was hired not to be -- to pick up Ukraine. I was actually hired because of my experience working Russia, putting together the Department of Defense's military strategy for Russia. That's why I was hired.

But they needed somebody to cover Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus, and I said I was willing to do that. I had, you know, I was best positioned out of the cohort of folks that were coming in with the knowledge, the background knowledge and the language to be able to step in and pick up that role. So I said I'd be happy to do that.

MR. ZELDIN: You took over the Ukraine portfolio in July 2018?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Correct.

MR. ZELDIN: And you're scheduled to have it until about July 2020?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: If things go as planned.

MR. ZELDIN: Is that a typical 2-year term?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Actually, I was initially hired for a year, and the Army wanted me to come back. Dr. Hill asked me to stay for a second year, and I thought I could serve better on the National Security Council, so I stayed.

MR. ZELDIN: And who is the person that you took over the Ukrainian portfolio from?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Catherine Croft. She was the last senior advisor to Ambassador Volker.

MR. ZELDIN: And how long of a term did she have with the Ukraine portfolio?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I don't recall. I don't recall. I think it was either a 1 or 2-year term. I think -- it was a 1-year term.

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LT. COL. VINDMAN: Okay.

MR. ZELDIN: Earlier you testified that it was not in the U.S. national security interests when the President brought up investigating interference in the 2016 election and Joe Biden and Burisma. Is that accurate?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Could you restate that?

MR. ZELDIN: I believe earlier in the day you testified that the President referencing investigating interference in the 2016 election and Joe Biden and Burisma not to be in United States national security interests?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Actually, I'd go back to my statement, and I'd just refer to my statement, which -- just looking at it here. Where is it? So to be clear, and this remains my view to be consistent. I listened to the call in the Situation Room with my colleagues from the NSC and Office of the Vice President, as the transcript is in the public record, we are aware of what was said. I was concerned by the call. I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for U.S. Government support to Ukraine.

I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma it would be interpreted as a partisan play, which undoubtedly would result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained. This would undermine U.S. national security. And then following the call I reported to senior --

MR. ZELDIN: Investigating interference in the 2016 election wasn't a request to investigate a U.S. citizen, correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: No, it wasn't.

MR. ZELDIN: And earlier, as you were speaking with Mr. Malinowski, you were talking about some of the allegations related to Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: One more time, please.

MR. ZELDIN: I believe earlier you were answering questions from Mr. Malinowski where you were talking about some of the allegations regarding Ukrainians interfering in the 2016 election. Is that correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: What -- I apologize --

MR. ZELDIN: Oh, I'm sorry, he's not here. Earlier, though, you were answering questions from a Member --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Okay.

MR. ZELDIN: -- about some of the allegations that exist related to Ukrainians interfering in the 2016 election. Do you recall that?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes. Was that the gentleman that kind of went through the -- Ambassador Chaly's statement?

MR. ZELDIN: Yes. I believe you spoke about Ambassador Chaly's statement and you're familiar with the issue with the Black Ledger and Mr. Manafort?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: Have you ever heard of the name words redacted                          ?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I never met this person. I heard it in the nature of this investigation unfolding.

MR. ZELDIN: And these are some of the allegations that existed. You're familiar with the investigation that Robert Mueller conducted regarding interference in the 2016 election?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: The investigation --

MR. ZELDIN: The special counsel investigation.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes, on Russian interference.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you believe that that investigation was in the best interest of the U.S. national security?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: And if there are allegations regarding other foreigners interfering with the 2016 election, wouldn't that also be in U.S. best -- wouldn't that also be in U.S. national security interest?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, I would say yes, but I also feel obligated to say that I don't have anything to suggest that these were particularly credible allegations. But, frankly, that's not even why I followed up. As I said in my statement, I was concerned about the call to investigate a U.S. citizen by a foreign power.

MR. ZELDIN: You weren't concerned about the request that the President made with regard to the 2016 elections?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I don't think there was a huge amount of substance to substantiate it, but that's not the element that was particularly troubling. The element that was troubling is the element that I've, you know, stated repeatedly here now, that it was a foreign power investigating -- a foreign power that doesn't have an entirely credible justice system, yet, they are striving to move in that direction. Frankly, any foreign power to advance its own national security interest could do whatever they think they need to, but in this case it was a concern about a call for foreign power to investigate a U.S. citizen.

MR. ZELDIN: So just to be clear, your concern was about the -- was about one investigation not both investigations. It was with regard to Burisma -- the Burisma investigation as opposed to an investigation regarding the 2016 election?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, you know, I guess I'd have to -- if we're parsing it, I'd have to think about it. I think I may have even said that in my view at some point these became not separate investigations, but basically one -- you know, when there's a call for investigations, I understood it to mean both elements because that was the narrative that had evolved and that was the narrative that was out there that was being promoted by Mr. Giuliani.

And, you know, I guess I could spend some time thinking about which element bothered me more, I think it's the investigation of a U.S. citizen. But I also, Congressman, I could say that in my -- as the director for Ukraine handling this portfolio for the National Security Council, I didn't think that that was, you know, there was that much there there and that, frankly -- we needed to focus on helping the Ukrainians root out corruption in general, implementing reforms. We at that point had been reporting consistently that the Ukrainians were making headway. That, you know, it's above my pay grade, that's what the President wants to do, I guess, you know, it's his prerogative. But I'm going back to what I said in the statement was that the investigation -- what I thought warranted at least a communication with the lead counsel was the call to investigate the U.S. citizen.

MR. ZELDIN: But your notes from the July 25th call, you believe that President Zelensky referred to Burisma in response to the President's reference to Biden?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That is absolutely in my notes.

MR. ZELDIN: And Burisma is a natural gas producer in Ukraine that was investigated for corruption. Correct?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: My understanding is, yes, it was.

MR. ZELDIN: Run by a Ukrainian oligarch investigated for corruption?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That is my understanding. Congressman.

MR. ZELDIN: Paying the son of the sitting Vice President at least $50,000 a month?

MR. ZELDIN: Correct? Is that your understanding?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, that's all accurate. But I guess if we're going down this road, there are multiple entities in Ukraine that are corrupt. Frankly, some of them much bigger. There's an entity that's being run by Firtash, it's called the Obligaz, in this particular entity, and this is something that we've been struggling with in order to get -- help Ukraine achieve energy independence and --

MR. ZELDIN: Just for sake of time.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I apologize, I'll be brief.

MR. ZELDIN: I know we're going on a tangent here.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I'll be brief. There are much, much bigger issues. And this particular issue has a material effect on the price that the Ukrainian citizens pay in terms of tariffs, on the viability of Naftogaz, which is a core state-owned enterprise. And this particular entity has its very interesting arbitrage case in which they are obligated to sell gas, but are not obligated to pay for that gas.

So if we're going to go after things that really matter, that would seem to be one that we should go after. There are, I think, in the defense sector, I think, again, corruption is endemic.

MR. ZELDIN: We're out of time, so I just want to give you a little bit of rope to go on a tangent, but I know my colleagues have some more questions, too. So you're acknowledging that Burisma and Zlochevsky did have a corruption issue, and that there was this issue with Hunter Biden.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: To the best of my knowledge, Congressman.

MR. ZELDIN: But it wasn't corrupt enough for the President to --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: That's an interesting way to put it, Congressman. I guess all I'm saying is that -- I guess the contention is that, you know, there was an effort to fight corruption and, you know, what's being investigated is something that's connected to a U.S. citizen who's a son of a President -- or a Vice President and a future contender for 2020. I guess, you know, I don’t think -- certainly I'm not the brightest guy in this room, but there seems to be something -- some sort of connection there, there are much bigger issues.

And my concern that I was expressing to my leadership within the chain of command was specifically about this, these investigations, and certainly the call for foreign power to investigate a U.S. citizen.

MR. ZELDIN: But did you vet that case as to whether or not there was actual corruption with regards to the hiring of Hunter Biden?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I don't have any specific knowledge of this, Congressman, but, you know, my understanding is that, you know, power -- again, I'm not the smartest guy, but that power and prominence oftentimes translates to wealth and opportunities for, you know, for individuals and for their offspring.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware of whether or not Hunter Biden was qualified for that position?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: From what I understand, it doesn't look like he was.

MR. CASTOR: Mr. Perry.

MR. PERRY: Thanks, Colonel, and congratulations on ascension to the War College. I guarantee you it will probably feel like it's lasting longer than this when you're there. Out of curiosity, when did you -- it says on page 1 of your opening statement, you served at the embassy in Ukraine. What year or years were you there?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So in Ukraine, as a Foreign Area Officer, you go through an extensive training pipeline. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the program. In that program you learn language, you go to graduate school, they sent me, free of charge, to Flarvard, and then you get to do something called in-country training, regional immersion. And I did that following language. So 2009 to 2010 before going on to graduate school.

MR. PERRY: So 2009 to 2010?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Summer of 2009 to 2010.

MR. PERRY: Thank you. You're aware that a major benefactor to President Zelensky is this guy, Zlochevsky, who is tied to Burisma, are you not?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I'm, frankly, not aware of that fact. There are more problematic individuals that we've actually raised for leadership to engage on. There's a gentleman named Kolomoisky who is a media magnet and owns the movie -- the TV channel that was backing President Zelensky as he was advancing his campaign. And the most pressing issue is whether President Zelensky is in fact supporting activities of Kolomoisky. The gentleman, Burisma, and these other connections, I'm not aware of them with President Zelensky.

MR. PERRY: Okay. I need to truncate my questions apparently.

Let me move on to something else here. You said in previous rounds that you didn't think -- I don't want to put words in your mouth, but this is my recollection, so if you want to correct it and make it your own, I encourage you to do it.

You said in previous rounds that you didn't think it was appropriate that officials, whether it was Sondland or others, should reference investigations when there were none being conducted. Is that about right? I remember something to that effect.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So, Congressman, I think maybe the more appropriate way to phrase this is that I didn't think it was appropriate for government officials to act on and advance the narrative of these influencers that were operating counter to the consensus policy for Ukraine, and I didn't think it was appropriate to advance -- to interact with them or advance those interests.

MR. PERRY: Okay. So, yet, no problem then with officials referencing the investigations, whether it was Sondland or anyone else? Because I remember you saying that, I just -- it's not in your opening statement, but I'm pretty sure you said something to that effect and I just want to clarify that.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So if you're referring to the point in my statement where I identified Ambassador Sondland, this is page 5, second paragraph. Ambassador Sondland started to speak about Ukraine delivering specific investigations in order to secure the meeting with the President at which time Ambassador Bolton cut the meeting short. Is that what we're talking about?

MR. PERRY: It could have been. I mean, I'm more interested in your aversion to pursuing, talking about investigations --

LT. COL. VINDMAN: I understand.

MR. PERRY: -- as a matter of course in these discussions.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So I don't think that's an accurate characterization, Congressman. What I would say is that what I had an issue with, and maybe it's the military mindset. We had all come together in various meetings and charted a course for Ukraine. We did this through multiple efforts at the sub-policy coordinating committee level with deputy assistant secretary equivalent, and then we confirmed that approach at a PCC with assistant secretaries.

That means at that point everybody below -- everybody that you're referring to, Sondland and Volker, fall within that level. And if we agreed to move into a particular direction, I believe it would be appropriate to move in that direction. If you're moving counter to that then there's an issue. And this is I think something that Dr. Hill also, you know, some concerns about.

MR. PERRY: Okay. Now, are you aware that there was a notice of suspicion reported in open source reporting in April 2019 that an investigation was or essentially what we would characterize as an investigation based on what they call a notice of suspicion had been either reinstated or commenced regarding individuals, including Zlochevsky?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Yeah. So the timing is -- I vaguely recall this, but the timing is consistent with Mr. Lutsenko advancing a self-servicing, self-promoting narrative -- a self-preserving narrative to ensure that he was serving his current master's interest and securing his position for his future master.

MR. PERRY: Right.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: So the fact that, if I recall correctly, the fact that the Ukrainian prosecutor general took this kind of action to, again, you know, to what he thought was caterer to, you know, curry favor doesn't surprise me.

MR. PERRY: But does that mean that there was no -- there was no notice of suspicion that there was no investigation?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Congressman, I would bring your attention to the fact that in, I want to say the May timeframe, Mr. Lutsenko recanted and said that there was no such -- there was no substance or there was nothing really to look into.

MR. PERRY: So you're saying there was no investigation?

LT. COL. VINDMAN: Correct.

MR. PERRY: Okay. That's your testimony. Okay. I yield.

LT. COL. VINDMAN: As of the time the call occurred, the July 10th, the incidents that I brought to -- I guess I voiced concern, the 10th of July and the 25th of July there was no active investigation. And, frankly, you know, I think I earlier said that there had not been an active investigation for years. You may have corrected me in terms of pointing out that there was a short period of time in which this prosecutor general, not credible individual, you know, tried to resurface this narrative to protect himself, and then recanted very shortly thereafter. So --

MR. PERRY: I yield.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Is there concern words redacted                                                   about Kolomoisky's influence on Zelensky?

A  There is.

Q  Did that hold -- that concern, did that hold up any official meetings or visits?

A  It did not. As part of our policy of increasing engagement and focusing on the areas I’ve already addressed, we thought it best to, through engagement, coach, advise President Zelensky of the concerns that were surrounding his relationship with Mr. Kolomoisky, and have him realize that, you know, this is problematic for his, you know, his platform and his persona as an anti-corruption reformer. This was going to be problematic.

Frankly, now is this issue starting to get somewhat resolved in that Mr. Kolomoisky owned an interest called PrivatBank from which he stole $5.5 billion, and he was looking to do a couple of different things. One, recoup that interest. Potentially, you know, eliminate this idea of paying back the $5.5 million or looking for a couple of compensation -- a couple of billion dollars in compensation after stealing $5.5 billion.

So we had concerns continuously that this relationship was problematic. And, frankly, only recently have there been kind of the right signals sent that, you know, Kolomoisky wasn't going to be able to reacquire this interest and destabilize Ukraine and so forth. And this is also, in fact, one of the key sticking points to the IMF granting, you know, granting the next -- I apologize for the term-of-art, but the next kind of -- the next loan package that's supposed to run through several years. But, again, you know, I think through engagement we've probably had some positive effects.

MR. CASTOR: Time's up.

THE CHAIRMAN: Colonel, I want to thank you for your testimony today. I want to thank you for your service to the country. We're grateful that we have such patriotic Americans, and we are adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 7:55 p.m., the deposition was concluded.]

Fiona Hill Testimony

PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE,
joint with the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
and the
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
WASHINGTON, D.C.

DEPOSITION OF: FIONA HILL

Monday, October 14, 2019
Washington, D.C.

The deposition in the above matter was held in Room HVC-304, Capitol Visitor Center, commencing at 9:55 a.m.

Present: Representatives Schiff, Carson, Swalwell, and Heck.

Also Present: Representatives Raskin, Rouda, Rooney,Jordan, Zeldin, Perry, and Gaetz.

Appearances:

For the PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE:

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For the COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM:

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For the COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS:

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For FIONA HILL:

SAMUEL S. UNGAR
LEE WOLOSKY
BOIES SCHILLER FLEXNER LLP
1401 New York Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 2005

THE CHAIRMAN: The committee will come to order.

Good morning, Dr. Hill, and welcome to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which, along with the Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees, is conducting this investigation as part of the official impeachment inquiry of the House of Representatives. Today's deposition is being conducted as part of that inquiry.

In light of attempts by the White House administration to direct witnesses not to cooperate with the inquiry, the committee had no choice but to compel your appearance today. We thank you for complying with the duly authorized congressional subpoena.

Dr. Hill has served with distinction in and out of government, including as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council, as a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, and, most recently, as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council staff.

In her most recent work at the White House, Dr. Hill held a unique position at the top of the executive branch's policymaking process, in which she would have had access to and been involved in key policy discussions, meetings, and decisions on Ukraine that relate directly to areas under investigation by the committees.

Although you left your position, Dr. Hill, only a few days before the President's July 25th, 2019, call with Ukrainian President Zelensky, we look forward to hearing your testimony today about the range of issues and interactions we are investigating that occurred in the leadup to the July 25th call, as well as your expert assessment of the evidence we have uncovered since you left the White House.

This includes the July 25 call record itself as well as the documentary record that has come to light about efforts after the call to get the Ukrainians to announce publicly investigations into the two areas President Trump asked President Zelensky to pursue, the Bidens and Burisma, and the conspiracy about Ukraine's purported interference in the 2016 U.S. elections.

Before I turn to committee counsel to begin the deposition, I invite the Ranking Member Nunes or, in his absence, one of the Republican members present to make any opening remarks. I will recognize one of the GOP members.

MR. JORDAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Hill, I want to thank you also for appearing today. My understanding is you were coming voluntarily until about an hour ago when the chairman issued to you a subpoena.

THE CHAIRMAN: Excuse me, could we suspend?

Do we have any members here that are not members of the three committees authorized to be present?

Mr. Gaetz, you're not permitted to be in the room

MR. GAETZ: I am on the Judiciary Committee.

THE CHAIRMAN: Judiciary Committee is not part of this hearing.

MR. GAETZ: I thought the Judiciary Committee had jurisdiction over impeachment.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Gaetz, you’re not permitted to be in the room. Please leave.

MR. JORDAN: Mr. Chairman, really?

THE CHAIRMAN: Yes, really.

MR. GAETZ: You’re going to include Members of Congress on committees that have roles of impeachment --

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Gaetz, take your statement to the press. They do you no good here. So, please, absent yourself.

MR. GAETZ: You’re going to have someone remove me from the hearing?

THE CHAIRMAN: You’re going to remove yourself, Mr. Gaetz.

MR. JORDAN: Mr. Gaetz is going to stay and listen to the testimony.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Gaetz, you’re going to leave the room.

MR. GAETZ: No, I think I have right to be – is there a rule you can cite as to why I am not --

THE CHAIRMAN: You're not a member of this committee.This is conducted in closed session. You're not permitted to be here.

MR. GAETZ: I'm on the Judiciary Committee.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Gaetz, please absent yourself from the committee. It's the ruling of the chair you're not permitted to be here. Please leave the committee.

MR. JORDAN: Mr. Chairman, I think in the 20 hours of testimony we've heard in the two previous interviews, there have been a grand total of 12 Members of Congress present. I don't think it's going to hurt to have a 13th Member actually hear something that, in my judgment, all 435 Members of Congress should be entitled to hear.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Gaetz, you're not a member of the three designated committees that are participating in this interview. You're not permitted to be here. That is the ruling of the chair, and you are required to leave.

MR. GAETZ: Do you have a rule that you're able to cite for that?

THE CHAIRMAN: I am citing the House rules and the deposition rules. You are not permitted to be here.

MR. GAETZ: Which rule?

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Gaetz, you are simply delaying the procedures in violation of the rules. Please absent yourself.

MR. GAETZ: Which rule?

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Gaetz, why don't you take your spectacle outside? This is not how we conduct ourselves in this committee.

MR. GAETZ: I've seen how you've conducted yourself in this committee, and I'd like to be here to observe.

THE CHAIRMAN: We’ll wait until Mr. Gaetz leaves before we begin. I do want to say that this dilatory tactic will come out of the minority's time for questioning.

MR. GAETZ: This isn't dilatory. You can begin any time you like.

THE CHAIRMAN: We're going to begin the clock. This will come out of the minority's time for questions.

MR. JORDAN: Well, I had a statement I wanted to get to when you interrupted me.

THE CHAIRMAN: We're not back on the record.

[10:43 a.m.]

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Let's go back on the record.

MR. BITAR: Hi. As the general counsel of the House Intelligence Committee, I'm relaying the view of the Parliamentarian, which was just relayed over the phone, to both Members and staff of the minority committees as well as the majority.

The Parliamentarian made clear that the House deposition regulations and the language used therein has always been construed as meaning members of the committees undertaking the joint investigation and not members of other committees who may wish to attend for other reasons, and, therefore, they are not allowed to participate in the deposition itself or be present.

Thank you.

MR. JORDAN: Chairman, could I just add one thing?

THE CHAIRMAN: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: The Parliamentarian was also clear that there is no precedent, no basis for docking anyone's time, that this was a legitimate question and not dilatory in any sense.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Jordan, you have an opening statement?

MR. JORDAN: I do.

On September 24th, Speaker Pelosi unilaterally announced --

THE CHAIRMAN: The record should reflect that Mr. Gaetz has left the room.

MR. JORDAN: Yes.

On September 24th, Speaker Pelosi unilaterally announced that the House was beginning a so-called impeachment inquiry. On October 2nd, Speaker Pelosi promised that the so-called impeachment inquiry would treat the President with fairness.

However, Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Schiff, and Democrats are not living up to that basic promise. Instead, Democrats are conducting a rushed, closed-door, and unprecedented impeachment inquiry. Democrats are ignoring 45 years of bipartisan procedures, procedures that provided elements of fundamental fairness and due process.

In past impeachment inquiries, the majority and the minority had coequal subpoena authority and the right to require a committee vote on all subpoenas. The President's counsel had a right to attend all depositions and hearings including those held in executive session. The President's counsel had a right to cross-examine witnesses and a right to propose witnesses.

The President's counsel also had the right to present evidence, object to the admission of evidence, and to review all evidence presented, both favorable and unfavorable. Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Schiff's so-called impeachment inquiry has none of these guarantees of fundamental fairness and due process.

Most disappointing, Democrats are conducting this impeachment inquiry behind closed doors. This seems to be nothing more than hiding this work from the American people and, frankly, as we just saw, hiding it from other Members of the United States Congress. If Democrats intend to undo the will of the American people just before the next election, they should at least do so transparently and be willing to be accountable for their actions.

And, finally, Dr. Hill, we've been advised by the State Department that communications between heads of state are classified, and I think it’s important that we keep that in mind as we proceed through today's interview.

With that, I yield back.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

This is a deposition of Dr. Fiona Hill conducted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence pursuant to the impeachment inquiry announced by the Speaker of the House on September 24th.

Dr. Hill, if you could please state your full name and spell your last name for the record.

DR. HILL: It's Fiona Hill. Last name is H-i-l-l.

MR. GOLDMAN: Along with other proceedings in furtherance of the inquiry, this deposition is part of a joint investigation led by the Intelligence Committee in coordination with the Committees on Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform.

In the room today are majority and minority staff from both the Foreign Affairs Committees and the Oversight Committees, as well as majority and minority staff from HPSCI. Just so the record is clear, equal numbers of staff from both the majority and minority have been and are permitted to be here. This is a staff-led deposition, but Members, of course, from the three committees may ask questions during their allotted time.

My name is Daniel Goldman. I'm the director of investigations for the HPSCI majority staff, and I want to thank you very much for coming in today for this deposition.

I would like to do brief introductions, and I understand that the witness would also just like for everybody around the table to introduce him or herself so that the witness knows who everybody is. So, to my right is Daniel Noble, who is the senior investigative counsel for HPSCI. Mr. Noble and I will be conducting most of the interview for the majority.

And then, if we could just continue down the room next to Mr. Noble, that would be great.

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MR. HECK: Denny Heck. I represent the 10th District of Washington State.

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MR. RASKIN: Congressman Jamie Raskin from Maryland's Eighth District.

MR. ROUDA: Congressman Harley Rouda from Orange County, California.

MR. ROONEY: Francis Rooney from southwest Florida, Foreign Affairs Committee.

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MR. PERRY: Scott Perry, Pennsylvania's 10th District.

MR. ZELDIN: Lee Zeldin, New York-1.

MR. JORDAN: Jim Jordan, Ohio.

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MR. CASTOR: Steve Castor with the Republican staff of the Oversight Committee.

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MR. WOLOSKY: I’m Lee Wolosky, counsel to Dr. Hill.

MR. UNGAR: I’m Sam Ungar, also counsel for Dr. Hill.

DR. HILL: Thank you.

MR. GOLDMAN: Dr. Hill, this deposition will be conducted entirely at the unclassified level. However, the deposition is being conducted in HPSCI’s secure spaces and in the presence of staff who all have appropriate security clearance. It is the committee's expectation that neither questions asked of the witness nor answers by the witness or the witness' counsel will require discussion of any information that is currently or at any point could be properly classified under Executive Order 13526.

Moreover, EO 13526 states that, quote, in no case shall information be classified, continued to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified, unquote, for the purpose of concealing any violations of law or preventing embarrassment of any person or entity.

Now, I understand that, Dr. Hill, you had classification authorization in your previous job. You were the classifying authority. So we expect you to fully understand the distinction here between the classified and unclassified, and we will be relying on you in part to indicate whether any questions that are asked may call for answers that are classified.

If that is the case, we would ask that you please inform us of that before answering the questions so that we can adjust accordingly. Part of the reason for that is our understanding is that your attorneys do not have appropriate security clearances --

DR. HILL: Right.

MR. GOLDMAN: -- and so we'll want to make sure that we preserve all classified information in our national security interests.

Today's deposition is not being taken in executive session, but because of the sensitive and confidential nature of some of the topics and materials that will be discussed, access to the transcript of the deposition will be limited to the three committees in attendance. You and your attorney will have an opportunity to review the transcript at a later date.

Before we begin, I'd like to go over a couple of ground rules for this deposition. We will be following the House regulations for depositions. As you know by now, we have previously provided your counsel with a copy of the regulations, and we have copies here as well if you or your counsel would like to review them at any time.

The way this deposition will proceed is as follows: The majority will be given 1 hour to ask questions, and then the minority will be given 1 hour to ask questions, and, thereafter, we will alternate back and forth between majority and minority in 45-minute rounds until the questioning is complete. We will take periodic breaks, but if you or your counsel need any break at any time, just let us know.

As we just understood, you do have counsel here, who just introduced themselves. And so we want to make it clear that, under the House deposition rules, counsel other than your own counsel, including counsel for government agencies, may not attend. So it is our understanding that the only counsel here today representing you is your personal counsel.

There is a stenographer taking down everything that is said here today. For the record to be clear, we would ask that you please wait until questions are finished before you answer, and we will do the same when you answer. The stenographer cannot record nonverbal answers, such as shaking your head or saying "uh-huh," so it is important that you answer each question with an audible, verbal answer.

We ask that you give complete replies to the questions based on your best recollection. If a question is unclear or you are uncertain in your response, please don't hesitate to let us know and ask that the question be rephrased or asked again. If you do not know the answer to a question or cannot remember, simply say so.

You may only refuse to answer a question to preserve a privilege that is recognized by the committee. If you refuse to answer a question on the basis of privilege, staff may either proceed with the deposition or seek a ruling from the chairman on the objection in person or by telephone during the deposition at a time of the majority staff's choosing. If the chair overrules any such objection, you are required to answer the question.

And, finally, you are reminded that it is unlawful to deliberately provide false information to Members of Congress or staff. It is imperative that you not only answer our questions truthfully but that you give full and complete answers to all questions asked of you. Omissions may also be considered to be false statements.

Now, as this deposition is under oath, Dr. Hill, would you please stand and raise your right hand to be sworn? Do you answer or affirm that the

testimony you are about to give us is the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

DR. HILL: I do.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you. Let the record reflect that the witness has been sworn.

Dr. Hill, if you choose, now is your time to make any opening remarks.

DR. HILL: I don't have any openings remarks. I'm just here to answer everyone's questions.

MR. GOLDMAN: And, Mr. Wolosky, do you have anything that you would like to address before we begin?

MR. WOLOSKY: Yes. Thank you, Mr. Goldman.

I would like to enter into the record a letter of today's date, October 14, 2019, from Michael Purpura of the White House Counsel's Office governing the subjects or addressing the subjects of executive privilege and classification, along with a letter from me to Mr. Purpura dated October 13, 2019.

I'd like to make it clear that Dr. Hill is testifying today subject to the contents of these letters or of the White House Counsel's Office's letter, also pursuant to the subpoena she received today, and pursuant to any rulings that are made by the chair during the pendency of these proceedings.

THE CHAIRMAN: Those letters will be admitted into the record.

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THE CHAIRMAN: In light of the White House counsel letter introduced by the witness' counsel, let me state at the outset of today's testimony that this testimony should proceed without any interference or delay.

Dr. Hill, you are compelled to testify at this deposition by a subpoena that the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued to you today, October 14, 2019. You are required to provide full, truthful, and accurate testimony in connection with the committee's joint investigation, which is undertaken as part of the House of Representatives' impeachment inquiry.

Your counsel has provided a letter sent to your counsel this morning from the White House stating that the information that you may be asked to testify about today could be covered by a privilege. Under the House deposition rules, as the chair, I have the authority to rule on any such objection, but no such objection will be in order or should be necessary.

As you know, only the President may assert executive privilege, and the President usually does so in writing with specificity along with an opinion from the Justice Department. The President has not communicated any such assertion to the committee with respect to the information requested.

The President has also spoken extensively publicly about the matters under investigation here, and he has declassified and publicly released a summary of his call with the Ukrainian President. The administration also declassified the whistleblower complaint and a range of accompanying materials that address the range of issues under discussion today.

The President's actions have opened the door to further investigative actions and taking of testimony on these subjects. The President has waived his ability to block others from making statements about the same matters that contradict his own statements or expose his wrongdoing.

Regarding any claim of deliberative process privilege as an element of executive privilege, this is not a privilege recognized by the Congress. Furthermore, the information you have been asked to provide is critical to the committee's investigation and the House's impeachment inquiry.

We must obtain your answers here because Congress has a constitutional duty to expose wrongdoing in the executive and to act as a check and balance to the power of the executive, especially when there is significant evidence that the President is abusing his executive power for his own personal gain. The committees cannot accept any effort to interfere with these proceedings. We therefore expect you do answer all questions during the deposition.

With that, I will yield back to Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Dr. Hill, could you please explain for everyone in the room what your role was on the National Security Council?

A  Yes. I was the senior director who was overseeing all of the interactions across the interagency pertaining to Europe, our European allies, including also the European Union and NATO, and also including Russia, Turkey, and the subject at hand, Ukraine.

Q  When did you join the NSC?

A  I formally started on April 3rd of 2017. Technically, it was April 1, but it was a weekend.

Q  And when did you depart the NSC?

A  I departed the NSC physically on July 19th of this year, 2019. I handed over my duties on July 15th to my successor, Tim Morrison, and I handed in my badge technically on September 3rd of 2019. But I was actually on vacation, a paid vacation from the NSC, from basically July 19 all the way through until handing in my badge again. My last payday was August 30th of 2019. And I give this detailed answer because I know that there's been some confusion as to when I was physically there or what my actual tenure was.

Q  And from July 19th until September 3rd, what was your access to email and other communications within the NSC?

A  I had some limited access to unclassified email on my iPhone, and that would have be under agreement with Ambassador Bolton and with other NSC staff. Because of the short handover to Tim Morrison, there were concerns that emails would come into me directly because I'd been there since the beginning essentially of the administration, and they wanted to make sure that if I was the only person getting an email, that it wasn't lost and could be forwarded on.

Q  Okay. And prior to joining the NSC, can you just give us a brief overview of your professional experience.

A  I have been working on issues related to Russia since I was an undergraduate at university back in the 1980s. And, actually, I first started in a professional way working on Russia-related issues, including actually with my counsel, Lee Wolosky, in the early 1990s when we were both research assistants                                                     at the Kennedy School at Harvard working on technical assistance projects.

After I completed my Ph.D. at Harvard and finished working with                                            . then worked for the Eurasia Foundation. I was the director of strategic planning for the Eurasia Foundation, which was a congressionally funded technical assistance foundation. I became an adjunct fellow at the Brookings Institution in 2000, and I became a full-time employee of the Brookings Institution around 2002, 2003.

I then, from the beginning of 2006 through to November 2009, at the end of the Bush administration and the first year of the Obama administration, was the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council.

I then returned to Brookings in the end of November 2009, and for the next 7 years, I was the director of the Center on the U.S. and Europe at the Brookings Institution before I joined the administration.

Q  You mentioned that you were responsible for overseeing the interagency process as it relates to your portfolio. Focusing on Ukraine, what does that mean?

A  That means bringing together interagency meetings, State Department, Pentagon, every other department for discussions of U.S. Government policy. It also means meeting, where appropriate, with Ukrainian officials, meeting with analysts from our intelligence services to get updates on a regular basis on developments in Ukraine, and also preparing, of course, memoranda and any policy documents necessary for the President or the National Security Advisor or other senior members of staff who may be having interactions pertinent to policy.

Q  All right. We are going to get into many of the details during your time with the NSC, but I would like to spend this first hour trying to hit on some top-line issues and get an understanding more broadly about what was going on with Ukraine while you were there.

And, I guess, the first question, and this is perhaps a little difficult, but can you describe, generally speaking, what the official U.S. policy was related to Ukraine and what the focus of official U.S. policy was in relation to Ukraine?

A  I think the policy towards Ukraine was going through a period of evolution in the time that I was in the administration. Many of you, being long-serving Members of Congress, and the staff, will of course recall that, you know, a lot of focus was put onto Ukraine after the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014.

And then, of course, there was the outbreak of the war in Donbas, the downing of MH-17, and decisions made by members of this body to impose sanctions on Russia in response to those acts that were conducted, those acts of aggression against Ukraine.

So, when I came into the administration there was a great deal of debate. This is, of course, you know, the beginning of 2017. We've had essentially 2-plus years of efforts to deter Russia from taking further aggressive acts against Ukraine. The war in Donbas is still continuing.

There's a question about what role the United States should play in the resolution of that conflict, because at that juncture it was the French and the Germans in the course of the Minsk group, the grouping set up by the French and the Germans, along with Ukrainians and technically also the Russians, to try to find a resolution to the war in the Donbas.

The United States didn't actually have a role in this. So we were in the process of deliberating then what role the United States should play, how we would work together with the French and the Germans to try to seek a resolution of the conflict in Donbas, how we should conduct ourselves in terms of assistance to Ukraine; should there be the provision of lethal weaponry, meaning, of course, defensive weaponry; how would we be able to help Ukraine over the longer term -- this is a big debate with the Pentagon -- to rebuild its military forces that had been decimated not just by the war with Russia but by the annexation of Crimea because the Russians, of course, seized the major ports and the whole entire Ukrainian Black Sea fleet, and, of course, it also devastated their command and control.

We were also concerned about domestic politics in Ukraine. I mean, this has been a longstanding concern through multiple administrations. And when I was in the DNI, I mean, I felt in many respects that I was reprieving, you know, many of the analytical concerns that I'd had when I was national intelligence officer for Russia and Ukraine.

We were worried about the stability of the Ukrainian Government, the role of oligarchs in the Ukrainian Government. It was a very weak Presidency. There was, of course, a great deal of corruption. This has been standard across most of the republics in the former Soviet Union in their independence.

Many of them had had weak local governance in the Soviet structure. And when they became independent entities, they weren't particularly well set up to be independent countries, and there was a great deal of efforts by private interests to, you know, pick away at the structures of government. That happened in Russia as well.

And we were also trying to figure out indeed how we would work with our European allies on a much broader set of projects related to Ukraine's long-term sustainability. So it wasn't just tackling corruption or helping the Ukrainians build a more viable, sustainable state apparatus and institutions, but also how we would tackle some key problems for them beyond the restoration of their military capability, including their dependency on Russia for energy supplies as well as acting as the main conduit or transit for energy supplies from Russia, exports of Russian energy through Ukraine to the rest of Europe.

So we were also starting to work on a more comprehensive approach to Russia's energy. I mean, you're all very much familiar with the debates about Nord Stream 2. I was there in the Bush administration for Nord Stream 1 when we were also trying to block the expansion of pipelines from Russia. I mean, we tried again also under Reagan in the Soviet period. I mean, this is a longstanding U.S. policy to find ways of diversifying European energy supplies.

And so we were starting to look at how we could try to wean Ukraine off the dependence on Russian energy and try to find other energy suppliers, be it U.S. LNG or other oil and gas supplies, coal, including from Pennsylvania and, you know, other U.S. States.

So we were, you know, as I'm trying to point out here, having a wide-ranging set of discussions about Ukraine all against the backdrop, obviously, of a debate about how effective the sanctions were being on Russia's own behavior and, you know, Russia's own attitudes towards Ukraine.

MR. WOLOSKY: Mr. Goldman, can I just interject that the witness is obviously testifying to U.S. deliberative processes relating to the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. I actually don’t think that this is covered by the letter from the White House Counsel's Office, but I would appreciate guidance and a ruling from the chair on testimony such as the type that she is offering.

THE CHAIRMAN: I thank the counsel for raising the issue, and I'm prepared to rule on it now.

Dr. Hill, you are compelled to testify at this deposition by subpoena that was issued to you by the House Intelligence Committee on October 14, 2019. Your counsel has raised a potential objection on behalf of the White House stating that information that you are providing could be covered by privilege. Under the House deposition rules, as the chair, I have the authority to rule on that potential objection.

As you know, only the President may assert executive privilege, and he usually does so in writing with specificity along with an opinion from the Justice Department. The President and Department of Justice have not specifically invoked executive privilege with respect to the information requested.

The President has also spoken extensively about the matters under investigation here, and he has declassified and publicly released a summary of his call with the Ukrainian President. The administration also declassified the whistleblower complaint and a range of accompanying materials that addressed the range of issues under discussion today.

The President's actions have further opened the door to further investigative actions and taking of testimony on these subjects. The President has waived his ability to block others from making statements about the same matters that contradict his own statements or expose his wrongdoing. The privilege cannot be used to conceal misconduct during -- in particular during an impeachment inquiry.

To the extent that the White House may be asserting a deliberative process privilege as an element of executive privilege, this is not a privilege recognized by the Congress. Furthermore, the information the witness has been asked to provide is critical to the committee's investigation.

We must obtain your answers here because Congress has a constitutional duty to expose wrongdoing in the executive and act as a check and balance to the power of the executive, especially when there is significant evidence that the President is abusing his executive power for his own personal gain. Therefore, I am overruling any potential assertion of privilege, and I instruct the witness to answer all questions during the deposition today.

MR. ZELDIN: Mr. Chairman, respectfully, if the witness is about to give an answer and is unsure of whether or not her answer may violate a privilege, is the witness permitted to consult with the executive branch for advice on that question of whether or not that content is privileged?

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Zeldin, the White House had the opportunity, in correspondence with the witness prior to the testimony today, to raise any specific objection to any specific question. They chose not to do so. And, therefore, we will go forward as the chair has ruled.

MR. ZELDIN: That's not what the question -- well, respectfully, Mr. Chair, the question is, if the witness’ understanding of what is privileged comes up and the witness is unsure as to whether or not her answer is going to violate something that's privileged, will the witness be permitted to get advice before being forced to provide information that may be privileged?

THE CHAIRMAN: No, counsel. The counsel for the witness has already been in communication with the White House, has already received whatever guidance the White House was willing to give. The chair has made a ruling on the question of privilege; none applies here. We will not be asking the witness about extraneous conversations with the President about other matters. Our focus today will be on Ukraine, and the chair has ruled.

Mr. Goldman.

MR. JORDAN: Mr. Chairman, if I could, just one quick followup. So, if Dr. Hill gets a question and she believes it does violate what she has communicated -- the communications her and her counsel have had with the executive branch and she chooses not to answer that question, are you then going to overrule it?

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Jordan, as the witness counsel has already made clear, the witness' counsel has raised the concerns that were expressed to the witness through correspondence with the White House. It's appropriate that the counsel do so, and they have done so, and I have ruled on that potential objection. That is the process that we will use today.

MR. JORDAN: I would just underscore, Mr. Chairman -- then we can get back to Mr. Goldman's question -- I would just underscore this is why executive -- agency counsel should be here. This is why -- I have never -- this is now -- I’ve never been in these kind of proceedings where agency counsel wasn't permitted to be present. We wouldn't have these concerns if they were here.

THE CHAIRMAN: Actually, Mr. Jordan, you were present at a deposition conducted by Chairman Issa without the presence of agency counsel, and you were perfectly copacetic with it at that time, so your statement is not accurate. But, nonetheless, the chair has ruled and we will go forward.

Mr. Goldman.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Dr. Hill, ultimately toward -- by the end of your tenure at the NSC, had the United States agreed to provide lethal military assistance to Ukraine to withstand the aggression from Russia in the eastern area of Ukraine?

A  That's correct.

Q  And what anticorruption efforts did the U.S. promote within Ukraine during the time that you were there?

A  Well, the time that I was there has also spanned what was a period in Ukraine itself of a transition in its own government. I mean, we'll all recall that Ukraine has gone through quite a period of upheaval.

The independence movements back in the 1990s, 1980s, 1990s, then in a period of turmoil and changes of government, and then the events that were sparked off by Ukraine's decision to try to join the European Union, at least to form an association agreement with the European Union, that precipitated Russia's decision to annex Crimea because of the revolt in Ukraine that led to a change in government.

So there was a focus, as I said before, on trying to find a way of getting the Ukrainian Government to stabilize and sustainable. And we were also in the period in the last year or so of preparation for Ukrainian Presidential elections, which made it quite complicated in trying to work with the incumbent government and all of their institutions and then looking forward to what might be a change of government in Ukraine.

So what we were trying to do was work with the institutions that were there already in place, from the prosecutor's office to the Ukrainian Parliament, the Rada, to government officials who these sets of issues came into their purview, and the main locus of that activity was through our embassy in Kyiv and also through the State Department.

Q  Now --

A  I should also point out, of course, that we have posted to the Embassy in Ukraine, just as is the case in most embassies, representatives of all the U.S. Government departments and agencies that would be involved in these kinds of issues, so from the DOJ, FBI, and many others.

Q  But certainly eliminating corruption in Ukraine was one of, if the central, goals of U.S. foreign policy?

A  That's right, as it has been with many other former Soviet states where the corruption pervades through anything from the police force to getting into schools, getting medical treatment, you know, all different levels of the public sector.

Q  Are you familiar with the Intelligence Community's assessment of whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election?

A  I am.

Q  And are you familiar with an indictment that the Special Counsel Robert Mueller filed in connection to Russian interference in the 2016 election?

A  Yes, I am.

Q  Do you have any reason to doubt either the facts alleged in the indictment or the Intelligence Community's assessment that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election?

A  I do not.

Q  And do you have any reason to believe that Ukraine did interfere in the 2016 election?

A  I do not. We're talking about the Ukrainian Government here when you say Ukraine, correct?

Q  Yes.

A  Yes, I do not.

Q  Okay. I'm going to switch gears for a minute, Dr. Hill. When did you first become aware of the interest in Ukraine of Rudy Giuliani?

A  It would have been sometime between July -- I'm sorry -- January 2019 and March 2019. And I first became aware of it partly through articles in the newspaper that I see some of our Members of Congress reading, The Hill, by John Solomon, and also because of Mr. Giuliani's statements on television.

Q  Part of your duties and responsibilities is to keep track of matters in the public, right, and in the media related to the areas that you were covering. Is that accurate?

A  Not entirely. I mean, my job was to, you know, keep track of what our foreign counterparts were doing. I have to, you know, confess right upfront that it's incredibly difficult to keep up with what everybody else is doing as well.

And I would often rely on members of our internal NSC press corps, other colleagues, our directors, and other people to flag anything for me that they thought that I should be paying attention to. I had every morning an intel brief, and it didn't, you know, basically always pertain to domestic related issues, of course.

But we do get as much, of course -- I think most of you who have served in government know this -- compilations of clippings that the White House Sit Room deems to be of relevance or of interest. And some of those would be forwarded onto us if they had subject-related interest. So that was how I first became aware that there was some deeper interest on the part of Mr. Giuliani.

Q  And what did you understand that interest to have been when you initially learned about it?

A  To be honest, I had a hard time figuring out quite what it was about because there were references to George Soros; there were references to 2016; and then there were all kinds of references to -- when I first read the article in The Hill, which I think was in late March of 2019, it was referring to do-not-prosecute lists and statements from the Ukrainian prosecutor, Mr. Lutsenko, none of which I'd ever heard of anything about before.

Q  And at this point, what was your impression of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko?

A  I hadn't really formed much of a personal opinion of him, but certainly from the information that I had, not just from our embassy but from also colleagues at the State Department and others across the analytical community, there were clearly some problems with this gentleman in the way that he was conducting his work.

Q  And around this time, what did you understand the relationship between Rudy Giuliani and the President of the United States to be?

A  Beyond the official role of Mr. Giuliani as the private attorney, I had no other sense whatsoever of what his role might be.

Q  Okay. Did you ever meet or communicate with Rudy Giuliani directly on matters relating to Ukraine?

A  I did not. I've never actually met him.

Q  Now, after you first learned about Mr. Giuliani's interest in March, what did you understand to be the development of his interest in Ukraine after March?

A  Well, he seemed to develop a very strong interest in Ukraine in that timeframe. And I was trying, you know, to the best of my limited ability, to figure out what that interest might be. And I made a couple of inquiries to people to ask what they knew about his activities, and I will be quite frank in saying that most of the people who I spoke to thought it was related to personal business on his part.

Q  And who did you initially speak to about Mr. Giuliani?

A  I asked several of my colleagues who were, you know, familiar with his work in New York. I asked other                         because some of the references were obviously to energy related issues. I talked to some of my colleagues across the NSC who work in our energy directorate.

And I tried to read as much as I possibly could in the press to figure out what was going on because, at this point, it started to have an impact obviously on our own work because of the constant references by people to his statements, especially on FOX News.

Q  Can you explain what impact it had on the official U.S. policy and your role in making that?

A  Because Mr. Giuliani was asserting quite frequently on television in public appearances that he had been given some authority over matters related to Ukraine, and if that was the case, we hadn't been informed about that. But he was making a lot of public statements and, you know, obviously making a lot of assertions, including about our ambassador to Ukraine, Masha Yovanovitch.

Q  Did you try to determine whether Mr. Giuliani was accurate and he had been given any portfolio over Ukraine?

A  I asked my, you know, direct superior Ambassador Bolton if he was aware of Mr. Giuliani being given some direct taskings related to Ukraine, and he was not aware of this.

Q  Did you speak to anyone else about this?

A  People in the State Department also.

Q  All right. And what was their response?

A  Everyone was completely unaware of any direct official role that Mr. Giuliani had been given on the Ukraine account. And, at that particular juncture, no one that I had been in contact with had actually spoken to him.

Q  And what particular juncture are you referring to?

A  You asked me about the early stages, so around March, April of 2019.

Q  To your knowledge, was Mr. Giuliani ever a government employee?

A  Not that I know of, no.

Q  Do you know whether he held a security clearance?

A  I don't know.

Q  Now, you said that, initially, you were led to believe that his interest was based on his personal financial interest. Did you come to understand that that interest of his evolved over time?

A  If we're talking at later stages, I mean, it depends on how you want to go through this, you know, chronologically or, you know, what I started to know before I left. How would you like to approach this?

Q  I'm asking after March, April, up until you left, just broadly speaking, what did you come to understand his interests to encompass?

A  Well, there was a period before the ousting of our Ambassador, and there was a period after this. So, in the period up until the ouster -- and I'm using this, I think, very clearly, I think, for all of us who were working on the Ukraine account, the dismissal of Ambassador Yovanovitch was a real turning point for us.

Because all of the information that I had seen in the press, be it on The Hill, John Solomon's articles, on Mr. Giuliani's whirlwind, on FOX News or the newspaper articles I looked at, material that was -- you know, I asked to collect together and, you know, information that I got from other colleagues who were tracking this as well seemed to point towards a mixture of some business associates of Mr. Giuliani. I was told the names of the two gentlemen who happen to have just been indicted. I had not previously come across them at all.

There was also an American businessman in Florida who was associated with them whose name was also mentioned to me, Harry Sargeant. I didn't find any further information out about him. I mean, and my job was to track what was going on with Ukraine, not to start looking, you know, at what domestic actors were about.

I just want to make it very clear that at no time did I try to go beyond the confines of my job. I was just trying to understand what was going on so that I could then factor that in into any interactions that we were having with Ukrainian officials and across the board across the interagency.

I was told that these gentlemen, Mr. Parnas, Mr. Fruman, and Mr. Sargeant had all been in business with Mr. Giuliani, and that the impression that a number of Ukrainian officials and others had had was that they were interested in seeking business deals in Ukraine.

Q  Now why did the removal of Ambassador Yovanovitch mark a turning point for you?

A  Because there was no basis for her removal. The accusations against her had no merit whatsoever. This was a mishmash of conspiracy theories that, again, I've told you, I believe firmly to be baseless, an idea of an association between her and George Soros.

I had had accusations similar to this being made against me as well. My entire first year of my tenure at the National Security Council was filled with hateful calls, conspiracy theories, which has started again, frankly, as it's been announced that I've been giving this deposition, accusing me of being a Soros mole in the White House, of colluding with all kinds of enemies of the President, and, you know, of various improprieties.

And it seems to be extraordinarily easy, as Ambassador Yovanovitch pointed out in her opening testimony, for people to make baseless claims about people and then to seek their dismissal.

So I'd experienced exactly the same treatment that she had in the whole first year of my tenure at the National Security Council, which is a period in which Lieutenant General McMaster and many other members of staff were targeted as well, and many people were hounded out of the National Security Council because they became frightened about their own security.

I received, I just have to tell you, death threats, calls at my home. My neighbors reported somebody coming and hammering on my door. My                         picked up a phone call to have someone call me obscenities to      .           very nervous about me testifying today as a result of that.

Now, I'm not easily intimidated, but that made me mad. And when I saw this happening to Ambassador Yovanovitch again, I was furious, because this is, again, just this whipping up of what is frankly an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about George Soros to basically target nonpartisan career officials, and also some political appointees as well, because I just want to say this: This is not indiscriminate in its attacks.

And so it was obvious to us, and I mean all of my team, everybody at the State Department that I spoke to including at the higher levels, inside the NSC at the high levels as well, that she'd been subject to a pretty ruthless, nasty defamation to basically remove her from place.

And the most obvious explanation at that point, it has to be said, seemed to be business dealings of individuals who wanted to improve their investment positions inside of Ukraine itself, and also to deflect away from the findings of not just the Mueller report on Russian interference but what's also been confirmed by your own Senate report, and what I know myself to be true as a former intelligence analyst and somebody who has been working on Russia for more than 30 years. So the fact that Ambassador Yovanovitch was removed as a result of this was, I have to say, pretty dispiriting.

Q  Who did you understand was responsible for her removal?

A  I understood this to be the result of the campaign that Mr. Giuliani had set in motion in conjunction with people who were writing articles and, you know, publications that I would have expected better of, and also, you know, just the constant drumbeat of these accusations that he was making on the television.

And as a result of that, he had created an atmosphere in which she was under great suspicion, and it was obvious that she would lose the confidence of senior people because these accusations seem to stick to people even when they're proved not to be true.

Q  Well, did you understand that the State Department -- well, let me take a step back. Who ultimately made the decision to remove her?

A  I assumed, and I was told, that it was at the top levels of the State Department because they felt that her position was no longer tenable.

Q  Did you understand whether the President of the United States had a role in this at all?

A  I was not led to believe that. I did not hear that, and I was not told that. But it was clear that her position had become untenable by the nature of these accusations against her. And there are many other distinguished public servants who we read about in the paper every single day who have resigned or get pushed out because accusations are made against them that make it incredibly difficult for them to do their jobs.

Q  Were you aware, by the end of April when Ambassador Yovanovitch was removed, that the President himself had retweeted some of John Solomon's articles in The Hill related to this?

A  I think I had seen those tweets. I'd obviously seen those tweets.

Q  And since you were working in the White House, what did you understand at that point, in April, the President's view of Ambassador Yovanovitch to be, if you knew?

A  Basically -- yeah.

MR. WOLOSKY: Let me just caution you not to speculate about things that you don't know.

DR. HILL: Yeah. I was just going to say that I could only form a judgment as everybody else could from the tweets. I was not able to form any other judgment. I did not hear at any juncture the President say anything about Ambassador Yovanovitch.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  And did you discuss Ambassador Yovanovitch with Ambassador Bolton?

A  I did.

Q  And what was his reaction to this?

A  His reaction was pained. And he basically said -- in fact, he directly said: Rudy Giuliani is a hand grenade that is going to blow everybody up.

He made it clear that he didn't feel that there was anything that he could personally do about this.

I met with Ambassador Yovanovitch and Assistant Secretary Phil Reeker on May 1st when she was recalled to Washington, D.C., to hear from her and to hear from Acting Assistant Secretary Phil Reeker what they thought had happened.

Because this had a really devastating effect on the morale of all of the teams that I work with across the interagency because everybody knows Ambassador Yovanovitch to be the best of the best in terms of a nonpartisan career official.

And as a woman, and, you know, I don't see always a lot of prominent women in these positions, she was the highest ranking woman diplomat. And I have worked with her across all of my career in -- both in government when I was at the DNI and also in the think tank world as a professional who works on this region when she'd been Ambassador in Armenia and also in Kyrgyzstan.

And I only have a professional relationship with her. I don't see myself as a personal friend of hers. But I just see her as epitomizing what United States diplomacy should be.

Q  During that meeting that you had on May 1st, did she relay to you what the reasoning for her removal was as she understood it?

A  She relayed to me basically the same things that she wrote in her testimony, and that has been made public.

And she was deeply disappointed and very upset. She also made it clear that she wasn't going to grandstand and that she appreciated that the State Department were trying to help her.

It was obvious that this had left a lot of her colleagues at high levels feeling extremely upset. It certainly seemed that Deputy Sullivan, Assistant Secretary Reeker, and other officials in the State Department's highest levels were trying to do their best to make sure that she, you know, kept her reputation and was also given at least a position in the interim that would be worthy of the kind of person that she is. She's, remember, also been commandant of the National Defense University. I mean, this is really one of our most distinguished diplomats.

Q  Did she indicate to you that Deputy Secretary Sullivan had told her that this order had come from the President at that point?

A  She did not say that to me, but she did say that he had said to her that there was no cause for her dismissal and that he was deeply regretful of it. She was being very discreet.

Q  And it was your understanding that no one at the senior levels at the State Department had any issues with her qualifications or her competence?

A  That was my understanding, and the same with all of her colleagues across the diplomatic corps, the ambassadorial corps, and certainly within the National Security Council.

Q  And did you understand whether Secretary Pompeo had any concerns about her work product or competency?

A  I never heard anything to indicate that.

[11:33 a.m.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  And you said a second ago or a few minutes ago that you never heard anything directly from the President related to --

A  I did not.

Q  -- Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Just broadly speaking, we're not going to get right now into the communications, but how frequently did you speak to the President about any matters under your portfolio?

A  Only in the context of larger meetings, particularly around visits. It changed over time. In the first year of our -- of the Presidency under General McMaster, he had a very different style, and he would bring many of us into meetings.

That was different under Ambassador Bolton, but I think that that’s also quite typical of the approach of different National Security Advisors, so I don't read anything into that. People have a different approach. And, as you know, there’s been a big debate since the beginning of the National Security Council when it was first set up, you know, around the time of, you know, World War II and the Cold War, about what the right size, what the composition should be, and what the approach should be, both of the National Security Advisor and the staff.

Q  Now, so as it relates directly to Ukraine, how many conversations did you have with -- were you present for where the President was discussing Ukraine, Ukrainian policy, or otherwise?

MR. WOLOSKY: think it's fine to answer the question of how many, generally speaking, times you were in discussions with the President. I mean, if there are further questions about the content of those discussions --

MR. GOLDMAN: I'm asking because she indicated that she didn't hear anything about Ambassador Yovanovitch directly from the President, so I'm trying just to understand how frequently she would have been in a position to discuss these matters.

DR. HILL: I mean, just also to be clear, Ukraine was not a top policy item in a lot of this period. And my portfolio covered all of Europe. It covered Turkey, which, you know, obviously, there was a great deal of activity, and Russia.

So it was really only ever in the context of when there would be an official meeting with the Ukrainian President. And in the time that I was there, there were not a great deal of meetings with the Ukrainian leadership. There was Poroshenko at one of the U.N. General Assemblies.

So the meetings were only very much in the context of brief preparatory discussions for a meeting -- and this is obviously covered by executive privilege -- with heads of State.

MR. GOLDMAN: So you said that Ambassador Yovanovitch’s removal was a turning point. How did things change after that?

THE CHAIRMAN: Before we go to that, if I could just ask, Dr. Hill, you mentioned that the decision to remove the Ambassador, as far as you knew, took place at the top of the State Department. By that, do you mean Secretary Pompeo or someone else?

DR. HILL: This would be a presumption so --

MR. WOLOSKY: If you don't know the answer, don't speculate. Just state what you know.

THE CHAIRMAN: Ambassador Yovanovitch related seeking support, a statement of support from the Secretary of State. That was not forthcoming. Do you have any personal knowledge of those circumstances?

DR. HILL: I do not. I did take part in basically reviewing statements of support for Ambassador Yovanovitch from the State Department, but this was done at the working level. I mean, there were many announcements trying to refute some of basically the baseless accusations against Ambassador Yovanovitch in the period of March and April.

And I just want to say again that I met with her on May 1st, when she had been unexpectedly summoned back to Washington, D.C. It took all of us by surprise because, to be frank, I thought that those accusations about her would be dismissed because they were clearly, in some cases, just absurd.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  So just going back to after her removal, how did -- you said it was a turning point. How so?

A  Well, it was a shock, to be frank, to all of the team. Ambassador Yovanovitch had been a key person, as I mentioned before. Many of the interagency-approved policies that we were implementing were carried out primarily by the Embassy in Kyiv, and we had just then lost the leadership.

There was also a changeover in the Embassy at that point, as the -- inevitably, as you get into the spring-summer period, as new staff are going to be brought on board at the Embassy. And so there was a bit of a kind of a loss of direction for a period.

Now, we had, of course, the ongoing efforts of Ambassador Kurt Volker as the U.S. Envoy for Ukraine. But at this particular juncture, Ambassador Volker's main job had been to meet with the Russians as well as the other members of the Normandy format Minsk group, the French and the Germans, under the European leadership.

But the Russians at this particular juncture were not really picking up on the idea of having further meetings.

They were stonewalling because they themselves didn't want to make very clearly any steps in determining the future of their own Ukraine policy until they found out who they were going to be dealing with in the Ukrainian Presidential election.

Now, we'd had, of course, the election in April of Zelensky, but at this point, we were also waiting to see what would happen in the Ukrainian Parliamentary elections, the Rada, to see whether Zelensky would be able to have a workable majority.

You might also recall in November of 2018, there was the incident in the Kerch Strait, where the Russians seized Naval vessels of the Ukrainian Navy that were trying to enter through international waters of the Kerch Strait into the Sea of Azov and then detained their sailors after, in fact, firing on the two Ukrainian ships and injuring at least one, but maybe more of the sailors. And they'd taken the sailors to Moscow. They were effectively becoming prisoners of war.

And we'd been focused in this period on trying to push the Russians to release the Ukrainian sailors, and we had pulled down meetings, bilateral meetings with President Putin -- this was actually the President's decision to do so -- in response to the Russians' refusal to release the Ukrainians.

And so, you know, there were many issues that we were still trying to push at this period, and we had to figure out how we were going to do this. So there was a period of uncertainty as to how we were going to be conducting our Ukraine policy.

Q  And that's from the official United States position, you mean?

A  Correct.

Q  Now, how did Rudy Giuliani's efforts from after -- from May through the summer impact the official U.S. foreign policy?

A  Well, we heard that he was planning on visiting Ukraine, and we didn't know why, you know, for what purpose and what was his intent. And, you know, I heard about that on the news and read about that in the paper. I mean, subsequently that meeting was pulled down.

But this was then in the period where Ambassador Volker told us that he was planning on meeting with Mr. Giuliani to try to see if he could resolve whatever issues there may be there. You’ve had Ambassador Volker come and talk on his own terms and to answer your questions, and I'm sure he's told you what he told us.

But this is also in the period where, rather unexpectedly, our Ambassador to the EU, Ambassador Sondland informed us, but just informed us without, again, us being given any specific directive, that he had been assigned to be in charge, at least in interim fashion, of the Ukraine portfolio.

Q  And around when was that?

A  That was in the May-June timeframe.

Q  And who did you understand assigned Ambassador

Sondland to do that?

A  At first, nobody. And it was only later, very late June, when Ambassador Sondland told me again that he was in charge of Ukraine. And I asked, well, on whose authority? And he said, the President.

Q  At this point now, Mr. Giuliani had indicated he was going to speak to Ukrainian officials, and then he decided not to go. Now, into the June timeframe into July, did you understand what he was advocating about -- in Ukraine and what his interests were?

A  In this period in May, I had a request from a former U.S. Government official to meet with me. This was Amos Hochstein, the former U.S. Envoy for Energy, who I'd previously worked with in different capacities. Mr. Hochstein had been appointed to the board of Naftogaz, the main Ukrainian-U. S -- gas and oil company. He had actually been appointed during this administration, in conjunction with discussions with the Department of Energy.

So I just want to make clear that although Amos Hochstein had been the U.S. Energy Envoy under President Obama, he was somebody who was well-respected by the Department of Energy, and he had very close ties with Secretary Perry's staff and also with people who served on the National Security Council who worked on energy issues.

So they were very comfortable with him taking on this role.

And he'd been in the position for several months, perhaps even a year at this juncture when he came in to talk with me, which was towards the end of May. And he came in to express some serious concerns that he had. In the course of his time on the board of Naftogaz, which he actually said had actually not been a particularly uplifting experience, it had come to his attention that there was a lot of pressure being put on the officials of Naftogaz, who had also reached out to talk to me and my colleagues at the National Security Council, to have other board members put in place and this seemed to be at the direction of Giuliani, and that they were also being pushed more generally in the Ukrainian energy sector to open up investigations into corruption in the energy sector that seemed to go beyond what I had assumed was the thrust of our push on corruption, which was related to people trying to siphon off assets of Naftogaz or to use that improperly, which had been done at many times in the past, and, in fact, would include the energy company Burisma that everyone has been very concerned about.

I, to be honest, had forgotten the name of Burisma. It had been a long time since that name had surfaced. It had been on my radar screen sometime previously, and I asked Amos to remind me of the Burisma issue. And he reminded me that this was the company that Hunter Biden had been affiliated with.

So, at that juncture, it became clear, from Amos' concerns that he was flagging for me -- he also said that a number of Ukrainian officials had come to him very concerned that they were getting pressure from Giuliani and Giuliani associates -- and he also mentioned the names of Mr. Parnas and Fruman -- to basically start to open up investigations and also to change the composition of the Naftogaz board.

Q  So did you come to understand that Mr. Giuliani perhaps, at a minimum, was advocating for an investigation into Burisma?

A  It was part of what seemed to be a package of issues that he was pushing for, including what seemed to be the business interests of his own associates.

Q  And when -- the way Mr. Hochstein explained it to you, did you understand what Rudy Giuliani's interest in an investigation into Burisma was?

A  Not entirely, I did not at that juncture.

Q  At a later point, did you come to understand what it was?

A  Only, frankly, since I've left the administration.

Q  And what is that?

A  It's only based on -- and, again, this is what I've been reading in the papers. My jaw dropped when I saw the indictments of these two gentlemen, of Fruman and Parnas. So it becomes clear that they were certainly up to no good. But that was what I was already hearing.

And I was also told by Amos and other colleagues that they had some linkages, so I also want to, you know, get you to step back at this period. This is, you know, March, April, into May, where we were having a standoff over Venezuela. And the Russians at this particular juncture were signaling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine.

In other words, if we were going to exert some semblance of the Monroe Doctrine of, you know, Russia keeping out of our backyard, because this is after the Russians had sent in these hundred operatives essentially to, you know, basically secure the Venezuelan Government and, you know, to preempt what they were obviously taking to be some kind of U.S. military action, they were basically signaling: You know, you have your Monroe doctrine. You want us out of your backyard. Well, you know, we have our own version of this. You're in our backyard in Ukraine. And we were getting that sent to us, you know, kind of informally through channels. It was in the Russian press, various commentators.

And I was asked to go out to Russia in this timeframe to basically tell the Russians to knock this off. I was given a special assignment by the National Security Council with the agreement with the State Department to get the Russians to back off.

So, in the course of my discussions with my colleagues                                                        , I also found out that there were Ukrainian energy interests that had been in the mix in Venezuelan energy sectors as well as the names again of Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman, and this gentleman Harry Sargeant came up. And my colleagues                                                         said these guys were notorious in Florida and that they were bad news.

Q  And you understood that they were working with Rudy Giuliani at that point?

A  I did at this point.

Q  You mentioned Ambassador Sondland, who I think in June told you that he had been assigned by the President to cover Ukraine. You said that was somewhat of an unusual development. What did you mean by that?

A  Well, it was very unusual because we were given no instructions. There wasn't a directive. Ambassador Bolton didn't know about this. Nobody at the State Department seemed to know about this either. I went to consult several times with senior State Department officials to ask them if they knew if this was the case.

Q  And what did they say?

A  They said they had no -- no directive, no information to suggest this.

Q  And who did you speak to about this?

A  I spoke to Under Secretary Hale. I spoke to Assistant Secretary Reeker. And I did have a phone call at one point with Ulrich Brechbuhl, the counsel to Secretary Pompeo.

But I also have to say that Ambassador Sondland had asserted -- and, again, I mean asserted by telling me that he had a very large remit for his understanding of Ambassador to the European Union. He referred to a letter outlining his authorities and his responsibilities given to him by the State Department, which is, frankly, the regular State Department letter to Ambassadors when they, you know, get remit as the plenipotentiaries and the representatives of the President.

In all cases, you know, they have quite extensive responsibilities and authorities anyway. But said that he had been -- again, this is what he said to us, and I can only tell you what Ambassador Sondland said to me, that the President had given him broad authority on all things related to Europe, that he was the President's point man on Europe.

So this meant that anything that was related to the European Union could, in his view, fall within his purview. And I was constantly going back to State Department and to the Deputy Assistant Secretaries and Acting Assistant Secretary to try to clarify this. And, again, in each case, they had no knowledge of these responsibilities that had been accorded to Ambassador Sondland in his rendition of these issues.

And so I was spending an inordinate amount of time trying to coordinate in some fashion with Ambassador Sondland on a whole range of issues related to visits by heads of states, meetings. And Ambassador Sondland would frequently give people my personal cell phone to call up and demand meetings with Ambassador Bolton or with me.

We had all kinds of officials from Europe, particularly when words redacted                    was the president in office of the European Union, literally appearing at the gates of the White House, calling on our personal phones, which are actually in lock boxes, so it was kind of difficult to get hold of them. I'd find endless messages from irate words redactedwords redacted                      officials who'd been told that they were supposed to meet with me by Ambassador Sondland.

I mean, some of it was comical, but it was also, for me and for others, deeply concerning. And I actually went to our Intelligence Bureau and asked to have words redactedwords redacted                                  sit down with him and explain that this was a counter intelligence risk, particularly giving out our personal phone numbers. And also just, I mean, basically going beyond the larger remit because he should have been having briefings. If, indeed, he had been given these assignments, he should have been having appropriate briefings for all of these meetings.

And as far as I could understand, the briefings that he was getting -- so he was often meeting with people he had no information about. It's like basically driving along with no guardrails and no GPS on an unfamiliar territory. He was meeting with, for example, words redacted                    officials that we had derogatory information on that he shouldn't have been meeting with, or he was, you know, giving out his phone number and texting to, you know, regional officials, for example, the Prime Minister of words redacted                who he met at a meeting in Brussels. All of those communications could have been exfiltrated by the Russians very easily.

So I'll just say right upfront we had a lot of concerns, but I expressed these openly to Ambassador Sondland. So I'm not telling you anything that I didn't say to him.

Q  Did there come a time when you had a meeting at the White House with Ukrainian officials in early July, where Ambassador Sondland was also present?

A  Yes, that is correct.

Q  Do you recall what day that was?

A  That was July 10th. So this was essentially the week before I was due to wrap up and hand off.

Q  And who was present for that meeting?

A  This was a meeting by, at this point, the appointee for President Zelensky to be his National Security Advisor, Oleksandr Danylyuk, and his personal adviser, a gentleman who has been named in the press, Andrey Yermak, with Ambassador Bolton. Secretary Perry was also in attendance. Yermak had an assistant. Ambassador Sondland. There was our Ukraine director, Ambassador Volker, and myself and our senior director for energy affairs, Wells Griffith.

And there may have also been -- the room got a bit crowded and, I had to sit on the back sofa. I think there might have also been one of Secretary Perry's aides with him in that meeting. And then there were other officials who were also there in attendance, but not in Ambassador Bolton's office, who were waiting out in one of the anterooms.

Q  And what was the ostensible purpose of the meeting?

A  It was twofold. Danylyuk, who was the designated National Security Advisor, was trying to seek assistance in what he wanted to do with a revamp of the Ukrainian National Security Council, which, frankly, could do with it. And so he was wanting to ask Ambassador Bolton for his assistance and recommendations on, you know, what they could do to sort of streamline the national security apparatus, and would the U.S. be willing to help with technical assistance. I mean, again, this would be something that would normally be done through the State Department. It's not something that the National Security Council deals with. But I think they were trying to get Ambassador Bolton's imprimatur, because he is the National Security Advisor, and support for this.

And also Ambassador Bolton has, you know, deep knowledge of many issues, and Mr. Danylyuk was hoping to get, you know, some of his advice just in the general perspective of national security issues.

And then there was also that the Ukrainians were very anxious to set up a meeting, a first meeting between President Zelensky and our President.

Q  And there had already been a written invitation to that effect by that point from the White House, right?

A  It wasn't an invitation. It was basically a general, you know, we look forward to seeing you kind of open-ended invitation at the end of a congratulatory letter that was sent to President Zelensky after his election in April.

Q  But you understood that the Ukrainians wanted President Zelensky to make a White House visit?

A  Correct.

Q  Why is that?

A  Every single leader, with very few exceptions, who's either come into office or been in office some period wants to have a meeting with the President at the White House. All of my interactions with Ambassadors or officials from other countries inevitably came to, "When can we have a White House meeting, and if we can't meet with the President, when can we meet with the Vice President?"

And people, you know, in these circumstances were not satisfied with perhaps a pull-aside at a larger event like the G-20 or the U.N. GA. They wanted to have a White House meeting, if at all possible.

Q  Did anything happen in that meeting that was out of the ordinary?

A  Yes. At one point during that meeting, Ambassador Bolton was, you know, basically trying very hard not to commit to a meeting, because, you know -- and, again, these meetings have to be well-prepared. They're not just something that you say, yes, we're going to have a meeting without there being a clear understanding of what the content of that meeting is going to be.

And that is a perpetual problem for us, that many -- not all leaders but some, you know, want to really just have a photo opportunity often for their own purposes. I mean, legitimacy and legitimization of them as a new leader is obviously very important. That's not just an inconsequential issue.

But sometimes -- you know, the previous President Poroshenko very much wanted a White House meeting in the run up to his election, because he wanted to use that for his election campaign. We've had, you know, all kinds of leaders or people who are running for reelection actually try to ambush the President.

We had one candidate for election in one country that I won't state who showed up at the words redacted                State Fair and worked the rope line to get a picture with the President and then put it up on the website of his campaign, claiming that he'd had a personal meeting with the President. Well, you know, it was against a backdrop, so you couldn't see the cows in the background or, you know, the farm entity, but we all thought it was quite hysterical that they go to those lengths to work the rope line words redacted                to get a picture.

But this shows the importance that leaders put on meeting with our President, and having a White House meeting is obviously the most important of all. And Ambassador Bolton is always -- was always very cautious and always very much, you know, by the book and was not going to certainly commit to a meeting right there and then, certainly not one where it wasn't -- it was unclear what the content of the meeting would be about, what kind of issues that we would discuss that would be pertaining to Ukrainian-U.S. relations.

And Secretary Perry had been talking in this context about the importance of reforming the energy structures in Ukraine in a very general sense and talking about how important that was for Ukrainian national security and that, as well as reforming their national security structures, they also have to, you know, really pay attention to their Achilles heel, all the places that Russia had leverage, the military sector, which Ambassador Bolton had also been talking about, and then the energy sector, which was really in some considerable disarray.

Then Ambassador Sondland blurted out: Well, we have an agreement with the Chief of Staff for a meeting if these investigations in the energy sector start.

And Ambassador Bolton immediately stiffened. He said words to the effect -- I can't say word for word what he said because I was behind them sitting on the sofa with our Senior Director of Energy, and we all kind of looked up and thought that was somewhat odd. And Ambassador Bolton immediately stiffened and ended the meeting.

Q  Right then, he just ended the meeting?

A  Yeah. He said: Well, it was very nice to see you. You know, I can't discuss a meeting at this time. We'll clearly work on this. And, you know, kind of it was really nice to see you.

So it was very abrupt. I mean, he looked at the clock as if he had, you know, suddenly another meeting and his time was up, but it was obvious he ended the meeting.

Q  And did you have a conversation with Ambassador Bolton after this meeting?

A  did.

Q  Describe that.

A  Ambassador Sondland said as he was leaving -- again, I was back -- to the back of Ambassador Bolton's office. And Ambassador Sondland said to Ambassador Volker and also Secretary Perry and the other people who were with him, including the Ukrainians, to come down to -- there's a room in the White House, the Ward Room, to basically talk about next steps. And that's also unusual. I mean, he meant to talk to the Ukrainians about next steps about the meeting.

And Ambassador --

Q  The White House meeting?

A  The White House meeting. And Ambassador Bolton pulled me back as I was walking out afterwards and said: Go down to the Ward Room right now and find out what they're talking about and come back and talk to me.

So I did go down. And I came in as there was obviously a discussion underway. And there was a very large group of people in the room. They were the aides to the Ukrainian officials, Mr. Yermak and Mr. Danylyuk. There were a couple, at least two State Department aides who had come over with Ambassador Sondland. There was Ambassador Volker's aide, and there were a couple of other people. I weren't sure who they were, whether they'd been part of Secretary Perry's team. But as I was coming in, Secretary Perry was leaving to go off to another engagement. So I think that one person there was probably one of his team, but I'm not sure for certain, because I didn't recognize the person. And there was also our director for Ukrainian affairs.

And Ambassador Sondland, in front of the Ukrainians, as I came in, was talking about how he had an agreement with Chief of Staff Mulvaney for a meeting with the Ukrainians if they were going to go forward with investigations. And my director for Ukraine was looking completely alarmed. And I came in again as this discussion was underway. Mr. Danylyuk looked very alarmed as well. He didn't look like he knew what was going on. That wasn't the case with Yermak.

And I immediately said to Ambassador Sondland: Look, we can't discuss the meeting here with our Ukrainian colleagues. Ambassador Bolton sent me down to ask -- you know, kind of to make sure that you understand that we'll be talking about the meeting. We'll obviously be looking into this, but that we can't make any commitments at this particular juncture because a lot of things will have to be worked through in terms of the timing and the substance.

And Ambassador Sondland cut me off, and he said: We have an agreement that they'll have a meeting.

And I said: Look, we cannot discuss this in front of our colleagues. You know, we have to talk about, you know, the details of this.

And he said: Okay, okay, I get it.

And he asked the Ukrainians to basically leave the room. So they basically moved out into the corridor.

And I said: Look, I don't know what's going on here, but Ambassador Bolton wants to make it very clear that we have to talk about, you know, how are we going to set up this meeting. It has to go through proper procedures.

And he started to basically talk about discussions that he had had with the Chief of Staff. He mentioned Mr. Giuliani, but then I cut him off because I didn't want to get further into this discussion at all.

And I said: Look, we're the National Security Council. We’re basically here to talk about how we set this up, and we’re going to set this up in the right way. And, you know, Ambassador Bolton has asked me to make it completely clear that we're going to talk about this, and, you know, we will deal with this in the proper procedures. And Ambassador Sondland was clearly annoyed with this, but then, you know, he moved off. He said he had other meetings.

And I went back to talk to Ambassador Bolton. And Ambassador Bolton asked me to go over and report this to our NSC counsel, to John Eisenberg. And he told me, and this is a direct quote from Ambassador Bolton: You go and tell Eisenberg that I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up on this, and you go and tell him what you've heard and what I've said. So I went over to talk to John Eisenberg about this.

MR. GOLDMAN: We'll have to pick that up in the next round. Our time is up. Over to the minority.

THE CHAIRMAN: The minority is recognized.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Good morning, Dr. Hill, Steve Castor with the Republican staff.

A  Yes.

Q  Ambassador Volker related his thoughts about the July 10th White House meeting. Was Secretary Perry involved with that, was he in the meeting?

A  He wasn't in the Ward Room when I came in. He was leaving out. But he was in the meeting with Ambassador Bolton, correct.

Q  The first art of the meeting?

A  That is correct, yes.

Q  Could you just run down the people that were in the

meeting again? Danylyuk, Yermak.

A  Yeah, Yermak's assistant or aide, whose name, I'm sorry, I don't recall. There was Wells Griffith, P. Wells Griffith, our senior director for energy. He and I were sitting together on the sofa. There was Secretary Perry. There was our director for Ukraine, and there was Ambassador Volker and Alex Vindman, and there was Ambassador Bolton. And, again, there may have been another aide to --

Q  Was Volker there?

A  Volker was there. Yes, correct, he was there. And there may have been another aide to Secretary Perry. I'm just trying to think about the layout across the table. It's not a very big table. Because I think there was somebody else sitting in one of the chairs. And I'm afraid, I'm sorry, I can't recall who it was.

Q  Did I get this right? You said Bolton wanted you to go down to John Eisenberg, and he said, "I'm not part of any drug deal"?

A  That's exactly what he said, quote/unquote. I think he was being ironic. But he wasn't very happy. He was very angry.

Q  Then you went down and spoke with Eisenberg?

A  Yes, I went across to speak to him in the other building.

Q  And what did you tell Eisenberg?

A  I told Ambassador Eisenberg that Ambassador Bolton had instructed me to go over there right away. And I gave him the details of what had transpired in the meeting in Ambassador Bolton's office and then what I had overheard as I came into the Ward Room and that my, you know, kind of primary concern for me personally was the fact that Ambassador Sondland was saying all of this in front of foreign nationals.

Now, the Ward Room is located right beside the Navy mess. It's inside really the secure spaces of the White House. Ambassador Sondland said he had requested this room through the Chief of Staff's Office, because I was a bit surprised that they had this room. We do meet with foreign delegations in there, but usually in a formal setting, not just for informal talks.

And when he pushed them also out of that, they were basically standing in a space between the Navy mess and the White House Sit Room. So this was an awkward setup, to say the least. So I also expressed those concerns to John, that then foreign nationals, you know, are just standing around in the corridor outside the Ward Room by the doors into the Sit Room.

Q  The President sent a letter May 29th, are you familiar with that, where he congratulated Zelensky?

A  I am familiar with that, right.

Q  And at the end of the letter -- we can make it an exhibit if we need to, but the President says: I would like to invite you to meet with me at the White House in Washington, D.C., as soon as we can find a mutually convenient time.

A  Correct.

Q  You're aware of that?

A  Yes. And I also want to tell you that Ambassador Sondland told us that he had dictated that paragraph to the President and to the Chief of Staff to add to that letter.

That letter did not go through the normal NSC procedures because the initial draft of the letter that we had put in place was sent back to the Chief of Staff. So Ambassador Sondland coordinated on that letter directly with the Chief of Staff, and it did not go back through the National Security Council Exec Sec. I had to get that letter directly from the White House Exec Sec.

Q  Is this an unusual statement to put in a letter?

A  Not at all. I mean, it's the kind of thing that one would normally have in -- or might have in a letter, but I have to say, again, we were very cautious because it's not the case that you want actually every single head of state who's just been elected to come to the White House. So we would usually have something more generic, "We look forward to seeing you, you know, kind of at some future event," because a lot of heads of state we’d much prefer to meet with them on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly or NATO or, you know, some other event because, I mean, you can't have basically every week the President having to host some head of state in the White House.

Q  Is it fair to say sometimes these invitations are theoretically extended, but, in practicality, they don't come to fruition?

A  That is correct. They're often done as a courtesy, you know, as one -- and the President has had invitations like that himself. You may remember he got an invitation from Theresa May on her first visit to the White House in 2017 for a state visit to the United Kingdom, and that took a long time to come about.

Q  So is it fair to say it's part of the diplomatic pleasantries?

A  That is correct.

Q  Say, we'll bring you to the White House?

A  But not always, because we don't always put that in. So, again, Ambassador Sondland specifically told us that he had had that paragraph inserted. And we were, again, somewhat nervous about that, because, again, when you make an invitation like that and an expectation is set up, you need to have a clear idea of the timeframe and then the nature of the discussions.

And at this particular point, we're still waiting for the elections to the Ukrainian Parliament. So I just want to put that on the record.

Q  When was that going to be?

A  That was going to be in July. Well, in actual fact, at that point -- I'll have to go back and check. Perhaps we can all check whether it had actually been announced because Zelensky was under a great deal of pressure internally, domestically, and also from the Russians.

There was, you know, speculation in all analytical circles, both in Ukraine and outside, that he might not be able to get a workable majority in the Ukrainian Parliament. And all of us are very cognizant of the dangers of writing congratulatory letters to people who can't form governments. We've had a number of letters, in fact, we had to pull back where heads of state that we congratulated then couldn't actually form a government.

And at that point, we were very hesitant to, you know, push forward with any invitation to Zelensky until we knew that he had a workable majority in the Rada and was then going to be able to form his own cabinet.

So myself and others were actually cautioning against extending an invitation at that particular point until we knew that Zelensky would form a government. We were also extremely concerned about Zelensky's relationship with the gentleman Igor Kolomoisky, the Ukrainian oligarch, who was -- the oligarch who was basically the owner of the TV and production company that Mr. Zelensky's famous Servant of the People program had been part of. And, of course, our analysts and our Embassy and others were watching very closely -- and this is playing out now in the press and public -- to see how much influence Mr. Kolomoisky might have on Zelensky or on government formation.

And Kolomoisky is someone who the U.S. Government has been concerned about for some time, having been suspected and, indeed, proven to have embezzled money, American taxpayers' money, from a bank that was subsequently nationalized, PrivatBank. And he had gone into exile in Israel in this particular timeframe.

Q  Is he back in Ukraine?

A  So we were watching -- he's gone back to Ukraine. So we were watching for exactly these kinds of eventualities and were very reluctant at that point to put a meeting on the agenda, push for a meeting until we could see how the complexities of Ukrainian politics would play out.

Q  What were your thoughts on Zelensky in the run up to his election victory?

A  I had an open mind about him. He was, you know, somebody, you know, completely, you know, out of the -- from outside the political realm. Obviously, you know, we asked our analysts to, you know, get us as much information as they could.

And, as I said, the one question we had was really whether he would be able to act independently. He would obviously need a major Parliamentary majority for this or a significant Parliamentary majority, and whether someone like Igor Kolomoisky or other oligarchs would try to predate upon his Presidency.

Q  Did you believe he was genuinely campaigning on being an anticorruption champion?

A  There was a good chance that he was. And I'm always one of the people, you know, trust but verify. So I wanted to have a bit more information about him.

Q  Had Poroshenko's time run out, you think?

A  Poroshenko's time had definitely run out.

I also want to say that, you know, in this timeframe, we were being very careful in the run up to the elections not to appear, as the previous administration had done, to tip our hat in the election.

And we all remember the notorious phone call that the Russians basically intercepted and then put on YouTube of Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland talking to our Ambassador Geoff Pyatt at the time about decisions about who should be Prime Minister of Ukraine and the very damaging effect that that had. So we were trying to ensure at that time --

Q  When did that occur?

A  That was during the -- gosh, when was that -- one of the many upheavals in Ukrainian politics back in the2000s. I'll have to come back to you. That's one of those, you know, trivia questions I would have failed in my pub quiz there.

But, basically, you will all remember that it was intercepted by the Russians. It was a question of then-Prime Minister Yatseniuk about who would be more preferable for the United States. And we had determined as a government that we weren't going to play that game. We were not going to try to in any case -- in any shape or form suggest that Poroshenko was our candidate or that we had a preference for Zelensky or any of the other candidates that were running in the Presidential race.

And that had made President Poroshenko very uncomfortable and he had been agitating for some kind of meeting in that timeframe, including with the Vice President or someone as well.

Q  It's been posited that Ambassador Yovanovitch was close to Poroshenko, whether that's true or untrue.

A  That’s rubbish, just to be very clear. Then anybody in the government who is interacting with Poroshenko, including the Vice President, was -- and the President was close to Poroshenko, and that's just not true.

Q  When was it clear that Poroshenko's time was up?

A  I think it became, you know, very obvious in his handling of, you know, various issues. The Kerch Strait incident could very well have been handled differently.

Q  When was that?

A  That was in November of 2018. They have a perfect right to send their ships through the Kerch Strait, but it seemed to us that this action, you know, was taken -- it was taken on the eve of the armistice commemorations in France, where we'd already announced that there was going to be a meeting between the President and President Putin. There was a lot of scrutiny on other major events.

And it seemed to have been done not just with a freedom of navigation goal in mind, which, again, is completely acceptable and the right of the Ukrainians, but also to gain maximum attention.

And there was a miscalculation there. Perhaps the Ukrainians -- this is speculation on my part, but I think it bears on an analytical basis rather than on anything else that President Poroshenko thought that the Russians would catch and release, that they would, you know, perhaps attempt to detain the ships, not that there would be a fire fight, which is actually what happened. I mean, those ships were shot on by a Russian helicopter, and one of the seamen, the sailors, was injured. And I don't think he anticipated they'd seize both vessels and take the sailors off to Moscow.

Q  Was it clear that Zelensky was going to be the winner?

A  It was not

Q  So it was trending not towards Poroshenko, but it was going to be Zelensky or a third candidate?

A  Yeah. I mean, all the analysis, we had many updates at the time we were doing. In fact, the Embassy in Ukraine was doing some really excellent work on polling and on, you know, kind of outreach to Ukrainian citizens and their think tanks. And it was clear that Poroshenko was polling in the single digits, so it was an uphill battle for him if it was a free and fair election.

So our focus was on encouraging all parts of the Ukrainian establishment to have a free and fair election, and signaling to Poroshenko that if he tried to steal the election, this would not be acknowledged by the U.S. Government, that we were watching this. And to be fair to Poroshenko, he really did run a free and fair election. It was something the Russians didn't expect, and it was something I think that a lot of people did not expect

Q  How confident were you that Zelensky would be able to get the margins he needed to form a parliament or to form a majority?

A  Not especially confident, to be honest, given the pressures that he was facing and also the role of the Russians in obviously targeting the Ukrainian elections as well. You have to remember that before, you know, the Russians targeted us and targeted other European countries around their elections, they targeted Ukraine as well. And it was well-documented that the Russians were trying to run their own candidates, people with affiliations with Russian businesses, Russian oligarchs, and with the Kremlin.

Q  But, ultimately, he was able to do that in the July election?

A  He was, because I think everyone has always underestimated the Ukrainian people's political sentiment and grassroots.

Q  Ambassador Volker, you touched on it a little bit in the first hour, what was his portfolio?

A  His portfolio was to conduct, as best he could, the negotiations or give the United States a role in the negotiations with the Russians and the Ukrainians to find resolution to the war in Donbas.

So his portfolio covered interactions with the Normandy format Minsk group, the French and the Germans and the Ukrainians and Russians in that context. He was responsible for meetings with President Putin's designated Ukrainian envoy to the Ukrainian conflict, Mr. Sokov. That in itself is a challenge. Sokov is a political operator of the highest caliber and, you know, very well-known in Russian circles. And also to deal with other European leaders who have been, you know, actively involved and engaging with Ukraine, and our other allies, the Canadians, you know, NATO and others. But it was very much focused on the resolution of the conflict in Donbas.

Q  With Ambassador Sondland's self-asserted authority over at least parts of the Ukrainian portfolio, who are the other relevant U.S. officials, not Rudy Giuliani, but relevant U.S. officials involved with Ukraine policy at this point?

A  In terms of across the interagency, the equivalent Assistant Secretaries and Deputy Assistant Secretaries of Defense and at State. So –

Q  Who are they?

A  George Kent is the DAS in charge of Ukraine at the State Department. Wess Mitchell was previously the Assistant Secretary, but he left in February of 2019, February of 2019. Does that sound right?

And Phil Reeker came in as Acting Assistant Secretary, having been the special adviser to EUCOM, only really in April-May. So he was actually dual-hatted until the retirement of General Scaparrotti. He was his chief adviser. So he was, you know, doing two jobs at once. So I think he was appointed of -- named as Acting Assistant Secretary, but he only really was coming into the job in April.

And then, in terms of -- the DAS is Laura Cooper at the Defense Department. Then -- well, we also had had a number of changes over there. I mean, the Defense Department, there was a whole range of people who were involved in this, because of just the nature of assistance to Ukraine. We'd also had General Abizaid, who had been a chief military adviser to Ukraine. He was replaced by Keith Dayton, General Keith Dayton, who is the head of Garmisch -- our military school at Garmisch.

So you had a broad range of people, people also at, obviously, OMB, Departments of Commerce, USTR. There's a broad range of people who were involved in one way or another on Ukraine portfolio. Department of Justice, the FBI. We had a Department of Justice team working, and also in our Intel agencies as well.

Q  And in your directorate, could you help us understand how your directorate was set up?

A  We had one director for Ukraine, who at this particular juncture was Alex Vindman. Our previous director -- who was detailed from the Defense Department, he had been -- well, he still is -- a foreign area officer detailed to the Chairman's Office, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He had been General Dunford's key action officer for interactions with the Russians.

Q  And who's that?

A  For interactions, this is Alex Vindman.

Q  Okay. This is Alex Vindman. Is he still there?

A  I'm just giving you his background. To the best of my knowledge, he's still there. His predecessor was Catherine Croft, who was previously the Ukraine desk officer at the State Department, and she went to work for Kurt Volker as his deputy, but only in the very last couple of months.

Q  How many officials on your staff concentrated on Ukraine?

A  Only Alex Vindman.

Q  How many personnel did you have in your organization?

A  As you're aware, there was an effort to streamline the National Security Council. words redacted                                                                                                                                                                                                                            So, basically, we didn't replace people when they rotated out of detail. So some people had enormous portfolios.

And Alex Vindman had initially been taken on by my -- the other senior director in -- the director with me, Colonel Rich Hooker, who had been, you know, very interested, obviously, in defense-related issues.

And we initially brought him on to look at the totality of Russian defense-related issues, but then there was a determination during -- in the course of the streamlining of the NSC that that should all be concentrated in our defense directorate. So another person had been taken on there to focus on those related issues who would work closely. So we moved Alex to work on Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova.

Q  When did that occur?

A  So he wasn't hired primarily -- it had occurred when Catherine Croft left.

Q  When was that?

A  That would be sometime toward the end of the summer of 2018. Every year, in the summer of -- the summer we have a rotation of detailees. Most people are there for a year. Some people get permission from their agencies for 18 months. And on rare occasions people are seconded for 2 years, but only if their department is willing to pay.

And there was a big debate while I was there that people here may recall about whether departments and agencies were going to pay for additional time beyond the 1 year.

Q  And what agencies do you draw the detailees from?

A  Every agency, if we can.

Q  Such as?

A  Every agency that we can that will detail someone. I mean, it’s rare to have –

Q  Well, in your tenure, what were the agencies supplying detailees?

A  Well, it depended, again, on the memorandums of understanding. When I first started, the majority were from the State Department. But the State Department, when Secretary Tillerson came in, was refusing to let people stay for longer than a year, and there was also some questions back and forth about the downsizing of the State Department.

DOD initially were more receptive to putting forward particularly foreign area officers and particularly people from JCS. And there were a lot of detailees from DOD in the time that I was there across the NSC and all directorates.

words redacted

I was trying to get someone actually from Commerce, because I felt like we needed, you know, kind of a diversity of views, especially since an awful lot of the issues that we were dealing with related to trade, especially when it came to Europe but also with many other countries. And although that was in our International Economics division, it was very helpful to have people with, you know, broader backgrounds.

We had also detailees from Treasury, although Treasury itself, they got short-staffed and were trying to recall some of their deputies in that time.

And let me just see if I've missed anyone. And then --

Q  Which words redacted                                  ?

A  I think in some cases, that would be classified.

Q  And in total, you had anywhere from 10 to 14 people under your supervision?

A  At some times, it was only words redacted        because, often with the detailees changing over, we could go weeks, you know, I see                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     could attest that, when you have a changeover of detailees, it often takes a long time for people to come in, and you might be really short-staffed.

So I have been literally down to words redacted        directors, you know, kind of total, and myself have acted as a director and at different times have had to ask our special assistant. We also had a number of special assistants. In my case, we were down to only words redacted      special assistant.

Q  The --

A  And often that was how people's portfolios ended up getting determined. So we had one colleague who had to cover the entirety of the eastern flank of NATO, I mean 20-plus countries because, when words redacted    came in, the other previous words redacted      directors who were divided up between them had left. And words redacted      did that job for several months and actually did it so well that we decided not to hire an extra deputy. words redacted    was basically working 18-hour days, however.

Q  Switching gears back to the July 10th meeting.

A  Yes.

Q  The next sort of key event was the July 25th call with President Trump and President Zelensky. You had left shortly prior --

A  I had.

Q  -- prior to the call. But what was the preparation for that call underway?

A  It was not because the call had not been announced when I left.

Q  So you didn't know the call was scheduled --

A  I did not.

Q  -- as of July 19th?

A  As of July 19th, I did not know it was scheduled. And on July 15th was the last day that I had formal interagency meetings. And from July 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th, I had meetings myself just to wrap up and, you know, kind of basically pass on information about the portfolio to relevant people, including across the interagency.

Q  Who did you pass your portfolio on to?

A  I passed my portfolio on to Tim Morrison. And so any meetings that were pertinent to Ukraine in that timeframe of that week, he attended with Alex Vindman, although actually, to be honest, I think he was traveling in that period. He went to take part in -- he may have been back by the Thursday -- an arms control meeting with the State Department because he came over, as you know, from being the senior director for arms control.

Q  Did he at any point work for you, Morrison?

A  Work for me?

Q  Yes.

A  No, he did not. He was my counterpart in weapons of mass destruction.

Q  Then he came over to take your job?

A  Correct.

Q  Why did you decide to leave the White House?

A  I had always said when I came in: I'm a nonpartisan, nonpolitical appointee. I was hired, in fact, by General Flynn, K.T. McFarland, and General Kellogg. And when they first approached me and asked me if I would be willing to do this, I had previously taken a leave from Brookings, I was on IPA to the National Intelligence Office.

So I had actually worked with General Flynn when he was working for Admiral Mullen at the Joint Chiefs of Staff when I was a National Intelligence Officer. And I said that I couldn't commit to longer than 2 years, maximum. In actual fact, I stayed longer because I agreed to help with transition, finding new directors, and also trying to find a successor and to be able to do a handover. And I said I was willing to stay no later than the end of the year to do this. And Tim Morrison wanted to start on July 15th.

Q  So you're nonpartisan?

A  I am nonpartisan.

Q  In this current environment we're in, it's --

A  That's actually why I took the job. Because in this current environment we're in, I think it's extremely important for people who are nonpartisan to serve in government positions.

Q  At any point as you were on-boarding, was it -- did you find that you were ostracized because you weren't associated with the more partisan side of the house?

A  I got ostracized by --

MR. WOLOSKY: What do you mean? Ostracized by whom?

DR. HILL: Yeah, by whom? Not by anybody in the Republican Party, but I did have a colleague who had previously –

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Like were you --

A  -- who has not spoken to me since I took the job, but for the opposite reasons from what you are suggesting.

Q  And how would you characterize, were you a supporter of the President? Were you agnostic?

A  I was agnostic. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with that either. I was, basically, like I said, in the case of Zelensky and many others, I think everyone should have a very open mind. And I think it's very important to serve your country and to serve the President and the Presidency, you know, as being duly elected.

And I thought it was very important to step up, as an expert, as somebody who's been working on Russia for basically my whole entire adult life, given what had happened in 2016 and given the peril that I actually thought that we were in as a democracy, given what the Russians I know to have done in the course of the 2016 elections.

Q  So you say you were agnostic on the President, so you hadn't been a critic of the President?

A  I had not. There are a couple of articles where I expressed some, you know, skepticism about how his relationship would be with Putin that, you know, kind of perhaps didn't prove to be true, but anyway.

So, I mean, you can look back and, you know, see that, you know, I suggested they might not get along, you know, kind of because, you know, given the different natures of the individuals, I thought, you know, there might be some friction.

Q  At any point, did you find yourself becoming a critic of the President?

A  I did not. And if I had done, I would have left right away, and I left only on terms. And a lot of people -and I'm just going to put this out there. You haven't asked the question, but I have been accused of it many times. I did not write Anonymous. I am not Anonymous. So just to say that because --

Q  I didn't ask you that.

A  -- Lee has been having endless phone calls from people, and I was accused of that within the White House. It was the most uncomfortable time that I had. It was the only time when I experienced discomfort. Because of people parsing everything I had written. And Michael Anton, who was the head of the press at that time, was fielding endless calls from people saying that I was Anonymous. And I was not, and I will state it for the record: I was not.

Q  But you didn't leave the White House because you found yourself becoming a critic of the President?

A  No, I didn't. I had given myself 2 years. I stayed longer than that. But, as a nonpartisan person, I did not want to be part of the campaign --

Q  And even since you've left the White House, you don't find yourself as a critic of the President?

A  I have not returned to the Brookings Institution. I'm on leave. And I have not taken on any speaking engagements. I am not writing a book. I am basically trying to keep my head down, you know, while everybody else is trying to do their jobs. I worked with the most unbelievably professional first-rate team of people, both political and nonpolitical, in the time I was at the NSC, and I want to give them the space to do their jobs.

Q  The July 25th call, who would ordinarily be a participant on that call?

A  That really could vary because it also, you know, depends -- I mean, there were calls that I would have been ordinarily on, but I wasn't there or present. I might have been in another meeting or I might not have actually been physically in the building.

So it would usually be -- well, again, it often would be selected by the front office of the National Security Advisor as well as, you know, the kind of the broader White House team. You would imagine someone from the Chief of Staff's Office, someone representing the National Security Advisor, which could be the deputy. It could be myself, as the senior director, or the director if I'm not present. Someone from the Vice President's staff. Often someone from press or the White House counsel.

And if there was an anticipation that a particular topic in somebody else's area of responsibility would come up -say, it's a call with Chancellor Merkel and she wants to talk about -- let's just pick a random -- Libya, then the director who has responsibility and the senior directors for Libya would basically also be present.

So I can’t say for sure, you know, who would normally have been in those meetings, but that’s usually -- I mean -- and then you have the White House Situation Room staff, and then other Cabinet members can call in as well.

Now, also remember that there’s another side to all of these calls. So, while people start parsing who’s in our calls, all of those calls could very easily be being recorded as well as transcribed by a very large phalanx of other people on the other side of the call. And I will, you know, refer you to look at pictures that, for example, President Erdogan of Turkey would frequently release with himself listening to the call with about as many people as are sitting here in this room.

[12:33 p.m.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Did you speak with anyone? You had left on the 19th, but had you spoken to anybody about the call?

A  I did not. I was on vacation words redacted                        . And at the time the phone call took place, I think, based on my date-stamp on my phones, I was snorkeling.

VOICE: You were under water.

DR. HILL: I was under water, yeah. It was a pretty good alibi. I didn't take underwater pictures, but, you know, I can basically --

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  So you didn't receive any read -- outs of the call --

A  I did not.

Q  -- until it became public --

A  I did not.

Q  -- on the 25th?

A  No, I did not. I'd actually asked people -- I said I'd promise I would check my email once a day -- and there was a big time difference as well, so that was quite -- and I would forward on to them anything that they needed to deal with and, otherwise, I would prefer if they didn't call me.

Q  Okay. But you were getting your email, so you saw the traffic from your --

A  That was the first I saw that there was a call.

Q  Right. And were there any --

A  And I didn't see anything after that call at all.

Q  Were there any unclassified read-outs on emails?

A  There were not. I mean, they don't normally do that at all.

Q  Okay.

A  And, usually, any preparation is done on a more secure system, because one should assume that, in those kinds of emails, anybody could be reading them

Q  Right.

When is the first time you learned about the call and its nature?

A  Really when it was started to be made public. The first hint that I got that there might have been some discomfort about it was when I was handing back in my badge on September 3rd.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  And I went in to talk to my office, and I said, how are things going, and people said, well, not great. And I thought, well, okay, something is up. But there wasn't any -- I mean, I was coming in to hand in my badge, so I was technically no longer --

Q  Uh-huh.

A  And I had a very brief discussion with Tim Morrison, and he didn't mention the call at all. He did take the time to tell me that Gordon Sondland was apparently glad that I had gone. So I thought, well, that was a rather pointed message from Ambassador Sondland. But I didn't take that to be about the call or anything else. It just seemed to be a fairly gratuitous, you know, kind of messaging as I was leaving.

Q  So Ambassador Sondland didn't attend your farewell party?

A  He didn't. No.

Q  Did you have one?

A  Sort of.

Q  And when was that?

A  That would've been in the week I was leaving. I can't remember when it was, honestly.

Q  But back in July?

A  June or July, yeah.

Q  Where was it?

A  It was just in the White House. We had a lot of farewell parties in that period. Well, it was because people are rotating out, and everybody likes to go and relax and see their friends.

MR. JORDAN: Doctor, you mentioned on September 3rd you got a hint of the call or the content of --

DR. HILL: No, I had more a hint that something was up, but I didn't know exactly what.

MR. JORDAN: Not a hint of the call, just a hint that something was up.

DR. HILL: Yeah. People didn't look very happy in my directorate.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Who did you speak with when you came to turn in your badge?

A  I spoke to resource management, the financial people, the ethics people. And I also did have a very brief discussion with John Eisenberg and Michael Ellis, who I met with very frequently on a whole number of issues and had a really excellent, you know, professional relationship with.

And I asked them if there was anything that I should be mindful of as I was leaving, in terms of communications. Because I'd seen an email suggesting, again, that we had to keep all communications related to Ukraine. There'd been an email sometime in that timeframe. And I just wanted to tell them that I'd put everything into the records, and was there anything that I needed to know, and they didn't indicate that there was.

Q  Did you talk to Vindman?

A  I did not talk to Alex Vindman, no.

Q  What did Eisenberg and Ellis tell you about your records?

A  They said that, as long as I was having no, you know, kind of official communications, that there was no, you know, reason to be concerned, and just asked me what I'd done with all of my records.

Q  Like, all your notes that you take in meetings?

A  Correct. And I'd already filed all of those with the records office on the 19th.

Q  Okay. So you didn't take any --

A  I took nothing with me.

Q  -- of your own notes with you?

A  No. All I took with me was my -- the ethics and, you know, financial agreements. And the reason that I didn't hand my badge in until September 3rd -- because I was on vacation until the 30th -- is that you have to fill out all the ethics paperwork on your last -- or immediately after your last payday.

Q  Yeah.

A  And you can only then sign out of all of the resource management. It's just, you know, kind of a bureaucratic thing.

MR. JORDAN: Doctor, you said you learned about the call about the time of when it was public. Does that mean you learned about it prior to the 25th? Or when did you learn about the contents and the nature of the call?

MR. W0L0SKY: I believe that misstates her prior testimony over when she learned about the call, when she continued to have access to her nonclassified email. The record will speak for itself.

MR. JORDAN: No, but she -- earlier, she said – she said a hint of a call, and she clarified that and said that wasn't about the call necessarily, just a hint of something.

DR. HILL: Yeah, I was alert to the fact that people didn't look happy and something was up, but I didn't put it together with the call.

MR. JORDAN: And there was no time between

September 3rd, when you had a hint of something up, and September 25th that you learned about the contents of the call?

DR. HILL: No, I did not learn about the contents of the call. I did learn, as a result of lots of media calling me -- I was with words redacted                               , and I had very poor -- words redacted                                has a WiFi router that doesn't extend beyond, you know, kind of, basically this desk. I had to sit on it to basically get a text. And I basically ran through my entire data plan. And when I eventually called words redacted                                to get the data plan extended, words redacted

When it came back on, I had found I had just bazillions of texts and emails from press. And I didn't know what was going on. And I texted words redacted                -- it was clearly about NSC and a call. And I texted words redacted                , who was not actually directly related to all of this, and said, what's going on? What I do need to know? Why am I getting all of these calls? And words redacted                said, it’s the whistleblower account, and it's related to the Ukraine call.

MR. JORDAN: That was before the 25th?

DR. HILL: That would've been -- because I came back on the 25th with words redacted                                , so it was in the couple of days before that. I basically read about everything as I was sitting in Newark Airport in the transit area with words redacted               .

MR. JORDAN: Uh-uh. And who was words redacted               ?

DR. HILL: The words redacted                                                didn’t know – I mean, again, words redacted                                               .

And we kept a very close separation of issues, especially on Russia. Russia was highly coordinated, highly professional. And we kept all the Russia stuff out of everything else, because there was a tendency for people to leak information about Russia, and we wanted to make sure that that did not happen.

MR. ZELDIN: If I -- excuse me. If I could ask a quick followup on that?

So, earlier on in your testimony, you stated that you like to keep your head down. Even without being asked, you stated that you're not the person who wrote the anonymous New York Times --

DR. HILL: I've been asked about every single other time by every imaginable press person, and all of the people who are emailing me, who don't know me, are asking that. So I thought I would just get it on the record so that it's not, you know, kind of, a question that is all hovering over people’s minds .

MR. ZELDIN: Yeah, no, I appreciate that. But that's why your last answer just sparked my interest, and I just wanted to ask a followup question. How would so many in the media have your phone number?

DR. HILL: I used to work at a think tank, the Brookings Institution. In fact, I'm --

MR. ZELDIN: It was all from before you were in the White House?

DR. HILL: -- I am technically, you know, supposed to go back there. And I haven't gone back there because you can't really shelter in place at somewhere like the Brookings Institution when something like this is going on. And what I mean by that is, I'm obliged as part of the job as a senior fellow to talk to the media and to the press and to make public pronouncements.

MR. ZELDIN: So –

DR: HILL: And Brookings has, very sadly, words redacted                                               .

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. But you weren't giving out your phone number to the media while in your position at the White House?

DR. HILL: No.

And I'll be very clear, and you can ask any of the press directors, that I only ever gave background interviews at the request of the White House, including the press secretary on the NSC, with NSC press or White House press available. I never, on any occasion, talked to the media outside of those circumstances -- background, authorized interviews. I did not leak any information. I did not talk to the press.

I was accused of many things, and that's why I’m just saying that it gets my back up when people like Masha Yovanovitch and others were accused baselessly of doing all kinds of improper activity.

And I did not leak, and I was not Anonymous. I am not the whistleblower. And I'm not the second whistleblower. Just get this all for the record so we have it all out there and you don't have to ask any more questions about that.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Yeah, well, you know, if I may just walk you through this. We first heard about you coming in for today's all-day interview, all-day deposition, last Wednesday night. Nobody told us earlier than Wednesday. I contacted your lawyer on Thursday to try to find out a little bit more information and was unable to connect with your lawyer. We were in here all day Friday. And, finally, I connected with your lawyer for about 5 minutes last night.

And so you have to understand that when we're trying to prepare ourselves and prepare our members, we are being kept in the dark. So you just have to excuse the fact that we're going to have some questions about who were the people you worked for.

A  No, I completely understand. And I think, you know, my reaction is not because of you at all. I mean, it's the, you know, kind of, just the onslaught that I have been getting. I've had media inquiries and, you know, people I don't know at all --

Q  Got it.

A  -- you know, working -- I'm on YouTube. I'm, you know, on the internet.

Q  Okay.

A  My words redacted                        is panicked that, you know, kind of, words redacted              going to be targeted. You know, there are --

Q  Well, certainly, that is --

A  So I'm responding to, you know, all these suspicions about who I am as a person. And, again, I am a nonpartisan professional. And that's just what I wanted to have on the record.

Q  Dr. Hill, we appreciate your service and have enormous respect for you and, you know, the like-minded nonpartisan people that serve in the National Security Council. And, good heavens, anything that can be likened to a threat and anything with words redacted                       , good heavens, that is something that nobody, on the Republican side or the Democratic side, will --

A  No, I'm aware that this is not you at all. It's just, as you said, when you asked me a question before, given the environment --

Q  But just let me be clear that we find that type of thing to be absolutely abhorrent, and we want to assist you in any way possible to minimize that.

A  No, I appreciate that.

Q  Can you help us understand, like, when is the first time you heard the committee had an interest in speaking with you?

MR. WOLOSKY: I'm going to instruct her not to answer that question to the extent that it calls for communications with her attorney that are covered by attorney-client privilege.

MR. CASTOR: Okay.

Like, how did they know you were represented by Mr. Wolosky then?

DR. HILL: When I asked Mr. Wolosky to --

MR. CASTOR: And when -- like, was it earlier than last Wednesday?

MR. WOLOSKY: Yeah, I mean, I think that if you want to ask a question to the witness, she will answer the question to the extent that she has personal knowledge. If you want to ask a question to me, I'm not the witness in these proceedings.

MR. CASTOR: I don't want to ask a question of you.

I just want to know generally when you first became aware the committee had an interest in speaking with you.

DR. HILL: I became aware of it, actually, when the chairman released the letter publicly about what the -- because, you know, my title is on that list. It said current and former.

MR. CASTOR: Okay.

DR. HILL: And so I assumed --

MR. CASTOR: Okay.

DR. HILL: -- and I hope that it was a correct assumption -- based on the very thorough list of all the people that you intended to call for depositions, that that would cover me.

MR. CASTOR: Okay.

DR. HILL: Now, the title has changed somewhat. It was Europe and Russia when I was the senior director. It's been changed to European Affairs or, you know, European Issues or whatever it's been changed to now.

MR. CASTOR: Okay. And do you remember when that was, generally?

DR. HILL: Well, whenever the chairman published the letter that was put in the media.

MR. CASTOR: When is the first time you learned the committee attempted to contact you specifically?

DR. HILL: I saw that my name was on -- oh, not my name, not my name in person, but my function and my job -- was on the list. So I assumed that, at some point, I would be asked to testify or to speak to someone in some fashion.

And I’ve known Lee for 30 years. And on my first day back words redacted                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  came up to me and said                                                                                                       you need a lawyer. And I thought, who do I know? Oh, I know Lee.

MR. CASTOR: And when was that, the 25th?

MR. W0L0SKY: Thank you for the endorsement.

DR. HILL: I know he's a great lawyer. I know he's a great lawyer, just to add to all of that. But I've known him since before he was a lawyer. Lee's like, great, now I'm going to have no more clients. Anyway, sorry. Oops.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Which words redacted

words redacted                          does       work for?

A  words redacted      does not.       used to work for the                                                                             .

Q  For what?

A  I’m not to bring words redacted      into this.

Q  I’m not asking you for words redacted      name.                                                            .

Q  Well, words redacted      did for, you know, the government, words redacted      pursued white-collar crime.                                                                                .

I mean, I was some that disturbed, words redacted                                                          words redacted                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            .       would tell me that I should -- and I dismissed it at first, but then, as the news media picked up on this, I thought words redacted      was probably right.

Q  And when did you first realize that, indeed, they wanted to speak with you?

A  Well, that's when --

MR. WOLOSKY: I mean, again, to the extent that that involves communications with me, I'm going to instruct her not to answer that question.

MR. CASTOR: Uh-huh.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  The documents produced last night, are you familiar with what was produced on your behalf?

A  The -- yes, I am. Yeah.

Q  And what were the circumstances, to the extent you know, not involving communications with your lawyer, but how was that produced? Your calendar entries, is that something that you had with you?

A  I didn't actually have it with me.

Q  Okay. There was a range.

A  My assistant at the National Security Council --

Q  Okay.

A  -- actually kept the calendar. And it’s only -but only for the year in which he was working there.

Q  Right.

A  And I was asked to, you know, obviously, establish a timeline, you know, and what meetings I would've been available in. And I asked him if he had kept a copy of the calendar that I would be able to refer to to make sure that we got at least, you know, kind of, the meetings that the committee was most interested in in sequence.

Q  The handwritten notes on the calendar, is that --

A  That was just me circling --

Q  Okay.

A  -- you know, what I thought would be most pertinent, and also pointing out that I wasn't -- because the calendar had entries for after I had already left.

Q  Sure. I think on the 19th it said --

A  I'd gone or something, on vacation, or handed over the --

Q  And is that your handwriting?

A  Yeah, that's my handwriting. Because he gave it to me and I looked. And I only had one copy of this.

Q  Okay.

A  And, again, this is me trying to establish the facts as best I can, because, as you know -- you know it. I mean, I can't have total recall of every --

Q  Oh, of course not.

A  -- you know, single timing and things as well.

Q  And I don't expect you to.

A  Yeah. Yeah.

MR. WOLOSKY: Can I have just 1 minute?

DR. HILL: Yeah. Please. Yeah.

[Discussion off the record.]

DR. HILL: Yeah, I just also wanted to mention that, you know, obviously, in terms of documents and document retention, everything was filed in accordance with the requirements from records.

And I had asked on that last day that I was in the office, on September 3rd, if I could have a copy for reference of my contacts database, because I wanted to be able to pass on to Tim Morrison and to other colleagues names of ambassadors and ambassadors' staff. And all of those things are unaccessible to your successor when you leave. I mean, the accounts are all closed down.

And that was the similar -- I asked if my assistant, who was actually working in the transition period for Tim Morrison, could have access to the calendar that he had kept for me in that time so that Tim and others would be able to refer back to when I had a particular meeting. Because, I mean, it's obviously important for the Presidential record and for, you know, record keeping and for directorate continuity purposes to know when the predecessor met with whom, you know, which ambassador or, you know, which other official.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  You always had a good relationship with Ambassador Volker?

A  I did. Very good relationship with him.

Q  I think we're clear where you stand with Ambassador Sondland, but --

A  I actually had a very good relationship, I thought, at the very beginning with Ambassador Sondland. But the unfortunate thing was I had a blow-up with him --

Q  Right.

A  -- in June, when he told me that he was in charge of Ukraine, because initially I said to him, "You're not," with that kind of, you know, surprise and probably irritation in my voice.

Q  Right. Right.

A  And then he got testy with me. And I said, who has put you in charge of it? It seemed like, hi, I'm in charge. You know, there's no ambassador here. Well, at that point, Charge -- Ambassador Taylor had been sent out.

And I said, who has said you're in charge of Ukraine, Gordon? And he said, the President. Well, that shut me up, because you can't really argue with that. But then I wasn't -- to be honest, I wasn't really sure.

Q  But Ambassador Volker always acted with integrity?

A  He did.

Q  In the interest of the United States?

A  He did. I have to say, though, that we did say to him that we did not think it was a good idea for him talking to Rudy Giuliani .

Q  And how did he respond to that?

A  He said that he thought that he would be able to -- I don't think he used exactly these words, but be able to reason with him and to, you know, kind of, basically, you know, manage this. Well, we did not think that this was manageable.

And Ambassador Bolton made it very clear that nobody should be talking to Rudy Giuliani, on our team or anybody else should be.

Q  You may have had a disagreement with Ambassador Sondland, like you just recounted, but, I mean, he always was acting in the best interests of the United States, to the best of your knowledge, correct? A To the best of my knowledge, correct.

Q  Okay. He –-

A  Ambassador Sondland, I'm afraid, you know, I felt, you know, as I mentioned before, he was driving along on the road. You know, he'd just gone off the road. No guardrails, no GPS.

Q  Right.

A  And my main concern, that he was wading into, not just on Ukraine but many other issues, everything which he was not being properly briefed. And we reached out to his team at the EU mission, and they weren't giving him briefings on this.

Q  Right.

A  And, again, that's why I asked words redacted                                        to try to find some time to sit with him and to encourage him again not to use his personal phone, not to use other people's personal phone, not to give people's personal phone numbers out.

Q  Yeah.

A  I mean, he -- I am pretty confident that he was, you know, doing what he thought was, you know, the right thing to get agreements made and to further relationships, but he wasn't doing it in a way that was, you know, going to basically make for good process. And he was also doing this in a way that I thought put him at risk.

Q  Who is "we"? You said "we."

A  Ambassador Bolton, Assistant Secretary Reeker, Under Secretary Hale, Deputy Assistant Kent.

Q  Okay.

A  I could just go on and on.

I mean -- and, also, we had complaints from other ambassadors about Ambassador Sondland, that he was wading into their areas. He would show up in their countries without being, you know, kind of -- without really much foreknowledge. In some cases they were pleased, and in other cases they were not. And he would piggyback onto other people's visits when they wanted to, you know, basically, as the ambassador, shepherd their head of state to visit, and he would be there too.

Q  And he wasn't a Foreign Service officer. He was new to the experience, right?

A  He was new to the experience. I mean, he was clearly, you know, a savvy guy. He's charming. He's funny. He was well-meaning. I mean, a lot of the stories that have been in the press about him paying for things, actually I think he was doing that out of generosity. He was truly trying to build up morale in his embassy. His embassy loved, you know, the kind of treats and things that he would get for them. He was trying to create happy hours.

I think he was, in the spirit of being, obviously, a pretty good hotelier, he was, you know, trying to do the hospitality part of the embassy, which is actually an important part of being an ambassador.

Q  Ambassador Volker related to us that he was engaging with Mr. Giuliani because he believed that Giuliani was amplifying a negative narrative and he had the ear of the President, and so he was trying to make the best of this truism. Is that a --

A  That's exactly what he told me as well. I mean, I beg to differ, because I didn't think that this was actually going to be very helpful. Because the more you engage with someone who is spreading untruths, the more validity you give to those untruths.

Q  But Volker's initiatives here and Sondland's initiatives here, is it your testimony that you believe they were trying to do what's in the best interests of the United States?

A  I do believe that they were trying to do that.

Q  All right. And they're men of integrity?

A  I know Kurt Volker definitely to be a man of integrity. And in terms of Gordon Sondland, based on my interactions with him, I've already expressed the concerns, but I can't say that he's not a man of integrity.

And he definitely was very enthusiastic in all of our early initial meetings about serving the United States, serving the President, and really trying to do as good a job as possible to also patch up our relations with the European Union, which were quite rocky.

And, you know, from all reports that I was getting back from EU ambassadors, they actually appreciated his outreach and felt that he was very open --

Q  Right.

A  -- and they thought, you know, he was really trying very hard.

Q  Okay. So he wasn't part of the Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman--

A  I don't think he even knew who those gentlemen were --

Q  Okay.

A  -- because in the meeting where I had a bit of a blow-up with him, I said --

Q  Okay.

A  -- Gordon, you're in over your head. I don't think you know who these people are.

Q  Okay.

A  Because I also, myself, didn't know who all of these people were either. I'd only heard their names. And from what I could gather from just, you know, a quick Google and, you know, kind of, open-source search, they seemed to be bad news.

Q  Yeah.

And Volker, he related to us that the President had a deep-rooted skeptical view on Ukraine and their corruption environment. Is that something that you can attest to?

A  I think the President has actually quite publicly said that he was very skeptical about corruption in Ukraine. And, in fact, he's not alone, because everyone has expressed great concerns about corruption in Ukraine.

Q  And, you know, Ambassador Volker related the President's business experience in the region and his knowledge of other business executives that may have tried to do business in the Ukraine contributed to his deep-rooted views of Ukraine and corruption. Is --

A  Correct.

Q  -- that something you can attest to?

A  Well, I can attest to that, because, again, the President has said this publicly.

Q  And then, you know, additionally --

DR. HILL: Can I make a quick request to have a quick bathroom break?

MR. CASTOR: Yeah, we've got about 2 minutes --

DR. HILL: Yeah, I'm not trying to cut you off. I'm just sort of thinking I'd really like to go to the bathroom.

MR. CASTOR: We've got about 4 minutes left. Would you want to --

DR. HILL: Could we just literally take a quick break?

MR. CASTOR: Yes, of course.

DR. HILL: Because I've been kind of waiting for a pause.

MR. CASTOR: We can always take a break.

THE CHAIRMAN: We'll take a quick break.

[Recess. ]

THE CHAIRMAN: We're back on the record.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  We were talking about President Trump's -- what was at least related to us as his deep-rooted skeptical view of Ukraine as a businessman, as both himself in the region and also with his colleagues. But he also had a skepticism as a result of allegations in the 2016 election.

Is that also fair to say, that the President harbored some skepticism, whether based on, you know, legitimate reasons or not, that he did harbor some reservations about Ukraine?

MR. WOLOSKY: I think you should limit your comments to public statements unless there is -- absent a ruling from the chairman on the issue of privilege.

DR. HILL: Yeah, but I think he said it repeatedly in public, you know, kind of recently as well.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  I'm not asking about your personal communications with the President. I'm talking about your understanding, as an official with responsibility for this area, that the President harbored skepticism.

A  He's expressed it openly in the press pool and his own statements.

Q  You know, the U . S.-Ukrainian relations, you know, obviously, you have the President speaking with President Zelensky. But you also have a fairly robust set of, you know, staff -- at the National Security Council, at the State Department, the DOD, other agencies. You know, you had Kurt Volker, Phil Reeker, Wess Mitchell, George Kent. We have Bill Taylor. And I apologize for not using their official titles.

A  That's all right. No worries, no worries. Yeah.

Q  I mean no disrespect by that.

A  Yeah.

Q  And so, to the extent there may have been some, you know, comments exchanged on the call, isn't there a relatively robust infrastructure around the relationship to help steer anything into the types of back-and-forths U.S. and Ukraine ought to be having?

A  Hang on. Can you clarify again? So, absent the --

Q  So the President, you know -- absent the

President's call with President Zelensky, there is an infrastructure of staff, at the State Department, at National Security Council, that are interacting with -- A Right. Okay.

Q  -- Ukraine officials to help everyone understand some of the various things that are being requested.

A  Yes.

Q  I mean, isn't that --

A  Yeah, but I'm not quite sure what the question is, though. I mean, are you -- what are you suggesting?

Q  Well, you know, there's discussion about, you know, 2016 and Burisma. And, you know, we saw the back-and-forth on text about whether there's going to be a statement in advance of the White House meeting. And what we saw, I think, in that exchange is that there was a, you know, good bit of staff work going back and forth that ultimately led to a conclusion where no statement was issued.

MR. WOLOSKY: We're sort of losing you here. It's an extremely long, compound question. You're referring to text messages that are not being presented as exhibits. So we're happy to respond to a question if there’s a clear, specific question that you have for her.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  There is an infrastructure of staff dealing with the U . S .-Ukrainian relationship.

A  On that particular issue that you're talking about, actually there was not. I mean, if you're talking about the preparation for the call.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  And that was what I was explaining before about why July 10th was so problematic. Because, normally, there is indeed an interagency process that goes together in preparation for a call.

Q  Volker related to us that he got a readout from both the Ukrainian and the U.S. side and nobody mentioned Hunter Biden or 2016.

THE CHAIRMAN: You know, I just want to caution counsel, we can't vet what counsel is saying was represented in earlier witness testimony. So if you have a question about the facts for the witness, rather than representing what prior witnesses have said, that might be more appropriate.

MR. WOLOSKY: Let me put it another way. The witness is happy to testify to areas that are within her personal knowledge, not Mr. Volker's personal knowledge. So I’d ask you to please direct your questions to her personal knowledge.

MR. GOLDMAN: Time.

THE CHAIRMAN: Do you want to finish the last question?

DR. HILL: Yeah. I'm trying to figure it out what it is that you're trying to figure out.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  My question is, there is an infrastructure of staff at the State Department to manage the relationship.

A  There is infrastructure to manage the relationship.

Q  And all these people, as you've testified, have acted with -- you know, are individuals of high integrity.

A  But they were not coordinating across the government. I can be pretty confident, based on where I left things on July 19th, that nobody beyond Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Sondland knew what they were doing, beyond Chief of Staff Mulvaney -- because Ambassador Bolton and -- both Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Bolton referred to Mulvaney. Sondland said repeatedly he was meeting with Chief of Staff Mulvaney. And that was it. It was not going down to the rest of the staff.

When I left, I did several things in the week that I left just to wrap up. I had a discussion with George Kent, telling him where I knew things stood and telling him -- and this was not knowing that there was going to be a call, because I don't think it was actually at all even scheduled at this point or even thought of --

Q  Uh-huh.

A  -- warning him that I was very worried about this whole engagement between Sondland and Giuliani and with Kurt and that he should be mindful of this, and I thought that it was starting to take on different dimensions, including, you know, this reference to, you know, energy corruption. Although, when I spoke to George, I didn’t have a full picture. I just told him that he should be really mindful and be careful on this.

And on the very last day, on the 19th, I had a phone call with Ambassador Taylor relating everything that I knew at that point. I was sort of sending out red flags for him and telling him, there's a lot of stuff going on here that we have no insight into and that you need to, you know, kind of, figure out and get on top of this.

And I told him at that point that Ambassador Sondland had told me that he was in charge of Ukraine. And that was also news to Ambassador Taylor.

THE CHAIRMAN: Let's pause here. We'll take a 10-minute break to either wolf down lunch or get lunch, and then we'll resume in 10 minutes.

[Recess. ]

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. We'll go back on the record.

Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Dr. Hill, before, at the tail end of our initial round, you were describing the circumstances around the July 10th meeting at the White House.

A  Yes.

Q  And I believe you said that, after you came back from meeting in the Ward Room with the Ukrainian counterparts and the other American officials, you went and spoke to Ambassador Bolton --

A  Uh-huh.

Q  -- right? And did you inform him of what had just transpired in the Ward Room?

A  Yes, I did.

Q  And could you just tell us again what he said to you at that point?

A  He told me, as I stated before, to go and talk to John Eisenberg. And he basically -- he said, you go and tell John Eisenberg -- you go and tell Eisenberg that I am not part of this drug deal that Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.

Q  And what did you understand --

A  He was saying that sarcastically, of course, I mean, just to be clear. Actually, he was angry, but he was also sarcastic. I mean, he wasn't --

Q  Right, because --

A  -- inferring that they were cooking up an actual drug deal in the Ward Room.

Q  Right. So --

A  Just to be clear.

Q  So we're clear, because sometimes --

A  Yeah, I know. This could lead to some conspiracy theories and -- yeah.

Q  Yes. And sometimes our colleagues don't understand parody or sarcasm, so --

A  No. Ambassador Bolton has a reputation for being sarcastic and, you know, for basically using those kinds of expressions.

Q  Okay. But what did you understand him to mean by that?

A  Well, based on what had happened in the July 10th meeting and Ambassador Sondland blurting out that he'd already gotten agreement to have a meeting at the White House for Zelensky if these investigations were started up again, clearly Ambassador Bolton was referring directly to those.

And Ambassador Bolton had said repeatedly that nobody should be meeting with Giuliani. And you may recall before that I said that he described Giuliani as a bit of a hand grenade that was going to blow everyone up.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  And he was obviously, at that point, you know, closely monitoring what Mr. Giuliani was doing and the messaging that he was sending out.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  So this is also against the backdrop, as all of you will recall, of Mr. Giuliani's frequent appearances on television. And I can't say that I caught all of them, but I was getting them relayed to me by, you know, other staff members. And, often -- I mean, you've all, no doubt, been in the National Security Council buildings and the White House. There's TVs everywhere. So, I mean, I could often just walk down the corridor and catch Mr. Giuliani on the television.

Q  But Ambassador Bolton specifically referenced Mr. Sondland and Mr. Mulvaney, who --

A  Correct. And he had said previously -- I mean, we had regular meetings with Ambassador Volker, you know, in which, you know, getting back to Mr. Castor's questions, they were all about the, you know, regular coordination of what we were trying to do on Ukraine, you know, trying to get the Russians to start meeting with Ambassador Volker again, see if we could move forward on the Donbas. Ambassador Bolton made it very clear that, you know, again, he didn't think anybody should be dealing with Giuliani.

Q  And who did he make that clear to?

A  He expressed it in one of the meetings with Ambassador Volker. But, at that point, I don’t think he was fully aware of the extensive meetings that Ambassador Volker was having. This may have been early on, when Ambassador Volker had just started to meet with Giuliani.

Because I only, actually, to be honest, became familiar with the timeline once it was all published in the press. Because we’d already said to -- again, I'd personally said to Ambassador Volker and others that he shouldn't be talking to Mr. Giuliani.

Q  And did you say that to Mr. Volker before that July 10th meeting?

A  Absolutely.

Q  What was Mr. Volker's response?

A  Again, you know, getting back to what I said to Mr. Castor, it was really about -- he was trying to fix it.

I mean, he was trying to refute, you know, the, kind of, very negative perceptions that were coming out.

But I expressed to him that I was concerned that there were business dealings, nefarious business dealings, underway. And I had mentioned to Kurt Volker the names of these individuals that had been relayed to me.

THE CHAIRMAN: I just want to follow up with a couple ofquestions about Ambassador Bolton's comments about not wanting to be part of this drug deal.

Did you understand it from that that he was not referring to an actual drug deal but --

DR. HILL: Of course not. Yeah.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- some other kind of illicit transaction that he believed that Sondland and Mulvaney were engaged in?

DR. HILL: Yes. He made it clear that he believed that they were making, basically, an improper arrangement to have a meeting in the White House, that they were predicating the meeting in the White House on the Ukrainians agreeing, in this case, based on the meeting on July 10th, to restart investigations that had been dropped in the energy sector --

THE CHAIRMAN: And --

DR. HILL: -- by which point it was apparent that this was code, at least, for Burisma. Because that had been mentioned, you know, in the course of Mr. Giuliani's appearances on television and in the course of -- I'd already relayed to Ambassador Bolton everything that had been told to me by everyone, including Ambassador Yovanovitch and Phil Reeker, when Amos Hochstein had come in to see me, and I'drelayed to him everything I'd been told by our energy directorate and by our Western Hemisphere directorate as well.

THE CHAIRMAN: And not only was discussion of energy code for Burisma, but Burisma was also, at this point, understood to be code for the Bidens, an investigation into the Bidens.

DR. HILL: That never came out explicitly, just to be clear.

THE CHAIRMAN: And --

DR. HILL: I did -- when I talked to Ambassador Bolton, I also talked to Charlie Kupperman at length about this, the Deputy National Security Advisor. I mean, I recall telling Charlie that this was the company that Hunter Biden was associated with. And we were concerned that -- not at this particular juncture, again, not specifically about the Bidens per se, but that Ukraine was going to be played by Giuliani in some way as part of the campaign.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now --

DR. HILL: Because it was positing, you know, here that there was a great deal of, you know, illegal or whatever activity going on in Ukraine, according to Giuliani. You know, basically, the 2016 alternative theory of the election, the cyber issues -- these were all getting put out through these articles in the newspaper. So it was kind of creating a kind of a story that was out there that was being packaged.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, do you recall at the time -- you mentioned that Giuliani had expressed that he was going to go to Ukraine. Do you remember when that was?

DR. HILL: That was almost immediately after Ambassador Yovanovitch had been removed from office, so it was sometime in May. I mean, again, I saw it on the television, he said he was going to go. And then I heard it from colleagues.

And there was, you know, kind of, quite a bit of consternation on the part of the State Department.

THE CHAIRMAN: And he made it clear, I think, in those television appearances, didn't he, that he was going to Ukraine to seek to have them investigate the Bidens?

DR. HILL: Well, that's what he said. That's what I mean. This is part of -- I mean, I think, you know, part of the dilemma that we all have here in trying to -- you, me, and all of us -- parse this, is that a lot of this is happening on the television, in terms of statements that Giuliani has made.

THE CHAIRMAN: Did that give content to you when you heard these discussions going on, or did that inform --

DR. HILL: Correct, it did. And it was clearly -- I mean, in Ambassador Bolton's office, when I was meeting with him, the television was always on. And it was usually on FOX News. I mean, there was sometimes a split screen. And often when I was in the office, Giuliani would be on the television, and, you know, Ambassador Bolton would put on the sound to hear what he was saying.

THE CHAIRMAN: So they didn't need to make it explicit in your presence what Burisma meant. It was clear from Rudy Giuliani's public comments that, for Rudy Giuliani, Burisma meant investigating the Bidens.

DR. HILL: Correct. But it was never explicitly said, just to reiterate that.

THE CHAIRMAN: Not until the President's call with President Zelensky.

DR. HILL: Again, which I only read about when the transcript was released.

THE CHAIRMAN: But you've seen that transcript now. And --

DR. HILL: I have. But I was not aware until that point.

THE CHAIRMAN: And, in fact, in that transcript, the President doesn't talk about Burisma: he talks about investigating the Bidens. Is that correct?

DR. HILL: From what I've read in the transcript.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay.

Mr. Goldman.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Ambassador Volker was also at that July 10th meeting, right?

A  He was.

Q  Okay. So, to that point, had you gotten any indication that the acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, had any discussions about a White House visit with Ambassador Sondland or anyone else?

A  Yes, I had.

And just to be clear, that's also a part of, you know, the acting Chief of Staff's role, is to oversee White House visits. It would be rather unusual for him not to have been, you know, consulted with on this.

I mean, you know, at this particular juncture, there was a bit of tension on these visits overall. But many ambassadors -- and I don't just mean our ambassadors, but, you know, kind of, foreign ambassadors and foreign officials -- I mean, were aware that Ambassador Bolton and the National Security staff would always do everything according to national security provisions.

So there were a lot of meetings that -- there were requests, let's say, from heads of state that we actually didn't think merited the President's time, because they weren't pertinent to, you know, basically, policy priorities.

And I don't want to be insulting to any particular countries by, you know, singling any of them out, but let's just say I think you would all, you know, agree that there's a certain hierarchy of countries that one would imagine that the President should be making the most time for, and there are orders that would be, you know, kind of a nice, you know, diplomatic gesture, getting back to the questions before about the letter, but that, you know, obviously wouldn't be something that one would want to schedule at any particular, you know, kind of fast pace. And these could be, you know, heads of state that the President could have a greeting with at a diplomatic reception at the UNGA and things like this.

Q  Well, let me rephrase my question --

A  No, so--

Q  Oh.

A  -- the point is, on this, that Mulvaney's office had been pushed many, many times by Ukrainians and others for a visit. And so I was well-aware that Ambassador Sondland was talking to the Chief of Staff at the moment.

And Ambassador Sondland was, frankly, trying to play us off the National Security Council and Ambassador Bolton against Mulvaney's office. Because we were saying that we didn't actually believe, at that particular juncture, that we should have a meeting with Zelensky. Because we wanted to wait until the July -- by this point, you know, I can’t remember exactly, you know -- and forgive me -- when it was announced that the Ukraine elections would be July 21st. Because there was some question about whether it would be a snap election. The actual election time might have been in the fall. You know, it could've been in October or, you know, some other date.

And so we were waiting to see when the election would be. And we were pushing back against this, you know, kind of, idea that Zelensky needed to have a meeting right away. We were saying, you know, getting back to our earlier discussion, no, we should wait to see if he actually has a majority. I mean, what if he -- and we didn't also want to then be seen to be playing in the Ukrainian parliamentary elections. Because, obviously, a White House visit for Zelensky before the Rada elections, the parliamentary elections, would be a big boost, potentially, to his ability to get a workable or a majority mandate. So we were trying to be very careful.

And Ambassador Bolton knows Ukraine very well. I mean, you've seen, you know, he did his independent visits there. When he was outside of government, he was frequently in Ukraine. He knew all the players. He knows how complicated the politics and things are there. And he was trying to, you know, basically restrain others for pushing for a meeting that he thought would be premature.

Q  Prior to that July 10th meeting, were you aware of Mr. Mulvaney being involved in any conversations about a White House visit being contingent on opening investigations?

A  I was not.

Q  So that was the first --

A  That was right.

Q  -- that you had heard of it?

A  But I knew that he was obviously a player already in decisions about having a visit.

Q  Okay.

A  And I was -- to be honest, I was quite shocked. I mean, prior to that, the only other indication that I had that Ambassador Sondland and the Chief of Staff were, you know, kind of talking about this, you know, directly was the letter, getting back to the paragraph that we discussed earlier, where Ambassador Sondland essentially, you know, told us that he had, you know, personally made sure that this letter was released and that -- because it was delayed, you know, somewhat, it wasn't immediately out after the election. The election happened over a weekend, and, you know, it was taking a while for the results to get in, but it was, you know, getting snarled up. And Sondland said that he would make sure that the letter got out. And he said that he was the person who put in this paragraph about having the White House visit.

So that's in the week of April 22nd-23rd, if the 21st was a Sunday. So that week immediately after the April 21st Presidential election.

Q  You're referring to the phone call?

A  No, about the letter that was basically stating that there would be a general invitation for a White House visit.

Q  I think the letter was May 29th.

A  Was it May 29th? So there was a considerable delay then.

Q  So it was after the -- you may recall, just to refresh your recollection, that the inauguration in Ukraine was May 20th.

A  Right. Okay. So it was around the inauguration. I'm sorry then. I was getting my dates mixed up.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  So it was after, then, the inauguration for a congratulatory letter.

Q  Right.

A  So that makes sense. I'm sorry, because I'm getting my timelines confused here. Because the election happened; there was a congratulatory phone call, which we, you know, kind of, prepared just to say, hey, congratulations, that was great. And then there was an idea then there would be a letter that would be tied to the inauguration. And there was a lot of back-and-forth on when that would be as well.

But that was on the Ukrainian part. Because the Ukrainians, themselves, were not sure when to have the inauguration, because, again, they were trying to determine when they would call parliamentary Rada elections.

I'm sorry. I got the timeframes confused.

Q  No, that's fine.

Just while we're on the topic of the April 21st call, did you listen in to that call?

A  I did not. It was on a weekend, and I remember I was doing something with my words redacted                    , and Alex Vindman, our director, agreed to go in.

Q  And listen in?

A  Yeah. And it was a very short call.

Q  Did you read the transcript?

A  I think I'm not --

MR. WOLOSKY: Yeah, I think that would probably be classified, the April 21st call.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  I just want to know if you read the transcript afterwards.

A  I did.

Q  Okay.

A  I said it was a short congratulatory call.

Q  All right.

So, just getting back to this, sort of, aftermath of July 10th, you said you were surprised, and Ambassador Bolton asked you to go meet with John Eisenberg. Did you go meet with --

A  I did.

Q  -- Mr. Eisenberg?

A  Yeah.

Q  When did you do that?

A  I ended up meeting with him on the next day. I went over immediately and talked to him, you know, very briefly, and we agreed that we would have a longer discussion the following day, where I would talk to him about all of the concerns that I had about what was going on on the Ukraine front.

Q  And in that initial brief conversation, do you recall what you said and what he said?

A  Yeah. I told him exactly, you know, what had transpired and that Ambassador Sondland had basically indicated that there was an agreement with the Chief of Staff that they would have a White House meeting or, you know, a Presidential meeting if the Ukrainians started up these investigations again. And the main thing that I was personally concerned about, as I said to John, was that he did this in front of the Ukrainians.

Q  Why were you concerned about that in particular?

A  Well, I mean, this is -- you know, we're talking here about, you know, should one reveal deliberative process to, you know, kind of, people outside of the government? And here we're having a deliberative process. I mean, this is what Ambassador Bolton was pretty livid about, you know, kind of in an argument between, you know, our ambassador to the EU and our National Security Advisor about having a meeting, you know, in front of the national security advisor-designate of Ukraine and the chief advisor, Mr. Yermak, to the Ukrainian President and a whole bunch of extraneous, you know, kind of, people who hadn't, actually, also been in that meeting on July 10th.

Q  The --

A  And, again, the Ukrainians were put outside of the Ward Room when I pointed out that this wasn't an appropriate place to be having a discussion about what was going to be a deliberative process about how one goes about setting up a meeting and the timing of it and the content of it. And then they're standing there in, you know, basically the space in the corridor between the Navy mess and the White House Sit Room.

Q  And why were you concerned about that specific location?

A  Well, because an awful lot of people were going in the Sit Room and are having, you know, deliberative conversations that may or may not be classified on their way into there.

And there's a sign in the Navy mess that says, you know, do not have classified, you know, conversations in here because, you know, external people may be present. But on the way to the Sit Room -- I don't know if you've been in the space. It's about the space of, kind of, the interior here of these desks. So you have a couple of Ukrainians who were standing there as Cabinet members or anybody else could be going into the Sit Room, which will already give them information about meetings that could be taking place there. I mean, they shouldn't have been, you know, kind of, basically out in the corridor.

But, also, that meeting in the Ward Room would've been -- under normal circumstances, we would've known about it. We didn't know that they were actually having a meeting in the Ward Room. And it's completely inappropriate to have, you know, the Ambassador to the EU take the Ukrainians down to the Ward Room to have a huddle on next steps about getting a meeting with the President of the United States.

Q  You had said earlier that --

A  Now, Secretary Perry, again, I want to say, had left by the time I got down there. He had clearly gone down and then had left. So this is Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Volker there.

Q  And you had said earlier that you were concerned that Ambassador Sondland was a counterintelligence risk. Is this an example of that concern?

A  Well, yes. And a risk not by intent, getting back to Mr. Castor's question about, you know, Ambassador Sondland's integrity, but one about just more about being clueless sometimes about the kinds of natures of threats.

And that's something -- ambassadors get all kinds of, you know, early counterintelligence briefings. But, you know, he has now expanded his remit, you know, to countries that, you know, in the case of Ukraine, are targeted by the Russians. One could be sure that -- you know, I didn't even know whether the Ukrainians had left their cell phones in boxes at this particular point. I mean, they had when they were in Ambassador Bolton's office, but had they picked them up before they went down to the Ward Room? I didn't know any of this.

And so, I mean, all of them -- and you can be sure that they're being targeted by the Russians, if not, you know, kind of, members of our own Cabinet and our own team. And as Ambassador Sondland was using his own personal cell phone at all times, as well as his government-issued cell phone, I became extremely concerned that his communications were not going to be secure.

Q  For example, the WhatsApp text messages that you've now --

A  Yeah, we were not allowed -- just to be, again, clear, the White House has disabled all of those functions on the phone. And Ambassador Sondland was always trying to text. And on my White House phone, which did not receive texts, I would always get this kind of ghost text from Ambassador Sondland, from the very first time I met him, texting me to say that he wanted to meet, from his personal cell phone. And every time I switched the phone on, this ghost text would appear. Just to make the point.

But he was the only person, you know, who tried that. We kept telling him over and over again, please do not text us. And the same thing with WhatsApp; we were not allowed to use this because of the Presidential record and Presidential communications .

THE CHAIRMAN: I just want to go back to that first short discussion you had with Attorney Eisenberg.

DR. HILL: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: I think you conveyed that you described briefly your concern over having this debate about setting up this meeting in front of the Ukraine delegation. You expressed your concern about the security issues involved with having this discussion, where it was taking place.

Did you also discuss with Attorney Eisenberg, though, Ambassador Bolton's concern that there was an illicit transaction here?

DR. HILL: I did. And I said that, actually, what I would like would be for him to also ask my counterpart, Wells Griffith, to talk to him too, who'd been in the meeting. Because I couldn't really determine, at the time, initially, in the meeting with Ambassador Bolton, exactly what it was that Ambassador Sondland had said that triggered off Ambassador Bolton's reaction.

Because Secretary Perry had been sticking to the regular talking points about energy that we always had, you know, that were obviously referring to Naftogaz and, you know, to the energy sector writ large, which was, frankly, rife with corruption.

And, you know, you may all recall, you know, under previous iterations of the Ukrainian Government, there was the notorious Dmytro Firtash-run organization or intermediary gas entity, RosUkrEnergo -- and I'm sure you had lots of congressional hearings, you know, about this -- that was really basically an interface for all kinds of illicit dealings between the Russians and the Ukrainians.

So we've been on this issue for decades, frankly. I mean, I was working on this with the Bush administration and the Obama administration. Everybody has gone through looking at this issue. So when Secretary Perry was talking, I mean, from my perspective, it's just following in a long line of all of the issues that we said.

And then when Ambassador Sondland came in about specific investigations, that's when Ambassador Bolton stiffened up and immediately, you know, brought the meeting to a halt, because he tied that to the meeting. But when I went down --

MR. GOLDMAN: Sorry. You mean the White House meeting?

DR. HILL: To the White House meeting or to a meeting with the President. Now, just to be, kind of, clear, actually, it wasn't always a White House meeting per se, but definitely a Presidential-level, you know, meeting with Zelensky and the President. I mean, it could've taken place in Poland, in Warsaw. It could've been, you know, a proper bilateral in some other context. But, in other words, a White House-level Presidential meeting.

THE CHAIRMAN: So then you were saying -- and then you went downstairs.

DR. HILL: And then I went downstairs. And I came in when the conversation was already underway, because I had talked to Ambassador Bolton quickly to, you know, kind of, get a bit more of a sense of, you know, kind of, his concerns and what he wanted me to be watchful for. I mean, I had my own concerns.

As I said, when I was coming in, Secretary Perry was leaving. So I'm not sure that Secretary Perry was there for this portion of the discussion. And Wells Griffith had already -- had also left as well.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Was Ambassador Volker still there for this?

A  Ambassador Volker was still there, and Yermak and Danylyuk and, as I mentioned before, a couple of State Department people and somebody who I thought could've been one of Secretary Perry's aides but I'm not 100 percent sure. Because Secretary Perry had a large -- because he was off to go to do some other business and he had a large group of people with him.

And it was at that point that Sondland was complaining to our director, Alex Vindman, about the fact that he already had an arrangement to have this meeting that he worked out with Mulvaney.

THE CHAIRMAN: And so I want to get back to your conveying this to the attorney, Eisenberg.

DR. HILL: Yeah.

THE CHAIRMAN: What did you convey to him at that first short meeting? And then Mr. Goldman will get into what you conveyed to him in the longer meeting. But in the first meeting, what did you convey to him about any concern you had over this illicit transaction, the "if" that you mentioned?

DR. HILL: Yeah, I explained to him what I just explained to you. And then I said, but I need to actually talk to Wells Griffith and we should talk to Wells about what he understood was the larger context here as well.

Because Sondland talked about Burisma when I was with him in the Ward Room, but I didn't hear him say Burisma when I was in Ambassador Bolton's office. And, again, I was sitting at the back, on the sofa. They were all, you know -- I was behind Sondland, and he was talking forward. So I wasn't sure if I missed it or whether he didn't say it at all.

And I also wanted to be clear -- because he seemed to sort of interrupt Bolton and Perry -- you know, what it was that Wells understood that Secretary Perry was talking about. Because this gets to the nub of what we're concerned about. Was this a generic discussion about, you know, corruption in the energy sector and Ukraine, or was it something much more specific? And I wanted to make sure that Wells Griffith could also talk to Eisenberg. And that's why we had the larger meeting the next day.

[1:55 p.m.]

THE CHAIRMAN: And did you -- the larger meeting with Eisenberg?

DR. HILL: Just me and Eisenberg and Wells Griffith. I mean meeting, meaning to bring in Wells, and so that I could get into more detail, and I could go through my notes and, you know, kind of basically figure out, you know, what exactly had happened.

THE CHAIRMAN: Do you want to walk through that meeting?

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Yeah. So in that meeting on July 11, Wells --

A  Wells also came in.

Q  What's his last name?

A  Wells Griffith.

Q  Griffith.

A  It’s P. Wells Griffith. And he is a long-term, he's a really, you know, superb energy expert, works very closely with Secretary Perry.

Q  And it was the three of you?

A  Yes, it was the three of us.

Q  All right. And so describe that conversation.

A  Well, I reiterated to John the day before, and, you know, I apologized to Wells for, you know, jumping on him, but I said that I wanted to, you know, basically just to clarify for John, you know, what had -- I told him what had happened in the Ward Room, but I wasn't entirely sure, you know, what Wells also thought had happened in Ambassador Sondland's office, because it was immediately after Secretary Perry had gone through his talking points.

And Wells and the deputy -- the deputies to Secretary Perry had worked on those talking points. And I wanted to just kind of be certain, 100 percent sure that Secretary Perry's talking points were exactly what I anticipated or thought that they were, which is about the generic, you know, problems of the energy sector, which is what --

MR. WOLOSKY: You said Ambassador Sondland's office. I think you meant Ambassador Bolton's office.

DR. HILL: Oh, did I? I'm so sorry. Yeah. Thank you for correcting me. Yeah, when Ambassador Sondland was in Ambassador Bolton's office.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  And just to be clear, between meetings with Mr. Eisenberg, did you have any follow-on conversations with Ambassador Bolton?

A  I did not, no, not in that time.

Q  Did you talk to anybody else about this meeting?

A  I talked to Wells Griffith. And then I also had -¬

my colleague Alex Vindman was really upset, because he said that before I came in Sondland was making it very clear that there was all kinds of -- that there was -- and Perry had left at this point. He said Perry didn't need to stay, because by the time I came into the Ward Room Alex Vindman was very up upset.

Q  And what did Mr. Vindman say?

A  He said that these are obviously not issues that the National Security Council was dealing with, should not deal with. And he actually said this along the lines to Ambassador Sondland, that whatever it was that he was talking about was not appropriate for us to be engaged in, and that we were -- you know, could only, you know, be organizing a meeting, you know, as the National Security Council on, you know, official national security basis, and clearly something else was going on here.

Q  So at this meeting on the 11th with Mr. Eisenberg and Mr. Griffith, what did Mr. Griffith relay to Mr. Eisenberg about his recollection of this meeting?

A  His recollection was somewhat similar that, you know -- and he confirmed that Secretary Perry's talking points were all the usual talking points about energy sector corruption, the importance of getting the energy sector into good shape and diversification of energy, all of the issues that we were trying to do.

We were trying to get the Ukrainians to work with the Czechs, the Poles, and with the Europeans more broadly, the Germans, you know. Secretary Perry had been going to the Three Seas Initiative, which is all about building up infrastructure in Eastern Europe.

So Secretary Perry was, you know, very much focused on a whole larger initiative spearheaded by DOE but also with the State Department on trying to help Ukraine wean itself off this dependency. So everything that Wells believed that Secretary Perry was saying was related to that.

We also agreed that Sondland seemed to be redirecting it into --

Q  What was his recollection of what Ambassador Sondland said in the Ward Room?

A  In the Ward Room he wasn't in.

Q  Oh, so this was just in the main meeting.

A  Wells was also confirming, though, that Secretary Perry was not in on this discussion in the Ward Room, that he'd come down briefly. And that was also important to me because I needed to know did Secretary Perry, you know, have part of this discussion as well.

Q  So it was you personally who heard Ambassador Sondland mention Burisma --

A  Correct.

Q  -- in the Ward Room?

A  Correct. And Wells had been sitting with me in Ambassador Bolton's office when the initial meeting took place, and he also understood it was a redirect.

Q  And Mr. Vindman was also there --

A  Correct.

Q  -- and heard it?

A  And Kurt Volker.

THE CHAIRMAN: Can you tell us what -- you said Mr. Vindman expressed concern about what took place, and he was there before you got to the Ward Room.

DR. HILL: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Can you tell us what Mr. Vindman told you --

DR. HILL: He was really uncomfortable with where the conversation was, and that's also because it was in front of Ukrainians, that it was basically Ambassador Sondland getting very annoyed that he already had an agreement with the Chief of Staff for a meeting between the Presidents on the basis of these investigations.

THE CHAIRMAN: And did he know anything more about the investigations?

DR. HILL: He was alarmed, Mr. Vindman, because he

didn't know exactly what was going on. And he said that -- and as I said, Sondland had mentioned meeting with Giuliani in front of, again, the Ukrainians. And --

MR. GOLDMAN: So what --

DR. HILL: -- who was the National Security Advisor --

MR. GOLDMAN: -- did he say about that?

DR. HILL: I didn't get exactly what the wording was.

THE CHAIRMAN: But Mr. Sondland brought up Mr. Giuliani in the context of there being this agreement on the meeting.

DR. HILL: And that he said he'd been meeting with Giuliani as well. This is at least what I understood, you know, from Alex.

THE CHAIRMAN: That was what Mr. Vindman relayed?

DR. HILL: That's what he understood, yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And did Giuliani's name come up when you were in the Ward Room?

DR. HILL: No.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Can you just clarify why it was important to you to understand that Secretary Perry's talking points were separate and apart from the reference to investigations by Ambassador Sondland?

A  It was important to me because I was trying to figure out how much Ambassador Sondland was coordinating with others. And, again, we'd actually tried to prioritize in this timeframe energy sector reform and all of the work with the other European countries. So I was pretty concerned here in thinking that maybe Ambassador Sondland was not keeping Secretary Perry fully informed of what was going on either.

Q  And so --

A  And I'd understood from the May inauguration, I was not in the meeting that relayed back to the President about how the inauguration had gone, but I understood from the readout there that we were to focus on energy sector reform as a top priority, and that Secretary Perry had been asked to sort of step up and to really see what he could do to, you know, work with the Ukrainians in this timeframe to prove that they could actually start to tackle, you know, corruption in Ukraine.

And so by this point I'm personally concerned that there's something else going on, and I wanted to make sure that I understand who it's going on between.

Q  So the energy sector reform and the anti corruption efforts surrounding that were what Secretary Perry was talking about?

A  Correct.

Q  And is it -- was it your understanding that Ambassador Sondland was not talking about that --

A  Correct.

Q  -- when he mentioned --

A  And it's the way that he did a redirect.

Q  And what do you mean by redirect?

A  Well, Secretary Perry was talking, and then, you know, he laid out all of these talking points. And then Ambassador Bolton said -- you know, was basically saying well, you know, we'll work all the way through all of this you know, kind of a rule, you know. At some point start, you know, thinking, you know, basically about a meeting, but, you know, we're going to be, you know, in the process of -- and it was encouraging actually what you're talking about, which was all the staffing work and the different parts of the agencies, State Department. He was urging the Ukrainians to deal with the State Department and to deal with Secretary Perry.

And this is when Sondland, who is, you know, a fairly big guy, kind of leaned over across Ambassador Bolton, because I could see that from where I was sitting, and said to the Ukrainians and back to Ambassador Bolton, but we've already got, you know, kind of an agreement on a meeting.

I mean, he was basically -- and you can imagine, you would all be annoyed as well that he was basically countermanding what Ambassador Bolton had just said. In other words saying, I actually have, you know, some completely separate agreement about a meeting, you know, kind of you're stonewalling kind of thing.

And then he was clearly in the -- when he went out into the office in front of Ambassador Bolton he was kind of clearly, you know, feeling irritated, Sondland was. And that's when he said, let's go back down to the Ward Room and talk about next steps for the meeting. And that's when Bolton was just, you know, I wouldn't say apoplectic, but pretty furious.

Q  Who did Sondland say that to?

A  He said it to the Ukrainians.

Q  Was it your understanding that he had previously discussed --

A  I took it from that that he'd already said to the Ukrainians that there was going to be a meeting and that obviously he was expecting Ambassador Bolton to start, you know, pulling out the schedule, which is not what Ambassador Bolton does anyway. That's worked out through the Chief of Staff's Office and the Visit.

Q  And just so the record is clear, when you say meeting, you mean a Presidential meeting?

AA Presidential-level meeting, again, be it the White House, be it in Warsaw, be it, you know, kind of in any of the places it would be.

And we had been again, as I've said repeatedly, Ambassador Bolton and others, recommending against having a meeting at this juncture because this is, you know, before the Ukrainian parliamentary elections.

Q  Was it your impression that the Ukrainian officials there were hearing this idea of a Presidential meeting conditioned on these investigations for the first time at that meeting --

A  Danylyuk for sure. He just looked alarmed, and actually he wanted to speak to me afterwards because he obviously didn't know what was going on.

Q  And what about Yermak?

A  Yermak was more impassive, but I'm not entirely sure that he fully understood everything because I'm not convinced about how good his English is. So I just want to state that for the record, that I wasn't entirely clear that Yermak was understanding everything because he didn't really say too much. And he had an aide with him who was whispering to him, and, again, I was sitting at a distance, and he maybe had been helping him with translation.

Q  Did you end up speaking to Danylyuk about --

A  I did, but we actually didn't really discuss what had actually happened -- well, I didn't want to discuss what had happened obviously in the Ward Room.

What I was trying to encourage Danylyuk was to work with the State Department, work with our embassy, and, you know, particularly as he was interested in working on the National Security Council reform in Ukraine.

I really wanted to get, you know, Danylyuk into the channels that we all, you know, kind of knew were working on getting back to this robust relationship. Danylyuk was a, you know, very above-board guy, one of the reformers in Ukraine. Actually, he resigned his position in Ukraine recently.

Q  Was it your understanding from any of the interactions you had with him or any information you got that Danylyuk was aware of Rudy Giuliani's efforts separate and apart from the official --

A  He didn't raise it. He was just generally concerned about actually not having a meeting because he felt that this would deprive Ukraine, the new Ukrainian Government of the legitimacy that it needed, especially vis-à-vis the Russians. So this gets to, you know, the heart of our national security dilemma.

You know, the Ukrainians at this point, you know, are looking at a White House meeting or looking at a meeting with the President of the United States as a recognition of their legitimacy as a sovereign state. And they are, you know, clearly perplexed, you know, kind of about this whole situation surrounding the meeting.

Q  What was -- just because we're somewhat short on time, I'm going to jump to the crux of this July 11th meeting. What was Mr. Eisenberg's reaction to what you explained to him had and Mr. Griffith had explained to him had occurred the day before?

A  Yeah. He was also concerned. I mean, he wasn't aware that Sondland, Ambassador Sondland was, you know, kind of running around doing a lot of these, you know, meetings and independently. We talked about the fact that, you know, Ambassador Sondland said he'd been meeting with Giuliani and he was very concerned about that. And he said that he would follow up on this.

He has frequent meetings with Ambassador Bolton and had frequent meetings with Ambassador Bolton and also with Charlie Kupperman, our deputy National Security Advisor, both of whom, you know, were fully cognizant of everything that was kind of going on and churning around.

I'd already expressed concerns to all of them about the removal of Masha Yovanovitch. I mean, I'd gone to talk all the way up my chain expressing my concerns and, you know, basically anger that this had happened.

I'd also talked to the Vice President's staff, to General Kellogg, who was the person who'd hired me and who, you know, I'd previously reported to in the first year of the administration, about these concerns as well, flagging for him that there were problems and that we should --

Q  Sorry, just to be clear, you mentioned Ambassador Yovanovitch. What are these concerns?

A  That she had been unfairly dismissed, that she'd been forced out as a result of all of these conspiracy theories and these attacks on her.

Q  Did you speak to them as well about Mr. Giuliani's - -

A  I did.

Q  -- efforts and influence?

A  Because this was all in the news, and, I mean, you know, again, everyone was watching the news and seeing this. And I said that this was, you know, a massive complication in terms of our engagements with Ukraine, because we were also talking about the Vice President having engaged with the Ukrainian leader if we could not schedule a meeting with the President, and that's simply about scheduling.

Because, you know, traditionally the Vice President has played an important role on countries like Ukraine or Georgia or a whole host of issues. And the Vice President had on his itinerary a range of foreign trips, including the trip you saw that he took recently, a personal trip to Ireland.

And we were trying to talk to his staff about whether it would make sense for the Vice President to maybe go via Kyiv or, you know, kind of basically meet with President Zelensky if we could not schedule a Presidential meeting in due course, you know, within a reasonable period of time after the parliamentary elections.

Q  After –

A  And also, by the way, September 1st we knew was coming up because the President had been invited to commemorate the initiation of World War II.

Q  There wasn't a long period of time when you were still there after this July 11th meeting, but at any point before July 19th did you hear back either from Mr. Eisenberg directly or from Ambassador Bolton or anyone else about any further conversations that Mr. Eisenberg had on this topic?

A  Not from Ambassador Bolton, I did not. John Eisenberg said that he had followed up, and he had followedup, you know, through his basically reporting authority, which would be the White House counsel.

Q  But did -- and you didn't hear anything else --

A  I did not, no.

Q  -- on your side of the --

A  No, I did not.

Q  Do you know whether Mr. Eisenberg spoke to Mr. Sondland at all?

A  Well, that wouldn't be, I think, appropriate in his position.

Q  Who would be the proper person to speak to Mr. Sondland and tell him to, you know, change his course of action?

A  It would be the State Department.

Q  And did you hear whether the State Department did that?

A  Well, I talked to Assistant Secretary Reeker about this, and I also flagged it, you know, again, as I'd mentioned before, at different points, actually probably not after the July 11th discussion. But I'd also at different points talked to Under Secretary Hale about the concerns about Ambassador Sondland, well, obviously, going in a direction we were hoping he wouldn't on the Ukrainian issue.

Q  And was there a substantive response from Under Secretary Hale or Mr. Reeker?

A  I mean, they were aware of it. And, you know, my presumption was based on the fact that they're both, you know, stellar professionals that they would follow up on this in some way.

Q  Around this time in mid-July, we understand that there was an order to hold on the security assistance intended for Ukraine.

A  Right.

Q  When did you learn about that?

A  I learned about it in that week, that is my last week there.

Q  And how did you learn?

A  I learned about it just in the normal course of action. We were informed that there had been a hold on the -- by the -- from OMB.

Q  Were you informed as to the reason why?

A  No, there was no reason given. And we were told that it actually came as a direction from the Chief of Staff's office.

Q  From Mr. Mulvaney?

A  Who, I think -- is he still technically the head of OMB?

Q  Yes. He hasn't left, yes.

A So there you are then. Yeah. I mean, that's – I mean, he had three different hats then, I guess, and I think it came under his -- it would have been, you know, I guess, normal for him to have put the hold on.

Q  As of that July 10th meeting, do you know whether Ambassador Bolton or anyone else was aware of whether this military aid or security assistance had been put on hold?

A  I don't think they knew. It had not been discussed. It was in the last week that I was there.

Q  Okay. And did you have any conversations yourself about the hold --

A  Wedid.

Q  -- within your reporting structure?

A  And, in fact, there was a meeting set up, two meetings on Ukraine in the last week that I was there, but Tim Morrison went and chaired them, so I did not take part in these meetings.

So there was -- interagency meetings were basically called to find out what was going on. And Charlie Kupperman, the deputy assistant to the President, the National Security Advisor, was basically trying to get to the bottom of it.

Q  And did you ever learn what he found out?

A  I did not, but I know that he was going to go and talk to Mulvaney about this.

And I left on the 19th, so, you know, by that point -- but I relayed to Ambassador Taylor at that point most of the things I've actually relayed to you today.

Q  So let's just talk about Ambassador Taylor for our last couple minutes. He had become the Charge d'Affaires in Ukraine?

A  Correct.

Q  And you spoke to him you said, I think, on July 19th?

A  Yes, but I'd actually spoken to him on several occasions before. I think you're all familiar with Ambassador Taylor's biography. I've worked with him in many, many different capacities.

And he was asked after Ambassador Yovanovitch was removed along with a number of other people whether they would be willing to be Charge, because it was agreed that with her precipitous removal -- I mean, she'd initially been, it was my understanding because I'd been told that by the State Department, asked to stay on for a transitional period a bit longer than she was supposed to, you know, as the Zelensky Presidency was underway.

So it was pretty abrupt, notwithstanding all the information we now have about this. So there was a debate about how -- could you possibly still have the embassy there with, you know, no Charge of any stature.

And there was a new DCM being sent out, Kristina Kvien, who I met in that last week as well, who was just being sent out fresh, although she was very knowledgeable about the region.

And there was a debate back and forth about whether they could find someone from either previous ambassadors to Ukraine or someone from high level, like a Paula Dobriansky, you know, the Ukrainian American community, or somebody who would be willing to be Charge at this transitional period to basically -- again, getting back to the national security questions about showing to Ukraine that we were still supportive of them and that we were still standing by them in the face of Russian aggression -- to have someone of stature there until there could be a formal appointment and naming of a new ambassador.

Q  And Ambassador Taylor was someone of stature in your view?

A  Correct. Yes. I mean, he'd previously been ambassador to Ukraine and is one of the most distinguished, you know, people that one can think of.

Q  I believe you said, and I just want to clarify this, that Ambassador Taylor, you relayed I think you called them red flags --

A  My red flags.

Q  -- your red flags to Ambassador Taylor, and that he was unaware that Ambassador Sondland had taken lead on Ukrainian policy. Is that --

A  Correct. That was news to him. I mean, he, like everybody else, knew that Ambassador Sondland was playing a role, but he had not been told that Ambassador Sondland was the lead.

Q  And he had not been told by the State Department?

A  No.

Q  Nor by Ambassador Sondland?

A  No.

Q  Okay. All right. I believe our time is up, so I yield to the minority for 45 minutes.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Is it fair to say just about every special envoy or broadly chartered ambassador sometimes is blamed for jumping out of their lane?

A  Yes, but Ambassador Sondland hadn't been named as aspecial envoy or, you know, ambassador at that time. We had Ambassador Volker who had been named as the special envoy for Ukraine, but Ambassador Sondland was saying that he was incharge of Ukrainian affairs writ large.

Q  Are we certain the President never appointed Ambassador Sondland to this role?

Q  Or we only know about --

A  As I said before, you remember, when I said, I said what? Who? You know, who said this? And he said the President, and then, you know, I couldn't really argue with that.

Q  In the July 10th meeting in the fallout in the Ward Room, was it ever clear to you what investigations were part of this discussion?

A  Well, he mentioned Burisma.

Q  Burisma. Anything else?

A  No.

Q  Okay.

A  And again, I cut it off because it was obviously going down avenues which were not appropriate for the National Security Council to go down. And also, again, he's haggling almost about this meeting.

Q  Are you aware of the allegation -- there's been some reporting, there was a big Politico article in January 2017 -- about Ukrainians' efforts to affect the outcome of the election, the U.S. election?

A  I'm aware of the articles.

Q  And do you give any credibility to some of the basic charges in there, such as                                         ? Are you familiar with that? Would it be helpful if we marked this as an exhibit, this Politico article?

A  I've seen that Politico article.

Q  Okay.

A  Look, I think we have --

Q  I can hand it to you.

A  No. But we have--

Q  Do you want it?

A  -- and I am very confident based on all of the analysis that has been done -- and, again, I don't want to start getting into intelligence matters -- that the Ukrainian Government did not interfere in our election in 2016.

Q  Okay. But you're aware of the reporting?

A  I'm aware of the reporting, but that doesn't mean that that amounts to an operation by the Ukrainian Government.

Q  Right. What do you know about                              ?

A  I don’t know very much about them, apart from things that I couldn't speak about.

Can I also say that in my past life at Brookings, is athink tank, I must have had about 25 different people from all kinds of different backgrounds coming to try to use me asa conduit to various campaigns, Republican and Democrat, given my experience and links, from, you know, Ukrainian, Belarussian, you know, Georgian, Russian, all trying to make contact with the campaigns.

I could write a million articles like that putting all kinds of people's names out there based on just the contacts of people that I had.

Q  Fair enough. Just asking the questions.

A  No, but I'm just saying in here that -- but this gets back to what Masha Yovanovitch said, that you can write something in an article and it somehow becomes true that it's written in an article without all of the due diligence that's done about -- done on this later.

I have my own beef with 2016 and the investigations, that I don't believe it should have started by focusing, first of all, on Americans. It should have started by looking at what Russians were doing, and I think we would have ended up in exactly the same place that Mr. Mueller did on what the Russians did with the same sets of indictments, and it might have not been quite so politicized at the time, because I can promise you that the Russians did everything that he outlined and then some. And I myself have been targeted by the Russians on many occasions.

And that doesn't make me anti-Russian. But I'll just say that this particular Russian administration, run by somebody who is an incredibly, you know, well-skilled KGB operative, is something that you just don't mess with. And we are going to be in big trouble --

Q  Who is the KGB operative?

A  That's President Putin.

And we're going to be in big trouble, if we don’t get our act together, in creating more fodder for them to throw right back at us in 2020. And I think this is an issue of our national security for all of us, no matter what part of the aisle that you're sitting on.

Q  Would you agree though that, you know, the bringing of Mr. Manafort's dealings in the Ukraine to the fore front, you know, may have had --

A  Corruption is the way that President Putin and other nefarious actors, be they from China, Iran, or North Korea, access our system.

Q  Are you familiar with the, you know, the allegation about Serhiy Leshchenko? I'm sorry if I'm not pronouncing that

A  Leshchenko, yes.

Q  You know, relating to publicizing Manafort's role in the Ukraine?

A  You've also got to remember that Ukraine is going through a massive period of upheaval itself in this period.I mean, this is the period where Yanukovych, the previous Ukrainian President, basically flees the country, leaves all kinds of documents and things behind, and the Ukrainian investigative reporters and everybody poring all over this.

You can go back and look on YouTube at some of the rather strange things that Yanukovych left behind him. He tried to flush half of his documents down the toilet. He threw some of those in a lake. There was all kinds of material that were out there for people to pick over and to look at. And I think, again, that Mr. Mueller and his team have well documented a lot of this information.

Q  But to the extent the Ukrainians were involved in pushing out the information on Paul Manafort, don't you think that could have had an impact on the election?

A  There are all kinds of things that could have had an impact on our election.

Q  Do you think it’s fair that people who are aware of that reporting --

A  I don’t know how much the average American voter is aware of that reporting. My family                         , my in-laws, that was not the reason that they voted in the election, for example. I have a huge American family, and none of them have ever referenced anything like that to me at all. They just -- they care about all the things that the average American cares about, which is health, education, jobs.

Q  But if there are Ukrainians trying to push the information out about Manafort, isn't that an effort to influence the outcome of the election?

MR. WOLOSKY: I think she answered the question several times.

DR. HILL: Also there are Ukrainians pushing out --

MR. CASTOR: It's a pretty harmless question.

MR. WOLOSKY: You've asked it three or four times.

DR. HILL: Yes, but there are Ukrainians pushing out information about Masha Yovanovitch which is untrue. Why don't you ask about that as well? Is Masha Yovanovitch any less of an American that Mr. Manafort? She has not been accused of any corruption.

MR. ZELDIN: Dr. Hill --

DR. HILL: I'm sorry. I'm just getting annoyed about this, because the point is that, you know, Mr. Manafort has also been subject -- I don't know him either. But there's been a trial in which he was convicted of certain activity. And I like to believe that the law was abided by in pursuing, you know, what he did.

And, again, as I've said, corruption is our Achilles heel here in the United States. And I am shocked, again, that we've had the failure of imagination to realize that the Russians could target us in the same way that they use corruption in Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia. We, unfortunately, by not cleaning up our own act, have given them the doors in which they can walk through and mess around in our system.

And if Mr. Manafort did half of the things that he was said to do, shame on him. Okay? And I don't know him. And, again, this is not a partisan discussion. And, frankly, what he did should not be subject to, you know, this kind of back and forth either.

MR. ZELDIN: Just kind of unpacking that back and forthand the origin of it, the first question, the answer was that it was -- and I don't want to put words in your mouth, so please correct me if this is not accurate. But the answer to the first question was where you concluded Ukraine did not interfere in the U.S. election?

DR. HILL: The Ukrainian Government did not interfere in the U.S. election. The Ukrainian Government did not do that. The Ukrainian Special Services also did not interfere in our election.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. The followup question and answers,the answer is that it's your assessment that where there was interference by Ukrainians that it's your assessment that it didn't change the election results. So I see that there is an interpretation --

MR. WOLOSKY: That misstates her testimony.

DR. HILL: It also misstates it. I have no basis --

MR. ZELDIN: Feel free to correct it. I'm just --

MR. WOLOSKY: We just said it misstated her testimony, so go to your next question, please.

MR. ZELDIN: So the first answer is, it's your position that the Ukrainian Government did not interfere with the U.S. election, correct?

DR. HILL: Correct.

MR. ZELDIN: Did Ukrainians interfere with the U.S. election?

DR. HILL: I mean, look, this is -- any foreign individual -- the way that you're going with this question is any foreign individual who evinced any kind of interest in the campaigns or tried to meet with anyone in any campaign -- and I just said to you before, I can come up in my own accounting of a whole range of people who are foreign individuals who wanted to meet with the various campaigns -- then that would count as interference, anybody wanting to meet with anybody in any campaign to talk to anybody.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. As far as --

DR. HILL: So did some Ukrainians want to talk to -- yes, but so did some Chinese, did a lot of Russians. And there were a lot more Russians that were trying to get involved in all kinds of people's campaigns. I myself witnessed some of this, and it wasn't just on, you know, the kind of Democratic or the Republican side.

And, I mean, this is not the nature of my testimony because it's when I was in, you know, not in my current job, but when I was at the Brookings Institution. But remember, I've been the national intelligence officer for Russia beforethis for 3-1/2 years. So a lot of the information I have is classified.

And I know from my previous position about how many people who were trying to gain influence into our politics. And it's very -- the Russians want to show that, in fact, that it wasn't them that were involved in 2016.

MR. ZELDIN: Was words redacted                    involved in any of the Ukrainians' efforts to interfere with U.S. elections?

DR. HILL: Tampering with our election systems? No.

MR. ZELDIN: All right. Was words redacted                    connected atall to any of the activities of Ukrainians to interfere with the U.S. election?

DR. HILL: I can't answer that question. No, I can'tanswer that question.

THE CHAIRMAN: And just to be clear whether we're talking about on the basis of press reports or are we talking about witness' personal knowledge?

MR. ZELDIN: The witness' personal knowledge.

DR. HILL: My personal knowledge, no. My personal knowledge, no. I mean, there were a lot, a lot of press reports purporting to all kinds of things, and I'm not testifying about press reports.

MR. ZELDIN: So that I don't misunderstand your answer, based on your personal knowledge, you're not aware of words redacted                    being connected to any Ukrainians attempting to interfere with the U.S. election?

DR. HILL: Correct.

And I also want to just point out here that our intelligence agencies were pretty thorough about a lot of the investigations and things here.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Who was your predecessor at the NSC?

A  My predecessor at the NSC -- well, there would have been two predecessors, because this was an amalgamation of two bureaus. The immediate predecessor would have been Celeste Wallander for Russia, Central Asia, I guess, but probably not Ukraine.

Q  Who had the Ukraine portfolio?

A  I think it would have been Charles Kupchan.

Q  I'm sorry, what was his last name?

A  Charles Kupchan. He's a professor at Georgetown.

Q  And then who had the Ukraine portfolio before Vindman?

A  Catherine Croft, who was the Ukraine desk officer at the State Department and then went to work with Ambassador Volker.

Q  And what was the timeframe that she had the Ukraine portfolio?

A  Up until the summer of 2018. And before her it was -- oh, I can't remember who was before her. There were several changes of directorates in the time that -- of directors in the time that I was there.

Look, and I'm sorry to get testy about, you know, this back and forth, because I'm really worried about these conspiracy theories, and I'm worried that all of you are going to go down a rabbit hole, you know, looking for things that are not going to be at all helpful to the American people or to our future election in 2020.

You just had the Senate report coming out informing us all yet again, a bipartisan, nonpartisan report from the Senate about the risk that there is to our elections. If we have people running around chasing rabbit holes because Rudy Giuliani or others have been feeding information to The Hill, Politico, we are not going to be prepared as a country to push back on this again. The Russians thrive on misinformation and disinformation.

And I just want to say that that was the reason that I went into the administration when I was asked by General Flynn, K.T. MacFarland, and General Kellogg. We're in peril as a democracy because of other people interfering here.

And it doesn't mean to say that other people haven't also been trying to do things, but the Russians were who attacked us in 2016, and they're now writing the script for others to do the same. And if we don't get our act together, they will continue to make fools of us internationally.

MR. JORDAN: Dr. Hill, was Christopher Steele's dossiera rabbit hole?

DR. HILL: I think it was a rabbit hole.

MR. JORDAN: You think the Russians were trying to influence us and get us to buy into something that was absolutely not true?

DR. HILL: But that was not on any basis -- once I got into the administration I didn't see that that was a rabbit hole that my former colleagues in the National Intelligence Council had gone down to. The way that the Russians operate is that they will use whatever conduit they can to put out information that is both real and credible but that also masks a great deal of disinformation.

So I've written a book on Vladimir Putin, and if you, you know, have a moment when you want to have a sleep aid, you know, late at night, I've laid all of that out there. And Putin himself has gone around, you know, claiming there were dossiers on him trying to redirect people to look in other places for information.

When I was at the National Intelligence Council there was some person who kept constantly writing to us, telling us that we were missing, you know, whole things about, you know, Vladimir Putin, which was clearly, you know, kind of an effort on the part of the Russians to send us down rabbit holes of inquiry that would kind of distract us from looking at the actual issues that we should be really concerned about. And this was under the Bush administration.

MR. JORDAN: So I just want to be clear, there was a story done in Politico on you last month. In that reporting it says Steele might have been played by the Russians into spreading disinformation. That's what you think happened with --

DR. HILL: It's very likely that the Russians planted disinformation in and among other information that may have been truthful, because that's exactly, again, the way that they operate. And I think everyone should always be cognizant of that.

MR. JORDAN: Yeah. So information that Christopher Steele was played by the Russians, that information was used, as you well know, by our Justice Department, specifically our FBI, as part of the basis for securing a warrant to spy on an American citizen.

DR. HILL: I think it's already come out that that wasn't exactly the case, that the dossier was basically out there when those investigations had already taken place.

MR. JORDAN: Well, that's not accurate. It was part of what was taken --

DR. HILL: Well, some of the information was that it had come through other ways. But, look, I don't want to also get into, again, a discussion that could go down a classified avenue because I just want to tell you on, you know, really good authority that the Russians -- I mean, again, we should all know this, the Senate has reconfirmed this again -- attacked --

MR. JORDAN: I'm not disputing that.

DR. HILL: -- attacked our democracy.

And also, the point that actually hasn't come out and, again, why I've been very cross in the media, is that the President was attacked as well, because the Russians sought to discredit him.

And I’ve been very unhappy with the media coverage of all of this, which is why I don't want to start, you know, kind of basically doing testimony by virtue of an article that you've read in Politico. Because everybody wants to sensationalize things, everybody wants to spend time looking at the things that seem sexy, and they don't want to actually look at, you know, talk to what the facts are.

MR. JORDAN: I'm not trying to do that.

Doctor, tell me about your relationship with Christopher Steele.

DR. HILL: He was my counterpart when I was the director, the national intelligence officer. words redacted

MR. JORDAN: And so --

DR. HILL: So inevitably, when I had to do liaison meetings with the U.K., he was the person I had to meet with.

MR. JORDAN: And so you had a working relationship with him for how long?

DR. HILL: For the whole period that I was national intelligence officer, so that would be from 2006 to the end of 2009.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

DR. HILL: So anybody who was working in the intelligence agencies at the time --

MR. JORDAN:I get it.

DR. HILL:-- who was dealing with Russia would have to deal with him. He retired words redacted              words redacted                    , as I understand,at the end of 2009.

MR. JORDAN: The story on you says that you spoke with him in 2016. So can you tell me about that conversation?

DR. HILL: That was prior to the time that I had any knowledge about the dossier. He was constantly trying to drum up business, and he had contacted me because he wanted to see if I could give him a contact to some other individual, who actually I don't even recall now, who he could approach about some business issues.

MR. JORDAN: And earlier you said there were all kinds of folks who contacted you from time to time wanting to get involved and have contact with various political campaigns. Is Mr. Steele one of those individuals?

DR. HILL: He was not.

MR. JORDAN: He was not, okay.

And then the same article mentions that you, when you were hired, as soon as you were hired you told Mr. McMaster that you had worked with Mr. Steele. Is that right?

DR. HILL: Yes, in the course of my official duties as NIO, because I thought, obviously, given the situation, it would be worth saying that. I also told Ambassador Bolton this as well.

MR.JORDAN: Okay. And you did that based on the fact that Steele was in the news?

DR.HILL: Correct.

MR.JORDAN: Okay. And you did that after you were hired or before you were hired?

DR.HILL: I mentioned it to General Kellogg when he was interviewing me as well.

MR.JORDAN: Okay.

DR.HILL: I mean, you can't, you know, choose who you have to interact with.

MR.JORDAN: No. I just want to know --

DR.HILL: And at that point Christopher Steele was the words redacted                    point person for dealing with Russia.

MR.JORDAN: Great.

MR.ZELDIN: Dr. Hill, are you aware of any interaction between Mr. Steele and Ukrainians --

DR. HILL: I'm not.

MR. ZELDIN:-- involved in the dossier?

DR. HILL: I have no knowledge whatsoever of how he developed that dossier, none, I just want to state that. The first time I saw that dossier was the day before it was published in Buzzfeed when a colleague, like it seemed to be about half of Washington, D.C., had it and showed me a copy of it and I was shocked. And then it appeared in Buzzfeed the next day.

MR. JORDAN: And when you read it you were convinced that it was --

DR. HILL: That was when I expressed the misgivings and concern that he could have been played.

MR. JORDAN: Yep. Okay. Thank you.

DR. HILL: Because if you also think about it, the Russians would have an ax to grind against him given the job that he had previously. And if he started going back through his old contacts and asking about, that would be a perfect opportunity for people to feed some kind of misinformation. I had no basis on which to assess that.

MR. CASTOR:

Q  We learned during the course of our investigation that Steele was desperate to see that Donald Trump was not elected President. Do you --

A  I don't know anything about that at all, no.

Q  How does the National Security Staff staff the Vice President? Is there a separate unit that --

A  He has a separate unit. But we, in my directorate, work very closely with the series of people, again, that he has detailees often for just a year at a time who rotate around. And we try to keep them as informed as possible about everything that's happening in our area of responsibility, especially, as I said, that's in the context of, you know, your question about red flags.

I wanted them to know that, you know, if we were discussing the possibility of a Vice Presidential visit, that there would be issues that we might be concerned about to be, you know, very careful about, you know, protecting the integrity of the Vice Presidency and the Vice President.

Because the Vice President played actually a very important foreign policy and diplomatic role in terms of his out reach, and especially this Vice President like, you know, predecessors has really kind of stepped up where there's been a conflict or where there's been some special care needed, you know, for a country that, you know, perhaps isn't one of the top allies but, you know, certainly might need some attention.

And, you know, Vice President Pence has been, you know, extremely good about stepping up when asked, you know, to go and, you know, give speeches for Munich Security Council conference and other settings, for example.

But the other thing, it's often very difficult for him to do these trips because of course he can't be out of the country when the President is, and he has got other domestic obligations, not least being here as representative as well.

Q  Right. There was some question about whether Vice President Pence was going to attend Zelensky's inauguration?

AIt depended on the date. I mean, we were hoping,you know, if others couldn't attend that he could. I mean, I myself couldn't attend because of the date, that the way that it -- again, there were several different dates, and then the date that was announced in May was very quickly announced.

Q  Right.

A  It was, you know, kind of basically with a couple of days' notice.

Q  So the decision not to send the Vice President had nothing to do with --

A  Well --

Q  -- anything other than his schedule?

A  I can't say with any -- with complete certainty. I did flag already that there were some problems, but I have no reason to believe -- you know, I flagged to his staff, to General Kellogg that there were some issues, you know, kind of noise going on around Ukraine that was worrisome and that we'd need to get to the bottom of. But I have no basis to say that he was told not to go. I think it would have been, real stretch for his schedule.

Q  Okay. How big is the NSC staff for the Vice President?

A  To be honest, I don't know. I don't know the numbers. It's not big at all, maybe about 10 people total.

Q  Which is about the same size as your --

A  Is that about right, Derek, 10 people at the Vice President's staff?

MR.HARVEY: I think so.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  And that's about the same size --

A  Yeah, which is why we always tried to help.

Q  -- as your --

A  Yeah. I mean, no one can say that the Vice President is overstaffed.

MR.BITAR: Just for the record, that was Derek Harvey answering.

DR.HILL: Yeah, Derek Harvey, yes. You know, I asked him because I could see him and I know that he would, you know --

MR.BITAR: For the reporter.

DR.HILL: I'm sorry. Yes. Yep.

MR. CASTOR:

Q  Vice President Biden had a role overseeing Ukraine policy. Do you know anything about that?

A  It was, you know, as far as I understand, you know,part of the division of labor from the previous administration. I mean, as I said, Vice Presidents often,you know, step up and play particular roles.

When I was in the Bush administration as NIO, Vice President Cheney had actually played a very active role on the former Soviet Union, gave many speeches. And I often had to go and brief him as well when I was NIO.

Q  When you left the NSC onJuly19th,could you just go through your direct reports again?

A  There was my assistant. Do you need me to name them all for the record?

Q  That would be helpful.

A  So there was my assistant words redacted                    . He was an NSC direct hire. He's no longer there because he had agreedto be there for the year that I was there and then he would transition off. He's gone to the Treasury Department.

There was words redacted                            , who was basically detailed from Treasury, and she and I started around the same time and ended the same time. She'd also had an agreement to be there for 2 years, and Treasury was understaffed and wanted to pull her back.

There was John Erath, who was the deputy senior director. John had been there for about a year and from State Department, and he had previously been detailed out to the Defense Department and all kinds of other -- NATO. He's,you know, kind of a quite long-serving State Department official who covered the whole gamut of issues.

There was -- sorry. I'm closing my mind to kind of do the desk things in order here.

words redacted                            , who was detailed from words redacted                        words redacted                                              and covered the entire eastern flank of NATO. I mentioned before that some people ended up with ahuge portfolio of countries, so we had everything from the Baltic States all the way down to kind of Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, you know, all those other countries.

There was words redacted                    , who was detailed from who was covering the U.K., France, the Netherlands, and the Western European countries. He's gone back to words redacted                                              .

There was                             , also from words redacted                                              , who was our NATO director. And he had a smaller portfolio because NATO is very wide ranging on a whole host of issues.

There was                             , who was the director for Turkey, Greece, the Aegean, and at one point had the Caucasus as well, but that actually became too much for him to handle. Turkey is a 24/7, 365-days-a-year job. He’s actually now off with the words redacted                                              , so he was also detailed over from the words redacted                                    .

There was Alex Vindman, who, as I explained before, got Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova, also detailed in from the JCS.

There was words redacted                    , who was detailed from words redacted                                          , so we shared with the words redacted                    directorate, and the nature of words redacted      job was classified.

And then there was who words redacted              , was our director for Russia and who was really handling all the outreach that we had to the Russian National Security Council and very much focused on just the nitty-gritty of coordinating all of our interactions with the Russians, which at this point were actually fairly extensive.

And he did -- none of these other individuals worked on the Ukraine portfolio. We actually had to ask           to stepup arid help on the Baltics and Caucasus just in a pinch because our other directors were getting overwhelmed.

I don’t think I’ve missed anyone. How many people do you have there? How much does that add up to? Is that       ?

Q  It’s about       , yeah.

A  Yeah, that sounds about right. And we previously had a couple more directors and we’d gone -- we were agreeing, I mean, as you’ve heard and read about the NSC downsizing, we were agreeing to attrition --

Q  Right.

A  -- you know, so that directors would not necessarily be replaced.

Q  So what was it like when you first arrived? Like, you know, how many people did you have reporting to you?

A  Initially there were       people there. But by the time I arrived there was a reorganization going on, because we used to also have Central Asia, and that moved to the directorate covering Central and South Asia. So one of the directors already went, and the Western European portfolio was differently arranged, and we didn’t replace one of those directors.

So, in fact,                           had all of the EU,Germany, Italy, the Vatican, Spain, Portugal.

Q  In the course of your experience did you ever come into contact with national security staffers that had a political orientation?

A  Well, I mean, I had plenty of political appointees from the administration.

Q  Any political or nonpolitical appointees that had a political orientation?

A  Not in my experience. People did not express those. I mean, I made it very clear from when I came on -- in -- that I was nonpartisan and I did not want people’s, you know, politics brought into the office. I mean, people could share opinions. And I was aware, you know, obviously of a few people’s political preferences, but they weren’t in any way -- that was only just by chance. But they were mostly all Republicans.

Q  When you started were there any holdovers from the previous administration?

A  Well, of course there were because the administrations -- that always happens. I mean, I was a holdover from the Bush administration at the DNI --

Q  How many of the       were holdovers?

A  Well, when I first started all of them would have been, because my first job, when I came in in March, was to preside over – that’s why I can’t remember, you know, all of the sequencing of directors, because the entire staff were from the previous administration. And from, you know, the period between March and the summer, that’s when I ended up down with four people at one point. We were trying to find new detailees.

Q  And you were --

A  And everybody left, you know, well, for the most part, who had just had a 1-year detail in the summer of 2017. But, again, all of these people were detailed from agencies, so they’re professional staff.

Q  You were initially introduced to the possibility of working at the NSC by General Flynn --

A  I was.

Q  -- K.T. MacFarland?

A  Correct. I had my first discussion with K.T. in December of 2016.

Q  And when General McMaster --

A  I had to wait a while to see whether he wanted to continue.

Q  Okay. And could you just help us understand, he wanted you to continue to --

A  He did. I mean, I came in to meet with him.

Q  And --

A  I mean, I’d been already offered the job and I was already in the process of onboarding. But clearly, you know, if a new National Security Advisor comes in, he’s, you know, perfectly within his rights to decide not to proceed.

Q  But he --

A  And I didn’t know him well. I mean, I knew him somewhat professionally. I’d been at a conference or two with him. But, I mean, it wasn’t like I really knew him well.

Q  When you onboarded, did you have any Flynn loyalists that you had to -- that left?

A  Remember, I was hired by General Flynn, and I knew him from the period when I worked at the DNI. And there were a number of people who continued who had worked with General Flynn. But, yes, it was true that, you know, Ambassador -- sorry -- General McMaster, just like Ambassador Bolton, also did change out the staff.

Q  General McMaster, could you identify the differences, top-line differences between how he ran the NSC and Ambassador Bolton?

A  They have very different personalities. I mean, they’ve obviously got very different backgrounds. And General McMaster was very focused on process. He had a lot of interagency meetings. He was focused in the whole year that he was there on the National Security Strategy and then trying to create integrated strategies to pull all the policy together.

So, you know, it was a very different, deliberative approach, a lot of, you know, meetings in his office, a lot of meetings with a lot of staff, you know, going through all the national security principles.

And Ambassador Bolton, you know, is much more of the view, as I think is well known about him, of a much smaller, streamlined National Security Staff in which just the principals interact with the President and, again, small meetings between, you know, the -- he famously has a picture on his wall that’s put in all of the, you know, bios of him or the stories about him since it’s all been out in public of the picture of the, you know, the Bush White House with Scowcroft and Powell and Cheney and others just at the desk, at the Resolute Desk, you know, kind of a small group.

Where Ambassador Bolton then kept it small, General McMaster liked, you know, kind of the larger, bringing out the guys, you know, for meetings and things.

Q  There was some discussion about the WhatsApp usage.

A  Yes.

Q  And you indicated that White House staffers couldn’t use WhatsApp?

A  No. It was not on our phones.

Q  But the State Department folks, they --

A  Yeah.

Q  -- do use WhatsApp?

A  So this has actually been an issue not with WhatsApp because it’s a relatively, you know, recent platform, but when I was NIO between 2006 and 2009, State Department did an awful lot of business on their BlackBerrys or, you know, whatever their system was at the time.

I think BlackBerrys were invented by 2006, right? I keep remembering times when we all had giant, you know, kind of phones and things like this.

And we had a real problem at the time capturing, you know, the flow of information. And when I was NIO, I mean, an awful lot of things that we relied on were embassy cables and feedback, you know, from our ambassadors or the deputy assistant secretaries, assistant secretaries. And a lot of the information was just not accessible to us because, you know, they’d take weeks to write up a cable and often the information was not captured.

And, you know, obviously, in the executive branch, because of the concerns about executive privilege, but also about Presidential records, everything needs to be captured.

Q  But State Department officials that are utilizing WhatsApp, as long as they’re preserving it for their own recordkeeping rules --

A  I presume that, you know, the State Department has fairly robust procedures.

We were also instructed, you know, like everybody else, that if anybody, you know, got hold of our personal email in any way or, you know, kind of phone number, that we had to immediately forward that onto our NSC email, which I always did.

It didn’t happen very often, but, you know, as you mentioned before, you asked me a question, why did the media have my phone number, my email, in actual fact, it’s on my Brookings out-of-office message on leave. So they have it. You know, it’s quite easy to get, hence why I get a lot of emails and phone calls.

So sometimes I’d find that, you know, some official had, you know – couldn’t remember the sequence of the NSC, so they’d just use my Brookings email and email me, and I would forward that on. But we were not allowed, as I said, to go before, in any official business in otherwise an official manner like that.

Q  President Trump’s Ukraine policy with forwarding lethal defensive weapons to the Ukraine, is it fair to say that that is a much more robust aid policy?

A  That’s correct.

Q  And what else can you tell us about the difference between the current administration and the previous?

A  Well, I, myself -- you can find this in the public record -- wrote an op-ed before -- long before I joined the administration, after the annexation of Crimea and with the war on the Donbas, actually opposing lethal weapon provisions, defensive lethal weapons to Ukraine, because I was really worried at the time as an independent analyst and based on what I’d known previously in my NIO job that the Ukrainian military was in such a state of shambles that it would never be able to stand up to the Russian military, which had, you know, basically escalation dominance, and that we were in the danger of basically fanning, you know, of the flames of the conflict and having the slaughter, frankly, of Ukrainian soldiers.

And also that the Europeans wouldn’t step up and wouldn’t do anything. I mean, this is a perpetual problem that I was facing on many fronts. Remember, Europe is all in my portfolio as well. And we were very concerned that, you know, it could become -- I was concerned, and my cohort atthe time, that it's become a rift in our relations with Europe, that they might actually even step back from sanctions or other commitments that they've made with us as a government.

Now, when I got into the government, the administration, I became actually more convinced that there was a thorough plan, that our colleagues at the Pentagon had really thought all of this through, and that General Abizaid and then, you know, kind of his replacement, Keith Dayton, who had been working on the behalf of the Pentagon as a special envoy of the Secretary to work with Ukrainian defense, as one would hope, they knew what they were doing.

And then they had a proper plan for the long-term sustainability of the Ukrainian military, and that the intent was that the Ukrainian defense sector would be able to get itself back into shape again over time. Because you may recall that Ukraine, as a republic of the Soviet Union, was one of the locus, along with Belarus, of the majority of the defense industrial base of the Soviet Union.

So many parts for helicopters and planes, all the heavy lift capacity for the Russian forces, were still being made in Ukraine up until the falling out between Ukraine and Russia. So we were kind of confident that if Ukraine could get its act together, especially if it could tackle some of the energy issues as well, which, you know, were really dragging it down, energy efficiency, and as we all know, militaries are one of their biggest utilizers of energy, that over time Ukraine, you know, could actually have a viable military.

And given the size of the country and, you know, the size of the population, Ukraine could actually potentially over time become a formidable military power, like the Poles were already becoming in Eastern Europe.

And so there was a plan there. So I, you know, everybody changes their mind, you know, and kind of learns things, I, you know, was basically persuaded that, you know, this was actually worth doing, even though I still had qualms about Russian escalation dominance and was worried about how this would be provided and making sure not to provoke the Russians.

Q  So you came around to the view that it was --

A  I did. I mean, I didn't want to use it as a way of just, you know, sticking a finger up to the Russians, you know, which is kind of -- you know, there were a few people that wanted to say, hey, you know, here, Russians, you know, kind of we're taking these actions, but it was very few. I wanted to make sure that it was part of a well thought out policy.

MR. CASTOR: I have about just shy of 10, 8 minutes.Does anybody, any Members have any questions?

MR. ZELDIN: Dr. Hill, Ambassador Volker made it sound like many in the U.S. Government working on these issues really wanted the meeting with Zelensky to happen. And earlier you're testifying a little bit about the desire for a meeting between President Trump and Zelensky. Can you just help me better understand your interest and your team's interest in wanting to set up a meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky?

[2:56 p.m.]

DR. HILL: Well, there was a bit of a split there as well. You know, I think I've made myself clear, but I'll, you know, be more clear. That myself and Ambassador Bolton and, you know, some other parts of our team did not believe we should be having a meeting with President Zelensky -- I mean "we" writ large as the U.S. Government at the highest levels -- until we were very sure how the Ukrainian Rada parliamentary elections would play out. And also, then, we could be really sure -- which, you know, nothing is ever really sure -- about how much Zelensky was going to be under the influence of various oligarchs.

And, again, I was concerned, as was Ambassador Bolton, that there was all this extraneous activity going on that would one way or another impact on this meeting in ways in which -- and this is actually my worst nightmare, what's happening now, that this could, you know, basically spin out and put, you know, kind of the United States in a very bad position because I did not know exactly what Mr. Giuliani was doing. So we are now living my worst nightmare.

MR. ZELDIN: As far as people inside of the UnitedStates Government working on the Ukraine issue, there was a difference of opinion and desire of whether or not to set up a meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky?

DR. HILL: Yeah, overall, we all wanted to have a meeting, but under the right kind of circumstances, you know, with the right messaging and the right discussion because it was important for the legitimization of the new Ukrainian Government and as a strong symbol of U.S. solidarity with Ukraine.

I mean, Ukraine is in a really remarkable and very difficult position. I mean, it first got its independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union and -- Lee will actually remember this. Back in 1994, we all worked on a report called "Back in the USSR" when we were at the Kennedy School that was basically documenting all of the efforts that the Russian Government and Boris Yeltsin were actually making to subvert the sovereignty of all of the new countries that emerged out of the Soviet Union.

And we basically highlighted Ukraine as being the most vulnerable at that particular juncture because this was the period when Ukraine was being pushed to give up its nuclear weapons. And we actually wrote in the report that Ukraine shouldn't give up its nuclear weapons because there was a good chance that they would then be predated upon by the Russians. And this was then addressed by the Budapest Memorandum in late 1994.

And there were all kinds of attacks on Ukraine taking -- this is a long time to go back -- but there were lots of attacks on Ukraine, strange assassinations, all kinds of threats of military action, including against Crimea, all in this timeframe. And that's when the U.S. Government moved, with others, to basically give guarantees to Ukraine of its sovereignty.

So, when you now look at what's happened to Ukraine, you know,basically 20 years on, exactly what we feared at the time has happened. So Ukraine has basically lost its sovereignty again. And our concern was to show that we were looking at Ukraine as a sovereign country. And one of the ways of expressing that sovereignty is obviously to show respect to their head of state at the very highest levels in our country. It's something that we traditionally do.

MR. ZELDIN: Ambassador Sondland seems to have areputation, from the conversations I've had outside of this setting and from what we're hearing, that he really liked to get his hands into everything. Even though he was the U.S. Ambassador to the EU, someone told me that he really looked at the entire European continent as his. And on his own initiatives, he was just getting himself involved in everything. Was that pretty much your observations too, or did you have a different observation?

DR. HILL: Well, that was my observation. And I said,you know, before that I was -- I had, you know, what I thought was an unfortunate blowup with him at the time when he told me he was in charge of Ukraine, which it was already,you know, at the juncture where Ambassador Taylor was being sent out as Charge. And when he said -- that was the first time that he said to me that the President had told him he was in charge of Ukraine.

But prior to that, he'd actually said to me repeatedly when I challenged him, you know, on issues like this where, you know, he was running around with, you know, words redacted                    appearing at the White House and, you know, all kinds of other things that he was, you know, doing at the time that were, you know, completely out of the ordinary process, I, you know, said to him again: What's going on here?

And he said: The President has given me, you know, this broad -- I am to be his point man on Europe.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you know whether or not he was actually getting any of this guidance from a higher level, or is it possible that he was just name-dropping the President?

DR. HILL: It is entirely possible that he was name-dropping the President. There were many times where -- I mean, he was a shocking number of times in Washington, D.C., to the point where several people said to me: Is he ever in Brussels?

And I busted him a couple of times on the street in West Executive where, I mean, if he was there, he would normally come in through protocol, as all the other Ambassadors did. They would have a meeting with me or with Ambassador Bolton.

And he would have some meetings with Ambassador Bolton from time to time, but I'd often see him in West Exec coming out of, you know, what looked like he was coming out of the West Wing. And he'd say that he'd been in, you know, to see the President, but I would find from talking to the staff that he'd only been up to see Mick Mulvaney. I don't know whether that's hearsay or presumption or --

MR. ZELDIN: But as far as him getting involved in other countries outside of the EU, he came across as someone who was trying to get his hands into everything on his own initiative?

DR. HILL: If he met somebody in Brussels from anothercountry, they were fair game, is basically how it appeared to be. He spent a long time working on               for a while andactually made a huge mess-up because he was given a piece of information from the                 Prime Minister that he should have actually handed over to State Department. He sat on it for 3 months.

And people at the State Department had meetings that were pertaining to that piece of paper, and it had never actually been handed over. And the                 thought that their counterparts were either, you know, kind of insane or deliberately obfuscating on the issues that they kept raising.

THE CHAIRMAN: It's time, Mr. Zeldin.

MR. ZELDIN: The time is almost up, or it is up?

THE CHAIRMAN: It is up.

Mr. Goldman.

MR. WOLOSKY: Can we take a 5-minute break?

THE CHAIRMAN: Yes, take a 5-minute break and we'll comeback in.

[Recess.]

THE CHAIRMAN: All right, let's go back on the record.Mr. Noble.

MR. NOBLE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Dr. Hill, you said in the last segment of your testimony that we're now living your worst nightmare. Can you unpack that a little bit for us? What do you mean by that?

A  Well, I was extremely concerned that whatever it was that Mr. Giuliani was doing might not be legal, especially after, you know, people had raised with me these two gentlemen, Parnas and Fruman. And also they'd mentioned this third individual who, I mean, I guess is actually on the list of names that you had because I didn't recognize all the others of, Harry Sargeant and when I'd spoken to my colleagues who, you know, were based in Florida, including our director for the Western Hemisphere, and he'd mentioned that these people were notorious and that, you know, they'd been involved in all kinds of strange things in Venezuela and, you know, kind of were just well-known for not being aboveboard. And so my early assumption was that it was pushing particular individuals' business interests.

Q  Did there come a time when you understood, though, that Rudy Giuliani was also pushing the Ukrainians to conduct or reopen or open particular investigations?

A  Yes. I mean, that was when Amos Hochstein had come to talk to me in May. I think it was May 20th, May 22nd, something like that. So all around the time of when we were preparing for the inauguration. And he had said that a number of Ukrainians had come to complain to him that they were -- that this was starting to happen. I also had the --

Q  Just to be clear, that Rudy Giuliani was in Ukraine, trying to --

A  Correct.

Q  -- press Ukrainians?

A  Or was talking to Ukrainians, I mean, in all kinds of different settings, and was sending messages to Ukrainians.

Q  And was it about these investigations in particular?

A  Also about Naftogaz, again, the Ukrainian oil and gas company. And the --

Q  So those two. So Naftogazand the investigations?

A  Correct. And the board of Naftogaz in this same time period had also come to have an official meeting with us in the NSC because --

Q  I think we're going to get to that a little bit later.

A  But they raised the same concerns, that they felt that they were under pressure to change out their board.

Q  And with respect to the investigations, I just want to be very clear, did you have an understanding of which investigations in particular Rudy Giuliani was pushing or pressing the Ukrainians on, and when did you come to realize that?

A  it was really in that period of late May after Masha Yovanovitch had been removed where it became clear that it was Burisma. And it was being couched in the context of energy investigations, but it was primarily focused on Burisma.

Q  And did you ever come to understand that Rudy Giuliani was also pressing the Ukrainians to investigate matters related to purported Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election?

A  Only based on what he was saying himself on the television.

Q  And when, in what time period did you realize that that was what Giuliani was pressing as well?

A  Well, that began with the articles that I started to see in The Hill and others, you know, from March onwards. And I started to pay attention to this. There was also the mentioning of George Soros, which, again, has become this crazy trope where every time somebody mentions the name of George Soros, there's a whole flurry of conspiracy theories, and he seems to be basically orchestrating absolutely everything.

Q  Right. So, in your last segment of testimony, I believe you said while you and other NSC officials in the interagency were trying to make Ukraine policy the way that you normally went about such things, there was all this extraneous stuff going on?

A  Correct.

Q  What do you mean? Were you referring to what Rudy Giuliani and others were doing --

A  Correct.

Q  -- as the extraneous stuff?

A  Correct. And saying, yeah. I mean, so, you know, every single day it seemed -- and that's probably an exaggeration, but every single day it seemed that he was on television, you know, basically spouting off, you know, one thing after another.

Q  Okay. And I believe you also said something along the lines that you didn't actually know exactly what Rudy Giuliani was going on, but did you have -- it seems that you did have some understanding at the time of what he was up to.

A  Well, I tried -- I worked extraordinarily longdays, so the last thing that I wanted to do when I went home was watch television. And I watch FOX News just as much I watch anything else, and I've appeared on FOX News, and that's how I got to know K.T. I was often on her show. I knew her through the Council on Foreign Relations.

So, you know, just to be kind of clear, I'm an omnivore when it comes to watching the news, and -- but I would have to go home in the evening and try to look on the news to see what Giuliani was saying. And then I would have to go onto YouTube or whatever else I could find, you know, kind of replays of things because people were constantly saying tome: My God, have you seen what Giuliani is saying now?

And it was clearly starting to create this, you know, meta-alternate narrative about Ukraine –

Q  And about Ambassador Yovanovitch?

A  -- political articles and all these other things as well.

Q  And Ambassador Yovanovitch as well?

A  Correct.

Q  Now, so, when you saw Rudy Giuliani or you talked to your colleagues about his appearances on the television, part of what he was saying and part of what he was pressing was for Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden and his connection to Burisma, correct?

A  He was. He was.

Q  So, at some point, did you come to realize that what Rudy Giuliani was pressing, these investigations were political in nature, that these were investigations that could benefit the President in his reelection campaign?

A  I came to realize that one way or another Ukraine was being used as part of the discussions and debates around the elections. And that's what I mean about my worst nightmare because Ukraine and the national security aspects of this and what the Russians have done and will continue to do is something that we should all be -- it should be a nonpartisan issue, and we should all be paying a lot of attention to it.

And that's what I mean about my worst nightmare, is having Ukraine become politicized -- I'm sure it's the Ukrainians' worst nightmare as well -- to become politicized in the way that Russia has become politicized in all of our discourse.

And so, at that point, I saw all of the above being bundled together: somebody's nefarious business interests,conspiracy theories about George Soros or the alternate retellings of what happened in 2016, and then also, potentially, you know, digging up dirt on candidates, all based on what Giuliani himself was saying, just to be very clear.

Q  Right. But did you also have an understanding that Giuliani was working and self-proclaiming to be the agent, essentially, of the President of the United States?

A  Yes, of course, I was aware of that. I mean, he said it all the time.

Q  And did you have any conversations or did you hear through other U.S. officials about how the Ukrainians were reacting to this --

A  Yes. I heard from --

Q  -- to this essential shadow foreign policy?

A  Yes, I heard from our Embassy staff. And this was after Masha Yovanovitch had left as well. I mean, I was in constant contact with Embassy staff. I heard from former Assistant Secretary Wess Mitchell, the Deputy Assistant Secretary, many others, and, of course, there's a whole think tank world out there. You know, I'm reading articles, and I'm hearing from people all the time.

As well, we had regular meetings with people from Heritage, CSIS, you know, kind of -- Atlantic Council -- because they were doing a lot of work on energy. And I know, you know, a lot of this gets politicized again, but we were meeting with everybody from all of the think tanks. And I'll just point out that our colleagues from Heritage were complaining to us repeatedly about what they were really concerned about what was going on with Ukraine.

Q  Who at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv were you speaking with about this issue?

A  The previous DCM. I mean, obviously Masha Yovanovitch herself before, you know, she was removed, and then, after she was removed, I mean, talking to Ambassador Taylor, who had been reaching out and talking to -- in the course of his work, you know, he'd been, you know, very closely associated with all of the former Ukrainian -- U.S. Ambassadors to Ukraine, who had also been talking to people as well.

Q  And the prior DCM, was that Mr. Pennington?

A  That is correct. And he got moved on, you know, kind of basically in this sort of timeframe as well.

Q  So you said, you know, you were concerned about the politicization of Ukraine. How does that impact our national security, U.S. national security?

A  Well, if Ukraine suddenly becomes, as it, you know, certainly appears to be, on the track of being a partisan issue, and we can't have a serious nonpartisan or bipartisan discussion about what the U.S. national security interests in it is, then that's a problem, especially as many of the sanctions that we've put in place -- I'll give you a concrete example about this.

I mean, we put sanctions, as a government and as the U.S. Congress put in place, against Russia because of Russia's annexation of Crimea and the starting of the war in the Donbas. The Europeans came on board with those sanctions and have been tightly coordinating with us since the downing of MH17, the Malaysian airline flight over Donbas, by what has been proven to be Russian operatives. And there’s been a very thorough international commission and investigation for this.

The Europeans have started to see that many of these issues, including sanctions that we've put on against Russia from 2016 onwards and now many of our machinations about Ukraine, are nothing more than our own domestic political games now.

So I was very disturbed and distressed in my last few weeks at the NSC in discussions that I had with Europeans.

One case in point was the CAATSA sanctions that you as the Congress, you know, kind of put forward, and the decision to basically sanction Mr. Deripaska and Rusal because the Treasury Department did a completely aboveboard -- and this, you know, is on everyone here -- process to really try to deconflict because when -- we're presuming that when you all put on sanctions under CAATSA, there wasn't an intention to close down factories and, you know, major installations across Europe. They're kind of collateral damage. And the largest aluminum factory, manufacturing factory in Europe happens to be in Ireland. There are major facilities in France and Sweden and, you know, elsewhere.

And all of the Ambassadors came to talk to us, very concerned about the impact that this was going to have on their countries and on, you know, major workforces, massive employment, if the sanctions were done to the narrow letter of the law. So Treasury was talking, you know, with all of them and trying to work on a supervisory arrangement and to try to make sure that there could be no collateral damage.

And when, you know, Ambassadors would come to talk to staff and people here, they got the impression that this was just a political game between both parties and that we were not taking seriously the implications of this.

So they began to believe that we were politicizing our foreign policy, that we were doing it sometimes to target them or that we were doing this, you know, to basically fight out, you know, our own disagreements. And that means that we cannot be effective in working together with our European allies on pushing back against Russia or also trying to enshrine Ukraine's sovereignty.

Q  Okay. I want to -- I'm going to jump around just a little bit to cover some topics that you already spoke about. The July 10th and July 11th, 2019, meetings with Eisenberg, are you aware of any documentation of the concerns that you raised or Mr. Griffith raised with Mr. Eisenberg?

A  I 'm not

Q  You're not aware of anything?

A  No.

Q  Are you aware of whether Eisenberg wrote anything down or made any written reports?

A  I'm not. I mean, in the time when -- actually, John has really great recall, as one would hope in a lawyer. And I 'm sorry. I 'm making that shtick about poor Lee all the time here.

But he was listening very intently, and he said he would follow up

Q  Okay. Was he taking notes?

A  And I had every reason to believe -- he was very familiar already with a lot of this because, again, like everyone else, he was observing what was going on on the television .

Q  Had you had prior conversations with Mr. Eisenberg about these issues?

A  In passing, I believe that I had. I met with him probably every day one way or another. His office was opposite mine, so I would see him constantly. But also, just to be clear in terms of process, we always had a legal representative at all of our interagency meetings and -- you know, as one would hope, you know, in terms of keeping us onthe straight and narrow on many things.

Q  So, going back to Ambassador Volker, his role was limited to trying to bring peace to the Donbas, correct? He wasn't -- he didn't have -- he wasn't in charge of Ukrainian policy writ large, is that right?

A  He was not, although I think, you know, you had a reference before about special envoys. We often saw mission creep with special envoys. And, frankly, it's a difficult job for them anywhere because they're given a particular slice of and are dealing with an issue, and they've got to bring in, you know, so many other things as well.

Q  Do you know whether Ambassador Volker ever had direct one-on-one conversations with the President?

A  He did not.

Q  What about Ambassador Sondland?

A  Well, Ambassador Sondland told me all the time that he did, but I don't know if that was actually the case.

Q  When was the first time you discussed Rudy Giuliani with Ambassador Volker?

A  I'm trying to think about which -- I think it might have been in an unscheduled meeting where I saw him around the time of Masha Yovanovitch's dismissal.

Q  So that would have been late April 2019?

A  Late April, yes.

Q  And do you remember what that conversation was?

A  It was basically talking about, you know, kind of basically the circumstances of her dismissal and that we should be extraordinarily careful about dealing with Giuliani.

Q  Okay. And can you explain just a little bit more what you said to him, what he said to you about Giuliani and what he's up to in Ukraine?

A  Well, he basically mentioned at this time, and I can't say -- I mean, hopefully, he told you this -- exactly when he had his first meeting with him. But he was intimating that he was considering meeting with Giuliani or perhaps he had some initial encounter with him so that he was clearly trying to -- you know, getting back to the question before -- try to figure out, you know, how he could do, you know, the right thing, in terms of trying to smooth this over and trying to deflect away because he was just as concerned as the rest of us were about the, you know, kind of politicization or the distortion of U.S.-Ukrainian relations or, you know, of U.S.-Ukrainian policy.

Q  And what did you say to Volker when he suggested he may meet with Giuliani?

A  I thought that it was futile. I mean --

Q  Explain why.

A  Because based on my -- look, I'm not a psychologist or anything, but based on my assessment of what Mr. Giulianiwas saying on the television, it was all over the place. And if that's what he's like in person, I have no way to judge it, but if he was anything like he was on the television, I didn't see the point in having a conversation with him. He seemed at times to actually believe some of the things he was saying that I knew to be untrue.

Q  That what Giuliani was saying was untrue?

A  Correct.

Q  Are you aware that Ambassador Volker produced text messages to us?

A  I am aware because they were in the paper.

Q  Okay. Have you read some of the text messages that are in the paper?

A  In the newspaper, yes.

Q  Were you aware that those conversations were going on at the time?

A  I was not.

Q  You never saw those -- you were never part of those WhatsApp conversations?

A  No. And, actually, the timing of it was after I left the NSC. Most of those text messages seemed to have been in the July-August timeframe, as far as I can tell.

Q  But, in any event, you weren't aware that Volker, Sondland, and Taylor were having text message exchanges?

A  I was not. I would hope that they would be talking to Ambassador Taylor. In fact, that was also one of my concerns when I was leaving, that they would not have Ambassador Taylor in the loop.

Q  And why is that? Why was that a concern?

A  Because Ambassador Sondland had done this with our Charge in words redacted                    I mentioned before he'd met the words redacted                    Prime Minister in Brussels and then decided that he was going to be the point person to words redacted                   , because we were alsowithout an Ambassador in. words redacted                   .but we had a very good Charge -- like Ambassador Taylor, who had previously been an Ambassador words redacted                                                and was retired, but had come back to step up. And Ambassador Sondland just ignored him and pretended he wasn't there.

Q  Having reviewed the text messages that are in the papers, what's your opinion of those? Is that normal diplomacy, as you -- based on your experience?

A  No.

Q  And why not?

A  Because of the content and the nature of, you know,setting up a meeting in relation to this, to something that is not a national security deliverable.

Q  And can you explain that a little bit more? Like what do you mean by this was not a national security deliverable? What was not the national security deliverable?

A  It was obvious from those text messages that they were referring to the investigations, and that was not something that we were pushing from the national security perspective, certainly not the National Security Council and certainly not the State Department.

Q  And they were pushing that in exchange for a White House meeting?

A  In exchange for a White House meeting.

MR. NOBLE: I'd like to show you what's going to be marked majority exhibit 1, I guess.

[Majority Exhibit No. 1 was marked for identification.]

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  And this is --

A  I'll put my glasses on.

Q  -- one of the text message exchanges involving Ambassador Volker and actually Andrey Yermak?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  And I direct your attention to the entry, the first entry on July 25th, 2019.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  Do you see that?

A  Yes, I do, yes.

Q  Can you just read what that says?

A  Which? Hang on. It's the one that --

Q  Yeah.

A  -- starts with Kurt Volker.

Q  Yeah, Kurt Volker writing to Andrey Yermak.

A  It says: Good lunch. Heard from White House -- assuming President Z convinces Trump he will investigate/get to the bottom of what happened in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington. Good luck. See you tomorrow -- Kurt.

Q  Okay. And just for the record, the Bates stamp is KV-19.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  Dr. Hill, the message that Kurt Volker is relaying to Andrey Yermak, President Zelensky's adviser, how does that correspond or match up or not with the message that Ambassador Sondland delivered during the July 10th meeting that Ambassador Volker was in attendance at?

A  It seems consistent with that. At least in that case, he's talking about investigations. And in the context of the July l0th/11th, you know, that was more on the energy sector in the way that Sondland -- but in terms of saying he will investigate and then, you know, get to the bottom of what happened in 2016 is consistent, at least, with the way that that was laid out in the July 10th.

Q  But in July 10th in the Ward Room meeting, I believe you testified you overheard Ambassador Sondland specifically mention Burisma. Is that right?

A  He did.

Q  And can you tell us a little bit more about what he --

A  But this seems, you know, somewhat -- well, this is slashed so I don't know -- I mean, obviously, I don't know exactly what they had in mind there.

Q  But, again, it's the -- they seem to be exchanging a White House meeting for a commitment by Ukraine to investigate these matters that Rudy Giuliani had been pressing?

A  That's what it looks like. The "heard from the White House" is interesting to me because I don’t know, obviously, who they heard from in the White House.

Q  Was it you or anyone at the NSC that you're aware?

A  It would not be me because I was not there. But, Imean, this could be the Chief of Staff's Office.

Q  Mick Mulvaney?

A  I mean, that leans to speculation, but based on the July 10th, which is 2 weeks prior to that, the only person that Gordon Sondland referenced was Chief of Staff Mulvaney.

And, actually, getting to the point when you asked me before about when did Sondland tell me he was in charge of Ukraine, at that time, in that rather testy exchange I had with him, you know, I was trying to impress upon him the importance of coordinating, you know, with all of these different individuals and others that, you know, you were laying out. We had a fairly robust set of interactions with Ukrainians.

And he retorted to me that if he was coordinating with the President because, again, this is part of him saying he's talking to the President, he was talking to Mulvaney, and he was filling in Ambassador Bolton -- he didn't say he was talking to him, Ambassador Bolton, he said filling in Ambassador Bolton -- and then talking to, you know, basically -- he said Brechbuhl, Ulrich, at the State Department. He didn't actually mention Secretary Pompeo, which I noted at the time I thought was a bit odd. Who else did he have to inform?

And I said: Well, it would be nice to inform all of us and, you know, the -- obviously, the Deputy Assistant Secretary and others.

And he did not think that he needed to do that.

Q  Did you have an understanding why he was --

A  He was also, of course, talking to Ambassador Volker and Secretary Perry, and he did mention that.

Q  Why was he keeping Ulrich Brechbuhl in the loop?

A  Ulrich is a special counselor to -- Brechbuhl –- to Secretary Pompeo. And, of course, Secretary Pompeo at this time is on the road all the time. So I'm -- you know, it would be difficult to meet with Secretary Pompeo on a regular basis. So that would actually make sense, I mean, but he's the special counselor. He's not, you know, kind of in the chain of command.

And that's actually what I pointed out to Gordon, that he wasn't -- to Ambassador Sondland. He wasn't, you know, kind of basically linked into anybody in the Embassy. He certainly wasn't talking to Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent, who, you know, on the basis of, you know, the daily interactions, would be managing that in the State Department.

And he wasn't aware of some of the larger policy threads that were going on either. He simply just wasn't aware of some of the elements of things we were trying to do with Ukraine. He wasn't, again, getting a regular brief on any of this either.

Q  Do you know whether Ulrich Brechbuhl was generally aware of what Rudy Giuliani was up to in Ukraine?

A  I could not say.

Q  Did you have any direct conversations with Brechbuhl about Giuliani?

A  Certainly not about Giuliani. I did not, no. I mean, I did have conversations with him about coordination, you know, trying to figure out how we could coordinate better.

Q  And did Rudy Giuliani come up in those contacts?

A  He did not. No, he did not.

Q  On the security assistance issue, I believe you testified that the first time you learned that the President had placed a freeze on the assistance was July 18th. Is that right?

A  Yes. But I learned that as OMB --

Q  Oh, that OMB had put the freeze -

A  -- and Mick Mulvaney had put a freeze on. So, just to be clear, I never learned that the President had put a freeze on this. And this is on -- what was happening at this time was there was a freeze put on all kinds of aid and assistance because it was in the process at the time of an awful lot of reviews of foreign assistance.

Q  But had there been any discussion within the national security staff about freezing the Ukraine assistance?

A  No. I mean, it was at that point supposed to be moving forward.

Q  And did you ever get an explanation before you left government for why the freeze was put in place?

A  I did not. And I discussed with Alex Vindman, the deputy, and with others that it would be important to follow up on this, and they should work very closely with the Deputy National Security Advisor Charlie Kupperman because he at this point was also trying to keep tabs on everything that was happening. So, I mean, I kept him fully apprised of allof my concerns.

And, obviously, it was easier to meet with him often than Ambassador Bolton. And, you know, we were aware that Gordon Sondland was talking to Chief of Staff's Office. They're all in the same corridor. And we were hopeful, at least I was hopeful at that time, that Deputy National Security Adviser Kupperman would be able to figure out what was going on.

Q  Did Kupperman or Vindman or anyone else you spoke to in that timeframe express any views as to why they believed there was a freeze in place?

A  No. They were just wanting to find out. And they were in touch with OMB, and they weren't getting much information apart from the fact there was a freeze. So I'll just say that my assumption at the time was that it was in this general framework of many, you know, foreign assistance items being put on hold.

Q  And do you believe that the assistance that the U.S. was providing to Ukraine should have gone through?

A  Yes. I mean, it had all been agreed on and was actually in train, but so had some of the other assistance, just to be clear.

Q  And were you aware that, at the time, DOD had already certified that Ukraine was compliant with the anticorruption requirement?

A  I was aware of that, yes, because that's what I mean; it was already on train, and our colleagues in the Pentagon had been working on this, you know, very thoroughly.

Q  Sitting here today, do you have any other -- has your understanding changed about why the freeze was put in place?

A  It hasn't actually because, you know, as I said, when I left, there wasn't an explanation, and foreign assistance overall was being frozen. And I haven't seen anything, at least in the public record, that would suggest that it was -- that the foreign assistance was being frozen for specific purposes at that point.

I mean, this was also, remember, again, at the point of discussion about cutting back on lots of Pentagon projects for the building of the wall for Homeland Security purposes, the border wall.

Q  After you left the National Security Council, did you have any conversations with anyone about the freeze?

A  I did not, no. I mean, I had a conversation with Alex Vindman in the last couple of days. And I did also have a conversation, as I reported before, with Ambassador Taylor. But I said at that point that I had no insight as to why it had been frozen, but I said, again, that I hoped that people would be able to get to the bottom of it with Mick Mulvaney.

Q  Did Ambassador Taylor say anything about why he believed the freeze was in place to you?

A  Well, at that point, he was asking me why it was, and I couldn't answer that. And then, again, I was leaving. So, I mean, I'd left that to Tim Morrison. And I believe that the following week they had a meeting. So I left on the 19th. So, sometime on the 22nd or 23rd, there was a meeting scheduled as I was leaving for them to pull everyone together from the interagency to try to get to the bottom of this.

But I did think that if it was political for whatever reason, the wall or, you know, you name it, it would have to be resolved at high levels in the interagency, and that Ambassador Bolton and Deputy National Security Advisor Kupperman would have to sit down with Mick Mulvaney and try to get to the bottom of what was going on. And, again, there were other freezes of assistance because there was a move to push out the new foreign assistance strategy.

Q  There's been reporting that the President or perhaps Mulvaney had tasked Ambassador Bolton to do a review of the security assistance. Are you aware of --

A  I'm not aware of that. Not when I left, I didn't know about that.

Q  If there were a freeze -- if a freeze were going to be put in place like this, would it have been normal for the National Security Council staff to have been involved in the decision making process leading up to the freeze?

A  Well, if it was done from the perspective of OMB, this has happened before, so define normal. I mean, you know, in other settings -- actually, when General McMaster was in place there was a lot more process, so a lot more regular interactions. And he always made sure to have OMB and everybody else present in meetings.

And there had been interventions by OMB previously, when Mr. Mulvaney was only single-hatted as the head of OMB, to hold things back and to review them. I mean, that had happened before. But in terms of -- you know, by this point, I have to say in this point in July, the process had somewhat broken down.

Q  You testified earlier about the scheduling of a meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky, and that --

THE CHAIRMAN: Can I just interject for a quick question? Dr. Hill, you mentioned I think, when you left your position, you didn't have any firsthand knowledge about why the military assistance was being frozen.

DR. HILL: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And you didn't subsequently personally learn anything that would inform you as to whether it was --

DR. HILL: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- withheld as part of a broad withholding or for a more insidious purpose?

DR. HILL: I did not, no. I mean, the first I saw of something suggesting otherwise was really in this exchange of text messages and also in newspaper reports.

THE CHAIRMAN: And the text message you're referring to is one in which --

DR. HILL: Ambassador Taylor makes the comment about this.

THE CHAIRMAN: Yes. And have you had any conversation with Ambassador Taylor --

DR. HILL: I have not. No, I have not been in touch with him at all.

THE CHAIRMAN: So, if there were a hidden agenda here,in terms of why that military assistance was being withheld along the lines that Ambassador Taylor indicated, that would have not come to your attention while you were there and --

DR. HILL: It would not have done, no. And, again,though I did speak to Ambassador Taylor at great length on the 19th of September, in which I reviewed a whole host of issues that I wanted to hand over to him, so Ambassador Taylor was very much alert to all kinds of concerns. And he was going to, you know, basically -- because he had to in his job as Charge -- you know, basically try to look into these and to try to figure out, you know, how he could work, you know, more closely with Ambassador -- well, he was already working closely with Ambassador Volker but also with Ambassador Sondland to figure out what was going on.

MR. WOLOSKY: You referenced the 19th of September. Ithink you meant July.

DR. HILL: July. I'm sorry. Thank you, Lee. I'msorry. My brain is now more shook up than my water. Sorry.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

DR. HILL: I apologize for that.

THE CHAIRMAN: You testified --

DR. HILL: How does this get corrected, by the way? I mean, do you go back, do you do the whole, you know, kind of correction back and forth of dates, you know?

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, the transcript will read as you said, and the correction will appear as you corrected it.

DR. HILL: Okay, good, thanks. That was just a slip,based on, you know, the timing here. Yeah. Anyway, go ahead. Sorry.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  The meeting between -- scheduling the meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky, I believe you said that, in your opinion, you were waiting to see what happened in the Ukrainian parliamentary elections –

A  Correct.

Q  -- which I believe were held on July 21st. Is that right?

A  That's right. And I left before that.

Q  To date, though, there's been no meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky, at least at the White House, right?

A  No, there has not. But there has been a meeting, of course, in the --

Q  At the U.N. General Assembly?

A  In New York, yes. And, actually, I mean, again, we'd been preferring those kinds of meetings in the past because setting up a White House meeting, as one can imagine, is a very heavy lift and, you know, the scheduling is always very difficult. And, you know, basically, we always try to have a serious meeting wherever we can.

And the initial -- even when I was there, there had been kind of a scheduling aspiration for Warsaw on the 1st of September because that seemed to be actually a very apt first meeting. Because after Poland, you know, the lands that were now modern Ukraine were pretty much run over by Nazi Germany, and, you know, Ukraine suffered greatly during World War II. And we thought it would be appropriate to, immediately after the meeting with the Poles, to have the President meet with Zelensky. So, I mean, that seemed to be kind of a nice packaging.

Q  But, as you said, after you left the White House, you weren't privy to the conversations that were going on behind the scenes --

A  I was not, no.

Q  -- by Ambassador Sondland, Ambassador Volker, and,to a certain extent, Ambassador Taylor about the scheduling of the meeting and linking it to the Ukrainian commitment to investigate –

A  I was not.

Q  You did not see any of those messages?

A  I did not see any of those messages.

Q  I believe you said that you've reviewed a copy of the 25th call summary, the call between President Trump and President Zelensky?

A  The one that was published in the newspaper, yes.

Q  I'd like to ask some questions about those.

MR.NOBLE: So we're going to mark this government exhibit 2-- I mean majority exhibit 2.

[Majority Exhibit No. 2was marked for identification.]

DR.HILL: See, we all have things --

MR.NOBLE: Old habits die hard.

MR.CASTOR: Do you have a copy of that?

MR.NOBLE: We might have another copy.

THE CHAIRMAN: It's just the call record.

MR.CASTOR: Okay, gotcha.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  So I direct your attention to page 3. You see at the top there that President Trump says: I would like you to do us a favor though --

A  Uh-huh.

Q  And then he goes on to mention: I would like youto find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it.

Do you know what the President -- what President Trump was referring to when he was asking President Zelensky to look into those things?

A  I think some of this gets to some speculation here. Clearly -- well, this seems to be the alternative theory for 2016 at the beginning here with the whole situation with Ukraine when as you've been asking questions along that Ukraine might have interfered in the election, particularly in the references to CrowdStrike.

Tom Bossert has already spoken out publicly against this, and we spent a lot of time with Tom and General McMaster and others trying to refute this one in the first year of the administration.

Q  Can you say a little bit more about that? What did Tom Bossert do in the first year?

A  Well, Tom Bossert came out publicly and said that he really regretted this reference after he read the transcript as well because this was a debunked theory. Andthis was also a muddle.

Q  But you said there were some efforts early on in the administration internally to debunk this theory. Can you explain what you did?

A  Basically, Tom and others who were working on cybersecurity laid out to the President the facts about the interference. Again, I can't say any more than that.

Q  Okay. But to a certain extent, they advised him that the alternate theory that Ukraine had interfered in the election was false?

A  Correct.

Q  If you turn to the next page, the top of paragraph 4. I'm sorry. Page 4, the top paragraph.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  So the President is saying that he's going to have Rudy Giuliani and the Attorney General call President Zelensky about these investigations, and then he goes on, lower in the paragraph, says: The other thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.

And then down in the next paragraph, President Zelensky responds. Kind of middle of the paragraph, you see he says: He or she, referring to the new prosecutor general that Zelensky says he's going to appoint, will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue.

Do you have an understanding of, when President Trump references investigating Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and President Zelensky's response that they're going to look into the company, what company President Zelensky was referring to?

A  Well, I think he means Burisma, President Zelensky is referring to.

Q  And why is that?

A  Because that was the company that Hunter Biden was on the board of.

Q  So you had an understanding -- did you have an understanding back at the time that when people like Giuliani were talking about investigating Burisma, they were also saying that Hunter Biden and Joe Biden should be investigated, or Hunter Biden?

A  That was becoming apparent. But, I mean, Mr. Giuliani made it very apparent as well.

Q  And going back up to that top paragraph, do you see President Trump says: The former Ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. Do you know who he's referring to there?

A  He's obviously referring to Ambassador Yovanovitch.And I know that, later on, President Zelensky runs her name back again, although he mispronounces it.

Q  I think it’s spelled Ivanovich in the summary in the next paragraph.

A  Yes.

Q  And in the next paragraph, President Trump says: Well, she's going to go through some things. Do you know what President Trump was referring to when he said that --

A  I do not.

Q  -- Ambassador Yovanovitch was going to go through some things?

A  I do not know what that meant.

Q  Because at this point, July 25th, she'd already been removed, ousted, as you said, from her position, correct?

A  Yes, correct.

Q  How did you react when you read that, the transcript, particularly the portions I pointed to about President Trump pushing President Zelensky to investigate the Bidens and investigate Ukrainian -- purported Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election and as well as his comments about Ambassador Yovanovitch?

A  I was actually shocked.

Q  Why?

A  Well, particularly on Ambassador Yovanovitch, andvery saddened because, again, Ambassador Yovanovitch is a great American, and I don't think any American citizen should be disparaged by their President, just to put it out there.So that made me very sad and very shocked and, yeah, not too happy.

And on the other issue, it was pretty blatant. So, I mean, I found that I couldn't really explain that away with an alternate explanation. So that's what I mean about being, you know, quite shocked.

And I was also very shocked, to be frank, that we ended up with a telephone conversation like this because all of the -- and, you know, this is obviously going into executive privilege, and I'm not going to say anything more about this, but I sat in an awful lot of calls, and I have not seen anything like this. And I was there for 2 and a half years. So I was just shocked.

Q  And I'd like to ask you some questions, to the extent you can answer, about the process of prepping for these types of calls in a little bit.

So you just said that it was pretty blatant, what President Trump was saying in this call. What do you mean by that?

A  Well, that it looks to me like it was in the context of everything else that had come to my attention.

Q  And what do you mean by -- you mean like what Ambassador Sondland had brought up in the July 10th meeting?

A  Correct. And then, you know, that Rudy Giuliani's commentary -- I mean, again, Rudy Giuliani has been saying an awful lot of things all the time, and he was pretty inescapable. And after a while, you know, kind of he was making it crystal clear what it was that he was pushing. And this is very much repeating things that Rudy Giuliani was saying in public on television.

THE CHAIRMAN: And by that, you mean that he wanted aninvestigation done of the Bidens and of this debunked conspiracy theory about 2016?

DR. HILL: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And that this was a condition of getting this White House meeting?

DR. HILL: That's certainly what this looks like, in the context of this transcript.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  And by "this," you mean the July 25th call summary?

A  Correct. But, again, I only read this in the context of the publication of it by the White House and subsequently in the press.

Q  And here it's -- I mean, this is essentially President Trump adopting exactly what Rudy Giuliani had been pressing since the spring of 2019 in this phone call. Is that right?

A  I mean, Giuliani has been relentless on this point, you know, to the point where, you know, obviously, he has, as Ambassador Volker said, shaped a very negative image.

Q  But now it's President Trump pressing the President of Ukraine to do exactly what Rudy Giuliani had been trying to get other Ukrainian officials to commit to, correct?

A  That is certainly how this reads.

Q  With the assistance of Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Volker?

A  Well, I can’t say that it was, you know, directly with their assistance.

Q  But you've seen the text messages between them, correct?

A  I have.

Q  Doesn't it seem that they were, if not assisting, facilitating this scheme?

A  They certainly seem to have been -- look, I wasn't in the deposition that Ambassador Volker gave. I don't know how many times he met with Ambassador -- I mean, with Giuliani or Ambassador Sondland, for that matter. I know that Ambassador Sondland talked repeatedly about conversations -- and you have him coming to give a deposition and, you know, I should leave it to him to speak on his own behalf.

But he said to me repeatedly that he was going in talking to the President. I mean, again, you can actually ask him because he'll have to tell you all truthfully how many times he really did meet with the President because I have my doubts. I could be wrong, but there were often times when he said he'd been in to see the President when other staff indicated to me that they did not believe that he had. He was certainly meeting with Chief of Staff Mulvaney on a regular basis.

Q  And how do you know that?

A  Because I know that from Mulvaney's staff.

Q  Who in particular told you about those meetings?

A  Many people did. I mean, he has -- look, and there are also lots of -- again, I keep telling -- well, I've said this before. Any of you who have been into the West Wing, into the entryway when you go in from West Executive, it's a very small space. So lots of people can say that they have seen people.

The front office of Ambassador Bolton, the door is always open. It looks right down the corridor to the Chief of Staff's Office, to the entryway to the foyer. People who are sitting on the staff of Ambassador Bolton could see Gordon Sondland going into Mulvaney's office. The guards could see Ambassador Sondland going into Mulvaney's office.

I didn't have to be told secretly by, you know, some high-ranking staff member. I could just say to someone, the front desk receptionist: Hey, has Ambassador Sondland just been in?

And I could just say: Did he see the President?

No, but he's been in to see Mulvaney.

So, I mean, I'm uncomfortable with answering, you know, kind of the question the way that you put it because I don't know, you know, to what extent Ambassador Volker, you know, was talking -- I don't know whether when Ambassador Volker is saying, you know, "the White House" whether he means the Chief of Staff or whether he means that Ambassador Sondland has told him that he's heard from the White House and he's just relating that to Yermak.

Q  Fair enough. Do you know whether Ambassador Bolton or Secretary Pompeo ever tried to rein in Ambassador Sondland?

A  Ambassador Bolton complained about him all the time, but I don't know whether he tried to rein him in because, again, Ambassador Sondland isn't in his chain of command. And Ambassador Sondland, you know, would occasionally -- and I just say "occasionally" -- make an appointment to see Ambassador Bolton, usually when he knew that I or somebody else wasn't there, just to -- so I don't know also what he said to Ambassador Bolton because I didn't get a readout.

So, often what he did with me, I would find out later Ambassador Sondland had told people that he'd called me and spoken to me about an issue, but he wouldn't relate what I'd told him. He'd just then proceed to go ahead on the way that he wanted to proceed anyway by just simply saying: Oh, I talked to Fiona, and, therefore, you know, kind of I'm doing this.

And I'd find out after the fact that he'd used my name, you know, as the basis of a phone call to just go forward and proceed with doing something.

Q  Right. Going back to the transcript just quickly, the investigations that President Trump was urging President Zelensky to undertake, is it fair to say that those were to serve President Trump's personal political interests as opposed to the national security interests of the United States?

A  I don't honestly see much national security interest in what I've just read there, and I do not see and I did not see at any point any national security interest in the things that Rudy Giuliani was saying on the television that I watched. Now, I could have missed many of his appearances. Again, they were ubiquitous, and I couldn't keep up with all of them, but I don't believe that he -anyway, he's not a national security official at this particular juncture.

Q  Do you see anything that would benefit President Trump politically?

A  Well, I think it depends on how this all plays out.

THE CHAIRMAN: Our time has expired.The minority.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Do you know words redacted                                                          words redacted                                          ?

A  I have, yes

Q  And what do you know words redacted                              ?

A  words redacted

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Q  What were words redacted            words redacted                 ?

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Q  And do you know what the circumtances of words redacted          words redacted                                                          ?

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I mean, a similar thing happened with Ambassador Bolton. words redactedwords redacted                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        And a couple of other people, there's just been a couple of people who have -- Ambassador Bolton's, one of his key assistants, words redactedwords redacted                  , who would actually, you know, know a lot about all of me these comings and goings,                               .

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Q  Did you have any discussions, communications with                           ?

A  I've kept in contact with most of the people that I've worked with, in a general sense. And       --

Q  When is the last time --

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Q  And so when was the last time words redacted                                words redactedwords redacted       ?

A  The last time words redactedwords redacted                             words redactedwords redacted        would have been before I went on vacation. I mean, in the last week. We did a lot of wrap-ups with all of the people who were, you know, pertinent. I did a lot of, you know, out-briefing in the professional arena. I often met, as I said, with DAS Kent. You know, I could run through, you know, all the people that I met with in that week just to, you know, wrap things up again.

Q  Since you left --

A  This was part of the whole briefing, you know, and analytical -- I should actually clarify. When I mentioned analysts before -- I'm an analyst myself, so I tend to use that as shorthand. But, you know, obviously, we met with an awful lot of analysts or, you know, subject-matter individuals from around the agencies.

Q  Since you left on July 19th, did you -- have you had any communications with any of the individuals we’ve discussed today about your --

A  With all of my staff.

Q  About your appearance here today?

A  Well, they know I'm appearing, yeah. I mean --

Q  Did any of them reach out to you, have any communications with you?

A  Well, a lot of them have reached out to me and, you know, kind of in solidarity, you know, because, I mean, obviously, this isn't a pleasant experience for everybody.

And I've had a few people who have reached out because they're just very concerned about the future of the National Security Council, and they're worried that, you know, all of these issues will politicize what has, you know, up until now been -- again, has certainly strived to be a nonpolitical body.

Q  Anyone try to influence your testimony?

A  No, they have not.

Q  And, again, please don't jump down my throat when I ask this.

A  I won’t.

Q  When was the first time that you knew you were coming in today?

A  When was the first time I knew I was coming in today?

Q  Yes.

A  Well, for sure when I got the letter requesting me to come in.

Q  But today specifically, not that you were on a generalized list.

A  I don't know when the first day would be because I gave Lee a sense of dates about when I was available.

Q  But it was sooner than -- it was farther back in time than last Wednesday, right?

A  It might not have been. Actually, when was last Wednesday? What was the date of last Wednesday? I'm sorry, I’m --

MR. WOLOSKY: I'm not testifying. If you don't know the date --

DR. HILL: Yeah. No, I'm sorry, I don't know the answer to that.

And, look, and one of the reasons that I've been basically -- words redacted                            words redacted                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            And I don't have a laptop right now, which may sound bizarre, because I've taken an extended leave from Brookings. So I only have my iPhone. And I've been, you know, basically trying to keep focused on the personal stuff.

And, also, I wanted to come here without any undue preparation precisely for the reasons that you've said, so that no one could influence my testimony. It's hard to escape the news, and I've tried to keep on top of that, but I haven't been, you know, completely keeping track of when I knew what, you know, because I wanted to come in and just make myself available, you know, and do my duty.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Okay. In terms of the universe of State Department officials --

A  Yes.

Q  -- that you had communications with about these relevant matters, I just want to make sure that we haven't missed anybody. There was Wess Mitchell?

A  Yes, who left in February of 2019, yes.

Q  And Phil Reeker?

A  Correct.

Q  And George Kent?

A  George Kent.

Q  And Masha Yovanovitch?

A  Kristina Kvien, who went out to be the DCM. I met with her as she was going out. I also met with Catherine Croft, who I mentioned had been our director previously and replaced Chris Anderson, who was previously Kurt Volker's -- he's another individual you're probably aware of, Christopher Anderson, who is Kurt Volker's deputy.

Catherine was actually in language training to be sent out to Baghdad for all the period after she left, but then the Embassy in Baghdad got downsized, as you're all aware, so they started redeploying people. And given her work on Ukraine, she was moved to work for Kurt Volker. And I would have talked to all of, you know, the office, relevant office directors. David Hale. I've also talked to Deputy Sullivan, Under Secretary Hale. Brechbuhl only a couple of times. I've talked to Morgan Ortagus, the press spokesman, and press spokesperson -- and Robert Palladino -- I think he's moved on -- press people, because we coordinated a lot of statements in support of Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Q  Ambassador Taylor?

A  Ambassador Taylor, correct.

Q  How about a former Ambassador Pyatt?

A  No. I've obviously had contact with Ambassador Pyatt because he’s Ambassador to Greece. Is he still Ambassador to Greece? He was, you know, last time when I -- yeah. And so, but I only dealt with him in the context of things that we were doing in Greece. We didn't actually speak about Ukraine, only with the exception of words redacted                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           words redacted                                                                                                            words redacted                                                                                                        So, yeah, I mean, that was the only -- and he's been very good about keeping a separation from his previous work on Ukraine because he got burned in that infamous phone call with Ambassador Nuland.

Q  Kathy Kavalec, do you know her?

A  I do know her, yes. She was nominated to be our Ambassador to Albania until an Albanian lobbyist group used a very tenuous tie that she had to Chris Steele to have her removed from the nomination. So this is another thing of somebody who was treated rather disgracefully. She had been instructed as part of her duties to meet with him. She hadn't met him before. She had had very limited interactions with him when he was                 in official position. And she was snarled up in all of these exchanges of emails when she just reported that she'd met with him.

And an Albanian lobbyist group also started to accuse her of being part of spurious conspiracies. And so her nomination to Albania to be our Ambassador was shelved, even though she would have been an excellent Ambassador and was in Albanian language training.

Q  Did you have any communications with her in regards to the Ukraine matters?

A  I have not. I mean, I've been in touch with her more generally because she's now got a new position. She's being sent out to the OSCE to do some work on the Balkans, but I did not talk to her about Ukraine.

Q  How many communications did you have with

Mr. Brechbuhl?

A  Only a couple. I mean, these were in general coordination-related issues.

Q  Was it --

A  I went out to meet with him, you know, first to introduce myself when he was appointed. I happened to have been in grad school with words redacted                    , so I had a connection. I obviously had met him at some point in the distant past. And I wanted to go and meet him so he'd know who I am and so we could talk about trying to do better coordination. Because Secretary Pompeo didn't have a chief of staff, and, you know, given the incredible amount of travel that he takes, it was important to be able to have some interactions.

And we were also concerned at this point about coordination with a couple of Ambassadors, including Ambassador Sondland. So I wanted to make sure that Mr. Brechbuhl would feel free to reach out to me if there was any issue.

[4:05 p.m.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  And forgive me if you said this. We've been here a little bit. Did you have any discussions with Mr. Brechbuhl about Sondland, Giuliani --

A  I did not. But I --

Q  So it was just Yovanovitch and the circumstances of her departure?

A  Correct. But, obviously, Mr. Giuliani seemed to have had --

Q  Right.

A  -- even at the time, a big influence in her departure.

Q  Okay.

A  And I expressed concern about that.

Q  You expressed concern to Mr. Brechbuhl about--

A  I probably said something about the circumstances of her departure. But this is only in a general sense.

Q  Was it a one-on-one meeting or telephone call?

A  I think it was a telephone call.

Q  Okay.

A  But it was really about other issues. So, you know, he may -- I took most of my concerns, you know, directly to Under Secretary Hale, Ambassador Bolton, and to Assistant Secretary Reeker. And I also spoke to DeputySecretary Sullivan.

Q  Uh-huh.

The fact that the foreign assistance was frozen, it occurred on July 18th, which was the day before --

A  Yeah, exactly.

Q  -- you left. So you may not have a lot of firsthand --

A  Correct.

Q  -- facts, but --

A  And I already said that.

Q  -- it's your understanding that it was subsequently lifted?

A  That's my understanding.

Q  And Ukraine got their Javelins and, you know, everything has been flowing in terms of the financial assistance?

A  I haven't any of the information on this at all.

Q  But that's your understanding?

A  That's my understanding.

Q  Is it fair to say that this type of stops and starts is sometimes common --

A  Yes.

Q  -- with foreign assistance?

A  It is.

Q  That there's different -- different power centers have questions and there are some starts and stops?

A  That's correct. And as I mentioned before in response to this question, OMB quite frequently would raise a lot of questions about this at other meetings in the past they had.

Q  Right. And sometimes there's issues from the Hill.

You know, Members get concerned about something, and that has to be sorted out and --

A  Correct. And it wasn't clear, when I left, about where was the provenance of this concern, but that Mulvaney, presumably in his hat as sort of the head of OMB, you know, not just as chief of staff, had put the hold on this.

Q  So these holds can happen for any reason or no reason?

A  Well, there's usually a reason --

Q  But good reason.

A  -- as you just laid out. Well, it depends on one's perspective of good reason.

Q  Right.

A  I mean, for some persons, it would be a good reason; for others, it wouldn't be.

Q  Right. I guess that's what I was trying to establish.

A  Yeah. Yeah.

Q  Do you agree with that?

A  I do agree with that.

Q  And I have a couple followup questions from --

A  Sure.

Q  -- other rounds. And I know I asked you this before, so forgive me.

You know, witnesses told us when we looked at the -- we looked at the Hillary Clinton investigation, and we looked at the beginnings of the Russia investigation last Congress with Chairman Gowdy and Chairman Goodlatte. And so we had a lot of firsthand testimony about --

A  Right.

Q  -- Christopher Steele and Bruce Ohr and so forth.

A  Right.

Q  And it was established -- I don't think anyone really disagreed with this -- that Steele's mindset was that he was desperate, or passionate, that President, you know, Trump not be elected.

And so my question -- and forgive me if you've already addressed this. I just want to be sure. Did you have any idea whether he held that view?

A  I had no idea whatsoever. I was shocked to find out that he'd even been -- and undertaken this investigation, honestly.

Q  Okay.

A  Because what I knew he was doing was, like, political risk. I thought he was, like, doing, like, controlled risks or Kroll.

Q  Okay.

A  And all in my discussions with him, I mean, he was clearly very interested in building up a client base. I almost fell over when I discovered that he was doing this report.

Q  Okay. So you have no idea whether he was desperate and it related to his business interests or he was --

A  I have no idea whatsoever.

Q  Okay.

Do you ever have any communications with Bruce Ohr?

A  No.

Q  You ever met him?

A  I mean, not since -- oh, I met him when I was NIO.

Q  Okay.

A  Because, I mean, he was at interagency meetings --

Q  Right.

A  -- given the nature of his position.

Q  But did you ever have any communications with

Mr. Ohr about the Steele dossier?

A  I did not.

Q  Okay.

How about Mr. Simpson, Glenn Simpson, at Fusion GPS?

A  I didn't know who he was until he was --

Q  Okay.

A  -- basically named in the press.

Q  Okay. Fair enough.

President Trump has, from time to time, expressed concern, among other descriptors, of Director Brennan, Director Clapper, and their role, you know, in the run-up to the 2016 election. Was there ever any friction caused by that at the National Security Council between some of the nonpartisan staff that had been serving under Director Clapper and Director Brennan?

A  Not that I noticed or was ever raised, you know, to me. We did have discussions in the staff that we wanted to see the nonpartisan depoliticization of intelligence. And having been the National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia previously, I personally didn't believe that intelligence officials should take political stances. So we did have a discussion about that. But there wasn't any friction within, certainly, my directorate or with any other directorates about this.

Q  And did you ever have any discussions with Director Brennan or Director --

A  I did not.

Q  You did not.

A  I worked briefly --

Q  About these --

A  -- with Director Clapper --

Q  About these issues.

A  -- when I was the NIO. But, no, I’ve had no contact with Brennan. I don't think Brennan would know who I am.

Q  Okay.

And I think you've addressed this today on several Occasions , but I just want to be sure that, other than the reference of Vice President Biden in the transcript, he has never come up during the course of, you know, any NSC activity regarding the Ukraine?

A  He did not. No. It's only in the context of Rudy

Giuliani --

Q  Okay.

A  -- on the television repeatedly.

Q  Okay. And, to your knowledge, Ambassador Volker or Sondland -- nobody was encouraging the Ukraine to investigate Vice President Biden?

A  To my knowledge, no.

Q  Okay. It was related to Burisma, and to the extent the Vice President's son was a director on Burisma, that could be a --

A  Correct.

Q  But it wasn't Vice President Biden --

A  I did not hear that.

Q  -- himself. Okay. And you never heard of any reason why anybody should be investigating Vice President Biden?

A  I also did not hear that, correct.

Q  Okay.

A  Yeah.

Q  Do you have any concerns generally about the circumstances of the transcript release of the July 25th call ?

A  In what way would I have concerns?

Q  Well, it lays bare the communications between, you know, our leader and the --

A  I have a lot of concerns now that I've read it, but -- and, no, please, I'm not saying that joking. I mean, it's raised an awful lot of concerns as a result of reading it.

Q  But as a more general matter, the declassification of, you know, call records from heads of states, does that concern you?

A  Yes, it does, actually, as a general matter.

Q  Because if --

A  I mean, I was responsible for overseeing many of these in my position, and I was deeply concerned at all times that they would not be leaked. And in the first period when I was at the White House and the NSC in 2017 -- words redacted

words redacted                                                                                -- there were a lot of leaks of material, and I felt that this was incredibly damaging.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  Sometimes it was obvious it was being donetosettle scores internally, because there was blame apportioned to people who were not responsible for the leakage. And I firmly believe that one of the leakages of the preparation packages for, basically, a phone call with Putin was used to have General McMaster fired.

Q  Okay. Is it due to that pervasive leaking that these transcripts may have been moved to a different server or place under a different set of –

A  I personally never heard of a transcript beingmoved to a different server. That also -- those circumstances trouble me. But we did move -- and I was responsible for part of that, with our legal colleagues -- to reduce the number of people who had access to any of these transcripts --

Q  Okay.

A  -- including transcripts that I would write up from meetings with heads of state.

Q  Right.

A  And I took that very seriously up to the records office.

And there were a number of people who left, you know, from the NSC because they felt very responsible for all of these issues and felt that they couldn't continue with all of this leaking going on. People were being accused, left, right, and center, of having leaked documents. And I think it's incredibly important for all of us to have integrity of communications.

Q  Uh-huh. And you're in favor of, if there is a pervasive leak problem, to do something to fix it, correct?

A  Yes, but not to put them on a system that isn't designed for that. You can restrict the number of people who have access to it fairly easily. I mean, we did a lot to make sure that you could actually figure out who got access to them. Having been, myself, accused multiple times of leaking documents, we made sure that you could actually get a record of who had --

Q  Who accessed it.

A  Who accessed it. Exactly. And, also, being very mindful, and we were encouraging people to report if they saw somebody trying to look at their computer, for example, if they had access to something.

And then it was also -- usually, if there was some concern about the sensitivity of the communication, having a restricted number of people sitting in on the call.

Q  And what do you know about the alternative server arrangements?

A  I'm not going to talk about it because it's classified --

Q  Okay.

A  -- and it shouldn't be used for this kind of material --

Q  Okay.

A  -- unless it has classified content. And very few people have access to it.

Q  Okay. And do you know -- can you tell us when the migration occurred?

A  I don't know anything about it. I only know what I read in the paper, and, as I said, that raised concerns for me as well.

Q  Okay. Do you know if it occurred while you were –

A  It couldn't possibly have done because I wasn't there. I wasn't there for the call. So if the question was could the transcript of the call be placed on the server while I was there, the answer is no --

Q  Oh, I’m sorry.

A  -- because I had left.

Q  My question was, the decision to move a certain amount of information from one server to another, did that occur while you were --

A  Not related to transcripts. No.

Q  Okay. So, if that did occur, it was after you left –

A  Correct. But it was -- I do not have any knowledge of any transcript that came under my purview being moved to that server.

Q  Okay. There's been press reporting that there may be other calls with, you know, other leaders dating back to the earliest part of the administration.

A  I cannot speak to that.

Q  Okay.

The July 11th meeting with John Eisenberg you attended with Secretary Perry's –

A  Well, no. Our senior director for energy, Special Assistant P. Wells Griffith, he used to work for Secretary Perry.

Q  Oh, okay.

A  We had a lot of people detail from DOE. I mean,again, you know, you need expertise.

Q  Sure.

A  And Wells is really a great energy expert.

Q  So, if my recollection is correct, after the events occurred, Ambassador Bolton referred you to Mr. Eisenberg.

A  Correct.

Q  And you walked across the hall –

A  I had concerns myself -- well, I went out of the building and up. John Eisenberg's office is in a separate building from Ambassador Bolton --

Q  Okay.

A  -- and his office was opposite mine.

Q  Right. So, on the 10th, you –

A  I went over right away.

Q  -- went to talk to him?

A  Correct.

Q  And you gave him the information?

A  I mean, basically along, you know, the lines that I said before, a quick summary, probably about in the same kind of length and with detail that I gave to you.

Q  Okay. And then he had you come back a day later to --

A  No, I asked if we could go back for a more lengthy call and discussion and asked if we could include Wells because he'd been in the meeting with me --

Q  Okay.

A  -- and I wanted to make sure that I wasn't, you know, kind of, purporting things being said by Secretary Perry to be part of this as well.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  Because Secretary Perry had been talking at great length about energy sector and corruption. And at no point did I think that anything Secretary Perry said referred to any of these issues that are under discussion today.

Q  Okay.

A  And I wanted to make sure that I was 100 percent correct and that when Secretary Perry had talking points, that, you know, these were -- there was nothing in there about any of these issues. Because, again, that would explain the very abrupt response to Gordon Sondland's interjection.

Q  Okay. And nothing Secretary Perry –

MR. GOLDMAN: Mr. Castor, I'm sorry, do you mind? She just said "these issues," and I want to make sure the record is clear as to what she meant.

DR. HILL: Oh. Again, about Burisma and the investigations on energy. I'm sorry. I should've been more specific on that, yeah. And do you need any further clarification?

MR. GORDON: No. Thank you.

DR. HILL: No? Okay.

MR. CASTOR: I'd like 30 seconds back. Just joking. Just joking.

MR. GOLDMAN: It's all yours.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  You didn't have any concerns about what Secretary Perry was saying during that meeting?

A  I did not. And I wanted to make sure that it was very clear with John Eisenberg that, you know, kind of, Secretary Perry was having one, kind of, set of discussions and that, clearly, Ambassador Sondland seemed to be having a different one. Because it was, you know, the --

Q  Okay.

A  -- disjuncture between the two that was what had immediately got Ambassador Bolton alerted to it.

Q  Okay.

A  It also suggests that Ambassador Bolton -- Ambassador Bolton also, you know, suggested to me that this was all related to the Rudy Giuliani discussions.

Q  Right.

A  So he had been, in the run-up to this -- every time I was in his office, Giuliani was on the television. And I told you he'd already told me that Giuliani was a hand grenade that was going to blow everybody up.

Q  Uh-huh.

Secretary Perry's, you know, involvement in this and his issues with the LNG and the other, you know, gas issues, you didn't have any issue with anything he was pursuing there, did you?

A  Not in the discussions that I had with him.

Q  Okay.

A  We always had discussions about -- I was the one who often was pushing for Secretary Perry to show up around Europe –

Q  Okay.

A  -- sending him off in a plane to Three Seas Initiative meetings and other -- because he knew what we were talking about. And we were trying to get him to integrate or help us integrate –

Q  Okay.

A  -- all of the different aspects of European energy to bring Ukraine into this so that it wasn't just the United States trying to push on Nord Stream 2. So we got the Germans, the Poles, the Romanians, and others to -- Czechs, Slovaks -- to step up and to help the Ukrainians.

Q  Uh-huh. And he led the delegation to President Zelensky's inauguration?

A  Correct.

Q  And he was involved with, it's been reported, some debriefing of the President about that –

A  He was. Correct.

Q  -- meeting. And with all of his involvement as it relates to these issues with President Zelensky, you don't have any concerns?

A  I personally had no concerns.

Q  Okay.

A  I wasn't in all of the meetings, but there was nothing in any of my interactions with Secretary Perry that would lead me to think anything different.

Q  Okay.

So getting back to the July 11th meeting with P. Wells Griffith and John Eisenberg –

A  Right.

Q  -- and Michael Ellis, I think you said –

A  I didn't say, actually, because I'm not sure that Michael Ellis was in there.

Q  Oh, okay.

A  I did say that, on my last day in the office, on September 3rd, that I met with both John Eisenberg and Michael Ellis.

Q  Okay. Okay. What was the final determination of -- you gave a readout of what occurred in the meeting, maybe what your concerns were, what Ambassador Bolton's concerns were. What was the final –

A  The final outcome of that was that John Eisenbergsaid that he would talk about this further, and I presumed that he meant with the White House counsel, with Pat Cipollone, and that he would, you know, raise these concerns about what Sondland had said.

Q  Okay.

A  And Wells Griffith, you know, obviously, was alsoyou know, concerned in the general sense about the references, you know, that were going out with Giuliani andthe other two, Burisma. But he did not indicate that, you know, Secretary Perry was following up on any of these issues.

Q  Okay. And was that loop ever closed? Did Eisenberg ever reach out to you and tell you that he spoke with Mr. Cipollone or any other officials?

A  He said that he'd talked to Cipollone, but he didn't then give me any further -- but, again, at this point, having told so many people and also Charlie Kupperman, as well as Ambassador Bolton, there was every indication that they were all going to follow up on this.

Q  Right. And presumably you articulated to John Eisenberg –

A  And, again, this is July 11th, and I’m leaving the following week. So I don't have a lot of time --

Q  Fair enough.

A  -- to do, you know, followup.

Q  Fair enough.

You related your other concerns about Sondland, not just the - -

A  Well, I'd said multiple times to him and to others that I was really worried about, you know, Sondland's extensive potentially self-appointed portfolio and that this could cause a whole range of problems, because we didn't have any oversight or insight, often, into what he was doing. And, again, it's like, you know, the guardrails were off and, you know, kind of, there could be a lot of problems from this.

And I'd already gone and spoken to our intelligence directorate to ask them to reach out to the chief of station at the EU mission to see if they could actually do a proper briefing for him again.

And I'd expressed that to Eisenberg as well, because that's also within Eisenberg's portfolio, to have these kinds of concerns about, you know, kind of, inadvertent disclosure or, you know, kind of, basically if somebody is being targeted by foreign powers. And, basically, at this point, Sondland has made himself a target for foreign powers, because he's basically telling people, I can get you into the White House, I can get you in to see Ambassador Bolton.

You know, you show up at the door, and, I mean, I think all of you who have tried to show up at the door of the White House will know it's actually not that easy to get in and you have to go through all kinds of procedures. You can't just, kind of, appear at the doorstep and be let in by the Secret Service.

People were literally coming up at the door because Sondland was -- and then he would, you know, literally call up and shout at the assistants in the front office to make sure that people were giving, you know, their passports or any kind of information because he wanted to have meetings.

So he was already offering himself as a conduit to all kinds of foreign officials to the White House for meetings. And it didn't matter whether it was the President, but with myself and others. I mean, that is, in itself, a problem.

Q  And these are the concerns you related to Eisenberg?

A  Correct.

Q  And he was going to talk to Pat Cipollone and he was going to –

A  Yeah. And, look, I'm sure from the point of view of Ambassador Sondland, having never been in the diplomatic service before, I mean, and being a business guy, I mean, this is what you do. You kind of connect people, and you set up meetings.

Q  Uh-huh. Did you ever communicate to Sondland your discomfort? I know you had talked about the one –

A  I did. I mean, I had that – which is probably why Tim Morrison related to me that Ambassador Sondland was glad to see the back of me when I had come back again.

Q  Okay.

A  Because we ended up with a kind of testy set of final interactions, which, you know, kind of -- as I said, you know, when I first started off, I had quite high hopes.He was enthusiastic. He clearly wanted to serve, you know the -- he's a patriot. He wanted to serve the American people. You know, I didn't get any indication, you know, early off that he was going to go off on a tangent like this.

Q  Uh-huh.

How did Volker deal with Sondland?

A  I don't really know, because I also said to Kurt that I didn't think he should be spending quite so much time with Sondland. Because, again, if you recall, originally, I was skeptical that Sondland was actually in charge of Ukraine from any higher authority other than his own interest in this issue.

Q  Uh-huh. Okay.

MR. ZELDIN: Dr. Hill, you brought up the phone call that President Trump had with President Putin and the leaks that took place and the firing of General McMaster.

DR. HILL: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you know who leaked that information?

When you say that you believe that it was leaked in order to get General McMaster fired, do you know who actually leaked it?

DR. HILL: I don't know for sure, so I won’t start to speculate. But I’m pretty confident and, you know, kind of, just from other discussions that I've had more recently, that this was exactly what happened, that this was leaked to get rid of him

I was on, you know, kind of, phone calls after that with General McMaster when he was being ripped open on this topic, blaming his staff for leaking this. And I know that I did not leak it and that my team did not leak it. And we offered to resign on that day, because it had clearly been used as part of an internal score settling.

MR. ZELDIN: You believe you know who leaked it –

DR. HILL Could I just offer –

MR. ZELDIN: -- but you're not sure?

DR. HILL: -- to be clear, that this particular "do not congratulate" card was not intended, even, to be briefed to the President. So that's kind of part of the backstory that isn't publicly known. Because we knew that the President was going to congratulate him anyway, because that's -- you know, the President always congratulates people. And we always have a lot of people wanting to put things into, you know, Presidential call packages for the historical record. And it was the State Department that had requested that we write that in.

MR. ZELDIN: I guess just due to the subject matter ofwhy we're here, I won't ask further on that, but in another setting I'd have some followup questions.

DR. HILL: But this gives you the, kind of, sense of how these things can be manipulated, you know, by people, which is also deeply disturbing. Because, again, this is a national security issue. And no matter what your views are of General McMaster, he's an American hero who served his country, you know, to great distinction. And to be pushed out over the leaking of a stupid card that wasn't even briefed to the President is pretty ridiculous.

MR. ZELDIN: Earlier –

DR. HILL: Whether he was the right person for the job or not is another matter, you know, that you all can debate at some point.

MR. ZELDIN: Earlier on, after you had referenced the term "drug deal," Chairman Schiff asked a question referencing it, where he used the word "illicit" in his question. Do you recall that question and answer with Chairman Schiff earlier?

DR. HILL: I clarified, of course, that the drug deal was an ironic and sarcastic statement that Ambassador Bolton made.

MR. ZELDIN: Yeah. Was your opinion that it was – I just want to be careful with the use of the word "illicit." Do you believe that it was illegal or no?

MR. WOLOSKY: What are you referring to?

DR. HILL: What was illegal?

MR. ZELDIN: I just -- it was one question and answer from earlier on –

MR. WOLOSKY: You can have it either read back --

MR. ZELDIN: That would be fantastic.

DR. HILL: Yeah, that would be, yeah, because I'm –

MR. ZELDIN: And I think that might serve everybody –

DR. HILL: I mean, clearly, Ambassador Bolton was worried that something was going on, which is why he wanted me to go to John Eisenberg.

MR. ZELDIN: We might get back to that. Just for sake of time –-

MR. GOLDMAN: It's going to take a long time to get back to that. If you could just rephrase the question?

DR. HILL: I'm afraid I can't remember the exactphrasing of Chairman Schiff's question.

MR. ZELDIN: You have a reputation, Dr. Hill, of being a master note-taker. And I don't know if this reputation is accurate –-

DR. HILL: I haven't been doing all of it quite as much as I normally do.

MR. ZELDIN: Apparently, you -- and you took a lot of notes all the time, and you had books. The -- first off, is that accurate?

DR. HILL: That's correct. I grew up in a town that was very impoverished, and we didn't have textbooks. So I learned to take notes from basically first grade onwards, because, you know, otherwise, I wouldn't have learned anything. And so it's a habit as much as anything else.

MR. ZELDIN: The books themselves, were they –

DR. HILL: They're all in the records.

MR. ZELDIN: They all have been turned back in?

DR. HILL: Correct. On the 19th, I filled up more boxes than I think is normal and spent lots of time putting in all the forms about all the dating of all of those books, and I handed them over to Presidential records.

MR. ZELDIN: And you don't have in your possession any of those books or copies of those books?

DR. HILL: I do not, and that would be illegal.

MR. ZELDIN: Did you ever disobey any orders you disagreed with or refuse to implement superiors' policies that you disagreed with?

DR. HILL: I did not. And if I'd come to a juncture where I'd been forced to do that, I would've left.

MR. ZELDIN: And earlier on, at the beginning of this 45 minutes, you were asked words redacted                  words redacted                    .

words redacted                                                                                                                                                        ?

DR. HILL: words redacted

words redacted

words redacted

words redacted

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words redacted                                                                                                                                    I did not start formally until April 3rd, and the administration came in in January.

I had already been offered the job at that particular point, but, as I mentioned before, General McMaster came on board. I’d been hired by General Flynn and K.T. and General Kellog, and so we had to wait a period to see if General McMaster wanted to continue with the hiring process.

words redacted                              words redacted

words redactedwords redacted

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words redacted

MR. ZEDIN: And I apologize for bouncing around a little bit. Just some questions from earlier rounds.

September 3rd, you mentioned that you came back, spoke to your team, and one of the people you spoke to was Tim Morrison.

DR. HILL: Correct.

MR. ZELDIN: And that's when you first became aware that there may be an issue?

DR. HILL: Well, I just noticed that everybody was not, you know, kind of, as chipper as, you know, I was expecting. Well, I mean, I was going in just very briefly –-

MR. ZELDIN: Did you –-

DR. HILL: -- but there seemed to be, you know, just -- people just seemed tense. And, you know, I put it down initially to the fact that there was a transition, you know, underway and, you know, all kinds of things. But I wasn't exactly -- I was just being honest in saying that I felt at the time that the atmosphere, you know, was different and people seemed worried.

MR. ZELDIN: But you didn't speak to them specifically as to what that issue was?

DR. HILL: No. I just said, how have things been? And, you know, a couple of people said, not so great.

MR. ZELDIN: But nothing more specific than that?

DR. HILL: Correct.

But I had seen -- and I mentioned that before -- that there'd been -- and this is what I did raise to Mr. Castor when you asked about meeting with Michael Ellis and John Eisenberg. As part of my out-briefing, I had to have a meeting with them.

And I had seen an email sometime in the -- I don't know what exactly timeframe it would've been -- maybe late August, early September, just as I was, you know, coming back to D.C. from my vacation, that said we had to retain all documents pertaining to Ukraine.

And so I asked them, did I have to do anything? I also told them I'd already handed in all my documents before I saw this. So I was concerned about my own obligations, making sure I'd done proper retention, because, you know, I hadn't seen that before I left. And, obviously, I might have been more extensive in even keeping some of, you know, the just generic intel pieces you can often just, kind of , archive electronically. Because I didn't know whether it meant, you know, you had to keep anything that had, you know, "Ukraine" on top and what that meant.

And they didn't tell me anything in particular. They just said that I'd already done what I needed to do.

MR. ZELDIN: So, on July 25th, you were snorkeling during the call. And at the end of the --

DR. HILL: I could've been sleeping, actually, in that time, given the time difference, but anyway --

MR. ZELDIN: Hopefully not at the same time.

DR. HILL: Hopefully not, no.

MR. ZELDIN: At the end of August, you said you returned home from vacation. Was that the same vacation from the end of July --

DR. HILL: I'm afraid it was. I know that sounds outrageous. But I didn't take much vacation in the time I was at NSC, and they owed me 6 or 7 weeks of back pay, and they said they'd prefer to do it as a vacation rather than as a payout.

MR. ZELDIN: That communication --

DR. HILL: So I took an outrageous vacation.

MR. ZELDIN: That communication at the end of August is the first communication that you received to alert you that there may be some issue related to Ukraine?

DR. HILL: Correct.

MR. ZELDIN: And who was the --

DR. HILL: It was an NSC -- you know, from the office of the legal counsel, so from John Eisenberg and his staff. Very generic. We've had these before, you know, related to a congressional inquiry or anything else, saying that we had to retain all documents pertaining -- any kind of communications.

And, you know, as I said, I'd already handed in my box and, you know, did a big purge of my office. And I'd also handed over things to colleagues that I thought would be useful for them for continuity purposes. And that's why I was nervous. You know, I thought, oops, did I retain everything I was supposed to? And I didn't know what this was about.

MR. ZELDIN: In an earlier round, we ran out of time. I was asking about Ambassador Sondland --

DR. HILL: Yeah.

MR. ZELDIN: -- and how he had stated -- or you had stated that he asserted himself as a lead for Ukraine?

DR. HILL: Correct.

MR. ZELDIN: And that his authority was --

DR. HILL: He said he was in charge of Ukraine.

MR. ZELDIN: And he stated that his authority was granted to him by the President?

DR. HILL: Yeah, because I said, "No, you're not." And, you know, I mean, sorry, it was kind of a bit of a rude retort because I was just so, "What?" And I said, "Well, we have Ambassador Taylor who's been sent out as Charge. Who says you're in charge of Ukraine?" It wasn't exactly the most diplomatic of responses on my part. And he said, "The President." And I was like, "Oh."

MR. ZELDIN: But you don't know whether or not he actually was given that authority from the President.

DR. HILL: I do not. And nobody else seemed to be aware of that either.

MR. ZELDIN: There's a possibility that Ambassador Sondland was appointing himself as the lead for Ukraine and stating that it was --

DR. HILL: I think you should ask Ambassador Sondland when he submits his deposition.

MR. ZELDIN: Yeah, I will. So we just don't know one way or the other.

DR. HILL: I do not know. There was never any kind of directive. Ambassador Bolton was not informed, and people at the State Department did not seem to be informed about this.

I would've thought that Assistant Secretary Reeker, you know, and others would've known, if that was the case.

MR. ZELDIN: One last question before I turn it back over. The calendar that we got with your document production, very detailed. You said it was prepared by someone else. Who -

DR. HILL: My assistant. I mean, it wasn't prepared. mean, it's my schedule. It's just a schedule.

MR. ZELDIN: Your assistant post-leaving-the-White-House or from when you were at the White House?

DR. HILL: No, it's actually only from the time that my assistant was making the schedule. So my assistant this particular last assistant, words redacted                    , who I mentioned to you before, he only worked with me for a year because, like in many other positions, there was a rotation of detailees. And the role of a special assistant is to keep the schedule.

MR. ZELDIN: Thank you.

DR. HILL: So, I mean, it wouldn't also have every entry on it of everything I ever did either.

MR. CASTOR: Do you have something?

MR. JORDAN: Dr. Hill, Ambassador Yovanovitch said that President Zelensky, you know, had one priority and ran his campaign on ending corruption in Ukraine. Do you share that belief?

MR. GOLDMAN: Mr. Jordan, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I don't believe that was what Ambassador Yovanovitch testified. And maybe if we could just ask -- she wasn't there for this, so --

MR. JORDAN: I’m reading from her statement. She said, "During the 2019" -- which I think has been public. And I think Dr. Hill --

DR. HILL: The public statement. Okay.

MR. JORDAN: I think Dr. Hill said she read it.

DR. HILL: Yeah, I had read that. Yeah.

MR. JORDAN: "During the 2019 Presidential elections, the Ukrainian people answered the question once again. Angered by insufficient progress in the fight against corruption, Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly elected a man who said that any corruption will be his number-one priority."

DR. HILL: He did say that, yeah.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

DR. HILL: I mean, that was his campaign pledge.

MR. JORDAN: But then, earlier, you also said that you never know, right?

DR. HILL: Yeah. I said that we were concerned, as you might recall, to an earlier question, about the potential influence of Igor Kolomoisky, who was an oligarch, who was the owner of the television and, you know, production company that Zelensky's program, "The Servant of the People," was broadcast on.

MR. HECK: Your time has expired.

I'm inclined to take a 5-minute bio break unless somebody objects.

Hearing no objection.

[Recess. ]

MR. HECK: Very good. Let's go back on the record.

Dr. Hill, I'd like to start, before turning it over to

Mr. Goldman.

DR. HILL: Certainly.

MR. HECK: You said in answer to an earlier question from Mr. Noble that the President had been briefed early in the administration that the Ukraine Government did not interfere in the 2016 election in the U.S. How do you come to know that?

DR. HILL: I know that from my interactions with General McMaster and Tom Bossert and many of the National Security staff.

MR. HECK: They both informed you that they had briefed the President thusly. Is that correct?

DR. HILL: Well, they informed me that those briefings had taken place. But I think, you know, part of those briefings were also conducted by the intelligence services.

MR. HECK: Good. Very good. Thank you.

Mr. Goldman?

MR. GOLDMAN: I'll turn it over to Mr. Noble.

MR. NOBLE:Thank you .

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  Dr. Hill, just sticking on that point for a moment, can you say anything about how Mr. Giuliani or others working with him pursuing this theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016, even though it's been determined that they did not, how does that affect Russia? And can Russia take advantage of that in any way?

A  Of course Russia can take advantage of this. I mean, actually, President Putin's whole schtick since 2016 has been, "We didn't do it."

Q  And tried to pin it on Ukraine?

A  Pin it on whoever, you know, kind of else, and alternative theories.

Q  Are you aware of any conversations between U.S. Government officials and Russia or Russian officials about this theory that Ukraine interfered in 2016?

A  I'm not aware of that.

Q  Okay.

Are you aware of -- well, did you watch any of the press conference that was held between President Trump and President Zelensky on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in September?

A  I confess I did not.

Q  You did not watch it?

A  I was with my mother, and I did not watch it. I'm sorry.

Q  Okay.Well, during that press conference, President Trump said something along the lines that President Zelensky should meet with Vladimir Putin and settle their disagreement. Was a Putin-Zelensky meeting ever part of U.S. policy when you were working at the National Security Council?

A  I encouraged a Putin-Zelensky meeting to the Russians when, you know, I was speaking to them as well.

Q  To what end?

A  To, indeed, have Putin -- because for a period of time, Putin was refusing to acknowledge Zelensky as the new, legitimately elected President of Ukraine. And we had been encouraging -- we, writ large -- the Russians to adopt a different strategy towards Ukraine.

And, ultimately, if Ukraine and Russia make peace, it has to be on Ukraine's terms, and it would be much better to be negotiated by Ukraine than, frankly, done by intermediaries. I mean, I think that's the case in point for most disputes and most conflicts. International mediation can only do so much. We've still got Kosovo-Serbia, for example, where we're trying to encourage them to have direct talks. So I don't think that that, in and of itself, is anything that anyone should be concerned about.

And I had gone out to Moscow in between the two rounds of the Ukrainian Presidential election at a point where -you know, there was an earlier question, you know, were we sure that Zelensky was going to be elected? We were not.

But, certainly, between the two election rounds, Zelensky looked like he had a pretty good chance of becoming the President.

And I laid out to the Russians that, you know, maybe they should take a fresh look at this, that, you know, they're creating lifelong enmity with an otherwise fraternal country, people who've been close to them, you know, for hundreds of years of history, and that, you know, they would be well-served to not be just so punitive with the Ukrainians and to, you know, rethink over the longer term.

We also had in June a trilateral meeting with the Russians and Israelis in Jerusalem just before the G-20 in Osaka. And you're probably aware of that happening. And I conducted meetings with my counterparts from the Russian National Security Council, by which time, of course,

President Zelensky had already been elected, and I tried to urge them to take a different approach.

Because there were two issues that one could immediately refute with Zelensky's election. The first was the Russians were saying that Ukraine was being run by a fascist government and one that was also hostile to Russian speakers. Well, Zelensky is a Russian-speaking Jew from basically eastern Ukraine. All of his family ties are in Russia. He’d spent an awful lot of time in Russia. He can neither be described as a fascist or as somebody who is hostile towards Russia or Russian speakers. And they couldn't argue with that. And, basically, the point was, you know, this is a time for reassessment.

But they were waiting, honestly -- and this is why it gets back to before, where Russia was looking for as much leverage over Ukraine as they possibly can. They were obviously waiting to see how things unfolded with the Rada, the parliamentary elections, which took place later on in July, and to try to see there how much leverage they would have over Zelensky. They were still holding on to the sailors from the Kerch Strait incident, and we'd been trying to push them to release them. And, in fact, we thought that they might around Orthodox Easter in April, and they didn't. We'd been given all kinds of signs that they might.

And it was very clear that the Russians were looking for anywhere to, you know, basically put Ukraine in a weaker position so that when they do finally sit down with them they'll have the upper hand and Ukraine will have, you know, little choice but to go along with, you know, many of the issues that were already on the table, of maximum autonomy for Luhansk and Donyetsk and basically having a veto over Ukrainian foreign policy, including any chance that Ukraine might have, somewhere off in the future, of their joining NATO or even becoming, you know, kind of a member state of the European Union at some point.

Q  Right.

A  So it was all very obvious, you know, at this particular juncture, that Russia was looking for leverage. But we were hoping that we could get, you know, kind of, Putin to see it's somehow, you know, kind of, in his interest, a recalculation and a recalibration of Russian policy, to at least begin to engage with Zelensky.

Q  Would a meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky following Zelensky's election be something that the Russians would be paying attention to?

A  Sure.

Q  Why is that?

A  Well, first of all, they are very interested in finding out whether they can drive a wedge between Ukraine and the United States. I mean, President Putin has been out in public -- this is not, you know, classified information or anything from the course of my work, but you can look at any public pronouncement of President Putin about Ukraine, and it's unremittingly negative. And he also, himself, always points to corruption in Ukraine. It's become, kind of, shorthand for, "This is not a real country, this is not a sovereign country, and this is not a country that deserves support from the U.S. or the Europeans at all."

Q  Okay.

I want to go back to the July 25th call summary. And we were talking about, I believe in the last round, the transfer of that summary into the NSC Codeword Classified System --

A  Uh-huh.

Q  -- which I believe is sometimes referred to as words redacted         . Is that -- are you familiar with that acronym?

A  I am kind of familiar, yeah.

Q  Okay. Do you believe there was any reason for this particular call, the July 25th call, summary to be placed in the words redacted          system?

A  No.

Q  Okay. And why not?

A  Because that's not the appropriate place for these kinds of transcripts. As I said before, they can be restricted, in terms of their access, very easily, and you can keep track of who has accessto them.

Q  And when you were at the NSC, were you aware that some transcripts were being transferred to the -- or, not transcripts -- summaries of meetings or telephone calls between the President and foreign leaders were being transferred to --

A  I was not. And the only circumstances in which that would be conceivable would be if it dealt with classified information.

Q  Highly classified information?

A  Yes. But, I mean, we do occasionally talk to counterparts about that kind of information.

Q  Who would have the authority to order a call summary like the July 25th call summary to be transferred to the words redacted          system?

A  I'm not entirely sure, to be honest, because I've never had to deal with that.

Q  Okay.

A  I imagine that -- well, I shouldn't imagine. I basically -- I'm not really clear. I would have to refer you back to, you know, other officials to ask for that.

Q  Okay.

A  That was not, certainly, in my purview. I would never be able to, you know, make a determination to have it in that system.

Q  And I think I know the answer to this, but are you aware of whether or not John Bolton or, before him, H.R. McMaster was aware of this practice and that this was going on?

A  I don't believe that it happened on any occasion when General McMaster was there. I'd never heard of anything about it. You would have to ask Ambassador Bolton.

Q  Okay.

There's been public reporting about the May 2017 meeting between Ambassador Kislyak, Foreign Minister Lavrov, and President Trump in the Oval Office. Did you participate in that meeting?

A  I did not.

Q  You did not. Did you get a readout from that meeting?

A  I did.

Q  Okay.And do you know whether the readout or the notes or the summary of that meeting were placed in the words redacted          system?

A  To my knowledge, it was not.

Q  Okay.

A  But I don't know for sure.

Q  Okay.

A  There were concerns about that transcript being leaked, and so it was certainly being preserved. And, also, the fact that it was later on requested by Mr. Mueller in the course of his investigation. So there was every effort made to keep that transcript secure.

Q  And what were the concerns about that being leaked?

A  Well,I think there’s concerns every time -- it’s been mentioned before -- about the integrity of communications, of leaking information.

Q  But was there anything in particular about the conversation or the --

A  Well, the conversation seemed to immediately end up in the press. And let me also just keep saying that, every time we get bent out of shape on issues like this, remember, there are foreign participants in all of these meetings who take just as good of notes as I do or, in some cases, could very easily be recording some of these meetings. Because when you go -- not in the White House, of course, but if you're in the G-20 or you're in some other public setting, UNGA, I am not convinced that these things are screened.

And I'll just give you an example. When I was at one of the G-20 meetings, a member of the Chinese delegation came in with a big backpack which they left on the chair in one of the meeting rooms, and it was there for the entire time.

Q  When you got the readout of that May 2017 meeting, was there anything that caused alarm for you?

A  Can I ask why we're going over the May Oval Office meeting? Because I don't see how it's directly related to Ukraine.

Q  Well, there's been public reporting about that particular meeting being particularly sensitive within the White House and it being -- the transcript or readout, the summary being placed in the words redacted        system.

A  I was not aware that it was placed in the words redacted        system.

Q  Right. And I understand that's your --

A  Yeah.

Q  -- testimony, but we're trying to figure out why that meeting, in particular, could have been --

A  Well, that meeting --

Q  -- treated the same way as the July 25th call summary.

A  That meeting was scrutinized because of, again, the press reporting that the President, who had the authority to declassify information, had talked about something that was previously codeword, in a general sense. And in actual fact, if that was the case, then there would be a reason to put it on words redacted      . Whether he'd said it to, you know, kind of, unauthorized individuals or not, if he had declassified that, but it would still technically be classified codeword.

Q  Okay.

A  And, indeed,when we had the readout, we had to redact portions of it. So that actually would not be in any way inappropriate on that occasion.

Q  Okay.

Going back to the July 25th call summary, some of the portions I read included ellipses. And there's been some public reporting and speculation that there could be other things that were said.

Are you aware of, in the process of creating this type of call summary, whether there's a more word-for-word transcript that’s created?

A  Transcripts that I produced often had ellipses in them.

Q  Okay.

A  I put ellipses in.

Q  Can you explain to us the process by which these types of call summaries are created, from when the call occurs to when this type of summary is drafted?

A  There's been some public discussion of this, but I feel that this might be verging into secure, you know --

MR. WOLOSKY: I'm sorry. Could you repeat --

MR. NOBLE: Yeah. I was asking her to explain the process of creating a call summary. So there's a call that occurs. What's the process by which notes are taken? Is there a verbatim transcript created?

DR. HILL: Is that fine to talk about?

MR. WOLOSKY: You can talk about the process --

DR. HILL: Process. Okay.

I mean, some of this has already been --

MR. NOBLE: Right.

DR. HILL: -- made public. I mean, I saw a piece of it on CNN or something that was reporting to say how the transcript would've come into being.

But the White House Situation Room, they produce that transcript. They actually talk in real-time through kind of a -- I don't know, it's almost like -- I don't know whether you have one as a stenographer, but they actually sort of talk through a device in real-time as they're hearing the speech and the exchange. And that's how --

Q  Who talks through the device?

A  The White House Situation Room staff. And that produces a kind of a word voice-recognition version of their voice. So they are --

Q  And they're repeating what the Presidents are saying?

A  And what the translator is saying on the other end as well. And that's probably -- I mean, those of you who, you know, are familiar with voice recognition -- is probably to deal with the fact that translators and others have accents. I have an accent. So, you know, it would make it difficult for the voice-recognition software.

And, also, I think, at this point, we no longer tape our President. That doesn't mean to say that the other party don't tape all of these communications, just to be very clear here.

So that rough transcript is then produced and then sent to either the director or the senior director or both, whoever is available, to look through, and then to others who were on the call that's pertinent to their area of expertise or who have taken notes --

Q  Okay.

A  -- to check this for accuracy. And sometimes there can be some pretty hysterically funny misrepresentations of what people heard.

Q  Okay. I won't ask about examples.

So once you or your director reviews the, kind of, raw transcript created by the voice-recognition software and you make all the corrections, are you the ones who draft the summaries, like the one that we see for the July 25th call? Who drafts that?

A  This, to me, looks like the transcripts that we would draft.

Q  Okay. And then where does the transcript --

A  It goes to our --

Q  Are there further layers of approval?

A  It goes through further layers of approvals. That was managed by the Executive Secretariat of the NSC --

Q  For the National Security Council?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay.

A  And then with the White House review, and it goes to the National Security Advisor and others as well -- and the Deputy National Security Advisor -- to take a look at.

Q  Okay.

Skipping around a little bit, are you aware of a compilation of documents, you might say a dossier, that Rudy Giuliani created about Ambassador Yovanovitch and --

A  Only from news reports.

Q  -- others? Okay. You weren't aware of that at the time --

A  I was not, no.

Q  -- that that was created that it came in a White House envelope to the State Department?

A  I had never heard anything about that.

Q  Did you ever see those types of materials or a similar dossier floating around the White House?

A  I did not.

Q  Okay.

I believe in the last segment of testimony you said that you had some conversations with Deputy Secretary of State Sullivan --

A  Correct.

Q  -- about Rudy Giuliani and your concerns?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  How many times did you speak with Deputy Secretary Sullivan? A I saw Deputy Secretary Sullivan quite a lot at events, and I often talked to him on the sidelines of this. So, often, these were conversations that I was just having with Deputy Secretary Sullivan, who is a pretty wonderful individual. And, you know, I know he's now been nominated to be Ambassador to Russia. But he and I would talk alot onthe margins of events and other meetings.

Q  And did you raise the –

A  I did.

Q  -- concerns you had?

A  Frequently. And he was also concerned.

Q  Okay. Did he say anything in response when you raised your concerns about Giuliani's activity?

A  He just expressed that he was also concerned. He didn't give any specifics, you know, back again. He just gave me a good, you know, respectful hearing. And it was clear that he was very upset about what had happened to Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Q  Did he ever say whether he ever tried to, himself, do something about it or get Secretary Pompeo to do something about it?

A  He said that both he and Secretary Pompeo had tried their best to head off what happened.

Q  Did he explain how they had tried?

A  He did not

But I was also very much struck by the commentary in her public statement, in Ambassador Yovanovitch's public statement, that they'd been under pressure since summer of 2018. I had no idea. Because, for me, I only -- you know, obviously, as I mentioned before, I just started to pick up that there something after January of this year.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  And, most definitely, when I saw what I think was a March 20th article in The Hill by John Solomon, then I looked back and saw that there were, you know, other similar reports. And then, of course, I started to watch Mr. Giuliani on television.

Q  Okay.

Did you ever speak with Michael Ellis about your concerns?

A  I'm sure I did. But, I mean, not at the request of, as I mentioned before, when I went in to talk to --

Q  Mr. Eisenberg?

A  -- Mr. Eisenberg. Yeah.

Q  Okay. So these were --

A  Because I saw all of them, both Michael Ellis and John Eisenberg, pretty much daily, sometimes multiple times in the day. Again, our offices were opposite each other. And it was, kind of, they were with me working on a whole range of issue. This was a big portfolio, and I needed a lot of legal advice. We'd often looked at treaties and other issues that we were trying to coordinate, and we needed them to work with the legal staff at the State Department, for example, or to reach out to DOD for us on a whole range of issues.

And I just, you know, wanted to say that they were the epitome of professionalism, and I've had a great working relationship with them. And I had no hesitation in going to express concerns to them about any issue.

Q  And --

A  So I probably talked to Michael on a number of occasions about this, just in a general, hey, you know, this is going on and I'm worried about it.

Q  Uh-huh. Did you ever ask him to do anything in particular about --

A  I did not. I mean, I was raising concerns, but I did do the official reporting to John Eisenberg.

Q  Okay. And did Mr. Eisenberg or Mr. Ellis ever tell you that they had taken steps to try to address the problem or had reported it further up the chain in the White House counsel's office or elsewhere?

A  Yeah, I already responded to that, that I believe that John Eisenberg talked to Pat Cipollone --

Q  Okay.

A  -- in the White House counsel's office.

Q  What about Mr. Ellis?

A  I do not know about that, And, again, you know, July 11th is just -- 10, 11 -- is just the week before I'm leaving.

Q  Okay.

On the issue of the security assistance freeze, had assistance for Ukraine ever been held up before during your time at the NSC?

A  Yes.

Q  For what -- and when was that?

A  At multiple junctures. You know, it gets back to the question that Mr. Castor asked before. There's often a question raised about assistance, you know, a range of assistance --

Q  But for Ukraine specifically?

A  Yeah, that’s correct.

Q  Okay. Even though there's been bipartisan support for the assistance?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay.

A  But there’s been a lot of hold-up of other assistance, you know, a lot of additional questions asked. I mean, again, clarification. You know, new people -- again, remember, also, there's a lot of turnover in staff at this point. So, as Mr. Castor was sort of suggesting, a lot of people suddenly want to know why is this happening, you know, kind of, who authorized this, what's the nature of it. Sometimes it was just informational.

Q  But at this point in time, when you learned about the freeze, July 18th I believe, everyone in the interagency had blessed it, so to speak, and had signed off on the aid. And so, as far as you know, there was nothing that legitimately should be holding it up.

A  Correct.

Q  Okay.

On the issue of security assistance for Ukraine, are you familiar with the first sale of Javelins to Ukraine --

A  I am.

Q  -- back in 2018? March or April timeframe, is that correct?

A  Yes, that's correct.

Q  Okay. Around the same time, are you aware that Ukraine stopped cooperating with Special Counsel Mueller's investigation?

A  I was not aware of that.

Q  Okay. Are you aware that they also stopped four separate investigations of Paul Manafort around this same time?

A  I was also not aware of that.

Q  Are you aware that Ukraine allowed Konstantin Kilimnik, who was a witness in the Mueller investigation, slip across the border to Russia?

A  I was aware of that.

Q  You were aware of that?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  What did you know about that?

A  Well, Konstantin Kilimnik is somebody -- if we're in the space of who knew people in the past, he used to work for the International Republican Institute in Moscow. And when I was working at the Kennedy School of Government on technical assistance projects, you know, we had a lot of interactions with IRI as well as NDI, and Konstantin Kilimnik was there. And all of my staff thought he was a Russian spy at the time that I was working with.

So Konstantin Kilimnik was somebody who popped up on the radar screen from time to time. So, when his name came up, I immediately had the, you know, reminders of the 1990s and of people being somewhat suspicious of Kilimnik. And so, you know, I did note that he'd --

Q  How did you learn that Ukraine had allowed him to exit to Russia?

A  It was in a report that I read.

Q  Okay. Are you aware of any connection between that and the sale of Javelins to Ukraine?

A  I am not.

Q  Okay.

You said that sometimes in your transcripts that you created or reviewed you'd use ellipses.

A  I did.

Q  Why would you use ellipses?

A  When the sentence trailed off, it wasn't a complete sentence. And that might be, you know, my English training, because, often, the Exec Sec would correct sometimes and, you know, change punctuation and things. I overuse commas, for example, and --

Q  Are you a fan of the Oxford comma?

A  I'm confused, is kind of basically where I am. Because when I was growing up, they changed the comma formatting, and then when I came here, I found there was all kinds of different comma formatting. So I tend to put commas everywhere.

And I also do like ellipses. Because, you know, when somebody trails off, like I just do sometimes, just dot, dot, dot, finish that thought. So I wouldn't read too much into the ellipses.

[5:14 p.m.]

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  While you were working at the NSC, were you aware of whether Kash Patel had any role in the Ukraine portfolio?

A  I became aware of that by chance and accident. In the last couple of weeks that I was there, probably in May, just after the Presidential inauguration in Ukraine. I --

Q  How did you learn?

A  I'd gone over to the Exec Sec in the White House just to pick something up, and this was around the time where we were trying to -- there was going to be a setup to debrief the President on the Presidential delegation. And just one of the people in Exec Sec just as a routine, you know, just said: Oh, the President wants to talk to your Ukraine director.

And I was like a bit surprised by that because the President has never asked to speak to any, you know, of our directors ever before. And I said: "Oh?"

Yeah, to talk about some of the materials.

And I said, "Oh," again because I thought this is strange.

And they said: Yeah, so, I mean, we might be reaching out to Kash.

And I said, "Oh," because Kash -- the only Kash --

Q  What was his role as far as you know?

A  -- I could think of was Kash Patel, and I thought, well, he is in our International Organizations Bureau and, you know, considerably he works on the U.N. and other related issues but he's not the Ukraine director. The Ukraine director, you know, after all the streamlining is only in our office.

So I basically didn't engage any further because I was wondering to myself: That's very strange.

And I went to talk to Charlie Kupperman, who was going to be taking part on our behalf sitting in on the debriefing for the President. And I said: Apparently, the President may think that Kash Patel is our Ukraine director, and I just want to make sure there's no embarrassment here. I'm not quite sure why that might be, but I want to flag for you that this is the case.

And I related what I related to you. And I said: That probably means that Alex Vindman, our Ukraine director who had actually been on the Presidential delegation, probably shouldn't go into the debrief from the delegation.

Q  And this was the May 23 meeting --

A  Correct.

Q  -- after the delegation got back?

A  Correct. And then I went back to my office and started looking at all my distro lists to see, you know, kind of whether Kash was on any of the -- maybe I'd missed out, you know, that he had some special, again, Ambassador Sondland-like representational role on Ukraine that I hadn't been informed about, and I couldn't elicit any information about that.

Q  Did you ever figure out what Mr. Patel was doing with respect to Ukraine kind of behind the scenes?

A  I did not, but I raised concerns with Charlie Kupperman about that, and he said that he would look into that, which is the appropriate course of action.

Q  And did you ever learn what he learned after he looked into it?

A  I did not because, again, you know, it’s difficult always to follow up on these issues. But I did warn my office to be very careful about communications with Kash Patel until we figured out why it was that he was sending clearly materials on Ukraine over to the -- because I didn't know what kind of materials.

Q  Did you ever see the materials?

A  I did not.

Q  Okay. Did you ever learn what materials Mr. Patel was providing?

A  I did not.

Q  Okay. You said that you advised or told

Mr. Vindman not to go into the debrief on May 23.

A  Well, particularly after it seemed to be the case he's evidently not Kash Patel and that if there was some confusion over who the director for Ukraine is, that could be rather difficult and awkward.

Q  Okay. But you knew this meeting was supposed to be about briefing the President on --

A  On the Presidential delegation.

Q  -- the delegation to the inauguration?

A  And Alex Vindman was also just there as the representative of the NSC. He wasn't the lead of the delegation in any case. And the whole point of the debriefing was for Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker, and Ambassador Sondland, and Senator Johnson to talk about their experiences and their views on Zelensky and to relay back the meetings.

And Alex was only in those meetings as basically a note taker and, you know, again, as the representative of the NSC because neither Ambassador Bolton or I were able to go given the timing of the inauguration.

Q  Do you know whether Kash Patel attended that meeting?

A  I do not. I had never heard any information to suggest that he was there.

Q  Okay. Did Mr. Patel have anything to do with Ukraine after that meeting, to your knowledge?

A  I'm not aware that he did. And I took him off our distro list because I was alarmed in thinking that, you know, this is -- I mean, this is obviously just not appropriate, and I'd already reported it to Charlie Kupperman.

Q  Do you know whether any of the documents that Mr. Patel was providing to the President relating to Ukraine had anything to do with what Rudy Giuliani was doing?

A  I really do not know. And I'll be also clear: I never actually have ever had a conversation with Kash Patel.

I knew who he was. I knew he was at the international, you know, organization group, and I'd seen him in meetings.

And I was, you know -- let's just say it's a red flag when somebody who you barely know is involved on, you know, one of your policy issues and is clearly providing, you know, materials outside of the line that we don't even know what those materials were.

And we were always very circumspect about the materials that we provided, and we only ever sent them up the chain to the Exec Sec to Ambassador Bolton. So, I mean, we never did anything to the President's or to the Chief of Staff or anything else except through the National Security Advisor.

Q  And it's your understanding, though, that these materials that Mr. Patel provided made their way directly to President Trump?

A  That's what I was led to believe from my very brief interaction with the Exec Sec. And, again, I went immediately and told Charlie Kupperman about this.

Q  Okay.

MR. NOBLE: So, Dr. Hill, I do want to go through some of the other meetings on your calendar, and I think we'd like to mark your calendar as an exhibit. So it's going to be majority exhibit No. 3.

[Majority Exhibit No. 3 was marked for identification.]

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  And we have an extra copy for you. And we're just going to skip through some of the meetings and see if there's anything --

A  Sure.

Q  -- relevant.

A  And I just want to assure everybody that I was not filing my nails or having spa treatments in all this black space. I obviously don't look like I was very busy, but there were a lot of other meetings.

And we also were very mindful of our calendars because calendar information can obviously be used by outside parties, meaning Russia, you know, kind of any others to kind of figure out the kind of meetings that they should be checking for people's communications with. So I would also ask people to be very careful with this.

Q  Okay. We appreciate that.

Let’s skip to page 36. It's Hill 36. These are the entries for April 29th through May 3rd, 2019.--

A  April 29 to --

Q  May 3. It's page 36.

A  Yeah. We haven't got -- oh, yeah. I see.

Q  Bottom right.

A  Yeah. I got it. Yes.

Q  Okay. So the meeting on May 1, I think we talked about that with --

A  We did.

Q  That was with Phil Reeker and Ambassador Yovanovitch?

A  Correct. That's when she told me that she was being removed as Ambassador.

Q  Okay. The next day, on May 2nd, you had a meeting with Rob Blair.

A  Correct.

Q  Who is Rob Blair?

A  He is the deputy to Mick Mulvaney.

Q  Do you recall what that meeting was about?

A  Yes. And there was also a meeting with -- JRB was you know,Ambassador Bolton, and then with General Kellogg. They were both to relate to them -- they were to relate to all of them my meeting with Ambassador Yovanovitch and Phil Reeker.

Q  Okay. And what specifically about Ambassador Yovanovitch?

A  How disturbed I was by what had happened to her, and I asked if there was anything that we could do.

Q  And what did they say?

A  That's when, you know, I mentioned to you that Ambassador Bolton, who looked extremely pained, you know, basically said there was nothing that could be done, but Rudy Giuliani was a --

Q  That's the hand grenade comment?

A  -- hand grenade, yeah, that's going to blow everybody up.

Q  Okay. And who is General Kellogg?

A  He is the now National Security Advisor to the Vice President. And General Kellogg is the person who hired me along with K.T. McFarland and General Flynn to work at the National Security Council. He's had a number of positions.

Q  What was his role at this time?

A  He was the National Security Advisor to the Vice President. And I wanted him to know that this very troubling development had taken place because, I mentioned before in the line of questioning, that we were always contemplating: Was there a way that we could get the Vice President, you know, to go to Ukraine at an appropriate time? And, you know, we had been, you know, talking about, depending on the timing of the inauguration or, you know, any of the potential meetings.

Q  Sure. Let's talk about that for a second because there has been public reporting that originally Vice President Pence was supposed to attend the inauguration, and then President Trump, at least has been reported, ordered him not to attend. Do you have any knowledge about that and how that happened?

A  Yeah. I already responded to that in regard to Mr. Castor's question, and as I said, there was a lot of scheduling issues. The Vice President can't be out of the country at the same time as the President. And as I mentioned, I'd already flagged that there were all kinds of issues swirling around with Rudy Giuliani and Ukraine and, you know, the ousting of our Ambassador.

And it was going to be very tight for the Vice President to make it for the inauguration. So I, you know, have no knowledge that he was actually ordered not to go, but it was going to be very difficult for him to go.

Q  Okay. And --

A  And I had already put forward, you know, as I mentioned before, Secretary Perry, who I, you know, was always advocating to go and -- you know, go to things like this.

Q  Did you have conversations with General Kellogg about your concerns regarding Giuliani?

A  I did.

Q  Okay. And was that -- is that around this time?

A  No. This is exactly -- that's what I'm saying. These meetings with the three of them, and I know they look like they were in the same time because they were both very short with Ambassador Bolton, and then with Kellogg, it was for somewhat longer because I had already expressed concerns with Ambassador Bolton beforehand.

And I wanted to flag for Rob Blair, because often ambassadorial issues come through the Chief of Staff's Office, and Rob Blair is a, you know, very good professional, knows foreign affairs, that this was all transpiring and that this was going to have a massive backlash also at the State Department and that it already had, you know, a chilling effect, you know, with our Embassy in Kyiv and also among, you know, many people that we were interacting with.

People were shocked. They'd already got word that she'd been, you know, recalled for or summoned very abruptly for consultations back at home, and she told me at this meeting here that she’d already been dismissed, and it was looking for a time for her to come back.

Q  Okay. How did Mr. Blair respond when you raised these concerns?

A  He said that he would flag this for Mick and that he would pay attention to it, for Mulvaney.

Q  How about General Kellogg?

A  General Kellogg didn't say that he would tell the Vice President, but he said that he would talk to the team. And I also had Jennifer Williams, his director who covered all of Europe, who was our counterpart there -- I mean, again, we talked about how small the Vice President's team is -- and she was also in the meeting.

So I wanted to make sure that they knew that there were issues and they should be very careful, you know, so that the Vice President didn't, you know, get mired up in -- you know, I was flagging, you know, in case Rudy Giuliani or anybody who’s sort of seeking meetings.

We did this frequently. I mean, that's what the Vice President's staff would rely on us for sending red flags to them for, you know, meetings they should avoid or, you know, kind of things that they should be aware of because they didn't have a big team to be able to track everything.

Q  Okay. Let's skip to the next page, page 37, a meeting on May 6th with, it looks like, the Ukrainian -- it was a Ukrainian delegation along with --

A  There was a Ukrainian delegation. I can't actually speak about that one. This was arranged with our intelligence directorate.

Q  Okay.

A  And then the secure call with Phil Reeker was me following up again on, you know, more of these related issues.

Q  Relating to Giuliani?

A  Related to concerns about Ukraine and, you know, how things were unfolding with Ambassador Yovanovitch. But also, I mean, as Phil Reeker was the Assistant Secretary for all of Europe, we always had a long agenda of items that we needed to discuss about. And in this, you know, timeframe there was also things related to -- and you'll see on the next page -- Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary was coming, and Ambassador Reeker was in charge of obviously Hungary in his portfolio. And we were doing a press background briefing in this timeframe. He was doing one, and I was doing one. So all of these issues would have been on the agenda.

Q  Okay. On May 23rd, it's not on your calendar, but that's the day of the meeting we've been talking about when the --

A  That's right.

Q  -- U.S. delegation came back.

A  Yeah.

Q  Did you get a readout from anyone about that meeting?

A  Yes. I got a readout from Charlie Kupperman.

Q  He participated in the meeting?

A  He did.

Q  And what did he say happened during that meeting on May 23rd?

A  He said that the other participants had made -- I mean, he obviously wasn't on the delegation -- had made a concerted effort to express -- and Senator Johnson can talk to you about this because he was in that meeting -- about their positive impressions about Zelensky, and that there had been a lot of stress on energy reform, and that Secretary Perry had been instructed that he had 90 days to see if we could make some progress on the energy -- reform in the energy sector.

And, again, this was all consistent with, as I mentioned before, discussions that we'd been having with our energy team, including with Wells Griffith and his staff and many others, on how we would try to get Ukraine more embedded in European energy security, not just look to some kind of object vis-à-vis Russia or as a transit country for Russian energy, but how we would get Ukraine in and of itself in a better place in terms of its energy diversification and the restructuring of its own energy sector.

Q  Are you aware of President Trump saying anything in that meeting along the lines that he believed that Ukraine had tried to bring him down in 2016?

A  That was related to me by Ambassador Volker at a later point.

Q  Okay. What did Ambassador Volker tell you?

A  He told me exactly that.

Q  Okay. Had you ever heard -- did you ever hear that on any other occasions, President Trump expressing belief that he believed Ukraine --

A  I think he said it publicly, but definitely Mr. Giuliani has said things in that regard.

Q  Turning to page 39, on May 24th, that Friday, it looks like you had a meeting with Ambassador Taylor --

A  That's right.

Q  and Mr. Vindman?

A  Yes. And I had a previous meeting with Ambassador Taylor on the 13th. So this was when Ambassador Taylor, on page 38, was, you know, basically in the process of -- he wasn't able to go out to the inauguration. He was in the process of going out as Charge.

And as I mentioned before, I've known Ambassador Taylor for decades, and he and I talked, you know, very frequently about some of the challenges he was going to face in this position.

And I know he's going to come in and talk to you himself, but he had made it very clear that if the State Department didn't have his back on this, that he wouldn't

continue in the position. He was very reluctant to step into a situation where the previous Ambassador had been ousted on baseless charges. He was very well aware of all of the dangers here.

Q  Did that include the dangers of Giuliani?

A  Yes.

Q  Yeah. You discussed that with Ambassador Taylor?

A  I did discuss that with Ambassador Taylor. And, actually, initially, I thought he shouldn't do it. And then over time we became, you know, more -- we needed Ambassador Taylor, frankly, somebody of his stature. And he said that he had an undertaking from Secretary Pompeo that they would have his back and make sure that he wasn't subject to baseless attacks either from inside of the Ukraine or from the outside.

Q  Why did you initially think he shouldn't do it?

A  Because he was basically taking over what looked at this point like a tainted, poisoned chalice. I mean, if you have had your previous Ambassador ousted on no just cause and somebody else has to step in and they have to basically clean up a mess, I mean, would you do that?

Q  I'm not testifying, but --

A  Yes. But I think basically most of us would think twice, three times, four times before agreeing to do this.

Q  Yeah. On page 39, there's this meeting on the 22nd with Amos Hochstein. Is that the meeting that you referred to earlier?

A  That's the meeting that I referred to. And I related to Ambassador Taylor, who also knows Amos Hochstein from the past, what he had told me and suggested that he should, you know, also talk to him if he wanted to. But Ambassador Taylor seemed to know a lot of this information anyway. Ambassador Taylor is extremely well informed, and he's, you know, kind of never stopped on his keeping track of Ukraine, you know, since the time that he was an Ambassador.

Q  Okay. What about this meeting on May 23 with Kristina -- I'm going to --

A  Kvien. She is the new DCM, deputy chief of mission, in Ukraine.

Q  And what was this? Was this meeting just a briefer on --

A  Correct.

Q  before she went over?

A  And for us to talk about, you know, kind of policy issues. And I related to her, you know, the hopes that we would be able to focus with the Ukrainians on this broader energy sector reform and how we could work with other European embassies there, the Germans, the Poles, the Czechs, the Slovaks, you know, not just the usual, you know, suspects of, you know -- we always work obviously with the EU or the NATO allies in a general sense, but how we could be more proactive in trying to get the Europeans to do more on Ukraine.

And it wasn't just about military issues; it was also about energy because, you know, the Germans -- we were in this spat with the Germans about Nord Stream 2, but, you know, the Germans also have the wherewithal to help Ukraine refurbish its energy infrastructure and, you know, also to work with the Poles and the Czechs and Slovaks for bringing in LNG.

And the Germans were also at this point talking about bringing through Bremen, and through a new port, LNG into Germany that also could come into Ukraine if there was indeed a building up of the infrastructure in that part of Europe.

Q  Okay. On page 41, we're moving into early June, you had a SVTC with Ambassador Volker, it looks like?

A  Yes. That was for him to update the Europeans on, you know, the Presidential delegation and some of the next steps, you know, on -- and then, you know, the question still at this point was, were the Russians going to be at all willing to meet, you know, as we're getting now past the inauguration of President Zelensky, or were we going to have to wait until the larger elections were taking place?

And so this is a kind of occasion where the French and German counterparts to Ambassador Volker would relay information from meetings that they had participated in. I have to confess, I was only in part of that meeting.

Q  Okay. That's okay. We don't need to go into detail. But I did want to ask you--

MR. HECK: [Presiding.] Your time has expired.

Minority.

DR. HILL: And just as a note, the Alex Ukraine thing after this is to follow up to say, you know, to kind of make sure that we were, you know, following up on any issues that would pertain to us in terms of interagency coordination.

So, often, when we had a meeting, I would follow up with our Ukraine director just to make sure that if we had any do-outs that we had to be in charge of -- and, you know, at his level, there's lots of working-level meetings that I don't participate in -- just to make sure that everyone is on the same page.

MR. NOBLE: Okay.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  So you told Mr. Vindman not to go to the debriefing with the President?

A  We agreed with Charlie Kupperman that, given what I'd just learned about this confusion about Kash Patel, that it would not be best.

Q  What if it was just a mistake?

A  Charlie Kupperman led me to believe that it probably not was a mistake, and he

didn't want to get into personnel issues.

Q  Okay. So --

A  But he was clearly concerned by this as well.

Q  What exactly was the issue? It sort of strikes us as random that now we're talking about Kash Patel.

A  Well, it was a bit random to me too. I'd never talked to-- I would -- him, and I told you I didn't have any meetings with him. And suddenly the Exec Sec, just, you know, the regular guys, you know, who I'm picking up some other material for are telling me that the President wants to meet with this Ukrainian director about materials that they had got from him and, you know, just to have -- an alert that he'd be asking for Kash. And that's obviously what, you know, for me --

Q  Is it possible there was just a mixup, that --

A  It didn't sound like it. That doesn't really happen. I've not had that kind of mixup before. It's not like the names of directors -- not everybody knows our directors.

Q  Any other reason the President would know Kash Patel? I mean, maybe --

A  I couldn't tell you. I think you'd have to ask that yourselves. I don't know.

Q  And you have never met Mr. Patel or you didn't --

A  I have met him. I know what he looks like, and I'd been in meetings with him. But I'd never had any one-on-one interaction with him, and he'd not been attending any of our Ukraine meetings. He was on the general distro for his directorate. But I started to worry that he'd been sending some of our materials in an unauthorized fashion, so I made sure that he wasn't on any of our distros that could have been internally.

Q  Did you communicate your issue with Ambassador Bolton?

A  Charlie Kupperman said he would speak to Ambassador Bolton about this.

Q  Okay. And did he ever get back to you about what the --

A  He said that he was dealing with it.

Q  Okay. That's it? That was the end of it?

A  Charlie Kupperman always dealt with issues that you brought to him, and it was in discussion with him that he said that he would go in and sit in and give us a readout of the meeting, because it was another red flag at that point that something was going on, because Kash Patel had not been involved in the inauguration meeting. And I never raised this with Kash Patel because, again --

Q  Was this like a widely known fact at NSC? It just seems like a rather random factoid.

A  When I told my office that this was the case, I said: Has any of you had any interaction with Kash Patel?

It alarmed everybody.

Q  Right. But now it's the subject of a Q and A being raised by, you know, congressional staff. I mean, how would that information get to congressional staff?

A  Well, that suggests that Charlie Kupperman did indeed raise it with people.

Q  Including congressional staffers?

A  I don't know about that, but he must have raised it with other people because, you know, how else do you guys get to know a lot of this stuff?

Q  Okay. But you haven't communicated that information --

A  I have not.

Q  -- in advance of today, right?

A  I have not.

Q  And the information conveyed to the majority has been equal in terms of majority and minority get the same information coming from you?

A  I haven't spoken to anybody from any of the staff.

Q  Okay. So this is the first time that you've been here talking --

A  About?

Q  -- about these matters? You didn't have a pre-brief?

A  That is correct, I did not.

Q  Or any pre-felt telephone calls?

A  I did not.

Q  And to your knowledge, there was no proffer raised by your representatives, whether your attorney or otherwise?

A  What do you mean a proffer?

Q  Proffer is when, you know, an attorney will call and talk about the testimony that his or her client intends to give.

A  Not to my knowledge. Although, now, what I have to say is that I've read a lot about my testimony, purported testimony, and as you know, I don't have a written testimony in the press.

Q  Right.

A  So, as I had raised Kash Patel as a concern in my directorate and to other people, and I mentioned it to DAS Kent, Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent, and to also Ambassador Taylor, and after I'd put it up the chain asking them to be aware if there was any communication from Kash Patel, I can be, you know, fairly confident that they talked to other people about this.

Q  Okay. So it wasn't a mistake. It was something to be handled, in your view?

A  Correct. That's right.

Q  Okay. And --

A  And based on my experience of 2 and a half years at the National Security Council, something like this isn't usually a mistake. We had an awful lot of people in the early stages of the administration doing all kinds of things that were not in their portfolio.

Q  Okay. Did you talk with Mr. Patel's supervisor?

A  I did not because they were in the moment of a transition there as well. And Charlie Kupperman was the person who was dealing with all personnel issues, so I went to the appropriate channel.

Q  And did he ever --

A  I also was not, you know, at the time, you know, going to, you know, basically throw Mr. Patel under anybody's bus. I told Charlie Kupperman about it, and I said: I barely know Kash Patel. I know what he works on.

But I did go back to my office and, again, flag for the people who were working on Ukraine that they should just be alert to make sure that they had no representation from him and, you know, kind of suggested there may be some confusion -- that is exactly what I said -- from our Exec Sec for whatever reason about who is our Ukraine director. And I just want to make sure that everyone knows it's Alex Vindman, and there is no other Ukraine director at the NSC.

Q  Okay. And Vindman wasn't in the May 23 debrief?

A  He was not.

Q  Was anybody from NSC?

A  Charlie Kupperman.

Q  Okay. And Charlie Kupperman didn't get back to you with a result of his --

A  He gave me a readout, and I just, you know, repeated that --

Q  No, with the Kash Patel issue.

A  He did not. But I wouldn't necessarily have expected him to, but my experience with Charlie Kupperman is he always followed up, always, on any issue that I brought to him.

Q  Well, if there's some confusion about somebody operating in the Ukraine policy space --

A  Then he would have dealt with this.

Q  -- you would think that he would follow up with you.

A  From what I've heard most recently is that Kash Patel has been moved to counterterrorism, where there's not a lot of terrorism going on in Ukraine.

Q  Okay. But I guess my point was, if there was an issue that needed to be deconflicted and Mr. Kupperman went and did that but didn't come back to you, I mean, what --

A  He did not, but, I mean, he would not necessarily. If there was any disciplinary or anything else as a result of that, he would not come back to me on that. That's a personnel issue that he would deal with.

Q  Did he indicate to you that he had handled it?

A  He said he would. He said he would handle it.

Q  Okay. But you never had any closed loop –

A  I did not, no.

Q  I'm going to ask you about the Politico article from January 17th again.

A  Okay.

Q  I just want to warn you in advance.

A  All right. I mean, I have to go back and read that all over again.

Q  And we have copies if anybody wants one.

A  You don't work for Politico, do you?

Q  What's that?

A  Well, it's just you're touting this, you know, kind of Politico article.

Q  I'm not touting it. No. I'm just -- you know, this is, you know, a news account. It's rather in depth. You know, this is a reporter that –-

A  Who's the reporter? Jog my memory.

Q  Mr. Vogel, Kenneth P. Vogel. Do you know Mr. Vogel

A  I mean, I know of him. I've seen his bio and other things.

Q  Right. I mean, he's gone on to The New York Times at this point. And, you know, this article goes through words redacted                    -- entreaties to the Ukrainian Embassy, you know, here in the United States. And Mr. Vogel interviews and gets people on the record talking about what words redacted                    was interested in.

And I'm just -- all the guffawing over the veracity of this article, I'm just --

A  This is in January 2017, this article.

Q  Yes. Yes.

A  So, remember, I go into the government, into the administration in April of 2017.

Q  Right.

A  By which time, I receive or when I go in an awful lot of briefings --

Q  Right.

A  -- from the Intelligence Community, and I read all of the documents pertaining to 2016. And I am then in endless meetings about this to try to push back against the Russians.

Q  Right.

A  And so all of the materials that I have from a classified context, there is none of that, anything, you know, related to words redacted                    .

Q  Okay. But, I mean, it's -- you know, reporting is a compilation of talking to sources. And you're not saying the whole story is just --

A  No, I'm not.

Q  -- outright fabrication, right?

A  No, I'm not.

Q  Okay. Are you able to characterize what parts of the story concerns you?

MR. WOLOSKY: I mean, we --

DR. HILL: I really -- yeah, I'd like to know why we're doing this.

MR. WOLOSKY: Just wait before we get to that

DR. HILL: Yeah. Okay.

MR. WOLOSKY: You know, I don't know what document you’re talking about.

MR. CASTOR: Okay. We can make an exhibit.--

MR. WOLOSKY: I haven't read it. The witness hasn't read it.

DR. HILL: Well, I read it a long time ago.

MR. WOLOSKY: A long time ago. It's not been entered as an exhibit --

MR. CASTOR: I'm going to enter it.

MR. WOLOSKY: -- or offered as an exhibit. Do you want us to sit and read the article? I mean we're here We'll do whatever you want.

MR. CASTOR: This is exhibit 4.

[Minority Exhibit No. 4
Was marked for identification.]

MR. WOLOSKY: If you are going to ask her about, you know, generally what's accurate and what's not accurate, you know, why don't you point her to specific portions of the article.

MR. CASTOR: Yeah, I'd be happy to.

DR. HILL: Yeah, I remember, I mean, of course, this article. And as I said before, I could give you a long list of people who were reaching out on all kinds of different fronts to all of the campaigns, all of the campaigns, from all kinds of different sources who were trying to do something like this.

MR. CASTOR: So you don't discount the fact that words redacted                    was probably doing what's reported here? I mean, you're an expert --

DR. HILL: It's not -- well, what specifically are we talking about?

MR. WOLOSKY: Well, what specifically are you referring to because we're not going to have her answer -- you know, affirm broad statements: Is this accurate? Is this 30-page article accurate?

DR. HILL: Yeah. And it's also, you know, talking about people in the Ukrainian American community, which is pretty extensive, people with meetings at the Embassy. And as you know, there were all kinds of peace projects that were being put around at that time. I received about three of them from different people.

I had people asking to talk to Colin Powell and would I, you know, help set things up with that --

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Sure.

A  -- before, you know, for example, Jeb Bush, you know, you name it. There were people coming forward trying to use any contact that they possibly could to talk to people. And there aren't articles about all of them.

So, when I go back to Brookings, perhaps I could start writing a lot of articles about the people I knew previously in the runup to the 2016 election who were trying to do some of these things too. It does not amount to a large-scale Ukrainian Government effort to subvert our elections which is comparable to anything that the Russians did in 2016.

And if we start down this path, not discounting what one individual or a couple of individuals might have done, ahead of our 2020 elections, we are setting ourselves up for the same kind of failures and intelligence failures that we had before.

Q  Okay. I --

A  Look, and I feel very strongly about this.

Q  Evidently.

A  I'm not trying to mess about here.

Q  Evidently you do.

A  Yes, and so you should, too, in terms of our national security.

Q  Well, let me help you understand here. I'm trying to understand: Is it the whole thing, everything?

MR. WOLOSKY: Ask her a question about a specific thing of which she has personal knowledge, and she'll respond. She's not going to respond to an 18-page article based on some general –

MR. CASTOR: I'm not asking her to respond to an 18-page article. I marked it as an exhibit, and we're about to get into it.

MR. WOLOSKY: Well, ask her something specific, Mr. Castor.

DR. HILL: Are you trying to suggest -- sorry. Okay.

MR. WOLOSKY: Just ask her a question, and she will respond.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Okay. Page two --

A  All right.

Q  -- a Ukrainian American operative -- this is the third paragraph on page two -- who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met up with top officials of the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between President Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort, and Russia, according to people with knowledge of the situation. The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race helping to force Manafort's resignation.

MR. WOLOSKY: Answer to the limit of your personal knowledge that you had.

DR. HILL: Well, this is the conclusion of Kenneth Vogel and David Stone.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Right. And so --

A  This is not the conclusion of the U.S. intelligence agencies.

Q  Okay. So --

A  I cannot make that conclusion just based on that article either

Q  Okay.

A  This is an assertion, the conclusion that the authors of this article are making.

Q  Okay.

A  Now, should we have been looking, all of us, overall, at every effort to interfere in our election? Yes, we should have been.

Q  At my peril, I'm trying to figure out whether this is just complete fiction that was pitched to a reporter and has been completely debunked based on information you have or whether there's any other explanation for this --

A  It is a fiction that the Ukrainian Government was launching an effort to upend our election, upend our election to mess with our Democratic systems.

Q  Okay. But there could have been some Ukrainians that were interested in injecting information --

A  And this appears to be a Ukrainian American, which we're also talking about Mr. Fruman and Mr. Parnas are Ukrainian Americans who were also trying to subvert our democracy and who managed to get one of our ambassadors sacked.

Q  On page 11 is where it starts getting into Leshchenko's involvement. Like, what do you know about Leshchenko's efforts to expose the Manafort issue?

A  Only what I have read in the press.

Q  Okay. So there is nothing that you have --

A  Again, this is in January of 2017, and the period in which I entered into the government and, you know, the period in which you're working there, we unearthed more and more information on what the Russians were doing.

Q  Okay. I'm not --

A  And it's not to --

Q  -- trying to compare what they're doing --

A  Yes, but I'm not sure where we're going with this line of inquiry here --

Q  I'm just asking you about --

A  Because if you're also trying to peddle an alternative variation of whether the Ukrainians subverted our election, I don't want to be part of that, and I will not be part of it.

Q  I'm not trying to peddle anything. I'm trying to ask you about what information you have regarding these.

And, you know, frankly, if we didn't have such a --

A  But you're asking me about an article that was written in Politico in January of 2017.

Q  And I probably wouldn't have returned to it, but it was just such a passionate rebuke of this article that just - -

A  Well, it's of the thrust of the question that you're asking here, which is to basically -- you know, what we're dealing with now is a situation where we are at risk of saying that everything that happened in 2016 was a result of Ukraine in some fashion.

Q  Yeah, I'm not saying that. I'm not --

A  Well, that's certainly what it sounds like to me.

Q  I’m not going down that path. I'm just simply trying to understand the facts that are discounted -- or recounted in this story.

On page 13, it talks about the Ambassador Chaly penning an op-ed. Do you have any familiarity with the op-ed that the Ambassador wrote that was negative to the President, the President when he was a candidate?

A  There were an awful lot of people from every imaginable country at this particular point trying to game out where things were going to go in our election. We can find an awful lot -- we had to do this, by the way, before every head of state visit. We had to comb through what any of them might have said in the course of the election campaign that might be negative toward the President, and there were an awful lot of people who said negative things.

You might remember a moment in public in the Rose Garden with Prime Minister Tsipras of Greece, and I got my ass chewed out for this one afterwards because we hadn't noticed -- because I don't happen to speak Greek and didn't have on hand a Greek-speaking staff member, but John Roberts of CNN did a gotcha moment for Tsipras in public, full view -- I remember it very vividly -- pointing out to Tsipras negative things that he had said about the President and how much he hoped that President Trump was not basically elected during the Presidential campaign.

And the President was not at all happy, and the press staff said to me: How could you have missed that?

Well, it was all in Greek. So I presume that CNN has a whole Greek staff on board who are poring over things at, you know, vast expense. Well, we don't have lots of Greek-speaking staff members poring over everything.

So, getting back to this again, many individuals were trying to game out our political system, many other governments. The Russians are the government that have been proven from the very top to be targeting our democratic systems.

Q  Okay. Fair enough.

A  And I'm sorry to be very passionate, but this is precisely --

Q  I'm just trying to get your --

A  -- why I joined the administration. I didn't join it because I thought the Ukrainians had been going after the President.

Q  I didn't say you did. I'm just trying to get your reaction to --

A  Well, my reaction obviously is pretty strong because, again --

Q  I know. It's proven very interesting.

A  -- I'm extremely concerned that this is a rabbit hole that we're all going to go down in between now and the 2020 election, and it will be to all of our detriment.

Q  I'm just asking you to give your reaction and if you have any firsthand information given your area of expertise.

A  My firsthand reaction is exactly -- of certaininformation -- is exactly what I've said, that there may be words redacted                                                                               , and I can name lots of other American citizens with various appellates to them who were running around trying to do similar things with similar embassies.

Q  Okay. But you don't have any firsthand information about Ambassador Chaly? Was that ever a point of discussion?

A  It was not. But Ambassador Chaly was always trying to obviously push President Poroshenko's interest and, you know, obviously has now been removed by President Zelensky.

Q  Right.

A  He was the former chief of staff to President Poroshenko.

Q  Was President Poroshenko, you know, in favor of Hillary Clinton over President Trump to the extent you know?

A  I do not know. I do know that President Poroshenko spent an inordinate amount of time in the early stages of the administration trying to create as good a relationship as he possibly could with both the Vice President and the President.

Q  On page 14, Ukraine's Minister of Internal Affairs,Avakov --

A  Mr. Avakov, yeah.

Q  Yeah. He had some disparaging remarks about the President on Twitter and Facebook. Do you have any firsthand information about that, or can relate any additional information?

A  I can't. As I said, we found disparaging remarks made by pretty much every world leader and official at different points about the President. So, you know, this is not surprising but, again -- you know, and the fact of this was in the course presumably of the campaign. Again, this is January of 2017, this article.

Q  Okay. And this will be my last passage that I point you to, page 15, a Ukrainian Parliamentarian Artemenko?

A  Artemenko. Yeah, I don't really know him.

Q  It was quoted -- you know, it was very clear that they, presuming the Poroshenko regime, was supporting Hillary Clinton's candidacy. They did everything from organizing meetings with the Clinton team to publicly supporting her to criticizing Trump. I think they simply didn't meet -- that is with the Trump Organization because they thought Hillary would win.

A  Well, I think that this is the kicker here. As you well know and as we all know, there was an awful lot of people who actually thought that Secretary Clinton would win the election. So an awful lot of countries and individuals were already preparing for that eventuality by trying to curry favor with the campaign.

Q  Okay.

A  And certainly, as I said earlier on, before President Trump was selected as the candidate, I mean, if you're at all interested, at some point, I can sit down with you privately and go through all of the people I know who tried to go through every single one of your colleagues' campaigns from every kind of different people who came up to us, because I had colleagues who were working on Senator Rubio's campaign, on Bush's campaign, on Jeb Bush's campaign.

And, believe me, there were Ukrainians, Ukrainian Americans, Russians, all of whom wanted to talk to those campaigns too because they didn't think that President Trump would become the candidate.

Q  Fair enough. Yeah. And at the end of today, I am pretty certain you and maybe your lawyer won't want to see me again, but --

A  No. No. It's totally fine. I'm just trying to basically say here that I have very -- you know, obviously strong feelings about our national security. And I just want to, if I've done anything, leave a message to you that we should all be greatly concerned about what the Russians intend to do in 2020. And any information that they can provide, you know, that basically deflects our attention away from what they did and what they're planning on doing is very useful to them.

Q  The bottom of exhibit 3, on each page there's adate stamp July 31.

A  That was when my assistant printed it out. As you can be aware, I was not actually there at the time.

Q  And do you have any firsthand information about why this was printed then?

A  Because that was his last day in the office. And before I left, after I'd been in to talk to our legal team, I asked if I could have a copy of the contacts and the calendar for reference purposes so that I could help Tim Morrison with transition.

And I wasn't actually able -- the contacts is also date-stamped the same time because I wasn't savvy enough to be able to print it out. Every time I printed it, it didn't print.

Q  Fair enough.

And then it was printed --

A  Simple incompetence.

Q  It was printed on the 31st and then --

A  And he held onto it, and I picked it up --

Q  When you came in in September?

A  Basically, yep. My printer -- picked it up from him, yep.

Q  To the extent that the information that Mr. Giuliani was communicating to the various persons, to the extent the individuals he was communicating that information to --

A  That was a lot of us, I think, you know, but anyone who was watching.

Q  -- took it at face value --

A  Right.

Q  -- and didn’t undertake their own fact checking --

A  Right.

Q  -- or own investigation. If they simply took it at face value, you know, is it fair to say that if people genuinely believed what was being provided, I mean, is it fair to say that that could have yielded some of the results that we saw?

A  What results?

MR. WOLOSKY: I don't understand. Too much breadth in that question. Could you sort of maybe break it down?

DR. HILL: Yeah. What results?

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Well, some of the results about the information Mr. Giuliani was proffering --

A  Right.

Q  -- you testified yielded the unpleasant result of Ambassador Yovanovitch being recalled?

A  Oh, Ambassador Yovanovitch being recalled. Well, yes, if you believe in conspiracy theories and, as you said, you know, and you don't have any –

Q  Right.

A  -- alternative ways of fact checking or looking into issues, if you believe that George Soros rules the world and, you know, basically controls everything, and, you know, If you –

Q  Was Mr. Giuliani pushing that?

A  He mentioned George Soros repeatedly, and The Hill article as well did and many others.

Q  But just the March 24th Hill article?

A  I think it was the 20th or something like that, that I saw.

Q  Okay.

A  And I was very sensitized to this issue because in the whole first year at the NSC --

Q  Right.

A  -- more people, myself included, were being accused of being Soros moles. And, indeed, I'm out on InfoWars again with Roger Stone, Alex Jones purporting that indeed from the very beginning I've been involved in a George Soros-led conspiracy.

Q  Okay.

A  So, if you believe things like that, I mean, in general, and a lot of people seem to do, or some people seem to do --

MR. WOLOSKY: I just wanted the record to reflect that Mr. Castor laughed in response to that question.

MR. CASTOR: Well, no. No.

MR. WOLOSKY: Let me finish. And this is a very serious matter, okay. This is a matter where people are being targeted and people --

MR. CASTOR: That is an outrageous -- that is outrageous to say that I laughed at that.

MR. WOLOSKY: You did laugh, and I want the record to reflect it because this is a very serious matter where people's lives potentially are in danger. And it's not a laughing matter.

MR. CASTOR: She discussed a number of individuals and situations that I have no familiarity with, and so to the extent you think that --

MR. WOLOSKY: And when she mentioned Soros and InfoWars and the fact that she is now back into that cycle, you laughed about it.

MR. CASTOR: I didn't bring up InfoWars.

DR. HILL: I did. I did.

MR. WOLOSKY: And you laughed. So the record will reflect it.

MR. CASTOR: Well, that is, you know, an absolutely ridiculous characterization.

DR. HILL: Look, I think the unfortunate thing that we're all in at the moment -- and as I said, you know, I try at all times to, you know, maintain this nonpartisan, you know, expert approach, but we're in an environment where people believe an awful lot of things.

I mean, Mr. Soros and a whole lot of other people were sent pipe bombs. I had a call from one of the detailees from the FBI who was in my office previously, my previous special assistant, who told me to seal up my door slot today before I came down here because he’s been following the alt right out of those -- and white supremacists.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Who was that?

A  My colleague back at the FBI, who was detailed, my special assistant, and he said I'm lighting up the Twittersphere.

Q  Okay. I have no --

A  I don't follow all of this stuff, so I have to rely on other people tipping me off about this.

Q  Okay. I know nothing about Alex Jones or anything like that. I’m simply interested in The Hill reporting and, you know, what Lutsenko may or may not have said to Solomon and --

A  But it's become part of what's become a very large universe of information and stories that are out there on the internet that is really affecting an awful lot of people's judgments.

MR. CASTOR: Mr. Jordan?

MR. JORDAN: Okay. Dr. Hill, I just want to go back to where I was last hour, if I could. Again, Ambassador Yovanovitch in her statement last week talked about corruption is not just prevalent in Ukraine but is the system. And then along comes this guy, Zelensky, who is running a campaign on -- you know, totally on cleaning up the corruption, I mean, it's a central issue of his campaign, and wins. And my understanding is he won rather big.

DR. HILL: He did win big, yeah.

MR. JORDAN: But as you indicated earlier, you still don't know. You know, people run campaigns and say things, and then they get elected and sometimes they do things that aren't consistent with what they told the voters they were going to do.

DR. HILL: Right.

MR. JORDAN: So you wanted to wait, see how things happen in the parliamentary elections --

DR. HILL: Yep.

MR. JORDAN: -- see how he handled himself. And so you wait and the parliamentary elections go well for his party, right?

DR. HILL: Well, this happened, you know, in July, July 21st, by which I had already left, but that is correct, yeah.

MR. JORDAN: Right. You're kind of waiting. And you also said earlier that -- I guess you were probably also waiting to see what happened -- what kind of feedback you got from the folks, Secretary Perry, Senator Johnson, who went to the inauguration, see what their feedback was. And my understanding, that feedback was positive for President Zelensky.

And you testified earlier that --

MR. GOLDMAN: Sorry to interrupt, but if that's a -- you're nodding, so I just want the record to reflect you’re saying yes.

DR. HILL: Oh, I'm so sorry. Yes. I forgot the first -- yes. That is correct. Yes. I'm sorry.

MR. JORDAN: And then you said earlier that, you know, OMB holds up dollars all the time.

DR. HILL: Uh-huh.

MR. JORDAN: It happened -- in your, you know, extensive experience, it's happened several times, even happened with Ukraine, right?

DR. HILL: That's correct.

MR. JORDAN: Yeah. And then, in the end, it sort of all worked out, the Javelins happened, the security assistance dollars happened, continued to flow. And then, when President Trump and President Zelensky meet, like many people have told us, it seems to me they actually hit it off when they met in New York.

So we've got all this stuff going on, and I get it, and we’ve spent several hours talking about it all. But as I look at it all, in the end, it kind of worked like it normally does. I understand there were different people talking and doing different things, and you talked a lot about Ambassador Sondland and Mayor Giuliani and different things.

But in the end, what needed to get done, everything you have said -- you agreed with the Javelins going there. You agreed with the security assistance happening. You felt, I think, like the rest of the folks that we have spoken to, that if President Zelensky and President Trump get together, they're actually going to get along.

And you felt that when the Senator and the Secretary went there for the inauguration, they liked this guy too.All that kind of worked out. Is that fair to say?

DR. HILL: Well, it depends on what you mean about working out. The President and President Zelensky did, in fact, meet at the U.N. GA. That is correct. The military assistance appears to have been delivered, to the best of my knowledge and also to yours.

But in terms of the overall U.S.-Ukrainian relationship, no, I wouldn't say that this has worked out because we're in the middle of now what is a scandal about Ukraine. So the manner in which we got to this point has been extraordinarily corrosive, the removal of our Ambassador and what we have done, which is laying open what appears to have been an effort in which a number of unsanctioned individuals, including Ukrainian American business people, seem to have been involved in these efforts --

MR. JORDAN: Dr. Hill, why do you think President Zelensky was in favor of a new Ambassador to Ukraine from the United States?

DR. HILL: I only see what I see in the transcript, in which he's talking to the President. He didn't say that he was necessarily in favor. He's just responding to what he has been told in this transcript.

MR. JORDAN: I mean, I can look at this transcript again, but I think he said he favored it 100 percent. He was pretty emphatic about --

DR. HILL: He's responding to what the President said,as far as I can tell here. I can't speak to what President Zelensky is thinking. I really can't.

MR. JORDAN: You think he's simply responding to the President's suggestion? It seems to me, if that was the case, he would say: Okay. I think that would be fine.

He says: No, I agree with you 100 percent. She was for Poroshenko.

DR. HILL: He also says that he agrees 100 percent, actually 1,000 percent, on, you know, Angela Merkel and other European countries not helping Ukraine, which actually isn't true. It is true, as the President has asserted, that they're not helping on the military front, but the Germans and the French and other Europeans are giving an awful lot of technical assistance and funding and money to Europe. We were trying to get them to do more, but it's not true that they're not doing much.

Look, I can't speak to what either of the Presidents were thinking in this moment. I can only read and respond to the transcript.

MR. JORDAN: Well, okay, fine. I mean, we have what President Zelensky said. He obviously wanted a new Ambassador just like President Trump did.

DR. HILL: Well, he doesn't say he wanted a new Ambassador here. He wants his own new Ambassador. President Zelensky also removed Ambassador Chaly because he's newly elected, and Ambassador Chaly used to be President Poroshenko's National Security Advisor and Special Assistant, Special Diplomatic Advisor.

MR. JORDAN: I'm just reading what President Zelensky said. I agree with you 100 percent -- page four, second paragraph, President Zelensky, near the bottom: I agree with you 100 percent. Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the previous President and she was on his side.

DR. HILL: Look, I can't speculate about why President Zelensky was saying this and about what he was thinking about at this particular time. He also doesn't have her name correct.

MR. JORDAN: You don't think --

DR. HILL: And he says: It was great that you were the first one who told me that she was a bad Ambassador.

He said: It was great that you were the first one who told me that she was a bad Ambassador.

MR. JORDAN: I understand. I'm not saying --

DR. HILL: No. But I'm just saying that this seems to suggest something else, so perhaps all of us shouldn't be speculating on what they were basically both thinking or saying.

MR. JORDAN: I'm not speculating. I'm just saying what he said. I'm asking you --

DR. HILL: Well, he says: It was great that you were the first one -- the first one -- who told me that she was a bad Ambassador because I agree with you 100 percent.

That doesn't mean to say that he thinks that she was a bad ambassador. He's responding to what the President has said to him.

MR. JORDAN: So, when he said, "I agree with you 100 percent," he’s not agreeing with the President 100 percent?

DR. HILL: Well, he's agreeing with the President 100 percent if the President has told him that she is a bad Ambassador, as the first one who is telling him.

MR. JORDAN: All I'm --

DR. HILL: I'm just saying to you what I'm reading here as well. And, look, I don't want to start parsing what either the President is saying or President Zelensky --

MR. JORDAN: I didn't posit why he wanted her. I just said what he said. You're the expert on Ukraine, not me.

DR. HILL: Look --

MR. JORDAN: I'm asking you what you think --

DR. HILL: I am saying that he --

MR. JORDAN: -- why did President Zelensky, the guy who ran on corruption, the single biggest issue, that was his campaign, he wins, he gets elected. He wins the parliamentary races, and he says -- he wins overwhelming in his Presidential election, he says he wants a new Ambassador. I'm just asking you --

DR. HILL: You'll actually see here that there's an error in translation here. So, remember, President Zelensky doesn't really speak English. He speaks some English but not a lot of English. I would like to actually know whether this was, you know, fully interpreted or whether he himself was attempting to speak in English for this because you'll actually see it's quite garbled.

So, if you start to actually look at this paragraph here, and I worked as a translator as well, as an interpreter, just to be clear here, and I do speak Ukrainian, although not as well as I speak Russian, and what he's saying here is he has got confused between the Ambassador to the United States from Ukraine, which could, in actual fact, be his Ambassador, the Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States. So he's getting himself confused in this particular point here.

MR. JORDAN: What was her name -- or his name, excuse me?

DR. HILL: That's Ambassador Chaly. But you see, he says here: It'd be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in our country with regard to the Ambassador to the United States from Ukraine.

So that’s already a confusion.

MR. JORDAN: Well, but he didn't say --

DR. HILL: So what I'm saying here is -- he didn't, but he's getting confused.

MR. JORDAN: He said Yovanovitch.

DR. HILL: Yes, but as I say, he's getting confused because he's talking about the Ambassador to the United States from Ukraine.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. Fine.

DR. HILL: So what I'm saying here is, and then he said: It was great that you were the first one who told me -- the first one who told me -- that she was a bad Ambassador because I agree with you 100 percent. And then he says her attitude to me was far from the best as she admired the previous President and she was on his side.

And this is what we understand as being said by Rudy Giuliani. Because I know from working with Ambassador Yovanovitch that she wasn't personally close to Poroshenko.

MR. JORDAN: Dr. Hill, that is fine.

DR. HILL: And let me just tell you this, there's been two instances -- just let me finish -- there's been two instances in which ambassadors have been refused agrement or been refused consideration by the countries because they've been accused of being close to the previous incumbent President.

This happened with our Ambassador to Georgia, and she'd been previously serving in the Embassy in Georgia under Saakashvili, and the current President said that she was close to him and purported to provide information to me and to others, and this wasn't true. Again, as I've said before, anyone who had worked with President Poroshenko --

MR. JORDAN: Doctor, I'm not asking about Georgia. I'm asking about Ukraine.

DR. HILL: No. But I'm pointing out to you that this is a common refrain that we get from other embassies in other countries when they don't necessarily, you know, want to either have an ambassador that we're trying to send to them or that they want to curry favor with many of our officials. They will often refer to things like this.

MR. JORDAN: All right. Thank you.

MR. ZELDIN: Dr. Hill, do you have a relationship with former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland?

DR. HILL: In what way, a relationship?

MR. ZELDIN: Professional.

DR. HILL: A professional relationship, yes, when I was working in the previous capacities as the national intelligence officer. She's a long-term, you know, Foreign Service officer. She'd been the National Security Advisor to Cheney, for example, to Vice President Cheney at that time. I do not have a personal relationship with her beyond the professional relationship.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware of her directing anyone at State to talk to Christopher Steele during her tenure as Assistant Secretary?

DR. HILL: I was aware from the exchanges that she asked Kathy Kavalec to talk to him after we had this discussion already, when I suppose Christopher Steele had asked to talk to her, and she asked Kathy Kavalec to talk to him instead.

MR. ZELDIN: In your opinion, would that be proper?

DR. HILL: I wouldn't have talked to him in that position, but whether it's proper or not, I think, is a judgment for Assistant Secretary Nuland and others.

MR. ZELDIN: This was in the midst of the 2016 election, correct?

DR. HILL: I believe that's the case. I mean, I read about this later, and Kathy Kavalec told me that she'd been instructed to go and talk to him.

MR. ZELDIN: Has anything been stated so far today that you would describe as classified, or would you say everything up to this point is unclassified?

DR. HILL: I don't think that anything that I have said is classified. Or are you referring to just questions that you have asked? I mean, I think that when we've got into -- and this is why, you know, perhaps I've been a little harsher in my responses to the questions about the Politico piece and things about Ukraine because I have a lot of classified information that leads in other directions, and, obviously, I can't share those.

[6:15 p.m.]

MR. ZELDIN: But it's your --

MR. BITAR: Just as a matter of record for the interview, this interview, as we said at the outset, has been conducted at the unclassified level. We have not flagged anything at this moment in time as classified.

DR. HILL: No, and I have confined all my answers to the things that have either been in the public discussion --

MR. BITAR: I just don't want to leave any ambiguity, in light of the question

MR. ZELDIN: That's why I'm asking the question.

So specifically with regards to the first round of questions, you stated something about Venezuela and Russia. Do you recall talking about some type of --

DR. HILL: Yes. I said that the Russians signaled, including publicly through the press and through press articles -- that's the way that they operate -- that they were interested in -- they laid it out in articles, I mean a lot of them in Russian -- but, you know, obviously, your staff and Congressional Research Service can find them for you -- positing that, as the U.S. was so concerned about the Monroe Doctrine and its own backyard, perhaps the U.S. might also be then concerned about developments in Russia's backyard as in Ukraine, making it very obvious that they were trying to set up some kind of let's just say: You stay out of Ukraine or you move out of Ukraine, you change your position on Ukraine, and, you know, we'll rethink where we are with Venezuela.

And I said that I went to Moscow. It wasn't a classified trip because I was going to meet with Russians. And in the course of those discussions, it was also apparent, including with a Russian think tank and other members, that the Russian Government was interested in having a discussion about Venezuela and Ukraine.

MR. ZELDIN: And just for my own knowledge then, so that's something that it's all been publicly reported, everything's unclassified there?

DR. HILL: It's been reported and that the Russians, the Russians themselves made it very clear in unclassified public settings that they were interested at some point in -- and, in fact, it was even reported in the press that I had gone to Russia, by someone that asked a question of our State Department officials in doing a press briefing: Had I gone to Russia at the time to make a trade between Venezuela and Ukraine? It was asked as a question to Christopher Robinson during a press briefing at the State Department.

MR. ZELDIN: Did you state earlier that there was a nexus between Rudy Giuliani associates and Venezuela?

DR. HILL: I was told that by the directors working on the Western Hemisphere. I didn't have a chance to look into this in any way. I was told that the same individuals who had been indicted had been interested at different points in energy investments in Venezuela and that this was quite well-known.

MR. ZELDIN: Have you maintained -- after you left the U.S. Government, have you been in contact with any Ukrainian Government officials?

DR. HILL: I have not.

MR. ZELDIN: Have you had contact with any U.S. Government officials sharing any information with you about when Ukraine became aware of a hold on aid?

DR. HILL: I have not. I've only read about it in the paper.

MR. ZELDIN: So the sole source of information that you have with regards to the hold on aid to Ukraine has been based on press reports?

DR. HILL: No. Well, you said about Ukrainian officials, when they knew about when the aid had been put on hold.

MR. ZELDIN: With regard to Ukrainian officials, solely through press reports?

DR. HILL: I only know about that from press reports. When I left, it had just been announced internally, and I was not aware at that point whether the Ukrainians knew about that. So I left on July 19th.

MR. ZELDIN: And you were snorkeling on July 25th?

DR. HILL: I was snorkeling quite a bit in that timeframe, yeah.

MR. ZELDIN: How much time do we have left?

MR. HECK: Three minutes.

MR. ZELDIN: We yield back.

MR. HECK: Turn now to the gentleman from California, Mr. Rouda, who has a couple of questions.

MR. ROUDA: Thank you very much.

Dr. Hill, thank you for a long day of testimony.

MR. GOLDMAN: Mr. Rouda, can you use the microphone?

MR. ROUDA: Just a couple quick questions. You talked a little bit about the aid that was approved in a bipartisan fashion that it is typical for the agencies and departments involved to slow down and move forward, step back as the process goes through for them to get to their final approvals.

If I understood your testimony correctly, it did appear that all approvals had been made at the time that this aid was delayed and that that would be characterized as unusual.

DR. HILL: That is correct.

MR. ROUDA: And equally unusual that the communicationfrom Mulvaney to the respective departments, that there was no specific reason for it. Would you characterize that as unusual as well?

DR. HILL: That is correct.

MR. ROUDA: Thank you. And then I just want to get a little bit of better understanding on the voice memorandum -- the call memorandum, excuse me. And if I understand correctly from your testimony, we have individuals who are repeating exactly what the President of the United States has said as well as what the President of Ukraine has said that's going into voice analytics, and that that is more than one person, is that correct, that's doing that activity?

DR. HILL: I think there may be more than one person at times.

MR. ROUDA: So do we know in this --

DR. HILL: I know -- I personally myself know of one person who usually does this, but there could be two at the same time, particularly if it's, you know, kind of a long call or, you know, maybe one person does one person, one person does another.

MR. ROUDA: So, in this situation, we don't know as we sit here right now whether there was one or more people who --

DR. HILL: I do not know.

MR. ROUDA: But, regardless, it's being dictated into the voice recognition, and then there's a process to go back and check against people's notes to make sure that the memorandum is as close as possible to what they believe they heard during that call?

DR. HILL: That's right.

MR. ROUDA: And then, once that's completed, various individuals, including members of the White House staff, have the ability to review that memorandum as well and make any additional edits?

DR. HILL: Say again. Members of the --

MR. ROUDA: Members of the White House staff would have the ability to look at that call summary?

DR. HILL: Only the Executive Secretariat would.

MR. ROUDA: Okay, the Executive --

DR. HILL: But usually for punctuation or, you know, kind of style punctuation-related issues.

MR. ROUDA: And is it possible that the memorandum that was circulated could have had redactions from it?

DR. HILL: It's possible, but it doesn't necessarily indicate this in looking at this. This is not inconsistent with other transcripts that I've worked on.

MR. ROUDA: Thank you, Chairman. I yield back.

MR. HECK: Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Mr. Noble will take it.

BY MR. NOBLE:

Q  So I'd like to go back and ask about some more of the meetings on your calendar.

A  Sure.

Q  Actually, this one is not on your calendar, but the day before the meeting on the 5th that we were talking about, there was a dinner or some kind of celebration hosted by Ambassador Sondland in Brussels to celebrate independence 1 month early. Were you aware of that?

A  I was. Yeah, that was in June. And this was the dinner that he had invited President Zelensky to attend.

Q  Right. Do you know why he invited President Zelensky?

A  Yes. Basically, this was in the course of, you know, the discussions that it would be very difficult for us to necessarily get a high-level meeting scheduled with President Zelensky, you know, immediately after his election.

We'd already talked at great length about, you know, kind of all the back-and-forth about what we were going to do about trying to have a Presidential meeting or a meeting with the Vice President.

And the Germans and the French and others were already inviting President Zelensky to visit. And Ambassador Sondland, what was traditionally -- well, I guess the United States Embassy always traditionally has a July Fourth party. For whatever reason, Ambassador Sondland was going to have his a month early.

You know, it was within the respectable period after the election of President Zelensky. We all wanted to have atouch of some description at a high level with him, something that would, you know, show that the United States was paying, you know, attention to him. And Gordon Sondland came up with that idea and, in fact, we all supported it.

Q  Who else attended the dinner, do you know, on the U.S. side?

A  I never saw a full invitation list. I mean, I read that Jay Leno was there, which was quite interesting and I guess makes sense. He's one comedian, you know, and another. And I do know that Jared Kushner was there. There was even a discussion about that because he was going to Europe for other business. And it was discussed that this would be a signaling, you know, on the part of the White House that, you know, Zelensky was being treated seriously by having a member of the President's family and also another senior White House official attending that dinner. So we did not see this as untoward in any way.

Q  Did you get a readout from the meeting?

A  I did not get a readout. I mean, this was being billed more as something social, and it was to introduce Zelensky to the European Diplomatic Corps and other European heads of state. And I believe that he -- President Zelensky had some other meetings around that with European officials.

Q  Okay. On page 42, on June 13, you had a meeting with Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Bolton.

A  Yes.

Q  Do you recall what that meeting was about on the13th?

A  Yes. That meeting was, again, looking forward to where we were going to try to go with Ukrainian policy, whether there was going to be any hope of having the Russians revisit some kind of process again with Ambassador Volker.

I mean, at this point, he's been waiting for some response from Sokov as to whether he's intending to meet with him again and whether we should anticipate the Russians doing anything before the Rada, the parliamentary elections. And he was relating to Ambassador Bolton, you know, all of his efforts to talk to the Europeans and to others at that time.

Q  Did you recall that that, on June 13th, that was the same day that President Trump told George Stephanopoulos in an interview that he'd be willing to accept dirt from a foreign government on a political opponent?

A  I did not make that connection. No, I did not recall that.

Q  So you didn't discuss that with Ambassador Volker --

A  No.

Q  -- and Ambassador Bolton?

Did you ever discuss that statement by the President with Ambassador Bolton?

A  I did not, no.

Q  Did that raise any concerns for you when you heard the President say that?

A  I mean, it raised general concerns about, you know, what does that mean? I mean, obviously, you know, I'm sure, based on my responses to some of these questions, you can be sure I don't approve of that kind of thing because, again, this is where we've all got ourselves into a predicament.

Q  And did you discuss that concern with anyone else at the NSC?

A  I did not.

Q  On the next page, on the 17th, you met with General Kellogg about Ukraine.

A  Yes.

Q  Do you recall what that meeting was about?

A  Yes. This was, again, you know, following up with him on my previous concerns and also trying to check to see if there was any more chance that perhaps the Vice President might consider, you know, going to Ukraine at some point in the summer.

Q  And the next day you met with Ambassador Sondland?

A  That is correct. That was the day that I was told by Ambassador Sondland that he was in charge of Ukraine.

Q  Okay. We'vegone over that. Skipping forward to the 3rd of July, it's on page 45, you had a meeting with Michael Ellis and John Eisenberg, and it looks like you handwrote this transition and question mark?

A  Yes, because I think that was my first initial transition meeting, and I just wanted to, you know, kind of double-check for myself because, you know, this is already in the month that I'm leaving, and there was an awful lot of things I had to make sure that I was complying with. I was also asking them,were there any of the issues that we'd all worked on together that I should specifically think about handing off to others, other individuals.

Q  This was a week before the meeting on July 10th that we talked about earlier where Sondland blurted out about pushing --

A  That is correct. And that hadn't -- actually hadn't been fully scheduled at that particular time. We were working on having Oleksandr Danylyuk and Andrey Yermak come, but we didn't at that moment actually know that Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Volker were going to participate as well.

And in actual fact, they weren't on the initial list to participate because I'll just say it was actually highly unusual for both of them to be at a meeting with a senior Ukrainian official that was with Ambassador Bolton. I mean, the normal thing would have been to have Ambassador Volker have his own meetings with them at State Department, but Ambassador Sondland was pretty insistent on getting into the meeting along with Ambassador Volker.

Q  Was he admitted to the meeting over the objection of --

A  And then that's actually when we also determined that Secretary Perry should be there as well, because obviously we were having Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Sondland, and Secretary Perry was having -- you know, basically, was really in the process of initiating work on the Ukrainian energy sector. Then, if we were going to have the two of them, we should then have Secretary Perry as well and cover the whole range of issues. It also seemed, to be frank, to be an opportunity for coordination that we obviously sorely needed at that point.

Q  Fair enough. The May 20th inauguration, the U.S. delegation, its composition, was there ever any debate about whether or not Ambassador Sondland should attend the inauguration?

A  Yes. He wasn't on our initial list.

Q  Okay. How did he --

A  We were trying to determine -- and the Chief of Staff's Office kept putting him back on. And Ambassador Sondland, in any case, said he was going.

Q  Mick Mulvaney's office kept putting him back on?

AThat's right.

Q  So did Ambassador Bolton essentially get overruled?

A  Essentially. I mean, that actually is not uncommon for us to put forward a list and then others to put forward lists. The State Department often puts lists forward of people that they want to be attending as well. And Ambassador Sondland also got the State Department, Lisa Kenna, who is the Executive Secretary at the State Department, to make it clear that he should attend.

Q  What do you mean, he got Lisa Kenna to make it clear that he should attend?

A  He contacted me when he wasn't on the list that Ambassador Bolton had put forward and said he wasn't on the list and that he would be contacting Lisa Kenna to write to the NSC to make sure that he was on the list. And he wanted to know why he wasn't on the list. And I related to him that the list had been drawn up according to people who were responsible for, you know, Ukrainian affairs.

This is before -- remember, this is May 20th, before he's announced to me that he's in charge of Ukraine on June 18th -- and that there was, you know, kind of no reason to see at that point why he should be going to the Presidential inauguration of the Ukrainian President as Ambassador to EU. It was just simply -- as simple as that.

And he said that he had been instructed by the State Department and that he would have Ulrich Brechbuhl, you know,if necessary, call, but he was going to have Lisa Kenna send a note to the Executive Secretariat.

Q  Of the National Security Council?

A  Of the National Security Council.

Q  Do you know whether she sent that note?

A  I believe she did. We'd also invited quite a lot of people. I think, you know, Senator Portman as well as Senator Johnson and a range of other people. But the scheduling was so tight that very few people were able to come.

Q  Was Sondland, Ambassador Sondland originally on the list of attendees for the July 10th meeting?

A  No. Initially -- I mean, this is a meeting that was requested with Ambassador Bolton, and they asked if they could attend, Ambassador Sondland and Kurt Volker. Then we decided to -- that we should also have Secretary Perry come.

Q  Who did they ask to attend, Ambassador Bolton? Whose permission did they have to get?

A  They went through Ambassador Bolton's office. And we were also then asked to push forward if they wanted to attend. So we had some back-and-forth with Ambassador Bolton about this. Because, again, in the spirit of coordination at this particular juncture, it seemed like actually a good thing to do.

Q  Okay. We may have talked about this one, so

A  Yes, because I think that was my first initial transition meeting, and I just wanted to, you know, kind of double-check for myself because, you know, this is already in the month that I'm leaving, and there was an awful lot of things I had to make sure that I was complying with. I was also asking them,were there any of the issues that we'd all worked on together that I should specifically think about handing off to others, other individuals.

Q  This was a week before the meeting on July 10th that we talked about earlier where Sondland blurted out about pushing --

A  That is correct. And that hadn't -- actually hadn't been fully scheduled at that particular time. We were working on having Oleksandr Danylyuk and Andrey Yermak come, but we didn't at that moment actually know that Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Volker were going to participate as well.

And in actual fact, they weren't on the initial list to participate because I'll just say it was actually highly unusual for both of them to be at a meeting with a senior Ukrainian official that was with Ambassador Bolton. I mean, the normal thing would have been to have Ambassador Volker have his own meetings with them at State Department, but Ambassador Sondland was pretty insistent on getting into the meeting along with Ambassador Volker.

Q  Was he admitted to the meeting over the objection of --

A  And then that's actually when we also determined that Secretary Perry should be there as well, because obviously we were having Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Sondland, and Secretary Perry was having -- you know, basically, was really in the process of initiating work on the Ukrainian energy sector. Then, if we were going to have the two of them, we should then have Secretary Perry as well and cover the whole range of issues. It also seemed, to be frank, to be an opportunity for coordination that we obviously sorely needed at that point.

Q  Fair enough. The May 20th inauguration, the U.S. delegation, its composition, was there ever any debate about whether or not Ambassador Sondland should attend the inauguration?

A  Yes. He wasn't on our initial list.

Q  Okay. How did he --

A  We were trying to determine -- and the Chief of Staff's Office kept putting him back on. And Ambassador Sondland, in any case, said he was going.

Q  Mick Mulvaney's office kept putting him back on?

A  That's right.

Q  So did Ambassador Bolton essentially get overruled?

A  Essentially. I mean, that actually is not uncommon for us to put forward a list and then others to put forward lists. The State Department often puts lists forward of people that they want to be attending as well. And Ambassador Sondland also got the State Department, Lisa Kenna, who is the Executive Secretary at the State Department, to make it clear that he should attend.

Q  What do you mean, he got Lisa Kenna to make it clear that he should attend?

A  He contacted me when he wasn't on the list that Ambassador Bolton had put forward and said he wasn't on the list and that he would be contacting Lisa Kenna to write to the NSC to make sure that he was on the list. And he wanted to know why he wasn't on the list. And I related to him that the list had been drawn up according to people who were responsible for, you know, Ukrainian affairs.

This is before -- remember, this is May 20th, before he's announced to me that he's in charge of Ukraine on June 18th -- and that there was, you know, kind of no reason to see at that point why he should be going to the Presidential inauguration of the Ukrainian President as Ambassador to EU. It was just simply -- as simple as that.

And he said that he had been instructed by the State Department and that he would have Ulrich Brechbuhl, you know,if necessary, call, but he was going to have Lisa Kenna send a note to the Executive Secretariat.

Q  Of the National Security Council?

A  Of the National Security Council.

Q  Do you know whether she sent that note?

A  I believe she did. We'd also invited quite a lot of people. I think, you know, Senator Portman as well as Senator Johnson and a range of other people. But the scheduling was so tight that very few people were able to come.

Q  Was Sondland, Ambassador Sondland originally on the list of attendees for the July 10th meeting?

A  No. Initially -- I mean, this is a meeting that was requested with Ambassador Bolton, and they asked if they could attend, Ambassador Sondland and Kurt Volker. Then we decided to -- that we should also have Secretary Perry come.

Q  Who did they ask to attend, Ambassador Bolton?Whose permission did they have to get?

A  They went through Ambassador Bolton's office. And we were also then asked to push forward if they wanted to attend. So we had some back-and-forth with Ambassador Bolton about this. Because, again, in the spirit of coordination at this particular juncture, it seemed like actually a good thing to do.

Q  Okay. We may have talked about this one, so forgive me, but on page 46, there was a meeting with George Kent --

A  Yes.

Q  -- on Monday, July 8th. What was that about?

A  That was basically in the course of my -- you know, I mentioned before I was trying to do handover meetings. And I wanted to fill in DAS Kent about the -- Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent -- about the fact that we were working very closely with Secretary Perry on trying to promote energy-related issues. And given his portfolio, I asked him if he would take the lead in making sure that there was full coordination with Secretary Perry on the energy issues.

Q  Okay. On page 47, we may have talked about this one as well, July 19th, your meeting with Ambassador Taylor --

A  Yes.

Q  -- about Ukraine. Was that another -- that was a transition meeting?

A  It was a secure phone call with him.

Q  Okay.

A  He wasn't at this point in -- he was actually in Kyiv. This was actually a secure phone call.

Q  And is this the conversation you had where you went through the laundry list of concerns with him?

A  That is correct.

Q  Okay.

A  And this was because, you know, obviously, the previous week we had, you know, had this -- these episodes, and I hadn't been able to talk to him since. I was trying to schedule a call with him.

And as you can see, I've also got Phil Reeker. We had lunch and I basically was trying to hand off. It wasn't just, again, about Ukraine in his case. All these issues that I was worried were loose threads that needed to be wrapped up, and I was worried there wouldn't be coordination on.

Q  Got it.

A  And then, as you can see here, Mr. Danylyuk called me as well, because he was still worried about not having reached a conclusion on who he should engage with to work on the National Security Council reform in Ukraine. And I suggested to him again that he work with Deputy Assistant Secretary Taylor -- Kent and also with Ambassador Taylor, because that would be appropriate, because normally the State Department carries out this kind of technical assistance or advisory role. And we'd already done this, of course, with the Ukrainian military, with General Abizaid and also with Keith Dayton.

Q  Did Danylyuk raise anything about the -- any concern about setting up a meeting between President Zelenskyand President Trump?

A  He kept expressing concern that there was no sign of the meeting. And I assured him that Ambassador Bolton was treating it seriously and that we would do it, you know, when it was appropriate in terms of the schedule. I also stressed again that, at this juncture, we needed to wait for -- you know, as I've said to our colleagues, that we needed to wait for the Rada elections and then to see about the formation of the government.

Q  Which were scheduled for the following week at that point?

A  The following week, correct.

Q  Okay. And then, on July 23rd, the next page, there's a Ukraine PCC meeting?

A  Yes.

Q  I take it you did not attend that meeting?

A  I did not. And I actually didn't attend the meeting that’s also on the calendar for the 18th, because I’d already handed over to Tim Morrison. The last series of meetings that I went to in my formal capacity were on the 15th, the redacted meetings.

And after that, we'd agreed with Ambassador Bolton and Charlie Kupperman that, you know, because of the short nature of the -- that we should hand over to Tim. But Tim had been traveling in this period. He did return on the Thursday, you know. And then the point was to have this meeting on the Tuesday, which was actually supposed to be where they started to discuss what was going on with the hold on the military assistance.

Q  Did Mr. Morrison, do you know, did he attend that meeting on the 18th, or was he still traveling?

A  I would have to check. He might have -- I remember he came back I think on the Thursday, but he might have missed the meeting. But this, looking at this, you know, often when it says Vindman, this is a meeting that is being held at the director level, which could have been, you know, kind of preparing for the larger meeting on the Tuesday, which Tim Morrison in that new role would have been --

Q  Would have attended?

A  That's right.

Q  Okay. That's it on the calendar. Thank you.

MR. GOLDMAN: Mr. Jordan, with your consent, would you mind if I took over this round, even though ordinarily we understand the rules are that counsel, just since we don't have a time limit?

MR. JORDAN: Are you guys planning on using all 45?

MR. GOLDMAN: I don't know.

MR. JORDAN: Go ahead.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Briefly, you mentioned earlier Dmytro Firtash. I don't want to get into too much detail about him. But I'm curious whether you know, whether you learned at any point whether Parnas and Fruman had any association with Firtash?

A  I did not learn that, no.

Q  And do you know whether Rudy Giuliani had any connection to Firtash?

A  I also do not know that.

Q  Do you know who represents Firtash in his extradition to the United States?

A  I actually didn't know that either. Who was it? Do we know that?

Q  I mean, the public reporting right now is that it's Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing.

A  I see. No, I don't know either of those names. I mean, all of my knowledge of Firtash comes from my time when I was at the DNI and then, you know, subsequently, to some degree, when I was in the think tank world because, of course, his role in RosUkrEnergo and the, you know, various middleman dealings between the Russian and Ukrainian energy sectors was very well-known. But he didn't really come onto the radar screen very much in my time in the administration.

Q  Are you familiar -- I'm going to switch gears now to Naftogaz again. Are you familiar with the public reporting that Secretary Perry tried to convince Naftogaz to change members of their board?

A  I was not familiar in the way that it's been publicly reported. I know that, you know, we were focusing on Naftogaz. Secretary Perry hadn't opposed Amos Hochstein being on the board initially, but there was definitely a discussion about how was Naftogaz going to be moving forward into the future. And part of that would have required probably getting, you know, kind of a pretty robust oversight board. And there were concerns expressed to me by the Naftogaz executives when they came to visit that they were under a lot of pressure at that particular point.

Q  Pressure from whom?

A  They did mention to me that there was pressure coming from Ukrainian Americans. They didn't get into any details because they clearly felt uncomfortable about this. But one of the women on the board who actually at that point was potentially slated to be Deputy Foreign Minister told me that it was coming from these Ukrainian Americans who were dealing with Giuliani.

Q  Fruman and Parnas?

A  That’s exactly the case, yes.

Q  Did you ever become aware of a memo or an open letter written by Dale Perry?

A  No. I don't know who that is.

Q  Did you ever come to learn whether there was a meeting in March of this year in Houston between an executive on Naftogaz, with Naftogaz, Andrey Favorov, and Parnas and Fruman?

A  I did not know, but this could be what they were referring to, because it's after that time when they came in to see me. And this is around the time when Amos Hochstein came in and said the Naftogaz people being on the board are coming under an awful lot of pressure.

Q  So just one last little bit on this. What was the rationale, that they would need a stronger board, you said, or -- I don't want to -- I don't know that that was your exact terminology, but --

A  Well, I mean, that was part of the discussion about how Naftogaz was going to become self-sufficient. They had debt issues. This is, you know, kind of a company that really needed an overhaul, and although the people who had been involved there had, you know, been trying to be very professional -- this is, you know, a far cry from, you know, some of the days of Russian and Ukrainian energy interactions -- there’s obviously still a lot of work to be done.

I also just want to reiterate here that, as the National Security Council, you know, we weren't having a major role in a lot of these issues. I mean, we were really trying at that point, you know, at the direction of Ambassador Bolton and others, beginning back at the beginning of the administration, to play more of a coordinating role. And in terms of the energy sector reform, this was really Department of Energy in conjunction with the State Department.

So, when people were approaching me with these concerns, I was referring them back at all times. Hence, why I was having regular consultations with Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent and also to then, now Charge Ambassador Taylor in Kyiv, because that would be the appropriate place for them to follow up. There wasn't any expectation, even on the National Security Council reform, that we would play some kind of meaningful role in that.

MR. HECK: Dr. Hill, I have to step out. I'm going to make every effort to return, but in the event that I am not able to return before you conclude, which I think everybody is aspiring to at this point, it is important to me that I express my personal appreciation for your presence here today.

Indeed, I would say that, in the years that I've been in the Congress, I've never seen anybody testify for 9 straight hours and have every bit as much energy and recall in the ninth hour as they did in the first hour. And I'm very, very grateful to you for your presence today and for your considerable public service.

DR. HILL: Thank you, sir. Thank you.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Did you understand how the Naftogaz executives could feel pressure from two businessmen, Parnas and Fruman, in such a meaningful way?

A  Well, I think there were lots of efforts in the Ukrainian energy sector, as in the Russian energy sector at many times, to, you know, move away from, you know, the sort of state supervision, to hive off parts of different companies.

In my previous guise in the think tank world, I've written a lot of articles and publications on the energy sector. And when I was at the DNI, I was involved very heavily in analysis of the energy sector in Ukraine and in Russia and elsewhere. This was, you know, an area, obviously, there's a lot of money to be made.

And, you know, as you know, in the Russian energy sector, a lot of the people who are in charge of that sector are very close to President Putin. He himself has taken a personal interest in this.

And RosUkrEnergo, Mr. Firtash and others, all of the oligarchs involved in these energy sectors, have been close one way or another to the Kremlin, because, in many respects, the Ukrainian energy sector is dependent on Russian energy, both as a transit route to the rest of Europe and also because an awful lot of the energy exploitation was taking place in areas close to Russia, and at different points, Russians were invested in energy sector development.

And, of course, after the annexation of Crimea, a number of potentially promising Ukrainian gas and oil fields were actually annexed by the Russians as well.

So, you know, this is a kind of fairly complicated procedure, and there's a lot of opportunity for a number of individuals, you know, kind of be they Ukrainian American businesspeople or people who have been -- you know, Western businesspeople who have been involved in the energy sector, to get involved in investments there.

I also came across, I just have to say, people who were not Ukrainian American but Americans who I was also wondering what they were up to, in terms of their own interest in the energy sector.

Q  Right. But that doesn't necessarily answer the question as to how two businessmen from Florida could make the Naftogaz executives feel significant pressure.

A  Their connections. The connections that they were either imputing or purporting in the context of these meetings.

Q  The connections to whom?

A  To Rudy Giuliani, and through that by, you know, usurpation, I presume, of some kind of Presidential authority, or purporting to be doing this on the kind of behalf of, in some way, of Rudy Giuliani.

Q  Was it not the case that Naftogaz had significantly reduced its dependence on Russia?

A  It had, but there's still, you know, kind of a way to go. And they were also having financial problems at this particular juncture, and they were hoping that the United States and other international entities would help them with funds that they needed, both for restructuring but also for purchases of gas, you know, for the winter.

Q  So do you believe that two oil and gas executives or finance executives from Texas was the solution to revamping the board?

A  I am not quite sure who you're talking about there again.

Q  I'm sorry. That was the public reporting.

A  Oh, I see.

Q  That Secretary Perry was advocating for --

A  I wasn't familiar at all with who Secretary Perry and others might be advocating. I'm just relating that the Naftogaz executives told me that they felt under pressure. And, again, I referred them to the State Department and to you know, obviously, our colleagues at Department of Energy. And I did talk to Ambassador Taylor, Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent, and also Phil Reeker about this.

Q  Because it wouldn't necessarily be your area of focus?

A  Correct.

Q  Understood. I have a few final questions a little bit later, but I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Raskin to see if he has any questions.

MR. RASKIN: Thank you very much, Dr. Hill. Thank you for your remarkable service to our country. And speaking as one Member, I can say I'm extremely proud of you, especially because you're my constituent. And thank you for the way you've conducted yourself through this very difficult process as well.

One of the reasons that you've taken umbrage at being led down a path which looks like the conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine and not Russia that interfered in our election in 2016 is that you said that it undermines our capacity to respond to 2020 properly, to understand what's happening or what's about to happen in 2020.

And I wonder if you would expound upon that a little bit. What is about to happen, best you can tell, in terms of Russian interference in our current Presidential election?

DR. HILL: I think, as we have gone on over the past, you know, 2 and a half years, and since the whole proceedings and the Mueller report, you know, in terms of press reporting and more in-depth investigations by social media, we realize, you know, how sophisticated and how extensive the Russian interference has been.

But the Russians, you know, can't basically exploit cleavages if there are not cleavages. The Russian can't exploit corruption if there's not corruption. They can't exploit alternative narratives if those alternative narratives are not out there and getting credence. What the Russians do is they exploit things that already exist.

And if you look at actually how President Putin himself has responded to what he fears would be our, or other interference in his elections, you can see, you know, what he has done. He's made it impossible to have foreign money into his elections. He’s cut down NGOs and other foreign entities, you know, from everything from Transparency International to IRI and NDI and other entities.

He has basically designated anyone with any kind of foreign experience as a fifth column and as a traitor to the country. He has gone after people like Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza, both people who you here as Members of Congress know -- Vladimir Kara-Murza has been here and met with congressional staff -- as stooges of the West and as people who are being played.

And, also, he has, you know, created a good degree of plausible deniability by sending out patriotic hackers to -- from, you know, for example, Mr. Prigozhin, his, you know, erstwhile cook or kind of catering oligarch, who has been paying for and sponsoring the IRA, the Internet Research Agency, that has been basically doing the same kind of research on all of our campaigns and all of our individuals, to dig up dirt and to, in fact, exploit any weakness in our system and to throw back all kinds of information on our candidates.

So the more that we denigrate ourselves, the more that we end up in across-the-aisle screaming matches, the more dirt that we put out on our own political candidates in the course of our own race, the more that the Russians will use that to amplify this.

And I think it's been very well documented right now how they've tried to exploit race. They've tried to exploit religious differences. And if you look very carefully at what Putin does, he never does anything like this in his own establishment. Putin presents himself as the President to everybody. He never singles anybody out on the basis of their race or their religion or their ethnic background. He lets other people do that, and he plays with it, but he has basically harnessed -- he's the first populist President, and he has harnessed that populism very effectively.

And I made a mistake when I did my research on Putin in the book that I wrote, because I actually wrote that he doesn't really fully understand our system and how it operates. I meant that from a positive point of view. But my mistake was in not fully understanding that he understands all the negative aspects of how our system works, and he's playing that right back at us.

MR. RASKIN: He understands the weaknesses?

DR. HILL: Correct. And the more divisive our politics are, the more that he can pick partisan differences apart and encourage people to go out and exploit that, the more vulnerable that we are.

MR. RASKIN: So partisan rancor and division is one of the weaknesses he's exploited, but you also said that corruption is our Achilles' heel. And I don’t know whether you were thinking specifically about Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman, but --

DR. HILL: I was.

MR. RASKIN: You were -- will you explain --

DR. HILL: Because the failure of imagination for myself, again, in writing this book -- and I've forced Lee to buy a copy now -- is if you read the epilogue and, you know, the final, you know, chapter -- and I'd be happy to send everybody, you know, this -- is basically Putin was a case officer in the KGB. He has said many times that his specialty is working with people, which means manipulating people, blackmailing people, extorting people. He looks at people's vulnerabilities.

And this is why I was concerned about the Steele report because that is a vulnerability. Christopher Steele going out and looking for information. He's obviously out there soliciting information. What a great opportunity to, basically, you know, present him with information that he's looking for that can be couched some truth and some disinformation.

So he’s looking out there for every opening that he can find, basically, and somebody's vulnerability to turn that against them. That's exactly what a case officer does. They get a weakness, and they blackmail their assets. And Putin will target world leaders and other officials like this. He tries to target everybody.

So a story from when I was working on the book, I was also looking for information for the book to write about Putin. And my phone was hacked repeatedly, and the Brookings system was hacked repeatedly. And at one point, it was clearly obvious that someone had exfiltrated out my draft chapters. I mean, you know, they were in draft form.

And then, mysteriously, after this I started to get emails from people who purported to have met me at different points in my career, people I kind of vaguely remember. I'd look online, and there would be these, you know, Linkedln pages or there might be, you know, something I could find out some information for them. And they'd start offering me information, you know, that somehow purported to, strangely enough, some of the chapters that I was actually working on. And when I would go to meetings in Russia, people would basically, you know -- so that I was being played, or they were attempting to play me as well. And I've seen this time and time again.

So the more that people are looking for business opportunities, the more that they're doing something that is illegal or certainly shady and nefarious, the more that Putin can step forward and the people around him to exploit this.

And you can see this time and time again in every one of the former Soviet republics and really across Europe as well. They've given money to political parties, to all kinds of political operatives, or sometimes they've just simply given access to people.

MR. RASKIN: The firing or the recall of Ambassador Yovanovitch followed upon a sequence of events that looks to me very much like a political hit and propaganda, that there was a campaign out to get her. Please give me your sense of if I'm right about that. And have you ever seen an Ambassador removed in similar circumstances before in your career?

DR. HILL: Well, that's what I said, that I believe as well that that was also a political hit on her. And I mentioned in reference to the question about do I know Kathy Kavalec that I believe that there was a hit done on her as well by the Albanian Democrats, who picked up on information, including the fact that she'd been mentioned in these exchanges with Bruce Ohr and Toria Nuland on Chris Steele, and used that to denounce her and to basically force the State Department to pull back her name. She was already in Albanian language training, which mustn't have been a lot of fun, I can imagine, but she was already well progressed on this. And she's now going out to have some role in the OSCE.

And there was also something similar done to our Ambassador-designate, Bridget Brink, to Georgia by the Georgians, also, you know, purporting to create a dossier and material.

And I was also -- Connie Mack, not the Congressman but his son, went to Vice President Pence's staff and asked for me being removed, providing as an exhibit the InfoWars and all the other information, saying that I was a Soros mole in the White House.

MR. RASKIN: In answer to a kind of all's well that ends well suggestion about this situation, you said, in fact, the U.S.-Ukraine relationship is now covered in scandal.

I wonder to what extent is the Ukrainian Government still looking to see how it should respond to the request for political dirt on the Bidens. Is that story over, or are they still waiting to see what happens in the United States now?

DR. HILL: I'm sure they are still waiting to see how what happens. But I'm sure that they also want to find out for themselves if there's any, you know, kind of thing there that they should be scared about or concerned about in any way. Not scared, let's just say concerned about.

And I was struck by the fact that their prosecutor announced that they were, you know, reviewing all of this again. And I think if I were President Zelensky and his new team, having been unfamiliar in actual fact with what was going on before -- remember, President Zelensky was engaged in making, you know, programs and playing a President on television. He wouldn't necessarily be familiar with all of this as well. So it's not actually, you know, completely ridiculous that he would actually be asking to have some investigations for his own purposes to see, you know, quite what has transpired here.

MR. RASKIN: Finally, the inspector general of the Department of State gave us a package, essentially, of propaganda materials and conspiracy theory, which I think Rudy Giuliani took credit for later. You've emphasized a lot the role that propaganda has played in attacking certain people and advancing this agenda in Ukraine, and I just wonder if you would expound generally on this.

Do you think we're in a period where political propaganda is playing a very seriously role in undermining the legitimacy of government, undermining the legitimacy of public officials, and what are your thoughts about what needs to be done about that?

DR. HILL: Well, I do. Look, I mean the issue -- I mean, this is, you know, obviously a big debate that we're having nationally about campaign finance and about the role of political action committees.

But what President Putin and others have seen -- and this gets back, you know, to be fair to you and your kind of question here about, you know, individual efforts by Ukrainian Americans or anybody to, you know, kind of get into campaigns, is they see an opportunity through the existence of these kinds of entities to play out something similar themselves.

I've often described Vladimir Putin as heading up a Super PAC, but he's not an American citizen. It's not part of a legitimate campaign, and it's not part of our democracy. But what he's doing is using exactly the same tactics and using, in fact, the campaign research that we all produce as part of our, you know, political efforts, to turn it right back at us. So that is, again, exactly the kind of actions that people like Putin take.

So the only way that we can keep the Russians out of our politics is to clean up our own act.

MR. RASKIN: Ma'am, we don't allow our own government to spend money on our politics. Why should we allow other people's governments to spend money on our politics?

DR. HILL: That’s exactly right. That's the kind of question, that's why I was getting so testy. You know, and I apologize again for getting a bit testy. I've got a bit of a headache now. You know, kind of a long day here.

But that's the kind of point that I am trying to get across here, that, you know, these are, you know, as you rightly point out, foreign governments, be they Ukrainian or Russian or others. The scale of what the Russians have done, they've also opened it up for the Chinese. And when President Pence said that the Chinese make the Russians look like junior varsity and he got pooh-poohed somewhat, you know, out in the press on that, he was absolutely right.

The biggest thing that I was most disturbed about in the course of my work is really the scale of Chinese efforts. The Chinese have a lot of money. They've infiltrated all of our universities. They've infiltrated a lot of our companies. And we can't get too carried away and, you know, start with a mass hysteria about China. But I was completely shocked, frankly, when former Senator Lieberman was basically signed up to represent a Chinese company at this particular juncture.

We should all be extraordinarily careful about our former senior officials and others going on to foreign companies of this nature. It's one thing to go and work with American companies or allied companies, the Netherlands and Norway, Sweden, you know, the United Kingdom, but it's another entirely when we know that a country has some adversarial intent towards us, and also from anyone who has had a security clearance to go into lobbying efforts.

And I was deeply disturbed to find out that my resume could be put in a filing of a FARA report by Connie Mack and could be used as an exhibit to try to create a case against me to ask the Vice President and his staff to have me fired for being a Soros mole in the White House. I mean, they laughed him out of a hearing and, you know, basically didn't listen to this, but this was, unfortunately, the kind of actions that were taken against Masha Yovanovitch. And if you also see with Kathy Kavalec, the Albanian Democratic Party, where they took on an advocacy group and put out her information, also in a FARA.

So we have permitted open season on our diplomats, and it could happen to anybody. It doesn't matter whether they're a noncareer official. It happened, rather disturbingly to me, to rather a lot of women, but it can happen to any political person as well. Any one of us here could be subject to this kind of claims and these kinds of attacks, any single person who gets crosswise with any of these individuals or any of these countries, if they think that any of us are in the way. And I've been extraordinarily concerned about this.

And, again, that's the only reason that, you know -- again, Mr. Castor, I don't mean to jump down your throat, but I'm really worried about this. And, you know, one of the reasons that I actually decided that I wanted to also come out of the administration during the campaign was to be able to speak about this publicly.

Now, in the case of right now, I think that, you know, what you're all doing here -- I know that there is debate about this -- is actually very important to get to the bottom of what has really been happening. If nothing else, we should all agree that what happened to Ambassador Yovanovitch is unacceptable, and we should not be letting this happen to our public servants across the board because it could happen to congressional staff. It could happen to absolutely everybody.

And I will, you know, try to, as I said, keep my head down and, you know, try to keep out of the public spotlight while this process is underway because I want to see that it's done in as nonpartisan and as serious a way as possible, but I eventually want to be able to speak out against this kind of activity.

I'm not a Russia hawk. What I am is a critic of the way that this government, led by a KGB former case officer who specializes in manipulating people's vulnerabilities and exploiting corruption -- it's what Putin did in the 1970s, when he joined the KGB in Leningrad and St. Petersburg. They went after American businessmen and set up sting operations. He's been targeting the business community.

I firmly believe he was also targeting President Trump, and he was targeting all of the other campaigns as well. And I think that that was the mistake when the 2016 investigations were launched, not to take it from the point of view what Russia was doing to target Americans, no matter who they were in the system.

MR. RASKIN: Based on what you just said, one final question. Why do you believe that Putin was targeting Donald Trump from his days as a businessman?

DR. HILL: Because that's exactly what President Putin and others were doing. Again, he was part of a directorate in the KGB in Leningrad. That's what they did exclusively was targeting businessmen.

And as a result of that work that he had there, he was then the deputy mayor in St. Petersburg under Anatoly Sobchak back in the period when, actually, Lee and I were working together for words redacted               , and we had delegations coming over from Sobchak. As deputy mayor, he was in charge of the liaison with all of the businesses in Leningrad and St. Petersburg. And that was filthy, the politics there at that particular juncture, as we recall.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  We just have a couple minutes in this round, and, unfortunately, we are going to need to go to another round on our end, but it won't be a full round. But I do just want to circle back to one thing. You've said earlier today that you have -- you are aware of no credible evidence that Ukraine was involved at all in the 2016 --

A  As the Ukrainian Government.

Q  The Ukrainian Government, right. And are you aware of any evidence that Vice President Joe Biden in any way acted inappropriately while he was Vice President in connection --

A  I'm not.

Q  -- to Ukraine?

A  I'm not.

Q  So you're not actually endorsing the idea of reopening these investigations by the Ukrainian Government. Is that right?

A  As a personal endorsement? I think if the Ukrainian Government wants themselves to figure out -- this is a new government -- wants to figure out, you know, what may have happened for their own informational purposes, they're perfectly within their rights to do that.

Q  So are you referring then to sort of a review of what has happened in the past, or are you talking about actually reopening this investigation? it crystallize in your head in any way a better understanding of what was transpiring while you were there?

A  In terms of providing, you know, more information with hindsight, unfortunately, yes.

Q  And in what way?

A  The specific references, also juxtaposed with the release of the text messages by Ambassador Volker -- you know, what I said before -- really was kind of my worst fears and nightmares, in terms of, you know, there being some kind of effort not just to subvert the national security process, but to try to subvert what really should be, you know, kind of, a diplomatic effort to, you know, kind of, set up a Presidential meeting.

Q  This may --

A  There seems to be an awful lot of people involved in, you know, basically turning a White House meeting into some kind of asset.

Q  What do you mean by "asset"?

A  Well, something that was being, you know, dangled out to the Ukrainian Government. They wanted the White House meeting very much. And this was kind of laying out that it wasn't just a question of scheduling or having, you know, the national security issues worked out, that there were all of these alternate discussions going on behind.

Q  And you have discussed the July 10th meeting where Ambassador Sondland indicated that. We've gone through the Kurt Volker text on July 25th. You've now read the transcript of the Presidential call between President Trump and President Zelensky.

Would you agree this doesn't seem to be a one-off; this seemed to be a fairly considered campaign over a period of time?

A  Well, it certainly dovetails with the activity that we started to see after the ouster of Marie Yovanovitch, of Masha Yovanovitch. So, for me, Masha Yovanovitch's ouster was some kind of tipping point or turning point.

Q  And this wasn’t --

A  Because it was after she was removed from her position that you started to see, you know, more of this activity.

Q  And, even then, I believe you said that you understood, at least from Ambassador Yovanovitch, that she was told that the President had ordered her removal. Is that right?

A  She didn't tell me that at the time when I saw her --

Q  I'm sorry.

A  -- May 1st. She was being discreet, but she told me that there had been a lack or a loss of confidence in her position and that, although they told her that she wasn't being removed for cause, her position was no longer tenable --

Q  But --

A  -- and that she had wrap up her -- she stated this in her public testimony.

Q  Right. And Deputy Secretary Sullivan told you, though, that the State Department was quite supportive of her and it had nothing to do with her work performance.

A  That's correct.

Q  So --

A  And I was also surprised to read in her public testimony that there'd been a pressure campaign, that she'd been told there was a pressure campaign going back to the summer of 2018.

Q  Okay. Well, Rudy Giuliani doesn't have the authority to remove the Ambassador, correct?

A  I don't believe that he does. That's correct.

Q  Right. So did you infer at the time who made the decision to remove her?

A  I actually inferred at the time that it had been made at the top of the State Department --

Q  So you think it was Secretary Pompeo?

A  -- in response to, you know, obviously, concerns that had been raised against her which one could trace right back to what Mr. Giuliani had been saying and he had been building up into a crescendo of criticism about her in that period.

Q  And now having read the call transcript, do you have a different view of what occurred?

A  Well --

Q  The call record.

A  Well, based on what I read in the transcript and what she said in her testimony, which was obviously told to her, then I have a different view -- well, I have the view that we're now discussing, that the President asked for her to be removed.

Q  Okay.

And I don't mean to belabor this, but Rudy Giuliani was not a government official. And so, did you have an understanding of for whom he was acting on behalf of?

A  I did not, actually. I mean, I was often worried, in listening to him, that he was acting on his own behalf.

Q  Right. Now, I'm sort of saying, now that you're looking back at the text messages, the call record, and putting it together with all the meetings and other interactions that you saw --

A  I still have questions of whether he was acting on his own behalf, particularly after the indictment of Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman.

Q  Understood. But do --

A  I think --

Q  -- you also understand that the President adopted a lot of Rudy Giuliani's views, to the extent they are Rudy Giuliani's?

A  Well, given the drumbeat of Rudy Giuliani's views on the television, I think if you listen to that long enough, you know, it kind of -- God knows what anybody would think, getting back to, you know, questions that have been posed before. He seemed to be, you know, basically engaged in a concerted effort to propagate these views.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  But I cannot say that this was -- all of the things that he was doing was at the direction of the President. I can't say that.

Q  But you did notice in the call transcript that the President said several times that President Zelensky should speak with Rudy Giuliani, right?

A  I did.

Q  So did that give you an understanding --

A  But that suggests that Rudy Giuliani has all of the information. I mean, again, he's being directed to talk to Rudy Giuliani. And, you know, when we refer to the ellipses, you know, the President isn’t laying out in full all of these issues. So, you know, kind of, a lot of this information is coming from Rudy Giuliani, and Rudy Giuliani seems to be, in some fashion, orchestrating a lot of these discussions.

Q  If Ukraine actually did initiate these investigations, who would they have benefited?

A  Well, they might have benefited Mr. Giuliani and his business colleagues just as much as anyone else.

Q  How so? An investigation into Joe Biden, how would that have helped --

A  It's an investigation, but it wasn't just into that. There was investigations writ large. So if there's upheaval in the Ukrainian energy sector and people are removed, perhaps this gives the opportunity for these individuals and other individuals to get investments or lucrative board positions.

Q  Did President Trump mention the energy sector or corruption in the energy sector in the July 25th call?

A  He doesn't seem to have done so. I mean, he refers to directly, as I stated -- but, overall, we were -- again, there have been lots of references to energy sector and to corruption in the energy sector. And, technically, Burisma is part of the energy sector in Ukraine.

Q  Right. But you understood -- as we discussed, you understand Rudy Giuliani and, clearly, President Trump's view of the Burisma to the extent that they wanted an investigation related to the Bidens?

A  I see what was in the transcript, but I'm also referring to all of the discussions that were out there in public on the television and all the statements by Mr. Giuliani. They seemed to cover a lot of ground and a lot of territory. I think it's entirely possible -- and, again, I'm presuming that this is what you're all trying to get to the bottom of -- that many things were being put onto this set of issues. This is --

Q  So it's not just one thing.

A  This is a bundling of a number of issues.

Q  So am I correct in understanding that there could be a number of different interests that are --

A  My view, in looking at this, is that individuals, private individuals, like Mr. Giuliani and his business associates, are trying to appropriate Presidential power or the authority of the President, given the position that Mr. Giuliani is in, to also pursue their own personal interests.

Q  But the President was willing to provide the Presidential power in that July 25th call.

A  Well, that's the July 25th call, but before that it seems to me that there was a lot of usurpation of that power.

Q  But you do agree that in that July 25th call the President was --

A  That's what it seems to suggest.

Q  Okay.

A  And, again, I'm reading that in a context in which, you know, I've been looking at other information -- and I don't have a complete picture of what transpired between when I left and when the call was made -- and then subsequently to all the information that we're seeing out in the press as well. I'm learning things from the press, if indeed all of this is accurate, for the first time.

Q  Right. I understand that.

And I guess the final question I have is, you indicated earlier on today that this was sort of your worst nightmare and that these requests for investigations appear to be political in nature. Is that accurate?

A  Correct. My worst nightmare is the politicization of the relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine and, also, the usurpation of authorities, you know, for other people's personal vested interests.

Q  Right. But whose --

A  And there seems to be a large range of people who were looking for these opportunities here.

Q  If the Ukraine -- I think you used this term -- dug up dirt on Joe Biden, whose political prospects would that assist?

A  Well, depending on how it plays out, that could assist a wide range of people.

Q  Potentially. Is it going to assist Rudy Giuliani's political campaign, or is it going to assist President Trump's?

A  Well, again, it depends on how this all plays out. At this particular -- look, this is now, kind of -- everybody could be damaged by all of this, which basically gets back to my point. Everybody's campaign could be severely damaged by how this plays out now. Or it could be benefited.

I think what you're saying is, was the intent to promote the campaign of President Trump. Yes. But you're asking the question, also, about how this might play out.

Q  That was really just the former, but I understand what you’re saying.

Can I have 1 minute?

All right. I think we're done here. I don't know if you guys have anything.

MR. CASTOR: Who was the staffer in the Exec Sec that brought up Kash Patel?

DR. HILL: I’ll be honest, I actually can't remember.

MR. CASTOR: Okay.

DR. HILL: Because it was one of the front office --

MR. CASTOR: Thank you.

DR. HILL: -- staff, and it wasn't someone who -- it was just simply they were relaying to me a piece of --

MR. CASTOR: Thank you.

DR. HILL: -- information. And I honestly can’t remember.

MR. JORDAN: Doctor, who's on this distribution list that you reference? I don't know how that operates and how that works.

DR. HILL: Well, it's usually for, you know, meetings related to Ukraine. So if we're having one of these interagency meetings at the directors level or, you know, kind of, a political coordination committee, you would add on everybody who you thought would be, you know, related to this in some way.

MR. JORDAN: And would the individuals --

DR. HILL: So I asked them to parse through and see, you know, what individuals were on and then to see what it would be about follow-on materials.

So, just to be kind of clear about this, I mean, a lot of these distribution lists are on our classified system, not just on our unclass system. And sometimes they have attached to them a lot of background materials.

MR. JORDAN: That was my next question.

DR. HILL: And this gets back to our, you know, concerns about leaking in the past. I mean, you asked me about this question about CNN. Just an enormous amount of our material, before you've even had a meeting, is out on CNN or Politico or Buzzfeed. And I would lose my mind, sometimes, before routine meetings by the fact that, before I'd even started the meeting, some of the background material with some of the deliberations already seemed to be somebody publishing it.

MR. JORDAN: Yeah. No, I've --

DR. HILL: So, you know, I mean, obviously, you've been familiar with that, and I'm sure it's an occupational hazard for people here as well.

MR. JORDAN: It sure is.

DR. HILL: So I started to worry about, you know, kind of: Were materials that were just meant for the interagency, you know, for people, that were deliberative drafts of, you know, policy memorandum going backwards and forwards, you know, that weren't intended for, you know, kind of, other people, being distributed or information that was attached to that?

But, in actual fact, when I looked at this, there'd been very little information that we’d been sending out that wasn't, you know, kind of, fairly routine in these documents.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. That was my question. So the distribution list is not just to individuals telling them about a schedule or a meeting. It's also some material that is actually being transmitted --

DR. HILL: That's right, that they need to use to prepare for the – and, often, it would be sent, you know, to individuals in different directorates to prepare their senior director or themselves, if they were just attending, you know, to basically, like we're doing here, you know, exhibit A, the Politico thing, or the transcript, for example.

MR. JORDAN: Right. And was Mr. Patel on the distribution list that was receiving this information?

DR. HILL: In some cases, he was on the larger distributive list for his directorate.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

DR. HILL: And, in some cases, he was there with a few other people from his directorate, perhaps because, again, if some of the meetings overlapped with things that he was working on, or there had also been a lot of changeover, again, in the directorate, so there were sometimes just two or three directors --

MR. JORDAN: So was he getting the information that -- he was getting the same information that everyone else was getting?

DR. HILL: From what I'm recalling, I think that was the case.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. So just like everyone else on the distribution list, he was getting that --

DR. HILL: That's right.

MR. JORDAN: -- exact same information --

DR. HILL: And, as I said, I went --

MR. JORDAN: -- at the exact same time in the meetings --

DR. HILL: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: -- everything the same?

DR. HILL: But as you're looking back, you know, over -- and I'm looking back on my schedule, there weren't a lot of other -- there weren't a lot of meetings taken, but there's a lot of background materials. So I also wanted to know from Alex and others if there was some other distro list that they had for other communications for materials. Basically, you know, directors often have their own distro people that they're working with.

MR. JORDAN: I guess my concern was, you said -- I think a littler earlier you said you were concerned about the material he may have and may present to whomever he was presenting it to in whatever meeting. And I'm just trying to figure out, if he's on this same distribution list and he's getting it just like everyone else and he's getting the same material, why would you be concerned about the material he'd be presenting in April, May --

DR. HILL: Well, because I wasn't sure -- when they referred to materials, I thought, what on Earth materials could they be talking about? So I wanted to see, is there any way that any of these background materials that were being prepared -- updates on Ukraine, in other words -- could've been in the mix and then were being given off to Exec Sec? Because they weren't being prepared for the Exec Sec or to be handed on, certainly, to the President. I mean, it would do something in a totally different nature if you're preparing a background briefing for the President or a background briefing for Ambassador Bolton. They do it in a very different way, if I'm preparing a background briefing --

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

DR. HILL: -- for a routine directors meeting, which might have, you know, all of the comments of the directors, you know, back and forth –-

MR. JORDAN: Yeah.

DR. HILL: And I thought to myself, you know, what materials could this be?

MR. JORDAN: Yeah. So, just to be clear, though, Mr. Patel is on the same distribution list as everyone else on the list and getting the same material.

DR. HILL: That's correct.

MR. JORDAN: Okay.

DR. HILL: But then again, I'm trying to figure out, why would that material and what could that material be that could be getting --

MR. JORDAN: Thank you.

DR. HILL: -- you know, sent up to the President?

MR. ZELDIN: The next piece of evidence -- what's the next number?

DR. HILL: And, again, just to be very clear, I did not know what that material would be. I did not know at any time, I was not told, what that material was that was sent to the President.

MR. JORDAN: I wasn't asking about that. I was asking about what was sent to Mr. Patel was exactly what everyone else was getting.

DR. HILL: That's correct.

MR. JORDAN: Got it.

[Minority Exhibit No. 5
Was marked for identification.]

MR. ZELDIN: Dr. Hill, we're passing around exhibit No. 5. This is -- I'll wait for a second until it gets distributed.

This is a May 4th, 2018, letter sent to Mr. Lutsenko from three Democratic United States Senators. Are you familiar with this letter?

DR. HILL: I'm not, actually.

MR. ZELDIN: You have never seen this letter before?

DR. HILL: I don't believe that I have, no.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. This is a letter that three Democratic United States Senators sent to the prosecutor general at the time in Ukraine, demanding that Ukraine assist with the Robert Mueller probe targeting the President.

DR. HILL: Was this letter made public? Was it sent to the NSC and the public offices?

MR. ZELDIN: I don't know the distro of the letter, which is --

DR. HILL: Right. Because I --

MR. ZELDIN: -- one of the reasons why I wanted to ask.

DR. HILL: -- have not seen this letter before.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay.

Did any of the people in the NSC ever articulate to you any anti-Trump political positions?

DR. HILL: They did not, no.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you believe that it was appropriate for the Clinton campaign and the DNC to hire Christophe Steele to create the dossier against the Trump campaign?

DR. HILL: As I understand, they didn't hire him directly. I don't have any personal knowledge about how he was hired. I don't know that he was hired directly by the DNC. Was he?

MR. ZELDIN: Well, they hired a law firm, Fusion GPS. It was through an intermediary, but the money originated from the Clinton campaign and DNC.

But if you’re not familiar with the source of funding, let's put that aside.

DR. HILL: No, I'm not. I'm not familiar with that.

MR. ZELDIN: Funding aside, do you think it is appropriate for Christopher Steele to have been hired as a foreign spy to be collecting information from foreign governments to gain an advantage against the Trump campaign?

DR. HILL: Well, he's a former foreign spy. But, nonetheless, a foreign national. I don't believe it's appropriate for him to have been hired to do this. And, again, I think I already expressed my shock and surprise when I learned that he had been involved in this.

MR. ZELDIN: We've spoken about Burisma a lot today. Are you familiar with the fact that Hunter Biden was paid for this position with Burisma?

DR. HILL: I remember seeing the reports about this when he was first taken onboard. I was still at the Brookings Institution, and I remember there were press reports about this.

MR. ZELDIN: Has his employment with Burisma come up at all in any of your official government positions?

DR. HILL: It did not, apart from the discussion with Amos Hochstein where he informed me that some of these discussions in Ukraine were centered around Burisma, and he reminded me that Burisma was the company that Hunter Biden sat on the board of. And, as you may also recall, Amos Hochstein had expressed concern about that when that appointment went through in the course of his own official duties.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you know Hunter Biden?

DR. HILL: I do not.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware of any experience or qualifications that he would have for that position?

DR. HILL: I am not aware. I don't know him.

MR. ZELDIN: And you worked with Vice President Joe Biden at all in any of your official capacities?

DR. HILL: When I was the National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia in the first year of the Obama administration, yes, I mean, in the same context as I worked with Vice President Cheney for the 3 years of the Bush administration that I was NIO. I was often asked to do briefings.

MR. ZELDIN: When did your official interactions with Vice President Biden end?

DR. HILL: In November of 2009 when I returned to Brookings after spending my time as the National Intelligence Officer.

MR. ZELDIN: So the remainder of the Obama administration you were out of the United States Government.

DR. HILL: That's correct. I was, as an expert, invited to a couple of dinner briefings on Russia hosted by Vice President Biden, but that's the totality of my interactions.

MR. ZELDIN: It's been widely reported that he doesn't have Ukraine experience, he doesn't have energy experience --

DR. HILL: Who are we referring to?

MR. ZELDIN: Hunter Biden.

DR. HILL: Oh, Hunter Biden.

MR. ZELDIN: Sorry. Hunter Biden --

DR. HILL: Yeah.

MR. ZELDIN: -- it's been widely reported he doesn't have any energy experience, doesn't have any Ukraine experience, but was hired by Burisma, which is a -- let me digress a minute.

From your knowledge of Burisma, are they a corrupt company?

DR. HILL: I don't know a lot about Burisma, I'll be frank.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you familiar with Zlochevsky?

DR. HILL: I'm not very familiar with him either, just more in a general sense.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you familiar with the investigations into Burisma or Zlochevsky?

DR. HILL: I was aware that there were investigations underway, yes.

MR. ZELDIN: And these were corruption investigations into Burisma and Zlochevsky?

DR. HILL: And into the particular individual. So, again, the fact that there is investigations into corruption in the energy sector in Ukraine, as well as Russia or many other countries, is not a surprise.

And, also, on this point, I have to also say there were an awful lot of people with political connections and not expertise on particular issues that were being hired by all kinds of entities.

MR. ZELDIN: It's been widely reported, as I started to state, with regards to a lack of energy experience --

DR. HILL: Right.

MR. ZELDIN: -- with a lack of Ukraine experience, he was paid at least $50,000 a month. There are reports that his company -- he has a partner -- were paid a substantially higher figure.

Vice President Joe Biden was the point man for the Obama administration with Ukraine. Being the point man for the Obama administration, what power comes with that, as far as purse strings, as far as funding that United States provides to Ukraine?

DR. HILL: The Vice President didn't have a role in that. I mean, this is, again, the determination of Congress and also of the State Department and Defense Department and others. I mean, the Vice President has no role in determining the pursestrings. The Office of Management and Budget do as well.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you familiar --

DR. HILL: And Vice President Pence also wanted to play a role on Ukraine in this administration.

MR. ZELDIN: To that point, are you familiar with a video from January 2018 where Vice President Biden spoke about his efforts to have Prosecutor General Shokin fired? Have you seen that video?

DR. HILL: I have not seen that video.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. That video -- I won't ask a question directly to that. I'll ask a different question. But for background, that video, Vice President Biden is speaking about his efforts, threatening Ukraine with the loss of $1 billion if they didn't fire Shokin, and then they instantly fired Shokin.

But the question is, you're saying that the Vice President doesn't have the ability to be delegated any authority from a President to make those types of threats?

DR. HILL: To make those types of threats? You were talking about money earlier.

MR. ZELDIN: Does a Vice President have the power to make a threat to a foreign government of the loss of United States support?

DR. HILL: If he is being asked to do that on the behalf of the government, on behalf of the President or the State Department and others.

So, when I was working in the Bush administration, Vice President Cheney was the heavy on all of these issues. And he certainly issued plenty of threats to a whole range of countries, including Russia, that, you know, I was privy to, at the direction or the request of other parts of the government.

So I think, you know, putting forward the idea that, you know, there could be forfeited an assistance and that Vice President Biden was conveying that information on behalf of the government, well, yes, of course, he could do that. But he does not make the determination about funding.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you have any concerns about any member of the United States Government being delegated the authority to make a threat if their son is receiving $50,000 a month from --

DR. HILL: I think you might be --

MR. ZELDIN: -- a company targeted by an open --

DR. HILL: -- starting to go into some very dangerous territory --

MR. ZELDIN: I'm sorry. Let me finish the question.

DR. HILL: -- at the moment for everybody.

MR. ZELDIN: I'm sorry. Do you think that it would be appropriate for a -- do you have any concern with a Vice President being delegated the authority to make a threat like that if their son is receiving $50,000 a month from an entity of that foreign country being targeted by having an open investigation?

DR. HILL: I think that there is a problem with perceptions of conflicts of interest and ethics for any child of any senior official to be involved in anything that their parents are involved in, period. So this goes not just to Hunter Biden and Vice President Biden but across the board.

And I think, getting back to the question that Congressman Raskin asked about before about corruption and perceptions of it, this is exactly the problem we have right now in our politics. The rank and file have to sign all kinds of ethical agreements to make sure that members of our family are not involved in anything that we are involved in or to recuse ourselves.

And across the board, Members of Congress, the Senate, I mean, this is what you spend your time looking at. Vice Presidents, Presidents, Secretaries of State, Secretaries of Commerce, Secretaries of Transportation, Secretaries of Interior -- I could just go on -- should not have their children involved in anything that they're involved in as well.

And that's why I'm saying it's a dangerous territory, because I'm not going to start on giving the long list of things that I personally think are a real problem.

MR. ZELDIN: There was an open investigation into Burisma at the time of that trip that Vice President Biden made to Ukraine and that President Trump was concerned with. Are you aware of that?

MR. GOLDMAN: Do you have any support --

DR. HILL: I wasn't aware of the information too. I wasn't in the government.

MR. WOLOSKY: Congressman, she wasn't in the government.

DR. HILL: No, and I'm --

MR. ZELDIN: Actually, the question was -- I'm sorry. Excuse me. The question was, are you aware of that? And if the answer is no, then --

DR. HILL: The answer is no. Because I'm also not aware of all of this timeline, in terms of the issues that you're raising here.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay.

DR. HILL: I was not -- I will be, you know, quite open. I was not monitoring and following exactly what Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden were doing in this time period.

MR. ZELDIN: Well, let me ask you what you do know. With regards to Burisma, do you know when that investigation was closed?

DR. HILL: I do not. And as I said, when Amos Hochstein came in to talk to me again about this and mentioned Burisma, I had to get him to remind me again about why Burisma was significant. In the back of my mind, I knew that there was some issue with Burisma, but it had not come up, up until then, at any point in the work that I was doing in the administration.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. Do you know if the case against Burisma was closed at any time?

DR. HILL: From what I have read and been told, that the case was closed or dropped or that the case stopped.

MR. ZELDIN: What do you know about when that case was - -

DR. HILL: I don't know when that was stopped. I mean, again, I'll just say that I had to be reminded by Amos ' Hochstein about why Burisma was significant. I remembered, from when I was at the Brookings Institution, reading about Hunter Biden being appointed, thinking this was not a bright idea, and then I did not continue to follow this issue for a long period of time.

So it came up again in the context of all the things that we're discussing basically around the time that Masha Yovanovitch was removed from her position. My knowledge is more general, about the state of the Ukrainian energy sector. My knowledge in depth is really about Russia and Russia's energy sector.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware of the case -- the criminal investigation against Zlochevsky?

DR. HILL: I was aware that there had been one. But, again, I didn't ask for any details of this in the position that I was in, because it did not seem relevant to the work that we were doing.

And, again, in the NSC, my job was to coordinate. And the real action was being taken, in terms of our Ukrainian policy and implementation, by the State Department, the Embassy, the Defense Department, and the Department of Energy.

MR. CASTOR: I think we’re all done.

DR. HILL: You're sure?

MR. CASTOR: Thank you so much.

DR. HILL: You don't want to continue?

MR. GOLDMAN: Dr. Hill, on behalf of Chairman Schiff,

I'd just like to thank you again for coming in and answering all of our questions.

DR. HILL: Thank you. Thank you.

MR. GOLDMAN: We are adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 7:55 p.m., the deposition was concluded.]

Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Laura Cooper Testimony Transcript I

PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE,
joint with the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
and the
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
WASHINGTON, D.C.

DEPOSITION OF: LAURA KATHERINE COOPER

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Washington, D.C.

The deposition in the above matter was held in Room HVC-304, Capitol Visitor Center, commencing at 2:58 p.m.

Present: Representatives Schiff, Himes, Sewell, Carson, Speier, Quigley, Swalwell, Heck, Maloney, Demings, Krishnamoorthi, Stefanik, and Ratcliffe.

Also Present: Representatives Cicilline, Kelly, Rouda, Jordan, Meadows, Wright, McCaul, Perry, Roy, and Zeldin.

Appearances:

For the PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

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For the COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM:

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For the COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS:

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For LAURA COOPER:

DANIEL LEVIN, ESQ.

White & Case LLP

701 Thirteenth Street, NW

Washington, D.C. 20005-3807

THE CHAIRMAN: The House Parliamentarian will be delivering a statement about the House rules, stating that any Members that remain will be in violation of the House rules.

We've already dispensed with enough time of this witness, so I'm going to forego my opening statement. I would urge the minority to do the same so we can begin the questioning.

Mr. Goldman, you are recognized.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

This is a deposition of Laura Cooper conducted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, pursuant to the impeachment inquiry announcement by the Speaker of the House on September 24th.

Ms. Cooper, we apologize to you for the 5-hour delay as a result of some unauthorized Republican Members being present, but we appreciate that you are here today and that you waited to take your testimony.

If you could, please state your full name and spell it for the record.

MS. COOPER: My name is Laura Katherine Cooper, L-a-u-r-a, Katherine, K-a-t-h-e-r-i-n-e, Cooper, C-o-o-p-e-r.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you. Along with other proceedings in furtherance of the inquiry, this deposition is part of a joint investigation led by the Intelligence Committee, in coordination with the Committees on Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform. In the room today are majority and minority staff from all three committees. This is a staff-led deposition, but members, of course, may ask questions during their allotted time, as has been the case in every deposition since the inception of this investigation.

My name is Daniel Goldman. I'm the Director of Investigations for the HPSCI majority staff. And I want to do some brief introductions right now. To my right is Nicolas Mitchell, Senior Investigative Counsel for HPSCI. Mr. Mitchell will be doing the bulk of the questioning today for the majority.

And I'll now ask my counterparts on the minority staff to introduce themselves.

MR. CASTOR: Steve Castor, Republican staff of the Oversight Committee.

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MR. GOLDMAN: This deposition will be conducted entirely at the unclassified level. However, we are in HPSCI secure spaces, and in the presence of staff with appropriate security clearances. It is the committee's expectation that neither questions asked of you nor answers provided by you will require discussion of any information that is currently, or at any point, could be properly classified under Executive Order 13526. You are reminded that EO-13526 states that, quote, "In no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified," unquote, for the purpose of concealing any violations of law or preventing embarrassment of any person or entity.

If any of our questions can only be answered with classified information, please inform us of that and we will adjust accordingly.

Today's deposition is not being taken in executive session, but because of the sensitive and confidential nature of some of the topics and materials that will be discussed, access to the transcript of the deposition will be limited to the three committees in attendance. Under the House deposition rules, no Member of Congress, nor any staff member can discuss the substance of the testimony that you provide today.

You and your attorney will have an opportunity to review the transcript at a later date.

Before we begin, I would like to go over the ground rules for this deposition. We will be following the House regulations for depositions, which we have previously provided to your counsel. The deposition will proceed as follows: The majority will be given one hour to ask questions. Then the minority will be given one hour. Thereafter, we will alternate back and forth between majority and minority in 45-minute rounds until questioning is complete. We will take periodic breaks, but if you need a break at any time, please let us know.

Under the House deposition rules, counsel for other persons or government agencies may not attend. You are allowed to have an attorney present during this deposition, and I see that you have brought one.

At this time, if counsel could please state his appearance for the record.

MR. LEVIN: Daniel Levin.

MR. GOLDMAN: There is a stenographer taking down everything that is said in order to make a written record of the deposition. For the record to be clear, please wait until each question is completed before you begin your answer, and we will endeavor to wait until you finish your response before asking the next question.

The stenographer cannot record nonverbal answers, such as shaking your head, so it is important that you answer each question with an audible verbal answer. We ask that you give complete replies to questions, based on your best recollection. If a question is unclear, or you are uncertain in your response, please let us know. And if you do not know the answer to a question or cannot remember, simply say so.

You may only refuse to answer a question to preserve a privilege recognized by the committee. If you refuse to answer a question on the basis of privilege, staff may either proceed with the deposition or seek a ruling from the chairman on the objection. If the chair overrules any such objection, you are required to answer the question.

Finally, you are reminded that it is unlawful to deliberately provide false information to Members of Congress or staff. It is imperative that you not only answer our questions truthfully, but that you give full and complete answers to all questions asked of you. Omissions may also be considered as false statements.

As this deposition is under oath, Ms. Cooper, would you please stand and raise your right hand to be sworn.

Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give is the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

MS. COOPER: I do.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you.

The record will reflect that the witness has been sworn, and you may be seated. With that, Ms. Cooper, if you have any opening remarks, now would be the time.

MS. COOPER: Thank you. I look forward to answering your questions. I do not have any opening remarks.

MR. GOLDMAN: I'll now yield to Mr. Mitchell for the majority's 1-hour round.

EXAMINATION

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  Good afternoon, ma'am. Would you please state your title.

A  My title is Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia.

Q  Can you just generally describe your duties and responsibilities?

A  My portfolio spans first Russia, and the Russia portfolio includes current events, current policy towards Russia, as well as long-term strategy on Russia for the Department of Defense.

I also cover a number of countries that are former states of the Soviet Union, particularly Ukraine, also Georgia. I also cover Azerbaijan and Armenia as well as Moldova and Belarus.

Finally, in terms of the regional part of my portfolio, I also handle the countries of the Western Balkans. So this includes Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, Croatia, Serbia, North Macedonia, and Montenegro, and Kosovo. And then, finally, I handle the conventional arms control portfolio for the Department of Defense.

Q  Today we're going to be focusing primarily on Ukraine-related issues. What percentage of your portfolio would you say, or how much time do you spend on Ukraine-related matters?

A  So I would say it fluctuates over time, but up to 25 percent.

Q  And within the Ukraine portfolio, in that 25 percent of the time, what types of matters are you working on within Ukraine?

A  So my primary focus is on building a strong relationship with Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and Ukrainian Armed Forces, and building the capacity of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to resist Russian aggression. So, as part of that, I oversee DOD's security assistance to Ukraine.

Q  I think we're going to get into more detail during the course of this deposition, but can you just generally describe whether you have any interactions, specifically in connection with the Ukrainian portfolio, with members of the Department of State?

A  Absolutely. I talk with my State Department counterparts quite frequently about Ukraine and, really, the whole range of my portfolio.

Q  And what about OMB, specifically with regard to Ukraine?

A  I do not routinely interact with OMB, although over the course of the summer, participated in a couple of meetings with OMB, perhaps more than a couple -- I'd have to double-check the number -- and had one phone conversation with an official from OMB over this past summer. But that would not be typical of my position.

Q  What about National Security Council, again, for the Ukraine-related matters?

A  So for Ukraine-related matters, I correspond, or speak quite frequently, at least weekly, with NSC counterparts.

Q  And that's a matter of routine. Is that right?

A  That's just routine.

Q  And is that because you coordinate with the National Security Council regarding U.S. policy with regard to Ukraine as well as other geographic regions?

A  Absolutely.

Q  What about the Office of the Vice President?

A  It has been quite some time that I have interacted with the Office of the Vice President. And it has depended over time on particular staff members and their interest in my portfolio and what the Defense Department is working on.

I actually cannot recall any instances within the past, say, 6 months to a year of direct interaction with one person from the Office of the Vice President, but it's important to note that the Office of the Vice President is usually present at interagency policy meetings.

Q  Like the ones that you were describing that took place during the course of this summer?

A  Yes, that is correct.

Q  And, again, we'll get into more detail a little bit later. What about White House counsel?

A  I have not had any direct interactions that I can recall with White House counsel in the foreseeable past, although I would not be surprised if they were participating, at least by sitting in on some of these interagency meetings, but I can't really recall anything that they've said in these meetings recently.

Q  And what about direct contact with Ukrainian officials?

A  So, I have relatively frequent direct contact with Ukrainian officials. I cochair a Bilateral Defense Consultation Forum every year to 18 months, and in the lead-up to those meetings, have contacts with Ministry of Defense officials.

I also tend to receive visiting parliamentarians from Ukraine. When they come to Washington, they'll stop by the Pentagon and see me.

Those are just examples.

Q  And do you have any contacts with Ukrainian officials about security assistance specifically?

A  With the Ministry of Defense, my consultations relate to setting priorities for security assistance and progress in implementing security assistance.

Q  So I think today we're going to focus on two different types of security assistance to Ukraine. The first is the DOD-administered Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which I understand is USAI, as well as the state-administered Foreign Military Financing, which is FMF.

A  Uh-huh.

Q  Can you just generally describe those two different programs for us?

A  Certainly. I would first start by, of course, noting the obvious of the different oversight authority. State Department is in the lead when it comes to FMF. So for FMF, the Defense Department is playing an implementing role and a coordinating role with respect to policy, whereas the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative is a DOD authority. So we are in the lead for the policy and the implementing, and the State Department is in a coordinating role. But both -- both authorities allow us to support Ukrainian Armed Forces in defending themselves against Russian aggression.

Q  And so what types of things does Ukraine get from this U.S. security assistance? And you can talk about it both as to USAI as well as to FMF.

A  Sure. So for me, I probably can't give you a very comprehensive list just off the top of my head, and I'm certainly more familiar with the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. But just to give an example of some of the things that we included in the USAI package for this year was a very wide range of capabilities, ranging from night vision goggles and vehicles to counter-battery radars, sniper rifles. Those are just -- medical equipment. Those are just some examples of the kinds of things that were included in this year's Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative package.

The most notable item that we funded through FMF in the recent past, although this is going back beyond this year's tranche of money, was the Javelin anti-armor system, which we used FMF to fund.

Q  Was that in 2017?

A  I'd have to double-check the date. I believe it was.

Q  Were you involved in that FMF funding for Javelins in 2017?

A  So -- yes. I was involved in the interagency process that resulted in the decision and then the implementation of it.

Q  Again, we'll have more questions about that later. Do other countries also provide economic and security assistance to Ukraine, just like the U.S.?

A  There are a number of other countries that provide both economic and security assistance.

Q  Including the EU?

A  I actually am not familiar with the EU as an institution, but a number of EU member states, I am familiar with their particular contributions. The EU funds tend to be on the economic side; and because I focus on defense and security, I'm less familiar with those.

Q  What about the amounts of assistance provided by the U.S. versus other European countries, for example, are you familiar with those numbers?

A  I couldn't give you the specific numbers, but the U.S. -- the U.S. contributions are far more significant than any individual country. Whether the collective contributions outweigh the U.S., I don't have that figure.

Q  Now, you indicated earlier that the security assistance is used by Ukraine to thwart Russian aggression, correct?

A  Correct.

Q  How important is security assistance to Ukrainians?

A  Security assistance is vital to helping the Ukrainians be able to defend themselves.

Q  Can you explain a little bit more?

A  Well, if you go back to 2014, when Ukraine found itself under attack by Russia, the state of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was significantly less capable than it is today, and that capability increase is largely the result of U.S. and allied assistance.

And now what you see is a Ukrainian armed force that is able to better deter Russian aggression, and you've seen a drop in the kinetic action, although not -- not a complete lack of hostilities, certainly. We still have casualties on a regular basis.

Q  So the security assistance that's provided by the U.S. is within the Ukrainians' national interest, obviously. Is that right?

A  Absolutely.

Q  And what about within the U.S. national interest?

A  It is also within the U.S. national interest to provide security assistance to Ukraine.

Q  Given this is an unclassified interview, with that constraint in mind, can you explain how it's within the U.S. national security interest to provide this aid to Ukraine?

A  Ukraine, and also Georgia, are the two front-line states facing Russian aggression. In order to deter further Russian aggression, we need to be able to shore up these countries' abilities to defend themselves. That’s, I think, pure and simple, the rationale behind our strategy of supporting these countries. It's in our interest to deter Russian aggression elsewhere around the world.

Q  And would you also agree that the U.S. security assistance to Ukraine is also helpful to Europe as a whole with regard to thwarting any sort of Russian aggression?

A  Absolutely.

Q  In 2018 and 2019, has Ukrainian security assistance received bipartisan support?

A  It has always received bipartisan support, in my experience.

Q  And that's both in the House and the Senate?

A  Absolutely, in my experience.

Q  And what about at the interagency level?

A  I have witnessed, even in the recent past, overwhelming consensus in favor of providing Ukraine security assistance.

Q  And when you say "within the recent past," you mean even over the course of this year?

A  Even over the course of the summer.

Q  Can you describe your own involvement in USAI and FMF matters?

A  Sure. I mean, I think the first part is with the process of defining what the requirements are for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and looking at what authorities and what resources we can use to support those requirements.

So, in my role, I'm receiving input from the field, from European Command, and from our team at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv as to the requirements; and then, I am overseeing a team that's putting together a package -- packages, really -- to support their needs via FMF and via Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.

I delve into much greater detail with respect to Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative than I do with FMF, because of my responsibility as a defense official.

MR. HECK: Mr. Mitchell, on behalf of the elderly at this end of the table, myself included, could I respectfully request you both eat your mics? We're really having difficulty hearing.

MS. COOPER: This is better? I apologize.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  But with regard to FMF, you also have some exposure and some knowledge of that program as well, based on your role and responsibilities at DOD?

A  Absolutely.

Q  In layman's terms and perhaps at a high level, can you generally describe the relevant milestones for USAI funding from appropriation all the way through to obligation of the funds, at a high level?

A  Certainly. I will attempt to do so. Because USAI -- there are two pieces that I'll discuss, the conditionality piece, and the actual allocation of resources.

The conditionality piece relates to the NDAA provision that requires that half of the funding be conditioned on Ukraine making sufficient progress in defense reforms. So that part of the process involves my office very closely.

At the beginning of the year, when we know how much funding we will be receiving, we take stock of Ukraine's reform needs, and develop a set of criteria that we want to use to gauge progress in defense reform.

Last year, I delivered that set of broad criteria to the Ukraine Defense Ministry in December, when I visited them.

Q  So this is after Congress has done the --

A  This is after.

Q  -- authorization and the appropriation, correct?

MR. LEVIN: Let him finish the question.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  So this is after Congress has authorized and appropriated the funds, correct?

A  Correct, correct.

So at that point, we convey to the Ukrainians our expectations for reform, and we support them in the reform process, so that later in the year we will be able to certify the reforms.

Q  So there is engagement with the Ukrainians during this stage. Is that correct?

A  Yes, there is engagement with the Ukrainians throughout this stage.

Q  Is there also -- are there also interagency meetings here in the United States during this phase as well?

A  Yes. And if I could correct the notion of a phase, these are really parallel processes, but they occur over the span of the entire year. So we're having conversations internal to the Defense Department with the Ukrainians and across the interagency about defense reform, and about what our expectations are for progress in defense reform from the moment that we outline those conditions -- in this case, last year it was in December -- all the way through to the point that we actually certify to the U.S. Congress that we believe Ukraine has made sufficient progress.

So we discuss our assessment of progress. We discuss what the conditions should be, and then we discuss what the assessment of progress is internal to the Defense Department, but also with our interagency colleagues.

And then, in parallel with that, we work the actual process of identifying the specific equipment requirements and specific funding needs. And when we are prepared with the precise packages, we notify the U.S. Congress, and we do that in two tranches, because of the conditionality requirement.

So the first tranche, this past year, we notified in the spring, I can't recall the exact date off the top of my head; and then the second tranche was notified in May.

Q  And the notification process that you're describing, these are Congressional Notifications, also sometimes called CNs. Is that correct?

A  Yes.

Q  Does DOD give the CN to OMB before it goes to Congress?

A  No. There's a different process for DOD than there is for State with the FMF process.

Q  Can you describe that difference?

A  So State Department -- my understanding from State Department colleagues and from this past summer is that OMB actually has to approve the Congressional Notification before it comes over to the Hill.

That is not the case for Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. We certainly coordinated this conditionality defense reform language and the assistance content with our interagency colleagues, but there was no requirement for DOD to run the Congressional Notification through OMB.

Q  All right. So once DOD gives the CN to Congress, is there a -- it sounds like you want to say something.

A  State Department. Oh, once DOD gives the USAI?

Q  Correct.

A  Okay.

Q  Once DOD gives USAI CN to Congress, what happens next?

A  Well, there's a particular waiting period. I want to say 15 days, but you may correct me if I have that wrong. And then we are able to obligate funding after that period of time.

In the case of this past year, I recall that for the late May notification of tranche two, HAC-D had some questions. I don't remember the exact nature of the questions, but I remember they had some questions. So it kind of -- it took us past that 15-day mark. But after that point, we were able to go ahead and start obligating funding.

Q  I think, again, we'll get into some detail as to what happened during the course of 2019, but --

MR. ROY: May I ask, who had questions? I didn't understand that acronym.

MR. MITCHELL: HAC-D.

MR. ROY: Oh, thanks. I didn’t hear you.

BY MR. MITCHELL

Q  So after the 15 days have elapsed or Congress green lights or clears the CN, what happens after that?

A  The Defense Department starts to obligate funding, and that's the purview -- the lead for that is Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

Q  Are you involved in the process?

A  I am a step removed from the actual process of obligating funding.

Q  And OMB does apportionments as well. Is that right?

A  That is correct.

Q  And what do you know about OMB's role in doing apportionments?

A  Well until this past summer, I didn't know anything about it, but I will -- I can say that my understanding as a policy official -- and I'm not a comptroller -- is that OMB essentially gives permission for the flow of funding and can provide, you know, specific guidance about that flow of funding.

Q  So before DOD can put moneys onto contract or obligate the funds, OMB needs to do an apportionment?

A  That is my understanding.

Q  Now, you mentioned, during this period prior to the CN, there's a lot of work that's done on your end to make sure that Ukraine is meeting the various institutional requirements, reform requirements. Can you describe what those are?

A  Yes. I want to emphasize that, from my perspective as a DOD official managing Ukraine security assistance, we appreciate the provision in the NDAA that calls for defense reform progress, and it allows us to have a very practical tool to encourage defense reform.

The language in the NDAA is not specific to exact reforms that must be accomplished but, rather, is a broad call for reform. So we elect, internal to the Defense Department and in consultation with interagency colleagues, to come up with loose benchmarks that we can then describe to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and monitor progress toward.

In the past year, the benchmarks were different from what they will be for the next year, because we're always looking at what the next important set of reforms would be.

So I can give you a quick example. This past year, we were looking at a few things. We were looking at progress on command and control reform. We were looking at a commitment to pursue defense industry reform. We were looking to the Ukrainian Government to pass a law that would enable government-to-government procurement. This would enable them to use our FMS system. And these are examples of some of the benchmarks.

The year before, it had just been one broad category. We wanted them to codify in law, their law on national security, the key reforms that they would need to take to become NATO interoperable.

So each year it's different, depending on what we think are the most important steps, but also the most practical steps to advance reform.

Q  Were there anticorruption benchmarks within the last year?

A  So all of these relate to anticorruption. Thank you for raising that. The FMS law, as we loosely call it, the law that allows them to do government-to-government procurement, will enable significant anticorruption efforts, because it will break the stranglehold that Ukroboronprom has on government procurement and allow for a truly competitive environment for government purchases. So that's one example of how these reforms are intrinsic with anticorruption.

MR. SWALWELL: Do you mind spelling that?

MS. COOPER: Ukroboronprom? Okay, let me write it down.

MR. MITCHELL: Usual spelling.

MS. COOPER: Okay. Sometimes it's called UOP for short. It's U-k-r-o-b-o-r-o-n-p-r-o-m.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  And who determines whether these benchmarks have been met?

A  So that is a question for interagency assessment informed by a number of things, to include my own judgment, to include the judgment of the U.S. Embassy team, to include the judgment of our key advisers on defense reform. General Dayton, retired General Dayton, is our senior adviser on defense reform.

So we're pulling in all the views of the key experts on Ukraine defense, and coming up with a consensus view, and then we run that up the chain in the Defense Department, to ensure we have approval. And in this case, in May of this year, it was Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, John Rood, who provided the certification to Congress, but that was after coordination with the State Department.

Q  So the consensus view that you're describing ultimately results in the certification and the CN that was by John Rood this year. But prior to that, is there memorialization of how Ukraine has met the various different benchmarks when you float it up the chain?

A  The only memorialization that I'm recalling at this moment that is in one document is, in fact, the package for the Congressional Notification, although it's fair to say on each of these individual reforms, we have a lot of correspondence back and forth with the field and within the interagency about progress throughout the course of the year.

Q  And how long have you personally been involved in USAI?

A  Since I took my position as principal director for the Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia Office back in 2016.

Q  So since 2016, during your tenure, has Ukraine always met the required benchmarks in order to receive USAI funds?

A  Yes. We're only talking about 2 years, though.

Q  And would you agree or disagree that Ukraine has generally made forward progress, again, over the course of your tenure when you have been monitoring these benchmarks?

A  Yes. I see significant forward progress.

Q  Now, you mentioned that USAI funds come in two different tranches. Is that right?

A  That is correct, although we divide it into two different tranches, based on a number of practical considerations. One is the long lead time for certain equipment items. So the items that we notify earlier in the year tend to be those that have a very long lead time for actually getting them on contract.

And the other is because of this conditionality provision, we want to allow the year to play out so that Ukraine can continue to make these reforms before we come back with the second notification.

Q  What do you mean by items that require significant lead time?

A  I am not a procurement expert, but my -- the advice that I have received from Defense Security Cooperation Agency is that, you know, some items, particularly those that are higher technology -- the Javelin, for instance, that was something that was procured via FMF, to take advantage of that longer lead time. So I think it depends on the specific contracting process.

[Majority Exhibit No. 1

was marked for identification.]

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  I'm going to hand you exhibit 1. It's a multipage document, but I'm really only going to focus on the first page here. Do you recognize this document?

A  Yes. I think it's our first -- it's our first Congressional Notification. Yes.

Q  And what's the date of this particular CN?

A  Well, strangely, it has two -- it has two dates on it, so I'm not sure which is the authoritative date. My recollection is that it was, you know, closer to March, but --

Q  And those two dates are February 28th, 2019, and March 5th, 2019?

A  Yes, that is correct, on the document anyway.

Q  And were you involved in putting together this particular CN?

A  Yes, I approved it on its way up.

Q  And this is signed by Under Secretary of Defense John Rood, correct?

A  Correct.

Q  What was his role in preparing or evaluating the CN and the package that goes behind it?

A  So, as the final signature authority, he reviewed the recommendations of his staff, and I would be one of his key advisers on this.

Q  Acting Assistant Under Secretary of Defense Katie Wheelbarger, what is her role?

A  I'll just correct her title. It's the Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. She is the official in the chain of command in between me and Under Secretary Rood. Now, there is also a Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy who is in between ASD Wheelbarger and Under Secretary Rood.

Q  And what's that person's name?

A  Well, that position is in an acting capacity right now. For the most of the past year, that position was occupied by David Trachtenberg, the DUSDP position.

Q  And what was Ms. Wheelbarger's role with regard to this March CN?

A  So, the normal procedure would have been for her to review this on its way to Under Secretary Rood. I can't tell you for certain whether she, in fact, reviewed this exact package, but she, you know, reviewed a number of Ukraine-related actions.

Q  And earlier, you indicated there was a 15-day window for Congress to act. Do you know what happened during that 15-day window for the March CN?

A  I cannot recall anything significant.

Q  So, to the best of your recollection, that --

A  That's just my recollection.

Q  So, to the best of your recollection, the CN was cleared by Congress?

A  That was -- so as I recall it -- again, my memory could be faulty -- the only questions that we received that caused a delay were for the May notification. This one, I don't recall any specific questions, but there could have been.

Q  Are you aware that there was the first round of Presidential elections in Ukraine at the end of March of 2019?

A  Absolutely.

Q  Do you know whether those Presidential elections affected the clearing of this March CN?

A  I do not recall any actual hindrance and, you know, that -- I just don't recall any.

Of course, the other thing I would say is, you know, at the time we were pretty focused on the elections themselves, not necessarily on this. So I'm not -- I'm just not sure.

Q  Do you know whether the Department of Defense put any funds onto contract with regard to this first tranche?

A  Well, ultimately, yes.

Q  Prior to September of this year?

A  Prior to September? I don't have the specific information on each case and when each case was obligated. All I can say is my understanding is that by -- by July timeframe we had started to obligate, but I don't know which specific items. And --

Q  So those obligations could have gone to the first tranche or the second tranche?

A  At my level, you know, I personally was not tracking exactly which item was obligated. I was merely looking for progress, and the assurance that we would be able to obligate everything by the end of the fiscal year.

Q  And do you know how much money had been obligated by this July time period, whether it's the first or the second tranche?

A  I don't. It wasn't very much, though. I know that much, again, because the process for obligating funding, my understanding of it from our experts is that it just takes quite some time. So because the earlier notification, this notification reflected a lot of long lead time items, they were only just starting to be in the window in which we'd be obligating by midsummer.

Q  Now, you indicated, I believe earlier, that the first tranche does not require the certification for the benchmarks. Is that correct?

A  So the requirement is to certify half. So it -- you know, we decided to present a notification of half, and then wait to certify the progress for the second half.

I'm trying to be careful to not mischaracterize the actual NDAA provision, but, you know, I trust that we can refer to that specifically as needed.

[Majority Exhibit No. 2

was marked for identification.]

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  I'm going to hand you exhibit 2. Do you recognize this document?

A  Yes, I do.

Q  And what is it?

A  So this is the second notification document, and this is the document that, you know -- that describes the certification of sufficient progress on defense reform. So in addition to notifying the specific equipment items, this document also describes the certification process.

Q  Can you point us to that certification in this document?

A  So if you -- if you look at the bottom paragraph, that describes -- it says, "the primary methodology used to inform this certification." That paragraph gives you a more detailed background on what I described to you earlier.

And at the very top of the letter, it outlines that the government of Ukraine has taken substantial actions to make defense institutional reforms for the purpose of decreasing corruption, increasing accountability, and sustaining improvements of combat capability. And that is the crux of the certification right there.

Q  And you just quoted from the very first sentence of this letter?

A  I did. If you look at the first sentence and then you look at the bottom paragraph, together that's kind of the discussion about certification.

Q  And you indicated that the Department of State played a coordinating role with regard to USAI. Is that correct?

A  Yes, that is correct.

Q  So would this certification have been done in coordination with the Secretary of State as well?

A  I can tell you that we coordinated it with the State Department, but I do not know which official -- which official at the State Department coordinated. It was in coordination with the Secretary of State.

But just as Under Secretary Rood was signing for the Secretary of Defense, I just don't know if it was Secretary Pompeo or if it was an official who had been delegated the responsibility.

Q  All right. But suffice to say that this certification memorializes that Ukraine had met all the necessary anticorruption requirements as well as other benchmarks that you described earlier under U.S. law in order to obtain this second tranche of USAI funding?

A  That is correct.

Q  And what was the total amount of the two tranches?

A  The total amount was 250.

Q  $250 million?

A  Yes. I'm sorry.

Q  Now, you indicated that there may have been some delay with regard to the 15-day clearing period. Is that right?

A  That is my recollection.

Q  But it eventually was cleared by Congress?

A  It was eventually cleaned. And by mid June, we had announced it and were moving out on it.

Q  Okay. And when you say, "by mid June, we had announced it," are you referring to the June 18th public release by the Department of Defense?

A  That is exactly what I'm referring to. Thank you.

Q  Were you involved, in any way, in the issuance of that public release?

A  Yes. I coordinated on the content of it.

Q  And when you say "coordinated on the content," does that mean -- what does that mean?

A  So that means -- so in this case, I believe that my staff helped draft it, in consultation with our public affairs staff. Then they provided me with the draft for review, and I approved it.

Q  And that release essentially said that the Department of Defense was planning on providing $250 million to Ukraine in security cooperation funds for training, equipment, and advisory efforts to build the capacity of Ukraine's Armed Forces. Is that consistent with your recollection of the release?

A  That would be the gist of it.

Q  And what was the -- I guess, what was the effect of this release on June 18th by DOD?

A  Well, one effect was that the Ukraine Embassy and the Ukraine Government thanked us for making that public. They had been looking for a public acknowledgement of the assistance, not because this was unusual, just they appreciate it when allies publicly note what kind of support we're providing Ukraine.

So that was an immediate reaction. We got a thank you phone call from the -- my staff did, anyway -- from the Ukraine Embassy; and our team in Kyiv, in the Defense Attache Office, heard appreciation.

But the second potential effect -- and I want to be clear that I am speculating here -- was that a few days later, we got a question from my chain of command forwarded down from the chief of staff, I believe, from the Department of Defense, asking for follow-up on a meeting with the President.

And it said, there are three questions. I believe it was -- I think it was three questions for follow-up from this meeting, no further information on what the meeting was.

And the one question was related to U.S. industry. Did U.S. -- is U.S. industry providing any of this equipment?

The second question that I recall was related to international contributions. It asked, what are other countries doing, something to that effect.

And then the third question, I don't recall -- I mean, with any of these I don't recall the exact wording, but it was something to the effect of, you know, who gave this money, or who gave this funding?

So when my office responded to these questions, we speculated that perhaps someone in the White House had seen our press release and then seen an article that came out after the press release. And the article that came out afterwards had a headline that could have been a little bit misleading, because the headline said something like, you know, U.S. gives 250 million to Ukraine, something that didn't explain this is equipment and it's, you know, U.S. industry and all that sort of thing.

So, again, I'm speculating here a little bit, but we did get that series of questions just within a few days after the press release and after that one article that had the headline.

Q  Who was this email from? You mentioned the chief of staff.

A  Yes. It came through a number of people before it reached my desk. I don't recall exactly how many people. But it came from the chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense, in our building, anyway.

Q  And prior to your office responding to these series of questions, did you seek any further clarity on who was asking these questions or what these questions were about?

A  So I think we asked. You know, we asked our various front offices, do you have any more insight? Do you have any more detail? Did this come from that news article? You know, we kind of asked, but nobody that we spoke with -- and it was -- to my recollection, this is just front office staff as opposed to conversations among principals. No one had any additional insight. So we, you know, dutifully responded to that email with some fact sheets.

Q  Was there a response to your response?

A  I never received a response.

Q  Prior to the issuance of this June 18th DOD statement, was there any talk of a potential hold on USAI or FMF funding?

A  No. And just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that there was talk on or about June 18th of a hold. All that I received at my level was that series of questions, and then we responded to those questions and, frankly, just moved on with the normal process.

Q  So when you received those questions, the first thing that popped in your mind was not that this was a potential hold coming down the pike?

A  Not at all.

Q  Okay. When you said chief of staff, what did you mean by that?

A  There's a position in the Secretary of Defense's front office. Eric Chewning is the current incumbent.

Q  But you indicated that you thought this might come from the White House. Did I mishear you?

A  No. The way the email was phrased, it said follow-up from POTUS meeting, so follow-up from a meeting with the President. So, you know, I'm thinking that the questions were probably questions from the President. That's how I interpreted that subject line.

Q  Did you ever get any more clarity on what this POTUS meeting was?

A  I never did.

Q  This response that you sent back, this email, how was it communicated back to the White House, if you know?

A  I do not know how it was communicated back to the White House.

Q  So when was the first time that you learned that there was a hold on USAI funds?

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, for clarity, so you get this email. And I think we've talked about two different chiefs of staff, which might be a bit confusing. There's the chief of staff at the Defense Department and then there's a chief of staff of the President.

MS. COOPER: Yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Did the emails seem to originate from the chief of staff of the President?

MS. COOPER: No, sir. The email originated from the chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense, but it --

THE CHAIRMAN: Chief of staff of the President or chief of staff of the Defense Department?

MS. COOPER: Of the Defense Department.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay.

MS. COOPER: But it did refer to follow-up from a meeting with the President.

THE CHAIRMAN: So somebody had to communicate from the White House to the chief of staff of the Defense Department?

MS. COOPER: Yes, or someone would have to have been in a meeting with the President and come out of that meeting and told the chief of staff to the Defense Department, here are some questions that came out of that meeting.

THE CHAIRMAN: And I think you gave us your best recollection of the questions. Can you tell us what your answers were?

MS. COOPER: Yes, sir, but only partially, because I just -- it was a volume of information that we provided, so I simply don't recall.

But in terms of U.S. industry, what we were able to delineate in careful detail, working with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, was that, you know, the vast majority of companies that are providing equipment under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative are U.S. companies. So we were able to give a list of U.S. companies that are involved in this.

And in terms of burden-sharing, we were able to highlight the role of this group of five nations that forms the Multinational Joint Commission, co-chaired by EUCOM and the Ukrainians, but with the participation of the U.K., Canada, Lithuania, Poland, and I'm sorry, I forget -- oh, the United States. We're the fifth.

And so this particular group, not only do the countries in this group participate in the process of identifying requirements for Ukraine security assistance, each individual country is contributing training or equipment to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

So in this particular fact sheet, we were able to describe that. I don't recall the specific content that we provided related to broader assistance beyond that specific security assistance domain.

THE CHAIRMAN: And I'm sorry, what was the third question that you received?

MS. COOPER: So the question was -- this is the one that was the trickiest for me to remember the phrasing, because it was kind of strange phrasing. It was something along the lines of who provided this funding, or where did this funding come from? So, for that, we just answered that this was, you know, supported -- this was provided by the U.S. Congress and that USAI has strong bipartisan support.

THE CHAIRMAN: And when you sent back all the answers to these three questions, you got no response?

MS. COOPER: That is correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And you had no reason to believe that there was going to be a hold on the funding, but you obviously responded to the questions anyway?

MS. COOPER: Absolutely, sir. It would be routine for us to respond to any question that comes down from the Secretary, and certainly any question that would come down from the President. That's relatively unusual, and we always respond as quickly as we can.

THE CHAIRMAN: Back to Mr. Noble -- Mitchell.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  This response that you provided, was it by email?

A  The response to these questions from follow-up from the meeting? Yes, it was via email.

Q  And were there also attachments to that email?

A  Yes, sir.

Q  Have you recently been asked to gather documents that may be responsive to a congressional subpoena?

A  So the way that the Department of Defense is handling the requests for information, both for the subpoena but also a number of Freedom of Information Act requests, as I have seen it from where I sit, is to have the Joint Service Provider, we call it DSP, our IT professionals, do a document pull.

So we have been asked to not remove anything. The vast majority of our documents are electronic. We keep almost no paper records anymore of anything. So the fact that the IT staff are pulling these documents behind the scenes means that we as individuals, or I personally, have not had to take any specific action.

Q  Without getting into any communications that you may have had with your attorney on this topic, prior to you coming in today, did you review any documents that might be relevant to your testimony?

A  Yes. I refreshed my memory on some prior emails.

Q  Okay. And was the email that you just described responding to these questions one of the emails that you reviewed?

A  Yes, it was.

Q  So it is -- that email is still in existence, as far as you understand?

A  Absolutely. It's my belief that all of the Department of Defense documents should be still in existence.

Q  Now, you indicated that the request, these three questions came about a couple of days, I believe, after this June 18th DOD announcement. Is that right?

A  It was shortly thereafter. I would say it was probably within a week. So I can't -- that I'm not sure of the exact timeframe, but within a week.

Q  Okay. And can you recall approximately when the response was sent back?

A  It certainly would have been within a week, but I can't -- I can't tell you the exact date, but we normally are required to respond very rapidly to questions from the Secretary or the President.

Q  So likely sometime between June 18th and the end of June?

A  Yes, that's my recollection.

Q  Okay. When did you first learn that USAI funds were potentially going to be held?

A  So I probably first learned in the middle of July. There was a meeting, an interagency meeting that I sent my deputy to. It was a routine Ukraine policy meeting. And the person chairing it, it was the director for Ukraine at the NSC, not the senior director. So I sent my deputy.

And I recall that after that meeting -- and I got, you know, I got a readout from the meeting -- there was discussion in that session about the -- about OMB saying that they were holding the Congressional Notification related to FMF. And the language that came out, as I recall, was something we were trying to parse the meaning of, because we -- I say "we." My deputy heard in the meeting, and my staff subsequently tried to clarify, a statement about, you know, the guidance being to hold -- it was more broadly applicable, was the phrase I remember hearing, that the guidance was more broadly applicable. But we tried to clarify, there's no guidance for DOD at this time. Is this correct? And they did not have specific guidance for DOD at the time.

So at that point, we were concerned, because this notion that there was guidance that was broadly applicable to Ukraine security assistance was a source of concern, but the only specific was related to that Congressional Notification for FMF.

[3:58 p.m.]

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  And who was the deputy that you sent in your stead?

A  words redacted                           ;, she's my principal director.

Q  Okay. And was this the July 18th sub PCC?

A  That's correct.

Q  But you did not participate --

A  I did not participate -- no, I participated in the subsequent meetings, but not that one.

Q  Okay. But you indicated that you saw a readout of it?

A  Yes, that's correct.

Q  Where did that readout come from?

A  So for most of these meetings there are two readouts. One is the readout that the person who is attending the meeting prepares. So we routinely memorialize all of our written notes into an electronic record. So I received that readout from my staff. And then the other readout from these meetings is the summary of conclusions that the NSC staff prepares, and it usually comes out a bit later after the meeting.

Q  Okay. That's also known as a SOC?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay. Did you see both this readout from words redacted                            as well as the SOC?

A  Yes, that's correct.

Q  Okay. Was there any discrepancies between the two?

A  Well, the NSC summary of conclusions is typically much less detailed than, you know, the notes that we memorialize. So there was lack of corresponding detail, but I did not see any that I recall, any substantive discrepancies.

Q  Okay. Have you looked at these two specific documents in preparation for your testimony here today?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. Do they still exist as well?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. What form are the notes that Ms. Sendak took? In other words, are they in a memo, or an email, handwritten?

A  They are in an email. And that's our routine practice from all of our key meetings, whether they be internal, or with foreign partners, or with interagency, we write up a summary and we email it to the pertinent people in the office and if appropriate we send it up the chain.

Q  Okay. And did the summary that you read, as well as the SOC, mention OMB's statement about the hold on FMF?

A  It described something along those lines, but I -- I don't recall the exact wording. And I'm not sure -- I'm not sure it said OMB, it might have said something that was more just there is, you know, a hold.

Q  Okay. Well based on your conversations with people who were actually in the room, do you know who made that statement at this July 18th sub PCC?

A  So my understanding is it was an OMB representative, but I don't know who.

Q  Okay. Do you know who chaired that meeting?

A  Since I wasn't there, I don't want to give you absolute certainty, but typically the sub PCC would be chaired by the director and in this case that's Alex Vindman.

Q  Was there any other DOD representative at this meeting?

A  I'm not sure. Routinely we have a joint staff representative, but I'm not sure if there was one at this particular meeting.

Q  Okay. Now you indicated there was some, that there was confusion on your part as to what effect this hold might have on USAI?

A  Yes, that's correct.

Q  And you sought further clarification or your staff did?

A  Yes.

Q  Following this meeting?

A  Yes. And they didn't really receive clarification.

Q  Okay. Who did they seek clarification from?

A  I don't know for sure, but I believe NSC staff, were the primary conduit, because we don't have routine counterpart interaction with OMB directly.

Q  Okay. Based on your review of the summary and the SOC, was there any reason provided for the hold during that July 18th meeting?

A  I don't recall any reason being provided at the July 18th meeting.

Q  Okay. And similarly during your follow-up it sounds like no reason was provided then either?

A  No. Although very quickly, there was a meeting at the next level up where we had another discussion about security assistance.

Q  Okay. And that's the July 23rd, PCC meeting?

A  That's correct.

Q  I think my time is up. So we'll stop there and I will yield.

THE CHAIRMAN: 1 hour to majority -- minority, excuse me.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Was this extremely unusual?

A  May I ask for clarification? What aspect?

Q  The funds were held without explanation.

A  So the way the process played out over the course of the summer was very --

Q  No. I'm just talking about the 7/18 meeting.

A  It was unusual.

Q  Okay. And were you unable to get any additional information from NSC --

A  No.

Q  -- shortly after the meeting?

A  No, we did not get clarification.

Q  What did you do to try to get that clarification?

A  We called around to NSC, to State. Those are our usual colleagues.

Q  And who did you call?

A  So I personally don't recall whether I called or it was my --

Q  Sure. --

A  -- my staff, but it would be the same people who were participating in the meeting. So the NSC directorate involved is very small. You have Tim Morrison as the senior director, and you have Alex Vindman as the director and those are the two key figures. And at the State Department there is a Ukraine desk and I don't know all of them, but my staff correspond with them, and would have called over to them, but my counterpart is George Kent.

Q  And eventually did you get any information about the source of the hold?

A  So the issue started to clarify a little bit on the 23rd at that -- at that PCC meeting. There in that meeting I recall I was advocating for the release of the FMF, because I still wasn't sure if our funds were actually at risk. But there again the OMB representative, again I do not -- this particular meeting I'm not sure who it was.

I believe I was participating via SVTC, but I'm not quite sure. But in that meeting again there was just this issue of the White House chief of staff has conveyed that the President has concerns about Ukraine and Ukraine security assistance. That was how it was conveyed in the meeting on the 23rd.

So I walked away from the meeting on the 23rd thinking okay, we know that this is, you know, a larger issue. But I still didn't have any specific direction with respect to USAI. That came after that meeting, the official direction from OMB to the DOD comptroller who then informed me was -- I'm pretty sure it was on the 25th of July that we got the apportionment notice for USAI.

And then the very next day, the 26th was the meeting that I was the backbencher for with the deputies' level. And there it was, to me anyway in my experience, it was the first time it was stated very clearly what -- that yes, it is FMF and USAI are both affected by this hold and that it relates to the President's concerns about corruption. And that is what in that meeting Mike Duffey from OMB said.

Q  And the President is authorized to have these types of holds placed. Correct?

A  Well, I'm not an expert on the law, but in that meeting immediately deputies began to raise concerns about how this could be done in a legal fashion because there was broad understanding in the meeting that the funding -- the State Department funding related to an earmark for Ukraine and that the DOD funding was specific to Ukraine security assistance.

So the comments in the room at the deputies' level reflected a sense that there was not an understanding of how this could legally play out. And at that meeting the deputies agreed to look into the legalities and to look at what was possible.

Q  Okay. So is it fair to say the deputies thought the President was not authorized to place a hold on these funds?

A  They did not use that term, but the expression in the room that I recall was a sense that there was not an available mechanism to simply not spend money that has been in the case of USAI already notified to Congress. And in the case of the FMF that was earmarked for Ukraine. So the senior leaders were expressing that they didn't see how this was legally available, but they didn't use the terminology that you've described.

Q  Okay. And you participated in person at the deputies' meeting --

A  Yes.

Q  -- as the backbencher?

A  Yes.

Q  Who was in that meeting to the extent that you can recall.

A  Whew. Well it was chaired by Charlie Kupperman and John Rood was the DOD principal. I believe it was Under Secretary Hale for the State Department, but I'm not 100 percent sure. Mike Duffey was the OMB rep, he was sitting in the back, as a backbencher. And I'm just not recalling the other agency representation.

Q  Okay. What was on the agenda for that day other than this topic?

A  So with all of the Ukraine meetings within that week timeframe, there was a focus on the elections and on the new President Zelensky team. There was a consensus in all of these meetings that this was a government that had a lot of promise, that was tackling corruption, and that we needed to support this government with security assistance.

The, you know, planned agenda I don't recall the specific details, but certainly the deputies' discussion I recall that while the sub PCC and the PCC we might not have fully realized what was happening with security assistance, by the time of the deputies meeting because the hold had also been placed on DOD -- the discussion was I believe very much dominated by the security assistance topic.

Although each member went around to talk about how important it was and how they assessed the future in Ukraine based on the recent election results.

Q  And between 7/18 and 7/26 had you had any personal conversations with NSC?

A  I don't recall any specific conversation, but also I -- you know, I participate in lots of meetings with them.

Q  Okay.

A  So I just -- You know, I don't recall any specifics, but that doesn't mean that there weren't any.

Q  Were you aware by the 26th of the President's deep rooted concerns about corruption in the Ukraine?

A  No. So by the 26th, all I had to go on was that the President is concerned about corruption in Ukraine and somehow therefore we were holding security assistance. So the conversation at the deputies, a lot of the members were saying, you know, corruption. Yes, it's been an issue. Yes, it's a concern. Yes, there's a long way to go, but we're on the right path, you know, we can move forward. So it felt like a conversation where people were trying to explain how corruption shouldn't be a concern.

Q  And the sub PCC and PCC in the deputies' meeting is the ordinary structure of meetings when these issues come up. Is that correct?

A  That is the routine progression. Although, we have a lot more sub PCC meetings and a lot more PCC meetings than we have deputies meetings. This is the only -- gosh the only deputies meeting that I can even recall on Ukraine in recent memory.

Q  Okay.

A  So we don't have routine deputies' level meetings.

Q  Okay. So Ukraine was the topic of the meeting.

A  Yes. It was only focused on Ukraine.

Q  Okay.

A  And it was set up following the PCC discussion.

Q  Okay.

A  As far as I recall, I don't think it had been previously on the calendar.

Q  So it was a meeting that was enabled by this --

A  Yes.

Q  -- situation?

A  Yes.

Q  Is there a better term?

A  I can't think of one.

Q  Okay. What was the next crucial date after the 7/26 meeting?

A  So after the 7 -- the deputies level meeting, I recall participating in another PCC level meeting and it was on I believe the 31st of July. And on that meeting it was very much a follow up, but -- well, I can pause there. Do you want me to describe the meeting?

Q  Sure.

A  Okay. So the meeting on the 31st, the expectation I think at least of my participation in the meeting was that we would talk about security assistance, but the agenda that was prepared by the NSC was largely focused on just routine Ukraine business, post election follow up. Those sorts of issues.

So it wasn't -- security assistance was not actually an explicit agenda item, but because we had left the deputies without clarity on the legally available mechanisms, this was a topic that I raised at the PCC. And I shared with the PCC my understanding that for USAI, not speaking to FMF -- I left that for the State Department -- but for USAI, my understanding was that there were two legally available mechanisms should the President want to stop assistance.

And the one mechanism would be Presidential rescission notice to the Congress and the other mechanism, as I understood it and articulated it in that meeting was for the Defense Department to do a reprogramming action. But I mentioned that either way, there would need to be a notification to Congress.

Q  And did that occur?

A  That did not occur.

Q  How soon was that notification to Congress supposed to have occurred?

A  I'm not sure when it would have supposed to have occurred. I think the way I understand these provisions is that if you reach a point where you cannot obligate the funding that the Congress has appropriated by the end of the fiscal year, once you reach that point, that is the point where you have to make that decision about what legally available mechanism you would use. And since we had not reached that point on July 20 -- July 31st.

Q  Okay. So it wasn't yet time to notify Congress. Is that right?

A  It wasn't yet time that we would be required.

Q  Okay. Did you --

A  As I understand it.

Q  Did you feel at that point Congress ought to have been notified?

A  So at that point I wanted to ensure that we could actually obligate the funding. And I was very much hoping that the explanations that the principals would provide the President, that this understanding, this new understanding perhaps of what legally available mechanisms were out there would create a decision to resume the funding. And I persisted in that hope for many, many days thereafter.

Q  And there were other avenues to convince the President or the person in the White House that was behind this decision such as through the NSC, right?

A  Well, certainly the NSC always has the ability to elevate within their chain. Out of the deputies' meeting the recommendation was to, you know, first kind of figure out these legal issues with respect to the security assistance topics specifically.

And then there were other topics, but they get into classified information so I'm not going to discuss them here. But with respect to the security assistance topic it was, you know, we have to look at the legalities and then let's elevate to principals. So the deputies agreed to elevate to the principals' level, but there was never a formal meeting of the principals to my knowledge on this topic.

Q  Do you know if the National Security Council was trying to work it on their end, briefing the President on the environment of corruption, briefing the President on the new political environment in the Ukraine after the parliamentary elections?

A  My sense is that yes -- my sense is that all of the senior leaders of the U.S. national security departments and agencies were all unified in their -- in their view that this assistance was essential, that we could work with the government of Ukraine to tackle corruption, and they were trying to find ways to engage the President on this. But I don't have any specific knowledge of the actual engagements if -- with the President.

Q  Okay. Did you or anyone on your staff try to communicate with Lieutenant Colonel Vindman or Director Morrison to find out what they were doing on their end, whether this was a genuine issue that needed to be addressed or whether they thought there was some maneuverability on their end?

A  So we absolutely engaged them many times. And my sense is that both Tim -- Tim Morrison and Alex Vindman understood the importance of obligating the security assistance and, you know, the only knowledge that I have about kind of Tim Morrison's personal engagement on this is that he did express to me that he was working very hard to set up a phone call between the President and President Zelensky. And he presented it as it was a helpful thing.

Q  Okay. So to the best of your understanding, the National Security Council was trying to set up the phone call between the Presidents?

A  To the best of my knowledge.

Q  That occurred on July 25th?

A  Again, to the best of my knowledge, but I wasn't directly involved in any of that.

Q  Did you get any readouts at any point of what happened on the 7/25 call?

A  I never got a readout. I don't think I know anyone in DOD who got a readout on that call.

Q  Okay. So the first time you learned about the developments on that call was when it became public in September?

A  Yes, that's correct. When it was released to the public, that was the first time I had seen that content.

Q  Okay. And during the 7/18 timeframe to 7/31 is where we currently are in the timeline, you never heard anything from Mr. Morrison or Lieutenant Colonel Vindman that there was a call between the Presidents?

A  Well, I'm not sure that's accurate. I think that -- I think I was aware that there would be a call and that perhaps there was a call, but no content.

Q  Okay. Was there any information communicated from NSC that the President's concern about corruption was a part of the call?

A  I got no readout on the call.

Q  Okay. So then maybe we could just go back to the deputies' meeting on July 31st. What happened next?

A  No the deputies was --

Q  July 31st?

A  No, July 31st was the PCC.

Q  Okay. The deputies meeting was the --

A  The 26th.

Q  26th, I'm sorry. And then you went back to the PCC?

A  Yes. That's correct.

Q  On the 31st?

A  Yes.

Q  I'm sorry, I'm sorry. What happened next?

A  So after the 31st, the focus of my office in Ukraine, we were working on a lot of other things at the same time, but on Ukraine specifically was trying to figure out how could we get the funds released, what -- you know, what were the process mechanisms that would be appropriate. And just practically speaking, how long could we delay obligation and still be able to obligate the entirety of the funding prior to September 30th.

So there were a number of kind of queries going back and forth between my staff, the comptroller's staff, and the Defense Security Cooperation Agency to try to figure out what to do and what was happening.

We also had the under secretary of defense for policy was engaging at his level. So the same comments that I made at the, you know, at the PCC level, he shared those same concerns with Charlie Kupperman, because there wasn't another deputies' meeting planned so this was a point-to-point communication about these two available mechanisms, the rescission or the reprogramming just to make sure that everyone was on the same page.

And in the meantime, OMB was issuing these apportionment notices. So it is probably worth me just saying a word about this now, because it gets very confusing in the timeline. Over the entirety of, you know, the period of time from when we got the first notice in July to when the funds were released and we could begin obligating again on September 12th, there were eight separate apportionment notices, but I personally wasn't aware of each one as it came in. I would hear after the fact.

And I would hear based on me talking to my comptroller colleagues saying are you still under guidance to not spend? Can we spend? So in these apportionment notices in the early ones, during this period of time this late July, early August period of time going out to I think August 6th, I believe, something around there, the apportionment notice said in it that this pause in funding -- and I'm not quoting verbatim obviously, but basically it said that the pause in funding would allow for an interagency process and would not effect the ultimate program execution.

In DOD we were trying to figure out if that was -- you know, how long that would be true. And over the course of the month of August we were, you know, trying to figure this out. It's not a science to know exactly how long it takes to obligate various projects, so that was a big part of sort of the day-to-day back and forth.

Q  So the mind-set was let's figure out if we can still do this. And then if we're not going to do it, then how do we legally effectuate that?

A  That's right.

Q  And so did you ever get to the point where you started the rescission process or the reprogramming?

A  Not to my knowledge.

Q  Okay.

A  We did get to a point though where the Department -- and I don't know who precisely, but the comptroller was most engaged with OMB as the natural counterparts. The Department of Defense had made sufficiently clear to OMB that we had passed the point where there would not be impact to program execution that in -- later in August that caveat in the apportionment footnote about not affecting the execution disappeared.

So at some point there was an understanding that we had conveyed an understanding that we were, you know, we were getting to the point where we're not going to be able to do all of this by the end of the fiscal year, and at least at the -- I don't know who issues apportionment notes at the OMB, but whoever does remove that to reflect that understanding.

Q  Okay. So from that point forward to September 12th, everyone involved was hopeful that this would get resolved?

A  Yes. Although I have to say after probably about, I don't know, August 20th or so we were really losing hope because we knew that we weren't going to be able to obligate everything by the end of the fiscal year so we were concerned about the actual program impacts.

Q  Okay. And were you ultimately able to obligate everything?

A  So by the end of the fiscal year we ultimately obligated -- it was upwards of 80 percent and, you know, thanks obviously to the Congress we got the language in the continuing resolution that thankfully will enable us to obligate all of the funding ultimately.

Q  Okay. What was the next key event after the 31st?

A  So the next --

Q  Other than the apportionment notices, which I got that.

A  So I'm probably forgetting things, but --

Q  It's okay.

A  -- the thing I personally remember is my only conversation with OMB because it's not a routine thing for me to be calling OMB. But in that July 31st meeting, I had expressed that, you know, because there are only two legally available options and we do not have direction to pursue either, after the apportionment notice expires, which was roughly August 6th, I think it was either the 5th or the 6th, something around there. After it expires, I said the Department would have to start obligating the funds.

And Tim Morrison reported that to Mike Duffey at OMB. And Mike Duffey said something like, I don't know what she's talking about or he needed clarification somehow. And so Tim asked me to call Mike Duffey to explain what I'm talking about with this deadline of August 6th or 5th.

And so I called -- you know, I corresponded with email with Mike Duffey and then he called me. And I just explained to him kind of what I explained to you that, you know, at a certain point we won't be able to obligate and that, you know, the guidance that we're under it's only to a certain point. And, you know, we finished the conversation, I kind of explained my piece.

He wanted more information on the precise nature of how long does it take to obligate, and how many cases, and that sort of thing. And I'm not a comptroller, so I referred him to the comptroller and to DSCA. And it was my understanding that throughout the month of August there were many such conversations where OMB was trying to see if we could push, you know, keep planning to obligate, but keep pushing the obligations until later in the year and still complete them. Comptroller was trying to figure out if that was possible. Defense Security Cooperation Agency was trying to figure out, you know, what -- what is possible. And along the way, Defense Security Cooperation Agency was expressing doubt that they could do it.

Q  And so this conversation was before the 5th or the 6th of August?

A  Yeah, the conversation was -- yeah, it was probably very close to the 5th or the 6th, it was probably like the 5th, it was pretty close to the deadline.

Q  And what was the next key event? Do you remember?

A  Some kind of -- I'm drawing a blank. I'm thinking of things that happened much later at the end of August. It did kind of go a little bit dark where we weren't getting guidance, we weren't --

Q  Were there any other PCC meetings?

A  I can't recall any formal additional meetings that were, you know, specific formal meetings on Ukraine.

Q  The deputies' meeting you described and the PCC and the sub PCC, this is all relating to Ukraine?

A  Yes.

Q  So there's a whole set of meetings, there was a whole infrastructure of interagency communications when something of this sort occurs?

A  Yes. And just to kind of describe the process a little bit, it is absolutely routine to have meetings at the level of kind of my deputy or even at my level on Ukraine to check in on major events. We were doing the same sort of thing in the spring when they were having their Presidential election. And we just meet on a reasonably routine basis. So that's all very typical. It is less typical to have meetings above our level unless there's a major policy decision.

Q  Had anyone at the NSC or anyone else communicated to you about this effort relating to Mr. Giuliani and his nontraditional form of diplomacy?

A  So the only conversations about Giuliani related to material that was in the press.

Q  Okay.

A  In no meetings that, you know, no meeting that I've attended do I recall a specific discussion about Giuliani.

Q  Okay.

A  There were certainly informal conversations within the national security community about whether or not he played a pivotal role in the recall of Ambassador Yovanovitch. So that was definitely a topic of conversation just informally, me and State Department, and NSC, and other counterparts in the kind of May, June timeframe as she was recalled surprisingly.

With respect to this other -- I forget how you described it.

Q  Nontraditional form of diplomacy?

A  Nontraditional form of diplomacy. My personal interaction was only with Ambassador Kurt Volker. So on about August 20th he visited me and this was not unusual because he was -- he was working on the peace negotiations and peace process. So we were actually supporting him in terms of developing concepts for potential peacekeeping operations, you know, military -- how the military relates to the possible political settlement so I had met with him many, many times previously.

But towards the end of August when he met with me for what, you know, I thought was going to be you know just a routine touch base on Ukraine, but also I thought it was going to be a strategizing session on how do we get this security assistance released knowing that we both -- we both wanted the funding released.

So in that meeting he did mention something to me that, you know, was the first about somehow an effort that he was engaged in to see if there was a statement that the government of Ukraine would make that would somehow disavow any interference in U.S. elections and would commit to the prosecution of any individuals involved in election interference. And that was about as specific as it got.

Q  Okay. Did he indicate to you that if that channel he was working was successful it might lift this issue?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. Had you known Ambassador Volker before?

A  Yes, yes. I basically met him for the first time kind of in person when he was appointed -- shortly after he was appointed in this role on Ukraine.

Q  Okay and your dealings with him had already been professional and he's somebody of integrity --

A  Yes.

Q  -- to your knowledge?

A  Yes absolutely.

Q  And he's very knowledgeable about the issues in the Ukraine, correct?

A  Yes.

Q  He has a lot of relationships with Ukrainians?

A  Absolutely.

Q  Were there any other, we're talking about the 5th or the 6th and the apportionment notices, and then you indicated that things went a little dark and you didn't have a specific recollection of another milestone event. Was the Volker meeting -- was there anything in between the Volker meeting and the 5th or the 6th when you were communicating with Mike Duffey?

A  So part of it is that I was also on vacation for a week so I don't recall. And we were preparing for a major round of briefings on Russia within the Department. So some of it is just I had a lot on my plate. There might have been things on Ukraine but I just don't remember during that period of time. That's not what I recall.

Q  The news I think the word used yesterday was I think leaked out about the hold on the assistance?

A  Yes, yes.

Q  On the 29th?

A  Yes. Actually, yes.

Q  Does that help you recall any events in that timeframe?

A  So the other -- the other kind of theme during that time period was -- that was when various folks in the Department started to get phone calls from industry. And the firm I referenced earlier all of these U.S. firms that were implementing USAI they were getting concerned.

So during that timeframe, I don't remember exact dates but it was kind of mid- to late August, a number of people my front office, in the Assistant Secretary office just the staff we're getting phone calls from industry. I received a call from the Chamber of Commerce.

So before the kind of press broke on it, we were hearing that there were signs of concern. And from my part, I think -- I think I started to get questions from staff from congressional staff probably, you know, it was around that timeframe. It was late August, late August. And so I had prepared, and my staff had prepared here draft responses. There wasn't much we could say other than OMB has placed a hold on this and we, you know, sent those replies up -- up the chain. And I never -- I never got authorization to be able to send anything over here, and then you did start to see the news break.

Q  And once the news broke, did that change the environment in the PCC world? Were there any other interactions with that group?

A  Well, I think --

Q  Once the news broke I think Senators started calling the White House and there started to be other external forces affecting the situation. Is that fair to say?

A  I think that's fair to say and I mean I want to emphasize that throughout this whole summer the people that work for me, the people that I work with at the Department of Defense were trying to get the funding released and were hopeful that we would get the funding released.

As it got to be very late in the game, we were worried not from a question of external pressure being brought to bear, certainly we were hopeful that someone could advise the President and explain why this was so important and that he would be persuaded. But we started to seem very concerned just from the timing, because we were worried that we simply couldn't -- we wouldn't have enough time to obligate all the money.

Q  During this timeframe, did you have any communications with Ukrainians?

A  I would have to say I'm sure I did, but I don't recall --

Q  About this?

A  But not about this. No, no, I did not speak with them about this. And no Ukrainians raised this issue with me or my team.

Q  Okay. So to the best of --

A  To my knowledge, to my knowledge.

Q  To the best of your knowledge, they didn't know that this funding was possibly being held up until --

A  Oh, that's not what I'm saying.

Q  Okay. What are you saying?

A  So I personally was not -- sorry, I apologize. I did not mean to be interrupting you.

So I personally did not have Ukrainian ministry -- I deal with the ministry of defense, none of them raised this issue with me.

But I knew from my Kurt Volker conversation and also from sort of the alarm bells that were coming from Ambassador Taylor and his team that there were Ukrainians who knew about this.

Q  Okay.

A  They just weren't talking to me.

Q  Okay. What did you know that the Ukrainians knew? Did Volker communicate that to you?

A  Well, Ambassador Volker described talking to an adviser to President Zelensky about making such a statement, making a statement, you know, disavowing election interference. And the way he described the statement I understood it to be a discussion that wasn't going to occur in the future, but that had occurred in the past. That was my understanding.

Q  Do you know if that statement was built around another -- another activity such as a White House meeting?

A  So I know that there were two specifics things that the Government of Ukraine wanted during this timeframe and the one was a visit by -- a hosted visit at the White House. And the other was Ukraine security assistance, but I do not know --

Q  Okay.

A  -- which issue was being tracked with the other.

Q  Okay. Okay. But you don't have any firsthand knowledge that the Ukrainans knew --

A  I --

Q  -- that the assistance was on hold, you had just heard that?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. To your knowledge, when do you believe the Ukrainians became aware that the assistance had been subject to a hold? Was it before the Volker meeting on August 20th?

A  I'm not sure precisely, because I can't recall when some of the conversations with our embassy in Kyiv occurred.

Q  Okay. What were your communications with the embassy during this time period on this topic?

A  Well, my staff were mostly the folks communicating with our defense attache office. I can't recall specifically, but it was fairly routine. We have email communications with the embassy that are fairly routine.

Q  Okay. And what was the general information you were getting from the embassy?

A  The embassy was expressing clearly and consistently that we needed to get the security assistance funds released and that this would cause a major major challenge in our relationship in the Ukraine security, and that the President had sent an invite to President Zelensky much earlier, I want to say May, it might have been May or June timeframe, and that the fact that the President hadn't followed up on that was causing a lot of concern. Those were the consistent themes from our embassy.

Q  Okay. After the Volker meeting, what was the next key event that you remember?

A  Well, we were hopeful this whole time that Secretary Esper and Secretary Pompeo would be able to meet with the President and just explain to him why this was so important and get the funds released.

And you know, from a variety of I think mostly scheduling reasons both Secretary Esper and Secretary Pompeo had different trips in August and were out of town at different times.

I never learned that the meeting took place until the end of August, and I don't remember the exact date, but the end of August there was an email that I received that was from the Secretary Esper down to -- I'm not sure who he addressed it to, but I got a copy of it and it -- it said -- it referenced the President somehow that there was a meeting with the President or some discussion, and he said, no -- no decision on Ukraine.

Next step is a Vice President meeting with Zelensky in Warsaw. And he included a note in there about holding on any memo that the Department would send to OMB on this matter pending the Vice President meeting. And that's the entirety of what I saw. I tried to seek additional context, but I did not receive additional context.

Q  Did you receive feedback or a readout from the Vice President's meeting in Warsaw?

A  I only got very fragmentary so I did not get a coherent readout. Originally Secretary Esper was supposed to join but his travel got changed.

Q  When did this environment start to change? Like when did you get a sense that the aid would be released? Was that on the 12th or --

A  It was the 11th.

Q  Okay.

A  And it really came quite out of the blue.

Q  It was abrupt?

A  It was quite abrupt. We got -- I believe we got an email. I think it came from again the Secretary of Defense's chief of staff so Eric Chewning. And it just said, OMB has lifted the hold and then we could start obligating on the 12th, which was I think the last apportionment expired.

Q  Okay. Were there any other milestone events that we haven't discussed that are material and relevant to the facts that you have firsthand information about?

A  I can't think of any.

Q  Okay. You indicated that no formal effort was expended for the rescission or reprogramming of these moneys?

A  I'm not sure what that means. The formal --

Q  You didn’t begin the rescission -- the rescission process did not begin, did it?

A  To my knowledge, no.

Q  And the reprogramming effort did not begin?

A  Again, to my knowledge, no. The people who'd have prepared the actual paperwork probably would have been in comptroller so.

Q  Right. But you had no awareness that that was --

A  No, no awareness.

Q  So to the best of your knowledge, everyone was hopeful that this would lift?

A  I don't know about everyone. I can't speak for everyone. I was hopeful until we got to the point where DSCA was telling us we can't spend all of this. And because I didn't understand any other mechanism than to obligate the money by the end of the year, I don't think anyone had thought of -- no one I spoke with had thought of the idea of the Congress doing, you know, another authorization essentially.

No one in DOD that I talked to was talking about that as a mechanism. So once we got that point where DSCA was telling us they didn't think they could do it, that's when the hope in my team was really starting to wane.

MR. CASTOR: Okay. We have about 15 minutes and I'd like to pivot this to some of our members.

Mr. Jordan?

MR. ZELDIN: I just want to follow up on a couple of items you just discussed with Mr. Castor.

When you stated that you knew that Ukraine wanted a White House visit, how did you know that?

MS. COOPER: I would have to think about all the different ways that I heard that. I know I heard it from Ambassadors Chaly, their Ambassador here. I know I heard it from other personnel in the Ukrainian ministry of defense, but not necessarily the minister himself, and certainly our embassy reported it quite regularly in our routine meetings. So those are a few of the places where I know that this was a desire.

MR. ZELDIN: The hold on aid you said you knew that Ukraine knew it from information received from Ambassador Volker and Taylor. Is that right?

MS. COOPER: I know that they knew about it based on what Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Taylor told me, not that those two were the sources.

MR. ZELDIN: Correct.

MS. COOPER: I don't know what that source of information was --

MR. ZELDIN: Do you recall the first time that either of them told you that Ukraine knew there was a hold on aid?

MS. COOPER: I don't recall specifically when. I mean I know that I met with Ambassador Volker on August -- on or about August 20th, so that's a specific -- I didn't talk to him, you know, routinely about this throughout the summer.

MR. ZELDIN: Then you stated that Ambassador Volker mentioned something about a statement. Correct?

MS. COOPER: Yes.

MR. ZELDIN: But did he say anything at that time about Ukraine knowing that there was a hold on aid?

MS. COOPER: I don't recall if he specifically said that, but the entire conversation started with a discussion on the need to lift the hold on aid and the fact that if this hold did not get lifted, it would be very damaging to the relationship.

MR. ZELDIN: I understand that and in your conversations with Kyiv as well that they are communicating that they wanted the hold to be released. I'm trying to understand how you concluded that Ukraine knew that there was a hold on aid.

MS. COOPER: The context for the discussion that I had with Ambassador Volker related specifically to the path that he was pursuing to lift the hold would be to get them to make this statement, but the only reason they would do that is because there was, you know, something valuable. But no, I don't know if he specifically said who --

MR. ZELDIN: Well, it's significant because you're -- it's one thing if you believe that they knew and it's another thing if you actually were told that Ukrainians knew. Are you are guessing that you think Ukraine would have known based on what you heard or did they actually tell you Ukraine knew?

A  So again, the conversation with Ambassador Volker because it related to the security assistance needing to be lifted and the importance of that, and he was relating conversations he had had with Ukraine officials. It could have been my inference, yes, a very strong inference that there was some knowledge on the part of the Ukrainians.

Later, when you get into early September, at that point there were -- I'm confident that there were staff level questions coming in from lower level officials in the Ukrainian ministry of defense to our team in Kyiv and to my team. But that was right before the hold was lifted so no, I cannot pinpoint a specific time in August.

MR.ZELDIN: And are you aware Ambassador Taylor was here to testify yesterday, correct?

MS. COOPER: Yes, it was in the media.

MR. ZELDIN: His opening statement was in the media. Are you aware of that?

MS. COOPER: Yes, but I have not been focused on other people's testimony, to be honest.

MR. ZELDIN: That's fine. I just want to confirm, you haven't read Ambassador Taylor's opening statement?

MS. COOPER: I saw some media reporting about it.

MR. ZELDIN: Did you read anything Ambassador Taylor said with regards to Ukraine, not knowing of aid as of August 27th?

MS. COOPER: I did not read that, no.

MR. ZELDIN: Now any other holds on -- to any other countries or other accounts that you're aware of anywhere in the world over the course of the last several months or is Ukraine the only hold on any payments through the Secretary of Defense?

MS. COOPER: Since I only handle my region, I can't speak to the other regions. I just don't know.

MR. ZELDIN: So there might be holds in -- to other countries and other types of accounts that -- in other parts of the world that you are just not aware of?

MS. COOPER: I simply don't know.

MS. STEFANIK. Ms. Cooper, in your answer to Mr. Castor's questions you referenced conversations with congressional staff after the July 31st PCC. When approximately were those conversations?

MS. COOPER: I'd have to go back. I might have misspoke, but I did not have any conversations with congressional staff.

MS. STEFANIK. Congressional staff reached out to you, you said.

MS. COOPER: Yes. So this was via legislative affairs so there were questions that were sent in by various congressional staff, and then I saw what the questions were and I had my staff prepare a response, and then coordinate it internally, which is a routine process, and then I sent that up saying, you know --

MS. STEFANIK. And which committees were those staff members from, which committees?

MS. COOPER: I'm pretty sure it was Senate side, but I don't remember the specifics. And there were more that I didn't -- I didn't see all the incoming, I saw what we prepared to go out.

MS. STEFANIK. Okay. Thank you.

MR. MEADOWS: So let me come back to the obligated, unobligated funds. One, thank you for your service. And it is refreshing to have people who are experts on their topic, and so I want to just say thank you for that.

So your staff, they didn't -- they didn't know that unobligated funds well typically that happens, end of fiscal year there's always unobligated funds and there was -- they were not aware of not only what happened in this case, but it had happened previously. Is that correct?

MS. COOPER: No, sir. My staff and I am aware that there are frequently unobligated funds at the very end of the year. What we were worried about in this case was that, you know, the bulk of the funds or a significant amount of funding would be unobligated. So absolutely we do understand that, you know, sometimes you can't actually obligate everything. And I believe last year USAI did not have 100 percent obligation.

MR. MEADOWS: Right. Of course that was a year -- so you came in in 2016.

MS. COOPER: Correct.

MR. MEADOWS: So prior to you getting there, I mean there was about the 90 percent of the appropriated funds were obligated, but the rest were not, but every year there have been unobligated funds. Would you agree with that?

I mean you may not have knowledge, but would it surprise you that every year there are unobligated funds based on what is appropriated versus what is obligated.

MS. COOPER: Sir, that would not surprise me.

MR. MEADOWS: And so how often would you directly talk to Ukrainian counterparts like the defense minister, et cetera, because I was trying -- you acted like you had a pretty regular dialogue with your counterparts, Ukrainian counterparts.

And I am not talking just on this issue, just in general.

[4:58 p.m.]

MS. COOPER: My --

MR. MEADOWS: And I'm not talking just on this issue, just in general.

MS. COOPER: In general, so I talk to Ukrainians relatively frequently. But my actual minister of defense, deputy minister of defense counterparts, that would be more, you know, every few months. And it's not always the minister, it might be the deputy, if that makes sense.

MR. MEADOWS: So when you say you talk to Ukrainians, you're talking to Ukrainians in Ukraine, not Ukrainians here?

MS. COOPER: Well, also Ukrainians visiting here. So when there's --

MR. MEADOWS: I guess, I'm trying to -- so let me be a little clearer then. I'm looking for contacts with Ukrainians that have contacts with Ukrainian Government. How often does that happen for you?

MS. COOPER: I mean, it certainly varies depending on the time of year, not a lot in August, but every few weeks at least.

MR. MEADOWS: Okay. So in those conversations every few weeks, what you're saying is in your conversations, this issue of the defense appropriations being held up was not something that was raised directly with you. Is that correct?

MS. COOPER: Correct.

MR. MEADOWS: Okay. I'll yield back.

MR. PERRY: Steve, is there time?

MR. CASTOR: There's time. We have about 4 minutes.

MR. PERRY: All right. Ma'am, thanks for your testimony. Right here. I'm curious about the 31 July PCC meeting as follow-up. You were talking about a meeting prior when you were looking into the legal -- the legality of the hold, and under what provisions that could happen. You, at the time, were aware of rescission and reprogramming. Is that correct or not correct?

MS. COOPER: So my personal knowledge on rescission and reprogramming was not existent prior to doing some research in the context of this discussion, if that's what you're getting at.

MR. PERRY: Okay. That's fine. And based on your understanding now, who would initiate either one, rescission or reprogramming, and what would your part in either one of those be?

MS. COOPER: So, again, I'm not the budget expert, so I might have an inaccurate understanding, but my understanding of the rescission piece is that it would have to be the President; and that the reprogramming piece, that's the Department of Defense, so, you know, it's my sense that the comptroller executes that. I find it, you know, unlikely that they would execute without the permission of the senior leadership of the Department. But for my office, we would be coordinating on that. So if it's Ukraine, I would see it, but if it's some other program, I would have no awareness of it.

MR. PERRY: And do you know when you would get notice of said action, rescission, or reprogramming? When would you get notice if those, in fact, were occurring, going to occur, so ordered, et cetera?

MS. COOPER: I don't know, because I also don't know that that's a routine thing for this account, so, yeah.

MR. PERRY: Okay. All right. Thank you. I yield.

MR. JORDAN: Secretary, in your -- I think you earlier said you were getting the information from both Tim and Alex. Is that Mr. Morrison and Mr. Vindman?

MS. COOPER: Yes, that's correct.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. And I think you indicated that they had both said that they were working hard on setting up a phone call. Was that the phone call between President Trump and President Zelensky?

MS. COOPER: Yes. Just to be clear, the only person who I recall specifically mentioning to me working on the phone call was Tim Morrison. I do not recall Alex Vindman ever telling me that.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. Then in your August 5, August 6, when you had your conversation with Mr. Duffy, I think you said you spoke to Mr. Morrison prior to that?

MS. COOPER: Yes. It was Tim Morrison who actually put me in touch with Mike Duffy.

MR. JORDAN: So Tim called you and said that you should call and talk with Mr. Duffy?

MS. COOPER: He emailed me and said -- he said that he was trying to explain to Mike Duffy some of the points that I had made in the meeting, and that I referenced this kind of deadline, and that he didn't know what that was referring to, so he asked me to talk to him. So that's why the contact took place.

MR. JORDAN: Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. The time of the minority has already expired. Let's take a 10- or 15-minute break and then we'll resume.

MS. COOPER: Okay.

[Recess.]

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Let's go back on the record.

I just have a couple of questions before I hand it back to Mr. Mitchell. In the first meeting where you described -- a question was raised about what are the legally available mechanisms to actually suspend this aid, or hold this aid, did someone raise that issue in a different -- using different terminology as in, is this lawful? Can this be done lawfully? Is this a violation of law?

MS. COOPER: So that was in the deputies' meeting that that first conversation that I recall arose, and I don't remember that exact phraseology being used. But, I mean, there were many affirmative statements that the Congress has appropriated this, we need to obligate it.

THE CHAIRMAN: Under the law?

MS. COOPER: Again, I don't remember that exact phrase, but yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, I think you said that as a result of the delay in the program execution that you got to a point of no return with at least part of the funding, where it would not be obligated in time pursuant to what Congress had appropriated. Is that right?

MS. COOPER: So based on the information that I was receiving from the people implementing the program, by late August, we felt -- they felt that they would not be able to obligate all of the funding. And this understanding was actually reflected in a change in the apportionment footnotes.

So in the original apportionment footnotes, OMB reflected that it would not impact timely execution of the funding, but -- and I wish I could recall for you the exact date, but mid- to late August, they changed the footnote. It actually probably would have been right about August 20. They changed the phrasing, and they didn't include that sentence that said that it would not impact the timely execution.

THE CHAIRMAN: And I think you said that at that point, or maybe soon thereafter, it became clear that fully a fifth of the funding would not be available to be obligated because of the delay. Is that right?

MS. COOPER: So I received different estimates at different points in time of what would be possible. And at one point, in August, DSCA actually thought it would be, you know, well over $100 million that would not be -- that there would not be time to obligate. They ended up being able to do a lot more than their earlier warnings, but we were quite concerned about the ability to execute.

THE CHAIRMAN: So at one point, then, the delay that had been occasioned by the President's order could have cost Ukraine $100 million that would not be obligated in that year?

MS. COOPER: So just to be clear, sir, the estimate at the time was that it would cost at least that amount of money, but that was an estimate. And then, you know, the professionals of the Department of Defense were able to essentially make up for lost time, is my perspective, and were able to do a lot more.

THE CHAIRMAN: But it's fair to say, at that point, it put $100 million of aid at risk?

MS. COOPER: That was my view at the time.

THE CHAIRMAN: Ultimately, because the Defense Department officials were able to do workaround, it reduced the impact down to about 20 percent, I think you said?

MS. COOPER: It was less than that. I think we were able to obligate, I want to say, 88 percent by the end of the year.

THE CHAIRMAN: So that still meant that tens of millions of dollars you were not going to be able to obligate. Is that right?

MS. COOPER: Well, yes, and the reason that we can obligate it at this point is because of congressional action, because --

THE CHAIRMAN: Right. But before the Congress took action, as a result of the delay, it was going to cost Ukraine tens of millions of dollars in military assistance. Is that right?

MS. COOPER: Roughly. That assumes that we would have been able to, you know, obligate the full amount, which sometimes there are challenges with that.

THE CHAIRMAN: And but for the effort of Congress to step in and pass a new law, Ukraine would have lost out on that military support at least in that fiscal year?

MS. COOPER: Yes, that's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Mitchell.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  Sticking with the same theme, Mr. Meadows was asking you a series of questions about whether it was unusual for there to be unobligated funds at the end of a fiscal year that couldn't be spent, and I think your answer was, no, that happens. That's not infrequent. Is that correct?

A  That's correct. I think it's just a matter of the order of magnitude.

Q  Okay. So I want to understand a little bit more the order of magnitude. So in your experience in the ordinary course, are we talking 1, 2, 3 percent of funds that are unobligated at the end of a fiscal year?

A  I can't answer that, because I just -- I do policy oversight, but I'm not looking that closely at program execution, and I just don't have the range of experience.

Q  Okay. Are you aware that that percentage, whatever that percentage is, is typically unobligated because of unpredictable events? For example, salaries change or the number of individuals who receive those salaries don't come to fruition; and as a result of that, those funds are not obligated in time?

A  So, yes. I think that in my limited experience, and from my conversations with DSCA, some of the reasons that we have historically been unable to obligate the entirety of the funding would be through such unpredictable factors, to include, you know, price changes and equipment.

Q  Okay. But here, those unpredictable factors were not the ones that prevented 12 percent of USAI funding from being obligated at the end of the fiscal year. Is that correct?

A  To my understanding, I don't know any of those factors came into play.

Q  Your understanding is that there was a hold that was put in place, correct?

A  Yes, that's correct.

Q  That delayed the obligation of funds --

A  Yes.

Q  -- for some certain time period, correct?

A  Yes, correct.

Q  All the way through September 11?

A  Exactly. September 12 is when we began obligating again.

Q  And as a result of that, the window for obligating the remaining funds was dramatically shortened. Is that correct?

A  That's correct.

Q  And it was because of that shortened window that 12 percent of those funds could not be obligated by the end of the fiscal year, and that Congress, as a result, had to change the law to extend the 1-year funding mechanism that is USAI. Is that right?

A  That is my understanding.

Q  I want to understand a little bit more this August 6 date that you were testifying to earlier that I think you mentioned -- correct me if I'm wrong -- but that you mentioned the July 31 PCC meeting. Is that night?

A  Yes.

Q  And then you also had a subsequent conversation with Mr. Duffey about this date?

A  That's correct.

Q  Can you explain the relevance of August 6?

A  So there were a few factors that came into play, but the main issue was that the original apportionment guidance from OMB had that expiration date on it. And what I explained at the PCC, and subsequently to Mike Duffey, was that we would not be able to continue to hold obligation either, you know, past the point where the apportionment footnote ended, because that was -- the OMB direction was until a certain date, but also, that we would not be able to hold past the point where continuing to hold would not allow us to obligate the funds by the end of the fiscal year, again, unless there was specific direction to reprogram or, you know, some other specific action with the Congress.

Q  And was that based on communications that you had with DSCA?

A  So the communications with DSCA about what the date would be were an active, ongoing set of conversations throughout the month of August. At the point that you were referring to, at the beginning of August, at that point, we didn't fully know what that date was. We weren't sure. We felt a sense of uncertainty about how much time we would need to obligate.

But in that first week of August, this information was still very fresh that there was a hold, and DSCA hadn't really done all the calculations to figure out, you know, kind of what's the last possible date.

I was simply telling Mike Duffey that, you know, we have this August 6 date, and beyond that date we don't have any guidance. The only thing we have is this piece of guidance that says, you know, hold until the 6th, and we would need to look at what the last possible date would be.

Q  Okay. And, again, the genesis for the August 6 date -- perhaps I missed it -- was what?

A  So -- and this is my secondhand understanding. So my secondhand understanding on this was that OMB wanted to communicate the President's direction to hold the assistance, and in consultation with the DOD comptroller they realized that the way to do this would be via an apportionment, this, you know, piece of guidance about the flow of funds that would tell us to hold.

At the time, I think the August 6 date was fairly arbitrary, to be honest. I think it was trying to put something down on paper that would reflect there will be some kind of a policy process, there will be some kind of a discussion with the President. You know, we'll give a date that allows for a process to play out. But, you know, we won't go much beyond that because DOD's signaling right away was, you know, we're concerned about this. But all of this is from me. It was secondhand that I was discussing this.

Q  DOD was concerned about all this because the concern was that not all the funds would be able to be obligated past August 6. Is that correct?

A  Yes. And it was -- I mean, so DOD was concerned about the obligation of funds. Policy, my team, we were also concerned about any signal that we would send to Ukraine about a wavering in our commitment. And that's another reason why, I mean, we did not want for this to be a big public discussion, you know, if we were about to get it turned back on again because we didn't want to signal any lack of support.

Q  Why would that be a problem for Ukraine?

A  So, I mean, the first and easiest way to answer that is by looking at the peace process. They are trying to negotiate a peace with Russia, and if they are seen as weak, and if they are seen to lack the backing of the United States for their Armed Forces, it makes it much more difficult for them to negotiate a peace on terms that are good for Ukraine.

Q  Okay. So it would weaken an ally, that being Ukraine. Is that correct?

A  It would weaken strategic partner.

Q  And it would potentially strengthen or embolden Russia?

A  That is correct.

Q  I'm going to hand you three exhibits, exhibits 3, 4, and 5.

[Majority Exhibits Nos. 3, 4, and 5

were marked for identification.]

THE CHAIRMAN: I just want to mention to the witness, we don't mean to be Rude. We have votes. So members are going to vote, but the deposition will continue through the staff. Thank you.

MS. COOPER: Okay. Thank you, sir.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  All right. So, ma'am, do you have those documents in front of you?

A  I do have the documents in front of me.

Q  And do these look like the three apportionments, the first one, exhibit No. 3 is undated, and it's just the footnotes. Do you have that one in front of you, ma'am?

A  I do.

Q  Okay. Put that one to the side for just a second.

The next one, exhibit No. 4, you'll see a signature page on the first page. Do you see that?

A  Uh-huh.

Q  What was the date of the signature?

A  So the date appears to be July 25.

Q  Okay. And who's it signed by?

A  Mark Sandy.

Q  Do you know who Mark Sandy is, other than the fact that it says deputy associate director for national security programs?

A  Yes. I don't know Mark Sandy.

Q  Okay. Is it your understanding that Mark Sandy is a person at OMB?

A  I actually don't know Mark Sandy, so I actually don't even know what his title is.

Q  All right. If you look at page 2 of exhibit No. 4, and I'll turn your attention to footnote A4. Do you see that? I'll just read it. It says: "Amounts apportioned but not yet obligated as to the date of this reapportionment for the Ukraine security assistance initiative are not available for obligation until August 5, 2019, to allow for an interagency process to determine the best use of such funds."

And then it continues: "Based on OMB's communication with DOD on July 25, 2019, OMB understands from the Department that this brief pause in obligations will not preclude DOD's timely execution of the final policy determination."

And then last sentence, "DOD may continue its planning and casework for the initiative during this period."

Was this the footnote that you were referring to earlier?

A  So I want to clarify that I never saw the actual full document, so this is the first time I am seeing that. But the language in here is the language that I saw. So it was -- the language was provided to me but not the formal document.

Q  Okay. This is the language that you were testifying about earlier?

A  Yes, this is exactly what I was discussing earlier.

Q  Okay. And this particular one says, August 5, 2019. We've been talking about August 6 to date, but do you see those two things as --

A  I think it's the same thing. So sometimes we would be talking about the date where we would resume obligation. Just earlier in this conversation, someone mentioned September 11, and I said, oh, September 12. It depends on what you're referring to, the date that you can resume obligation or the date that the footnote expired, so I think it's the same thing.

Q  And the second half of that same sentence says, "to allow for an interagency process to determine the best use of such funds."

Now, this particular document was signed on July 25, which was prior to the deputies' meeting, as well as prior to the PCC meeting on the 31st. Is that correct?

A  That's correct.

Q  So there was an interagency process occurring during this time period?

A  That is correct.

Q  The next sentence also says, "based on OMB's communication with DOD on July 25, 2019." What communication is this footnote referring to?

A  So I can't say for sure, but the communication that was occurring throughout this period tended to be between OMB and the DOD comptroller. And then DOD comptroller would relay pertinent pieces of information to me or obtain, you know, policy input from me.

Q  Okay. Let's go to exhibit 5. This particular apportionment, who is it signed -- well, what's the date of it?

A  The date is August 6.

Q  And who's it signed by?

A  Mike Duffey. Michael Duffey.

Q  And, again, who is Michael Duffey?

A  So Michael Duffey, I do know, works at OMB. It says here his title is associate director for national security programs. I did not know that prior to reading it, but Mike Duffey was the individual from OMB who was in the deputies' meeting that I referenced earlier.

Q  And also the individual that you spoke to after that deputies' meeting?

A  Exactly, that's correct.

Q  And I think you testified that you spoke with him on August 6. Is that right?

A  If I said that, I am not certain of the exact date. It was right around the same time period, but it was prior to the expiration of the footnote. So it probably actually was August 5, or even the 4th, but, yeah. So he would have approved this after he had spoken with me.

Q  Okay. And the footnote on page 2 of exhibit No. 5, you'll see is very similar to the last one we just read except for the date changes to August 12, 2019. Do you see that?

A  Yes. Yes.

Q  Do you know how they came up with August 12, 2019?

A  I do not. They did ask for input about, you know, how much time it would take, how quickly DSCA would be able to obligate the funds. To my knowledge, DSCA and policy did not provide a definitive answer to give a definitive date.

Q  Okay. And sometime after this apportionment, you indicated that this footnote changed?

A  Yes. So, in late August, I think on or about August 20, I think that was the next footnote actually, that is when it changed, and it took out that part about timely execution. I don't recall if it took out a part about a policy process. I don't recall either way.

Q  Okay. And why did that -- why was it changed?

A  My understanding is it changed because at that point, OMB recognized that there was a risk in not being able to obligate the funding. Prior to that point, OMB never formally acknowledged that they thought there was a risk.

Q  Okay. Do you know why the person who was signing these apportionments changed from July 25 to August 6?

A  I don't know.

Q  Was there a policy or interagency review process that was being conducted in August?

A  There was no policy review process that I participated in or knew of.

Q  The last meeting that you were aware of was July 31?

A  Yes, that's correct.

Q  Are you aware of whether DOD conducted any sort of review -- other than the interagency process that you described, any sort of review of USAI funding during the July, August, or beginning of September time period?

A  I know of no such review. The only three types of assessments, or reviews, that we -- that I personally participated in or that I know the DOD participated in, were, one, to look at the degree to which Ukraine had made sufficient progress in meeting defense reform and anticorruption goals consistent with the NDAA. We completed that review and provided the certification letter that we discussed earlier.

Q  So that was -- just to be clear, that was prior to May?

A  That was May, yes. I'm just trying to be very clear. Prior to May, we completed that review. There was the second query that I received regarding USAI that occurred after the press release in June, but the only thing that we did there was summarize readily available information regarding firms and international contributions. But I just want to be clear, we did provide information on that.

And then the third are these meetings that occurred in the interagency. But I would not use the term "review" to describe any of them because they were all just routine business.

Q  Okay. You indicated that at the July 26 deputies' meeting, Mike Duffey said that there was a hold both on FMF and USAI and that it relates to the President's concerns about corruption. Is that right?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay. But DOD did not conduct any sort of review following this statement about whether Ukraine was making any sort of progress with regard to its anticorruption efforts in July or August or beginning of September. Is that right?

A  That is correct.

Q  Okay. And that's because, as a matter of process and law, all of those events took place precertification, pre-May?

A  That is correct. And in the interagency discussions, DOD participants affirmed that we believed sufficient progress has been made.

Q  Okay. And it wasn't just DOD participants who believed that these funds should flow to Ukraine during these interagency meetings, correct?

A  That's correct. It was unanimous with the exception of the statements by OMB representatives, and those statements were relaying higher level guidance.

Q  And that's the case for all four interagency meetings?

A  That's correct.

Q  Did you ever learn what Mike Duffey meant by "corruption" when he made this statement at the July 26 deputies' meeting?

A  No.

Q  Have you seen the July 25 call transcripts involving President Trump and President Zelensky?

A  I saw them when they were publicly released.

Q  Okay. Do you now have any understanding of what the President's concerns were with regard to corruption on July 26, the day after his call with President Zelensky?

A  I think I have the same interpretation of anyone reading it for the first time. I don't have any direct knowledge beyond what's actually in that transcript and what he states himself.

Q  You testified earlier that -- I believe, correct me if I'm wrong -- that you did not personally have any conversations with Ukrainian officials about the hold during this July, August time period?

A  No, I had no conversations with the Ukrainians.

Q  Are you aware of anyone within the Department of Defense having conversations with Ukrainians about the hold during the July, August, beginning of September time period?

A  I'm not aware of specific instances, but I would just recall that we have a team in Embassy Kyiv that are DOD representatives under Ambassador Bill Taylor. So, you know, it would be very hard for me to discern conversations that the embassy side might have had versus the defense attache side.

Q  Okay. And I believe you testified earlier that you were in constant communication, or regular communication --

A  Right.

Q  -- with the defense attache in Kyiv. Is that right?

A  Yes. To be --

Q  Or your staff.

A  -- completely accurate, my staff, but --

Q  And was security assistance a topic that they would have discussed?

A  Absolutely. Throughout this entire period of time, our team in Kyiv was acutely aware of the hold and was expressing serious concerns to us.

Q  How were those concerns conveyed to you? Were they by email or some other form of communication?

A  So to me, it was kind of in-person. So I don't know whether there were emails to my staff. I would imagine there probably were, and I would imagine there were probably emails, you know, within various DOD components, because everyone focused on implementing the security assistance.

You know, they were engaged in, as I said before, this discussion of how long can we hold off, and so there were multiple DOD offices. But that is not to say that any of these would have necessarily been talking to the Ukrainians. I have no evidence of that.

Q  So you testified earlier that you were involved in the sale of javelins back in 2017, 2018. Is that correct?

A  That's correct.

Q  Just generally, without going into too much detail, what was your involvement in that program back then?

A  So I've been in my current office since kind of the end of the Obama administration, and obviously transitioned into the Trump administration. And there was a policy hold in the Obama administration on providing defensive lethal assistance to Ukraine, widespread, you know, bipartisan support for this, but within the administration there had been a restriction.

So with the advent of the new administration, I participated in a series of policy discussions with the intent of making the case that we should provide defensive lethal assistance beginning with the javelin system but not necessarily exclusive to that system.

Q  And that decision actually came to fruition; in other words, there was a decision made by this administration, the Trump administration to provide that lethal assistance to Ukraine, correct?

A  That's correct.

Q  And on --

A  And so --

Q  Go ahead.

A  And so at this point, we have both provided assistance via security assistance, via FMF, as I said earlier, the javelin system, but now, the Government of Ukraine is seeking to purchase also. I referred earlier to that new law that they have that allows them to do government-to-government procurement, and they are seeking to use that mechanism to procure javelin.

Q  Okay. So on December 22, 2017, the State Department announced that it approved a license for the export of these javelins to Ukraine. Are you generally aware of that?

A  Yes.

Q  And did you discuss -- presumably you had discussions with Ukraine officials about this fact?

A  Yes. I mean, that -- I've had discussions with them about this going back many, many months, over a year.

Q  Okay. Do you know what the anticipated timeline was for finalizing the transfer of those javelins to Ukraine after that announcement in December of 2017?

A  I don't recall. At one point I knew, but I just -- I don't recall.

Q  The DSCA didn't publicly announce State's approval of these FMF sales to Ukraine until March 1 of 2018. Are you aware of that?

A  I don't remember the timeline at all.

Q  So you're not aware of whether there was a delay in the release of these funds for the purchase of the javelins?

A  No, I'm not aware.

Q  Okay. You don't recall any discussions --

A  I don't recall.

Q  You don't recall any discussions about that at the time?

A  I don't recall.

Q  Are you aware that in, approximately the same time period, March or April of 2018, the Ukrainian authorities abruptly stopped four investigations related to Paul Manafort?

A  I'm not aware.

MR. MITCHELL: All right. We're going to go ahead and yield our time to the minority.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  I'll confess, normally the Paul Manafort question comes from this side of the room.

I would also like to note the defensive lethal assistance that was authorized and implemented in the new administration had bipartisan support, something that possibly Democrats liked about the Trump administration?

A  Well, I have to say that normally, I really enjoy coming up to the Hill to talk about Ukraine, because there is bipartisan support, and, you know, the javelin decision is something that I am personally proud of.

Q  Okay. The unobligated funds that ultimately -- there were provisions in the NDAA that allowed the money to be subsequently spent, right?

A  Yes.

Q  And do you know when those funds were ultimately expended? Like, how long did it take to work its way through?

A  I'm not tracking the specific details of the implementation timeline, but my understanding is we're still in the process of doing this.

Q  Okay. It's still --

A  It's ongoing.

Q  Okay. And that's not unusual when something gets extended via the NDAA?

A  I have never heard of something being extended via the NDAA in this manner. When it first came up as a possibility that we would not be able to expend the funds beyond the end of September, we were asking amongst ourselves, you know, what would be the possibility here. And it didn't seem like anyone knew that this was a typical thing. So we were grateful when the Congress acted.

Q  Okay. Was there any discussion about recertifying the funds after the new government established itself in Ukraine?

A  I can't recall any such discussion, in part because the new government was, pretty early on, embraced in terms of its anticorruption and reform agenda. You know, we had really been struggling at times to bring the previous government along, so the fact that the new government was, you know, proceeding in such a positive fashion, albeit in early days, I just don't recall anyone raising that as an issue.

Q  What exactly was done to evaluate the corruption environment in Ukraine as part of this process?

A  So, the specifics that we used to evaluate the NDAA criteria, if that's what you're talking about, related specifically to significant progress in defense reform. In the certification letter, we outline the specific areas, including things like sufficient progress on command-and-control reform, a whole host of reforms that relate to improving Ukraine's NATO interoperability, and, also, tackling corruption in, say, Ukraine defense industry. But at the end of the letter, it states that significant challenges remain, and this will be a multiyear effort.

Q  Do you have any knowledge of some of the corruption allegations involving the oligarchs in the Ukraine?

A  Well, certainly, I hear about some of these. There's open source and other reporting on these issues.

Q  Are you familiar with the company, Burisma?

A  So I want to be clear, I was not familiar with this company until the spate of reporting. So it is not something that I have encountered in my role as a defense official. It's something that I've seen in media.

Q  The oligarch that has control of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, is that a name you're familiar with?

A  It is not.

Q  And I apologize if my pronunciation is not perfect. He was a former ecology minister. Have you read any of the open-source stories about him or some of the investigations that Burisma was involved with?

A  I have not read much detail at all.

Q  Okay. But you're generally familiar there were some investigations into Burisma for various things? I mean, I can represent to you, money laundering, and tax evasion, things of that sort.

A  I have no level of personal knowledge or detail on these.

Q  Okay. Did you have any knowledge about any other companies in the Ukraine that were subject to corruption allegations, or any other oligarchs?

A  No. So my focus has been on the defense industry. So I am familiar with a number of allegations in the defense industry, and that is why we have a specific program of defense industry reform. And as part of the certification process last year, we were just starting our program under former Secretary of the Navy, Don Winter, will be our senior adviser on this. So we had them sign up to, you know, we're committed to this.

And since then, we've been able to have Secretary Winter go out and start to develop a program. But we're at the early stages of dealing with defense industry reform, and we have kind of a step-wise approach. It starts with the legislation that I talked about earlier, and it will be a multiyear effort.

Q  Okay. But the allegation that Ukraine is beset with corruption is not something that is controversial, right?

A  We absolutely understand that there is a significant amount of corruption in Ukraine, and that's why we have programs designed to counter that corruption.

Q  In December 2015, the Vice President, Vice President Biden, had some subsequently well-publicized remarks about his efforts to get a prosecutor general in the Ukraine fired by the -- Prosecutor General Shokin. Do you have any awareness of that story?

A  No. That was prior to my time on the account.

Q  Okay. But since you've been on the account, have you followed the news reporting about Vice President Biden's efforts to get Shokin removed?

A  I have seen media reporting on this, but I have no direct knowledge.

Q  He was captured on video at a Wall Street Journal -- or The Wall Street Journal pushed out some video of him recounting the demand that he made in the Ukraine in December of 2015 relating to Shokin. Have you ever seen that video?

A  No.

Q  Have you seen reporting about the comments he made?

A  I've seen reporting on this general topic, but I don't recall seeing the specifics that you're talking about.

Q  You know, essentially, he indicated that there was approximately $1 billion in loan guarantees at issue, and that if, you know, Shokin wasn't removed, the loan moneys would be withheld. And the question I have is whether -- if that were to come to fruition, if those loan moneys were to be withheld, would that go through the same interagency process?

A  It's very hard to respond to a hypothetical like that because, I mean, I don't know enough about the details to really even be able to make a judgment.

Q  Okay. You mentioned Acting Assistant Secretary Katie Wheelbarger this morning. We're scheduled to speak with her, I think, in subsequent days. What can you tell us about her involvement in these events?

A  So she is my immediate supervisor in the absence of -- I mean, she's in an acting capacity. So it's, you know, one person filling two roles. But I have to note, her portfolio is vast. It's the whole world except for Asia.

So she -- over the summer, if you think about the past summer, we've had Iran issues, she's the lead on that; we've had a lot going on in Syria, you know, not just the recent developments, but earlier; Venezuela is in her portfolio as well.

So she is the person who, you know, I route all of my papers through, but if she's on travel, she doesn't see the piece of paper. Somebody else pushes it on up the chain in her absence. So it's actually very hard for me to recall what specific meetings or events she would know about, and which ones she wouldn't, and she was not in any of those interagency meetings that we were discussing earlier.

Q  Okay. So you're not aware, as we sit here today, what value she would add to this discussion?

A  It's very hard for me to ever say that my boss would not add value. You know, she's a terrific leader and has, you know, a ton of broad knowledge. But on the specifics -- the specific questions that you have asked me, I just -- I don't know that she would --

Q  Okay. She's not going to have firsthand factual information about these --

A  Not any -- I mean, none of the specific things that I talked to you about, it just -- I mean, broadly, she has been following Ukraine like she follows everything else in her portfolio. But, again, because she wasn't in the specific meetings, I think it's less firsthand information.

Q  You've never had any communications with the President about this issue?

A  I've never had any communications with the President, period.

Q  Acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney?

A  No, sir.

Q  And your only interactions with the National Security Council have been the ones you've discussed with --

MR. LEVIN: Relating to this topic.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Relating to this topic, sir.

A  Relating specifically to this topic, to my recollection, yes.

Q  So Tim Morrison, Alexander Vindman?

A  Yes.

Q  Before that, Fiona Hill?

A  Yes, absolutely.

Q  And what can you tell us about any communications you had with Fiona Hill relating to this topic, although she -- her last day was July 19?

A  So I haven't talked to her about the topic of the suspension of the assistance, because it all played out after she had left.

Q  Did you ever have any communications with her about this diplomacy that was ongoing with Rudy Giuliani?

A  Well, I heard her remarks on multiple occasions that there was a separate track handling foreign policy. I don't recall her specifying Giuliani by name; but she did multiple times express concern that there was kind of a parallel process to the one that she was handling.

Q  And what did she tell you? Like, how did she characterize it? I think you said she had concerns?

A  She had concerns. And, I mean, the way she characterized it was the challenge of managing and, you know, coordinating an interagency process when there are those who work outside of that process and have engagements with foreign officials that, you know, people inside the process are unaware of.

Q  Did you ever have any communications with State Department officials about this non-traditional diplomacy that was occurring?

A  So I heard several concerns related to what was described as pressure that was brought to bear on Ambassador Yovanovitch. And I never heard anything specific about, you know, any actions that she was, you know, asked to take or had taken. But several, you know, other State Department staff would -- you know, pointed to the Giuliani visit to Ukraine, which was reported in open source as being a source of friction and a source of tension. But it never got -- I never got any more details than that.

Q  And who at the State Department related to Ukraine do you spend -- do you communicate with most of the time?

A  So it's either now-Ambassador Taylor in the field, or George Kent, or Phil Reeker, typically.

Q  And do you recall any specific conversations with George Kent or Phil Reeker relating to the holdup in the aid?

A  Oh, I can't think of any specifics, but we definitely discussed concerns that we needed to figure out how to get the aid released, and that we didn't, you know -- we thought it was very important to restore the assistance.

Q  Did Kent ever mention to you this Rudy Giuliani channel that was in existence?

A  I can’t recall any specifics. He did lament the treatment of Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Q  Okay. How about with Phil Reeker?

A  With Phil Reeker, I recall him mentioning how Ambassador Sondland was playing a large role in a number of issues, not just Ukraine, but he didn't express it as necessarily entirely negative.

Q  Okay. During this time period, how many conversations would you estimate you had with Phil Reeker?

A  That is very hard.

Q  About this topic.

A  Oh, about this topic?

Q  Yes.

A  Oh, about this topic, I don't know, I would have to guess, about a handful, probably.

[6:15 p.m.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  And do you remember anything remarkable about any of these conversations? Did you think that he was somebody that was trying to solve the problem, or was it more just sharing information? Did he have an active role in this?

A  So, I mean, my impression of Ambassador Reeker's role is that he has a very broad portfolio, and is, you know, on travel a good deal. So I think he has tried to be, you know, as helpful as he can to, you know, releasing the Ukraine security assistance and FMF funds. But I don't -- I haven't noticed a specific role that he has played in the process.

Q  Flow about Ambassador Sondland? Have you ever had conversations with him?

A  No, I've never had conversations with him or met him.

Q  Okay. You only heard of him?

A  I've heard of him.

Q  Us, too.

A  And if I could make one correction there in the sense that I attended the EUCOM, European Command Chief of Mission Conference last spring. It's possible that he was there, but I don't -- I didn't meet him in a sense that I don't -- he could have been at that conference.

Q  The whistleblower complaint was made public on September 26th, which was a day after the call transcript was made public on the 25th. Was that the first time you had seen or heard about the whistleblower transcript or, I'm sorry, the whistleblower complaint?

A  Yes. It was the first time I had seen the whistleblower complaint, although, obviously, many of the points therein are -- you know, track with some of what I have shared with you.

Q  From any of your discussions with U.S. Government officials, did you have any awareness that a whistleblower complaint of this sort was in the offing?

A  No.

Q  Okay. Are you aware of                                                   ?

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Q  Okay. Have you ever had any communications words redacted                                        words redacted                           ?

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Q  About the issues, though, that we're discussing here today?

A  Not these issues specifically, no.words redacted                                        words redacted

Q  Your appearance here today, the Department instructed you initially not to participate in a voluntary setting. Is that correct?

A  They instructed me yesterday not to participate. I'm not sure if it said a voluntary setting, that part of the phrase.

Q  What was your understanding of the direction the Department provided to you?

MR. LEVIN: Well, to the extent it involves discussions with me, I'd instruct her not to answer. You got the letter.

MR. CASTOR: We do?

MR. LEVIN: The committee has the letter.

MR. BITAR: If you could speak into the mic.

MR. LEVIN: I would instruct her not to answer to --

MR. CASTOR: I got that part. Yeah. I'm not trying to ask you about attorney-client --

MR. LEVIN: I think the letter has been sent out, so you should have a copy.

MR. CASTOR: This was yesterday, I guess, this letter. We can make it exhibit number 6.

[Minority Exhibit No. 6
was marked for identification.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  So exhibit 6 is a letter dated October 22nd to Dan Levin from -- who signed it? Do we know who signed it? I apologize. I was occupied yesterday in another event of this sort.

A  The letterhead is the Deputy Secretary of Defense letterhead.

Q  Okay. Okay. So what was your understanding of the direction that the Department gave you about participating?

MR. LEVIN: Again, to the extent it's based on discussions with me, I'd instruct her not to answer. I mean, the letter speaks for itself.

MR. CASTOR: Okay. Is this the sum total of the communications you had from the Department about appearing today?

MR. LEVIN: Yes, it is.

MR. CASTOR: So you didn't have any discussions with the Office of General Counsel officials or anybody like that?

MR. LEVIN: I mean, discussions -- I'm sorry.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  But just about your appearance here. Just trying to understand did they try to block your testimony or --

A  Again, I think the letter reflects what the Department's action has been.

Q  Okay.

A  I think it kind of summarizes it.

Q  In any event, you're appearing today under subpoena?

A  That is correct.

Q  Okay. And are you concerned that there will be repercussions at the Department for your testimony here today?

A  I would hope that I shouldn't be concerned about such matters.

Q  Okay. And so you're not?

A  I don't think that's an accurate statement either.

Q  Okay. You are concerned?

A  This is a challenging environment. And for a civil servant who is just trying to fulfill my obligations, this is -- this is challenging in both respects. Getting a letter like that, getting a subpoena. But, you know, I'm confident that I'll be able to continue to serve, and I'll be very happy to get back to the work that we do in my office.

Q  Who first notified you that they were -- that the committee was inviting you to appear today? Did the letter come to you directly, or did it come through Leg Affairs or the Office of General Counsel?

A  The original letter came through Leg Affairs.

Q  And what type of guidance did they give you?

A  None initially.

Q  They just --

A  It came in on a Friday night, though.

Q  Okay.

A  And I was supposed to appear the following week, and it was Columbus Day on Monday. So there wasn't a lot of time for them to --

Q  Okay.

A  -- you know, engage that much.

MR. CASTOR: Okay. I yield back.

MR. MITCHELL: We are not going to start another 45-minute round, but we might have a couple minutes of questions. So I think what we'll do, with your agreement, is if we go 2 minutes, you guys can go 2 minutes as well.

MR. CASTOR: I don't anticipate any additional questions. I mean, there might be follow-up, but I hope we're not going to keep track of the minutes or seconds. I want to --

MR. LEVIN: We'll keep track of that.

MR. MITCHELL: With that understanding.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  You testified earlier on July 31st that you made the statement at the PCC meeting -- and I tried to write down what you said. I think you said that it was your understanding that for USAI funds there were two legally available mechanisms, the first being -- well, what were they?

A  So the two mechanisms, as I understand them, and as I related, are first to have a rescission. And this was a Presidential-level action. And the second is for the Department of Defense to do a reprogramming action. And both require notification to Congress.

Q  And I believe Mr. Meadows asked you some questions about this, and you indicated that there was no congressional notification as to either. Is that correct?

A  Not to my knowledge.

Q  Prior to the July 31st PCC meeting, were you in communication with anyone from DOD legal?

A  Yes.

Q  And you testified earlier that you weren't an expert in the rescission or DOD programming, just generally. Is that right?

A  That is correct.

Q  But the statement that you made on this July 31st PCC wasn't based on your limited knowledge of these two programs, it was based on a conversation that you had with DOD legal?

MR. LEVIN: Can we leave it as it followed a conversation she had with DOD legal? I'm just trying not to get her in trouble back at the Department, in terms of --

MR. GOLDMAN: I think it's understood, but I don't think we're asking her to share the contents of the conversation that she had, but we are asking whether or not her statement relied on advice from DOD legal, which we don't think would fall under the privilege.

MR. LEVIN: I think it's a yes or no.

MS. COOPER: What was the question? The question was, did it rely on advice, is that the question?

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Did your understanding of the appropriate -- the two proper legal mechanisms to divert funding rely on a conversation that you had with DOD legal?

A  Yes.

Q  I'll just follow up with one question. Sorry. And, to your knowledge, the Department of Defense did not endeavor to do any work on a potential Presidential rescission?

A  To my knowledge, no.

Q  Would you know if that were to happen, or would you know if that were happening?

A  In normal circumstances, if it relates to the country that I'm handling, or the programs that I oversee, yes, in normal circumstances.

Q  And what about DOD reprogramming?

A  Again, in normal circumstances, that type of an action would have to be coordinated with the regional policy office, and that would be my office.

Q  Were you aware of whether any reprogramming efforts by DOD were either being undertaken or directed to be undertaken?

A  I was not aware of any such efforts.

Q  So, to your knowledge, the only legal ways to adjust funding provided by Congress were not being pursued in relation to USAI?

A  I just want to caveat that, that those legally available means relate to the question of whether or not all the funds can be obligated by the end of the fiscal year. So as long as the funds can be obligated, you do not have to avail yourself of these mechanisms.

You can have a hold in spending. It's once you get to the point where it's clear that you cannot obligate all the funds by the end of the fiscal year that those two mechanisms, one of the two would have to be used.

Q  Because otherwise, you'd be in violation of the Impoundment Control Act. Is that right?

A  That is my understanding, yes.

MR. GOLDMAN: We yield. Does minority have any questions?

MR. CASTOR: No.

MR. GOLDMAN: All right. Mr. Bitar?

MR. BITAR: So just prior to adjourning, I'd like to just underscore something. I'd like to underscore something that the chairman would have said at the opening, but due to the disruption, he was not able to.

So, first, I'd like to apologize on behalf of the committees for the disruption that occurred. But finally, with prior witnesses he has said the following, and I think this is very apt in light of what you -- the questions you answered at the end, which is to underscore that Congress will not tolerate any reprisal, threat of reprisal, or attempt to retaliate against any U.S. Government official for testifying before Congress, including you or any of your colleagues.

It is disturbing that the Defense Department, in coordination with the White House, sought to prohibit Department employees, including you, from cooperating with the inquiry and with Congress and have tried to limit what they can say. This is unacceptable. Thankfully, consummate public servants like you have demonstrated remarkable courage in coming forward to testify and tell the truth.

With that, we're adjourned. Thank you.

MS. COOPER: Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 6:29 p.m., the deposition was concluded.]

Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Laura Cooper Testimony Transcript II

PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE,
joint with the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
and the
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
WASHINGTON, D.C.

INTERVIEW OF: GEORGE KENT

Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Washington, D.C.

The interview in the above matter was held in Room HVC-304, Capitol Visitor Center, commencing at 10:08 a.m.

Present: Representatives Schiff, Himes, Sewell, Carson, Speier, Quigley, Swalwel1, Heck, Maloney, Demings, Krishnamoorthi, Conaway, Wenstrup and Hurd.

Also Present: Representatives Norton, Malinowski, Raskin, Rouda, Phillips, Engel, Perry, Meadows, and Zeldin.

Appearances:

For the PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE:

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For the COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM:

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For the COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS:

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For GEORGE KENT:

ANDREW WRIGHT
BARRY M. HARTMAN
NANCY IHEANCHO
K&L GATES LLP
1601 K Street NW
Washington, D.C. 2006-1600

THE CHAIRMAN: The committee will come to order.

Good morning, Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent, and welcome to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which, along with the Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees, is conducting this investigation as part of the official impeachment inquiry of the House of Representatives.

Today's deposition is being conducted as part of the impeachment inquiry. In light of attempts by the State Department in coordination with the White House to direct you not to appear and efforts to limit your testimony, the committee had no choice but to compel your appearance today. We thank you for complying with the dually authorized congressional subpoena, as other witnesses have done as well. We expect nothing less from a dedicated career civil servant like yourself.

Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent has served with distinction as a Foreign Service officer with deep experience relevant to the matters under investigation by the committees. In his capacity as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the European and Eurasian Bureau you oversee policy towards Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijani. Previously he was deputy chief of mission in Kyiv from 2015 until 2018 when he returned to Washington to assume his current position.

In 2014 and 2015, he was the senior anticorruption coordinator in the State Department's European Bureau. Since joining the Foreign Service in 1992 he has served among other postings in Warsaw, Poland, Kyiv, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and Bangkok, Thailand. Given your unique role, we look forward to hearing your testimony today, including your knowledge of and involvement in key policy discussions, meetings and decision on Ukraine that relate directly to areas under investigation by the committees. This includes developments related to the recall of Ambassador Yovanovitch, the President's July 25, 2019 call with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, as well as the documentary record that has come to life about efforts before and after the call to get the Ukrainians to announce publicly investigations into two areas President Trump asked President Zelenskyy to pursue: the Bidens in Burisma, and the conspiracy theory about the Ukraine-supported interference in the 2016 U.S. elections.

To state clearly on the record, I want to let you and your attorneys know that Congress will not tolerate any reprisal, threat of reprisal, or attempt to retaliate against you for complying with a subpoena, and testifying today as part of the impeachment inquiry. This includes any effort by the State Department, the White House, or any other entity of the government to claim that in the course of your testimony under dually authorized subpoena today, you are disclosing information in a nonauthorized manner.

We also expect that you will retain your current position after testifying today, and that you will be treated in accordance with your rank, such that in the normal course of the remainder of your career, you will be offered assignments commensurate with your experience and long service. Should that not be the case, we expect you to notify us immediately and we will hold those responsible to account.

Before I turn to committee counsel to begin the deposition, I invite the ranking member, or in his absence a minority member from the Foreign Affairs or Oversight committees to make an opening remark.

MR. JORDAN: Secretary Kent, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Kent, thank you for appearing today. On September 24th, Speaker Pelosi unilaterally announced that the House was beginning its so-called impeachment inquiry. On October 2nd, the Speaker promised that the so-called impeachment inquiry would treat the President with fairness.

However, Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Schiff, and the Democrats are not living up to that promise. Instead, Democrats are conducting a rushed, closed-door and unprecedented impeachment inquiry. Democrats are ignoring 45 years of bipartisan procedures designed to provide elements of fundamental fairness and due process. In past impeachment inquiries, the majority and minority had coequal subpoena authority and the right to require a committee vote on all subpoenas. The President's counsel had the right to attend all depositions and hearings, including those held in executive session. The President's counsel had the right to cross-examine the witnesses and the right to propose witnesses. The President's counsel had the right to present evidence, object to the admission of evidence, and to review all evidence presented, both favorable and unfavorable.

Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Schiff so-called impeachment inquiry has none of these guarantees of fundamental fairness and due process. Most disappointing, Democrats are conducting this inquiry behind closed doors. We’re conducting these depositions and interviews in a SCIF, but Democrats have been clear every single session that there's no unclassified material being presented in the sessions. This seems to be nothing more than hiding this work from the American people.

The Democrats intend to undo the will of the American people 13 months before the next election, they should at least do so transparently and be willing to be accountable for their actions.

Chairman, I believe the ranking member from the Foreign Affairs Committee would like to say something as well as well.

MR. MCCAUL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As you know, I conduct myself as both chairman and ranking member in a very bipartisan way, and I think that should apply here as well. I am -- next to declaring war, this is the most important thing that the Congress can do under Article I. To hide behind that, to have it in a SCIF, to defy historical precedent that we conducted under both Nixon and Clinton, which guarantees the participation of counsel, White House counsel in the room in an adversarial way.

To also provide the minority the power of that subpoena. That was done during both prior impeachments, because both sides recognized that with a fair. It's really about fairness. If -- I would just urge you, if you're going to continue, and I've been back in my district for 2 weeks, talking to my constituents both Republican, and Democrat, and Independent, above all what they had in common was they wanted to see this done the right way. I know you're a fair man. We've known each other for a long time. I hope that this resolution will come to the floor so that we can participate in a democratic system, with a democratic vote, up or down, to proceed with this inquiry, so that it is backed by the American people.

To do so otherwise, I think, defies democracy, it defies fairness, and it defies due process. And if we're going to do this, for God's sakes, let's do it the right way.

I yield back.

THE CHAIRMAN: I think my colleagues will certainly have an opportunity to discuss these matters further, but in the interest of moving ahead with the deposition I recognize Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a deposition of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, George Kent conducted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, pursuant to the impeachment inquiry announced by the Speaker of the House on September 24th.

Mr. Kent, could you please state your full name and spell your last name for the record?

THE WITNESS: George Peter Kent, K-e-n-t.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you. Now, along with other proceedings and furtherance of this inquiry, this deposition a part of a joint investigation, led by the Intelligence Committee, in coordination with the Committees on Foreign Affairs, and Oversight and Reform.

In the room today are equal numbers of majority staff and minority staff from the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Oversight Committee, as well as majority and minority staff from the Intelligence Committee. This is a staff-led deposition, but Members, of course, may ask questions during their allotted time, and there will be equal allotted time for the majority and the minority.

My name is Daniel Goldman, I am the senior adviser and director for investigations for the HPSCI majority staff. And I thank you very much for coming in today. I would like to do brief introductions before we begin. To my right is Nicholas Mitchell, who is the senior investigative counsel for the HPSCI majority staff. And Mr. Mitchell and I will be conducting most of deposition for the majority. And I'll let my counterparts from the minority staff introduce themselves as well.

MR. CASTOR Good morning, sir, Steve Castor with the Republican staff of the Oversight Committee.

MR. BREWER: Good morning, I'm David Brewer, Republican staff, Oversight.

MS. GREEN: Meghan Green, senior counsel for HPSCI minority.

MR. GOLDMAN: Now this deposition will be conducted entirely at the unclassified level. However, this deposition, as you no doubt know, is being conducted in HPSCI's secure spaces, and in the presence of staff with the appropriate security clearances, and, as we understand as of this morning, your attorneys all have appropriate security clearances. We understand that you received a letter from the State Department that addresses some of the concerns about the disclosure of classified information. But we want you to rest assured that, in any event, any classified information that is disclosed is not an unauthorized disclosure today.

It is the committee's expectation, however, that neither the questions asked of you nor the answers that you provide or your counsel provide will require discussion of any information that is currently, or at any point could be properly classified under Executive Order 13526. As you no doubt know, EO 13526 states that, quote "In no case shall information be classified, or continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified" unquote, for the purpose of concealing any violations of law or preventing embarrassment of any person or entity.

If any of our questions can only be answered with classified information. We would ask you to inform us of that before you provide the answer, and we can as just the deposition accordingly.

Today's deposition is not being taken in executive session, but because of sensitive and confidential nature of some of the topics and materials that will be discussed, access to the transcript of the deposition will be limited to the three committees in attendance. You and your attorney will have an opportunity to review the transcript at a later date.

Now before we begin the deposition, I would like to go over some of the ground rules. We will be following the House regulations for depositions. We have previously provided counsel with a copy of those regulations, but let us know if you need additional copies.

The deposition will proceed as follows today. The majority 1 hour to ask questions, and the minority will be given 1 hour to ask questions. Thereafter, we will alternate back and forth in 45 minute rounds. We'll take periodic breaks. But if, at any time, you or your counsel need a break, please just let us know. Under the House deposition rules, counsel for other persons or government agencies may not attend this proceeding, and we understand that none are here. You, however, are allowed to have personal attorney present during this deposition, and I see that you have brought a couple. At this time if counsel could please state his or her name for an appearance for the record.

MR. WRIGHT: My name is Andrew Wright with K&L Gates.

MR. HARTMAN: Barry Hartman, K&L Gates.

MS. IHEANACHO: Nancy Iheanacho with K&L Gates.

MR. GOLDMAN: To your left there is a stenographer taking down everything that is said, all questions and answers, so that there is a written report for the deposition. For that record to be clear, please wait until questions are completed before you provide your answers, and all staff and members here will wait until you finish your response before asking the next question. The stenographer cannot record nonverbal answers such as a shaking of the head or an uh-huh so please make sure that you answer questions with an audible verbal answer.

We ask that you give complete replies to questions based on your best recollection. If a question is unclear or you are uncertain about the response, please let us know and we can rephrase the question.

And if you do not know the answer to a question or cannot remember, simply say so. You may only refuse to answer a question to preserve a privilege recognized by the committee. If you do refuse to answer a question on the basis of privilege, staff may either proceed with the deposition, or seek a ruling from the chairman on and objection, in person or otherwise, during the deposition at a time of the majority staff's choosing. If the chair overrules any such objection, you are required to answer the question.

Finally, you are reminded that it is unlawful to deliberately provide false information to Members of Congress, or to staff of Congress. It is imperative that you not only answer our questions truthfully, but that you give full and complete answers to all questions asked of you. Omissions may also be considered false statements.

Now as this deposition is under oath, Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent, would you please stand and raise your right-hand to be sworn?

Do you swear or affirm the testimony that you are about to give is the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

THE WITNESS: I swear that the testimony I am about to give is the truth and nothing but the truth.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you. Let the record reflect that the witness has been sworn. But before we begin, Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent, now is the time for you to make any opening remarks.

MR. ZELDIN: Mr. Goldman, can we just go around the room and have everybody identify themselves?

MR. GOLDMAN: You want back? Why don't we start at the table here. Mr. Quigley.

MR. QUIGLEY: Mike Quigley from Illinois.

MS. SPEIER: Jackie Speier.

MR. SWALWELL: Eric Swalwell.

MS. SEWELL: Terri Sewell.

MR. ROUDA: Harley Rouda.

MR. RASKIN: Jamie Raskin, for Maryland.

MR. HECK: Denny Heck, Washington State.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Tom Malinowski, New Jersey.

MR. PHILLIPS: Dean Phillips, Minnesota.

MR. ROONEY: Francis Rooney, Florida.

MR. MEADOWS: Mark Meadows, North Carolina.

MR. MCCAUL: Mike McCaul.

MR. JORDAN: Jim Jordan, Ohio.

MR. GOLDMAN: And then if we could start behind here.

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MR. GOLDMAN: Mr. Kent.

MR. KENT: Good morning, as you've heard, my name is George Kent. I'm the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus in particular. I have served proudly as a nonpartisan career foreign service officer for more than 27 years, under five Presidents, three Republican and two Democrats. As you all know, I am appearing here in response to your congressional subpoena. If I did not appear I would have been exposed to being held in contempt. At the same time, I have been instructed by my employer, the U.S. Department of State, not to appear. I do not know the Department of State's views on disregarding that order. Even though section 105(c) of the Foreign Service Act of 1980, which is 22 U.S. Code 3905 expressly states, and I quote, "This section shall not be construed as authorizing of withholding of information from the Congress or the taking of any action of a member of the service who discloses information to Congress," end quote.

I have always been willing to provide facts of which I'm aware that are relevant to any appropriate investigation by either Congress or my employer. Yet, this is where I find myself today, faced with the enormous professional and personal cost and expense of dealing with a conflict between the executive and legislative branches not of my making.

With that said, I appear today in same spirit that I have brought to my entire career, as a Foreign Service officer and State Department employee, who has sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, as one of thousands of nonpolitical career professionals in the Foreign Service who embody that vow daily around the world often in harsh and dangerous conditions.

There has been a George Kent sworn to service in defense of the Constitution and U.S. national interests for nearly 60 consecutive years and counting, ever since my father was sworn in as a midshipman at Annapolis in June 1961, commissioned in 1965, after finishing first in his class, and serving honorably for 30 years, including as captain of a ballistic missile nuclear submarine. Principled service to country and community remains an honorable professional choice, not just a family tradition dating back to before World War II, one that survived the Bataan Death March, and a 3-year stint in a Japanese POW camp unbroken. I hope the drama now playing out does not discourage my words redacted                       son, words redacted                      , from seriously considering a life of service.

After two internship on a State Department Soviet desk in the late 1980s, I formally joined the Foreign Service in 1992, and have not, for a moment, regretted that choice to devote my life to principled public service. I served twice in Ukraine for a total of 6 years, posted in Kyiv, first during and after the Orange Revolution from 2004 to 2008, and again, from 2015 to 2018, in the aftermath of the Revolution of Dignity when I worked at deputy chief of mission.

In between, I worked in Washington from 2012 to 2015, in several policy and programming positions directly affecting U.S. strategic interests in Ukraine, most notably, as director for law enforcement and justice sector programming for Europe and Asia, and then as the European Bureau's senior anticorruption coordinator.

In the summer of 2018, then-Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, Wess Mitchell asked me to come back from Kyiv to Washington early to join his team as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State to take charge of our eastern European Caucasus portfolio, covering six countries in the front line of Russian aggression and malign influence, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The administration's national security strategy, which Wess helped write, makes clear the strategic challenge before us great power competition, with peer or near-peer rivals, such as Russia and China and the need to compete for positive influence without taking countries for granted. In that sense, Ukraine has been on the front lines, not just of Russia's war in eastern Ukraine since 2014, but of the greater geopolitical challenges facing the United States today.

Ukraine's success, thus, is very much in our national interest in the way we have defined or national interests broadly in Europe for the last 75 years, and specifically in central and Eastern Europe, for the last 30 years, since the fall of the Wall in 1989. A Europe whole, free, and at peace -- our strategic aim for the entirety of my foreign service career -- is not possible without a Ukraine full free and at peace, including Crimea and Donbas, both current occupied by Russia.

I am grateful for all of you on the key congressional committees who have traveled to Ukraine in the past 5 years -- and I had occasion to speak to many in the 3 years I was in Kyiv -- and appropriating billions of dollars in assistance in support of our primary strategic goals, in particular, increasing Ukraine's resiliency in the face of Russian aggression in the defense, energy, cyber, and information spheres, and empowering institutions in civil society to tackle corruption and undertake systemic reforms.

I believe that all of us in the legislative and the executive branches in the interagency community working out of our embassy in Kyiv, with Ukrainians in government in the Armed Services in civil society, and with our transatlantic allies and partners, can be proud of our efforts and our resolve in Ukraine over the past 5 years, even though much more remains to be done.

U.S. officials who have spoken publicly in Ukraine to push back on Russian aggression and corrupt influences have been subject to defamatory and disinformation campaigns, and even online threats for years. Starting in 2015 for former Ambassador Pyatt, in 2017 for me, and in 2018 for former Ambassador Yovanovitch.

That was, frankly, to be expected, from Russian proxies and corrupt Ukrainians, and indicators that our efforts were hitting their mark. You don't step in to the public arena of international diplomacy in active pursuit of U.S. principled interests against venal vested interests without expecting vigorous pushback.

On the other hand, I fully share the concerns in Ambassador Yovanovitch's statement on Friday expressing her incredulity that the U.S. Government chose to move an ambassador based, as best she tell, on unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives, at an especially challenging time in our bilateral elections with a newly elected Ukrainian President.

One final note, I will do my best to answer your questions today and I understand there are going to be a lot of them. I suspect your questions may well involve some issues, conversations and documents that span a number of years. The State Department is in the process of collecting documents in response to the subpoena, not to me, but to the Department that may contain facts relevant to my testimony. I have no such documents or materials with me today.

With the exception of a few documents related to the State Department inspector general's submission to Congress this month, neither the Department nor the committee has provided documents at issue in this inquiry. I will, thus, do my best to answer as accurately, completely and truthfully as I can to the best of my recollection.

And with those introductory words, I’m ready to answer all your questions regarding the subject of the subpoena, which has ordered me to appear before you today.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Kent.

MR. JORDAN: Could we get a copy, could staff get a copy of the Secretary's opening statement for us, please.

MR. GOLDMAN: Yeah, we can deal with that.

EXAMINATION

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Mr. Kent, I'm going to pick up just where you left off there about the documents. You are aware of a request of you as well to provide documents. Is that right?

A  In the letter that was emailed to me on September 27th there was a request to appear voluntarily and to provide documents, yes.

Q  What did do you, if anything, in relation to providing documents in response to that request?

A  I received direction that from the State Department that at the same time you issued the letters to me you issued a subpoena to the Department, and therefore the documents would be collected as part of that subpoena request since they are considered Federal records.

THE CHAIRMAN: Ambassador, you don't need to turn the mic off.

BY MR GOLDMAN:

Q  Are you aware of the status of that document production by the State Department related to your personal documents -- or professional documents, I should say?

A  I collected all the different types of records that possibly could be considered part of the request and provided them to the listed authority at the State Department.

Q  And have you had any followup conversations about production of those documents?

A  I have not.

Q  Have you had any conversations, separate and apart, from the letters that we understand you received? Have you had any type of conversations with the State Department -- anyone at the State Department about your testimony here today?

A  My testimony today? No.

Q  Okay. So you didn't have -- sorry, I don't mean the substance of your testimony, but did you have any conversations about whether you would be testifying or will testify?

A  The interaction consisted of letters through counsel.

Q  So you had no personnel conversations with anyone?

A  I had no personal conversation.

Q  Did you have any conversations with anyone at the State Department about the document request?

A  Yes.

Q  Can you describe those conversations?

A  Define conversations.

Q  All right. Well, who did you speak to about the document?

A  Okay. So the first interaction was with somebody I presume many of you are familiar with , who works with our congressional liaison. And initially, when I asked in email form whether I should start collecting documents, because I had received a personal request, I was instructed to await formal guidance, meaning formal instructions on how to fulfill the document production request, so that was the first interaction.

Q  And what was the second interaction?

A  The second interaction with the Department issued written guidance on how to be responsive to the subpoena for documents to the Department late on October 2nd and that was in writing.

Q  From whom?

A  The instructions were sent from the executive secretary of the Department, Lisa Kenna.

Q  And what did you do upon receiving those instructions?

A  That was after close of business. The senior bureau official at the time was Maureen Cormack (ph), and Maureen gave me a paper copy and said that the European Bureau staff on whom most of the requirements would fall would convene at 9 o'clock the next morning to discuss how we could fully be responsive to the request.

Q  And did that meeting at 9 o'clock the next day occur?

A  It occurred.

Q  And what happened at that meeting?

A  We had roughly 20 members of European Bureau still there and followed the overall staff meeting of the morning which was from 8:30 to 9:00. Most people left. Those related to the inquiry stayed. And we had several additional staff who joined us at that meeting.

Q  And can you just summarize the conversation at that meeting?

A  We started going through the instructions of the State Department, which initially, the first paragraph identified a number of individuals as key record collectors. And so we -- the first question that came up was when it said "including colon" and it listed names, was that an inclusive or exclusive list? Was it only those individuals or more? We had two people in the room who are not members of the European Bureau staff, there could have been more, but they self-identified as from congressional liaison and from the Office of Legal Counsel at the State Department. They clarified that that was not an exclusive list meaning not only those people listed, but others who might have records should also responsive.

Q  Okay. At any -- I just want to back it up a little and a little bit more generally here. I appreciate your detail, but we are somewhat -- we didn't want to stay here all night. So I’m just trying to get a sense of, sort of, the back and forth. Was there, at any point, did you take issue with any of the directives or suggestions that you received from the State Department?

A  The letter of instruction that was issued after the close of business on October 2nd was the first formal instruction that any of us had received in response to the subpoena to the Department and the personal letters which had been sent at the end of September 27th, so there was not any formal structured interaction, as I mentioned, that I’d had initial interaction with , and she directed me to await formal guidance. I did several interactions with other State Department officials on Tuesday, October 1st.

Q  With whom?

A  With the director general of the Foreign Service and with the acting L, so to speak, Marek String

Q  And what was the purpose of those conversations?

A  I approached the director general late in the afternoon -- mid-afternoon on October 1st, because I had not had any contact from any member on the leadership of the Department. And there was a letter sent to these committees that characterized interactions that I do not feel was accurate.

Q  Can you explain what you didn't feel was accurate?

A  Well, there was a line in there that the committees had been attempting to bully, intimidate, and threaten career foreign service officers. And I was one of two career foreign service officers which had received letters from the committees, and I had not felt bullied, threatened, and intimidated. There was another line in there that suggested that the career Foreign Service officers had requested the committee's to route all communications through House liaison and I think your colleague who -- , who sent me the initial email on Friday night received my reply, which indicated that I acknowledged receipt, and that our congressional liaison had requested that the information be routed to them. So I was concerned that the letter itself did not accurately characterize the interaction.

Q  When you're talking about the letter, you're talking about the letter from Secretary Pompeo?

A  Correct.

Q  And what was the response of the two individuals that you spoke to?

A  Well, Ms. Perez, who is one of the top two career foreign services officers and oversees the personnel system, I had worked for her previously directly in a previous job. And because I'd had no contact with the leadership of the Department outside of the European Bureau, I suggested that it was time that somebody engaged me personally, particularly since representations were being made about me.

Q  What representation? Oh, the letter?

A  Right, the language in the letter.

Q  And what was Ambassador Perez's response?

A  She needed to go and give a response to 150 people about taking care of your people. And she said when that was finished, she would reach out and find somebody that would reach out to me. And so she came back after an hour and said that the acting legal counselor of the Department, "L" in our parlance, Marek String, would reach out to me; that if I did not hear from him in 24 hours, I should contact her again.

Q  Did hear from him?

A  I did after I wrote him an email.

Q  And did you ultimately have a conversation with him?

A  I did. He called me back through the Operations Center in the evening when I was already at home.

Q  And can you summarize that conversation for us?

A  He apologized for not having had anyone reach out to me prior. He said it was a very busy day, that they had responsive and were doing a lot and -- but I'd known Marek previously and respected him. If it weren't for Marek, we would not have had Charge Taylor out in Kyiv. He helped with the process of getting him brought back on board as an Active Duty person. So I respected his professionalism previously, so it was a professional conversation.

Q  Did you voice the same -- similar concerns?

A  I did.

Q  And what was his response?

A  He apologized, because I mentioned that there had not been an exchange.

Q  Sorry. Did you voice your concerns about the two statements in the letter that you disagreed with?

A  To the best of my recollection, again, it was a phone call at night when I was in my kitchen eating dinner at about 9 -- between 8 and 9. So I cannot say it was more, I think, the tonality. It was a pleasant, professional exchange.

Q  And was there any follow-on conversations that you had?

A  Not with Marek, not with Marek. That was again, on the night on the 1st. The guidance that we received in writing came shortly after close of business on the 2nd. And then the next sort of point was the meeting, the guidance, our -- the European Bureau's meeting at 9 o'clock on October 3rd.

Q  And since October 3rd, until today, October 15th, is anything else -- any other further conversation that you've had?

A  I have not. That was also the time where I think the 3rd was when we formally -- I formally engaged Andrew Wright as my counsel in this process. And therefore, there were additional engagements, interactions with -- through counsel.

Q  Are you aware that as we sit here today, we have not received one document from the State Department?

A  I can read the news, but as I’ve answered you before, I'm not aware -- I did my role. Obviously there were a lot of documents and records that I had that I needed to provide, based on the subpoena and the guidance that the State Department issues. But having provided those records, I do not know the process on reviewing them.

Q  After your conversation with Marek String, did you have any additional conversations with anyone in L?

A  I did. There was a representative from L, as I previously mentioned , who attended the European Bureau guidance meeting on October 3rd.

Q  Did you have any private conversations with him?

A  We have a very public exchange in front of the roughly 20 people in the meeting. And then subsequent to that, I was called out into the hall where I had a continued conversation with him and

Q  Can you describe the public exchange?

A  Well, public -- in a room, closed-door room. The exchange started when we were discussing the issue of who needed to be responsive to the records collection. The individuals listed primarily were in the European Bureau. And I noted several people who should have been listed who played key roles on staff at the embassy in Kyiv. And then I mentioned Consular Affairs Assistant Secretary Risch, because he had spoken to Rudy Giuliani several times in January about trying to get a visa for the former corrupt prosecutor general of Ukraine, Viktor Shokin. And my read of the request would include that.

took issue with my raising the additional information, and the conversation rapidly, I would say, either escalated or degenerated into a tense exchange.

Q  So what was his response to your suggestions of additional custodians?

MS. SPEIER: What did he say?

MR. KENT: I've got two questions here, so I don't know how you want to manage -- Representative Speier asked me a question and you.

MS. SPEIER: No, I didn't. I was just talking to myself.

MR. KENT: Oh. Sorry.

MR. BAIR: It was the same question.

MR. GOLDMAN: It's the same question.

MR. KENT: He objected to my raising of the additional information and said that he didn't think -- I do not remember his exact words, but -- he made clear that he did not think it was appropriate for me to make the suggestion. I took the opportunity, then, to point out that that was the first -- the meeting was the first time that we were discussing guidance for being responsive to a subpoena. At this point, it was already October 3rd. The request for the documents and the request for submission had been delivered on September 27th and we had less than 2 business days to be responsive. has then said, I don't think I should be even talking to you. It's not appropriate. I should only talk to counsel, and I talked to your counsel last night. That was, as I knew, a factually incorrect statement at that point. He never had a conversation with my counsel. The conversation ended at that point, but later on when I then picked up this issue of guidance and our responsibilities, he raised his voice again, suggested, as I told you before, I should not be talking to you, it is against the bar ethics, for me to contact and talk to you directly. I took issue with that. I said I'm under no obligation to retain private counsel. I said somebody provided information to the Secretary that he said publicly in Italy that the congressional committees were preventing me from talking to legal counsel. And I said I've got 15 witnesses in a room hearing you say that you don't want to talk to me. So I'm worried that you as working for this office, are adopting positions at odds with the language that your office is providing the Secretary of State.

My interest in this process was so that the State Department and the Secretary would be protected, and being fully responsive to the legal subpoena that had been issued.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Was his concern more of a process concern or did he take any objection to your substantive suggestion that additional custodians should be included?

A  I honestly cannot answer what he was thinking. I can only say what he said to me.

Q  That's what I'm asking. What did he say?

A  He said to me that he represented the Secretary of State and the Department's interest in this process. And that was the end of that -- and he also said that he was the author of the lines about the -- of the letter that included the language about the bullying and intimidation.

I pointed out to him that I thought the language he had then drafted, since he said was the drafter, was inaccurate. And he asked why did I say that. I said, well, you say that the career Foreign Services are being intimidated. And he said, who are you speaking about? And I asked him, about whom are you speaking? And he said, you're asking me to reveal confidential information. And I said, no, I'm not. There are only two career Foreign Service officers who subject to this process. I'm one of them. I'm the only one working at the Department of State, and the other one is Ambassador Yovanovitch, who is teaching at Georgetown. So I'm not asking to you reveal anything that isn't already commonly known.

So that was that part of that conversation.

Q  What his response when you said that?

A  He spent the next 5 minutes glaring at me.

Q  Did he disagree that Mr. Risch should be included in the --

A  We did not return to that topic.

Q  Now this was all with the others in the room?

A  This is in the room with the 15 to 20 other people, yes.

Q  And then you said there was an additional conversation in the hallway with Can you describe that conversation?

A  Correct. then said, opened the door after a couple of minutes and asked if I could come out. So I excused myself before my colleagues. I apologized for them having had to hear an uncomfortable conversation. I said that it was important that they had been there as witnesses, since that was likely the only such only conversation engagement I would have with the legal staff of the State Department. I walked out, closed the door. And I stuck my hand out and said, Hi, I'm George Kent. We've never met. We shook hands. And then I said, that was unprofessional. And he then said, you were unprofessional. He got very angry. He started pointing at me with a clenched jaw and saying, What you did in there, if Congress knew what you were doing, they could say that you were trying to sort of control, or change the process of collecting documents. And what I said to him was what I hear you saying -- I said that's called projection. What I hear you saying is that you think that I am doing that.

What I was trying to do was make sure that the Department was being fully responsive. He then told me, I don’t think it is appropriate for you to go back into that room. I told him that's not your business, that's my meeting, but I will agree with you, though, I will go back in and tell my colleagues that since I'm one of the chief records collectors, I will go back to my office and resume collecting records to be responsive to the request.

And the only other thing we did was I gave him my business card, he wrote his name and phone number in my notebook. And he said, I imagine you will be writing up your version of this conversation and I will be too. And that was it.

Q  And did you write up your version?

A  I did.

Q  Did you provide that memo to the State Department to be turned over?

A  I believe -- yes, I did.

Q  Were you aware that the original request to the Department was made on September 9th?

A  I am aware that there was a letter sent, yes. I was traveling through much of that next week. So I am not a lawyer and I understand there are different ways of signaling how serious the issue is, but yes, I was aware that an earlier set of letters were sent prior to the September 27th letters.

Q  Were you asked to collect your records prior to, I believe, you said October 2nd?

A  There was no request for anyone to collect records prior to the subpoena that was issued, to my understanding, on the 27th.

Q  And I assume you did not have any further conversations with ?

A  No, and I think as counsel can confirm, once our relationship was established, he, , was taken off of my account, and while I did not participate in further conversations, my understanding is that the tone and further back and forth between L and my counsel was fully professional and respectful.

Q  All right. Before I move on, Mr. Kent, is there anything else on the topic of the State Department's response to the Congress' subpoena that you think the committee should know about that you haven't addressed?

A  No.

THE CHAIRMAN: If I could, I take it, at some point, you were instructed by the State Department not to provide the documents directly to the committee, but rather to provide them to the State Department?

MR. KENT: The initial document request under the subpoena was to the State Department and the State Department as part of its guidance did share the consideration that communications would be considered Federal records, and that they would be handling them, and that is a position that I accepted.

THE CHAIRMAN: But in terms of your own documents, the ones in your possession that we had requested, did you get instructions from the State Department that rather than provide them to the committee, you should provide them to the State Department?

MR. KENT: The letters that came in, the letter that came to me on September 27th was sent concurrently with a subpoena for those documents. And so they are considered Federal records. And all executive branch employees are reminded of that. So I was responsive to the request under subpoena to the Department for those records to be collected.

THE CHAIRMAN: But did you receive any instructions from the State Department that you should not provide the documents directly to the committee?

MR. KENT: I would have to go back and look at the written guidance that was issued on October 2nd. But I will say it was my understanding that I would provide the documents as part of the subpoena to the Department for the documents. My documents are not my personal documents. Any record that I create in the performance of my professional duties would be considered a record of the Department of State.

THE CHAIRMAN: And I assume that any records that you had on a personal device, those would have been provided to the State Department to be turned over as well?

MR. KENT: That is the -- right, correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Did you have any conversations with anyone else in the State Department about your interaction with ?

A  Yes.

Q  Who?

A  Now former, I guess, technically retired, he sent in his resignation letter, Michael McKinley, senior adviser to the Secretary of State. I had had no prior interaction with Mr. McKinley until the weekend after the letters were issued, and the story became news, and he reached out to talk to me.

Q  He reached out to you?

A  Correct. I was out picking apples with my wife -- Stribling Orchards,a very nice place in Markham, Virginia, if you ever want to get good apples -- and he reached out to me through the Operations Center and said that he felt the State Department should stand up for its career Foreign Service officers and wanted to know if I had any objection to him trying to get the Department to issue a statement of that nature.

Q  What did you say?

A  I think said I think it is entirely appropriate for the State Department leadership to stand up for its career foreign service officers.

Q  And what did you say about the statement?

A  He didn't share the statement with me. I asked him if he'd already floated the idea, and if he got any responses.

Q  What did he say?

A  He said he had not yet succeeded in securing an agreement to issue such a statement.

Q  Had he heard about your interaction with ?

A  So that came later, because our first conversation was on September 28th, Saturday, when I was picking apples. He then subsequently came to my office, and he was the only Foreign Service officer outside the European Bureau who initiated contact and came to my office.

So he checked in with me several times over the last 2 weeks to see how I was doing. And I did describe my -- the guidance meeting and what had occurred on the 3rd of October.

Q  And what was his response to --

A  He was concerned about that. He asked if I had written it up. And I said, I wrote a note to the file. And he asked if, in his capacity as a senior adviser to the Secretary, in part, responsible for ensuring that the Department leadership was connected to the career Foreign Service, if I would mind sharing it with him so that he could share it with other leaders of the Department, and I said I had no problem. And so I shared with him a copy of my note to the file.

Q  Did he say who he was going to share it with?

A  He later told me he shared it with the Deputy Secretary Sullivan, tinder Secretary Hale, and I believe the counselor -- sorry -- acting legal, Marek String.

Q  And did he indicate to you what the -- any response was to sharing the memo?

A  No.

Q  Did he indicate to you who he had discussed a statement with?

A  Not specifically.

Q  Generally?

A  He said leadership of the Department. That's -- so I presume that included people outside of the European Bureau, but I did not ask specifically which individuals he had engaged.

Q  Did you have any further conversations about that statement with him?

A  I did ask him, one of the times he dropped by my office, I asked him if that statement had gone anywhere, and he said, no.

Q  Did he indicate why not?

A  I don’t know recall if he gave any specific information on why.

Q  Anything else noteworthy about your conversations with Ambassador McKinley?

A  I had had never met him. I actually had to Google him. His career has not crossed mine. He's been an ambassador in four places -- three times in South America and Afghanistan. But he appeared to me in person to be a genuinely decent person who was concerned about what was happening.

And so I very much appreciated him reaching out on a personal level and showing, as someone who's been an ambassador in four missions, including Afghanistan, understanding it's important to be responsive and engage the people who work for you.

Q  Did you share his concerns?

A  Which concerns?

Q  About how the career Foreign Service officers were being treated during this process?

A  Well, as I mentioned before, that's why I reached out to the director general, Carol Perez, on October 1st because I had concerns that outside of the European Bureau, the leadership in the Department was not actually signaling its support for the career Foreign Service officers.

Q  All right. Mr. Kent, we're going spend some time today discussing Ukraine policy as well as efforts by nongovernment individuals to influence Ukraine policy. As you no doubt are aware one of the central players in this investigation is Rudy Giuliani. When did you first learn that Rudy Giuliani had taken an interest in Ukraine?

A  Well --

Q  Or any Ukrainians?

A  I think it's a matter of record that the former mayor of New York and the current mayor of Kyiv have known each other for over a decade. Mayor Klychko is a former heavyweight boxing champion of the world. And so I believe that Giuliani first met Klychko, roughly, in 2008.

Q  Okay.

A  So I think Giuliani, as a person, a private individual, has traveled to Ukraine over the course of the last decade.

Q  When you were in Ukraine, did you ever meet with him?

A  I never met with him, never been in the presence of him, never had any communication with him.

Q  So other than, as of 2018, at some point, did you come to learn that Mr. Giuliani was actively engaged in matters relating to Ukraine?

A  The first indication that I heard of contacts in 2018 came in May 2018. The then-prosecutor general of the country, Yuriy Lutsenko, had planned to go to New York and his plane, KLM plane, was canceled. But my understanding was that his intent to go to New York was to meet with Rudy Giuliani.

Q  And did you understand what the purpose of that meeting was?

A  At the time, no, because the meeting didn't happen.

Q  How did you learn about it?

A  There were stories in the Ukrainian media that he intended to go. I'd heard the story about the cancelation, KLM. Some of the stories later claimed that he did not have a visa. That was not true, because I know the plane had been canceled and he later traveled to New York. And also the head of Ukrainian diaspora organization told me that he had had a conversation with Lutsenko and Lutsenko said his intent was to go to New York and meet with Giuliani.

Q  Were you still in --

A  I was in -- I left Kyiv, Ukraine on August 12th, 2018.

Q  And what did you learn about Mr. Giuliani's interactions with Mr. Lutsenko after that initial aborted trip?

A  The next time I heard Mr. Giuliani's name mentioned was on the 9th of January this year, 2019, when I was copied on an email that Giuliani was calling the State Department regarding the inability of the previous prosecutor general Viktor Shokin to get a visa to come to the United States.

Q  How did you learn about that?

A  I was copied on an email. Because I'm the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State covering Ukraine, and it was a matter about Ukraine.

Q  And did you have any involvement in that visa issue?

A  I was involved extensively in conversations and exchanges over the next 2 days, yes.

Q  Describe briefly who Viktor Shokin is.

A  Viktor Shokin served as prosecutor general of Ukraine from, I believe his appointment date was February 10th, 2015, until sometime of the spring, perhaps late February, early March 2016. He was a longtime prosecutor. He was known to have been the godfather of then-President Poroshenko's kids. And he was someone with whom and about whom the U.S. Government had many conversations over that period of time as prosecutor general.

Q  Was there a broad-based international assessment of his, whether or not he was a credible or corrupt prosecutor general?

A  There was a broad-based consensus that he was a typical Ukraine prosecutor who lived a lifestyle far in excess of his government salary, who never prosecuted anybody known for having committed a crime, and having covered up crimes that were known to have been committed.

Q  Who was the email from that you received on January 9th?

A  I do not recall. I believe it may have been from one of the staff in the Office of the Secretary of State, because Rudy Giuliani was trying to call into that office.

Q  And did you follow up on this email?

A  The initial redirection was to the Assistant Secretary of Consular Affairs, Mr. Risch.

Q  Okay. The redirection by who?

A  I was just copied on the email. Since it was about a visa, I think it was entirely appropriate for the matter to be referred to the part of the State Department that deals with visas.

Q  And what was Mr. Giuliani's involvement in this matter?

A  He was pushing a visa. He wanted Viktor Shokin to get a visa.

Q  Had Viktor Shokin been denied a visa at that point?

A  Apparently, Mr. Shokin did not have a valid visa at the time. I do not know whether he had been denied a visa recently.

MR. SWALWELL: Ambassador, can you spell "Risch"?

MR. KENT: I believe, with apologies to any German Americans, I think it is R-i-s-c-h, but sometimes names get changed. My original German name was Kindt, K-i-n-d-t, and then my great-great-grandmother changed to anglicize it to K-e-n-t.

MR. SWALWELL: Thank you.

BY MR. GOLDMAN

Q  So describe generally what your role was in this visa matter, if any?

A  There was a series of conversations between members of the Consular Affairs front office and European Affairs front office. For the European office, that included Assistant Secretary Wess Mitchell and myself principally. And to the best of my recollection, on the side of Consular Affairs, it would be Assistant Secretary Risch and the deputy assistant secretary for visas, who I believe is Ed Romatowski.

Q  Just to try to get to the bottom line, Mr. Giuliani, what was the State Department's view about the propriety of a visa for Mr. Shokin?

A  Mr. Shokin, as I mentioned, was well and very unfavorably known to us. And we felt, under no circumstances, should a visa be issued to someone who knowingly subverted and wasted U.S. taxpayer money. And as somebody who had a fiduciary responsibility for anti corruption programs, I felt personally strongly, Wess Mitchell felt very strongly that it was incorrect and so we stated that view clearly to our congressional -- to or Consular Affairs colleagues.

Q  Okay. And what -- did you learn why Mr. Giuliani was pushing to have a visa granted?

A  To the best of my recollection, the story that he conveyed to my colleagues in Consular Affairs was that Shokin wanted to come to the United States to share information suggesting that there was corruption at the U.S. embassy.

Q  And did you understand what he was referring to?

A  Knowing Mr. Shokin, I had full faith that it was bunch of hooey, and he was looking to basically engage in a con game out of revenge because he'd lost his job.

Q  And do you know whether there was any engagement with Mr. Giuliani on behalf of the State Department?

A  To the best of my recollection, to my awareness based on the email exchanges, He may have had between two and three conversations with the Assistant Secretary in that period of time, Giuliani to Risch. No time did Wess Mitchell or I engage Giuliani.

Q  And did you learn about the substance of those conversations from Mr. Risch?

A  I shared what I recall, and I presume that either that was in one of those conversations were an email exchange, but I couldn't tell you for sure.

Q  What ultimately happened with the visa application?

A  When the State Department was not being responsive, my understanding is that former Mayor Giuliani attempted to call the White House, and deputy chief of staff, my understanding deputy chief of staff, Rob Blair, then called the State Department to ask for a background.

Q  Who did Mr. Blair speak to in the State Department?

A  In the end, I believe it was a conference call. I participated sitting in Wess Mitchell's office. I believe Consular Affairs may have also been on the call.

Q  And can you describe the conversation?

A  We laid out enough frank detail about U.S. Government engagement and assessment of Mr. Shokin. And Mr. Blair said, thank you very much, I've heard enough. He identified his role at that point to ground truth the situation and look out after the interest of the Office of the President. And I took from his response to us that he'd heard what he needed. And that was the last I heard about that, and Mr. Shokin, to the best of my knowledge, did not ever receive a visa and has not come to the U.S.

Q  So after Mr. Giuliani reached, attempted to convince the State Department to issue the visa directly, and was told no, he then went around to the chief of staff's office?

A  That -- I do not know who he tried to reach at the White House. I only know that Mr. Blair reached out to us to ground truth the situation.

Q  To your knowledge, had anyone in the State Department informed Mr. Blair or the chief of staff's office?

A  My understanding is he reached out to us, and we were responsive to him reaching out to us.

Q  And did you understand the he learned about it from Mr. Giuliani?

A  I do not if he had a direct conversation. To the best of my recollection, he said he was asked, which suggests that he did not have the conversation himself. I don't know.

Q  Was this the first that you had heard about any concerns about the embassy in Kyiv?

A  No. I was at the embassy in Kyiv when a series of corrupt prosecutors, including Shokin’s team accused us of not sharing our assistance to improve the prosecutor service in Ukraine. And to my understanding, because it was released as part of the disinformation campaign, that included a letter from April 2016 which I signed as Charge.

Q  Was that -- were those accusations accurate?

A  The accusations were completely without merit.

Q  Following this January 9th meeting, when is the next time that you learned about any involvement of Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine matters?

A  On February 11th, there was a seminar hosted at the U.S. Institute of Peace, about the conflict in Donbas, and the Minister of Interior, Arsen Avakov, came and participated presenting his plans for what he calls a plan of small steps.

We had a separate meeting, since I'm the leading policymaker focused on the region. And during that meeting, he let me know that Yuriy Lutsenko, the then-prosecutor general of Ukraine, had made a private trip to New York in which he met Rudy Giuliani. I said, did he know what the purpose was, and the Minister of Interior Avakov said it was to throw mud. And I said, throw mud at whom? And he said, a lot of people. I asked him, whom? And he said, towards Masha, towards you, towards others.

Q  Masha is Marie Yovanovitch?

A  Former Ambassador Yovanovitch, yes.

Q  Did he say -- name any other names?

A  At that point, to the best of my recollection, he mentioned specifically Masha and me, and then said others but did not mention the others.

Q  Where was this meeting?

A  It would have either happened at the U.S. Institute of Peace or in my office, which is right across the street. The State Department and USIP are across the street.

Q  Did he explain in any more detail what he had learned about the conversations between Lutsenko and Giuliani?

A  He was just passing along information. That was not the purpose of the meeting. The meeting was to talk about our assistance programs. He oversees the law enforcement reform. It was to talk about Ukrainian politics. Frankly, at the time, he was the second most powerful person in the country after President Poroshenko. It was to talk about his ideas about trying to bring peace to the Donbas. And his comment about Lutsenko's trip and meeting with Giuliani was and, Oh, by the way, probably the last thing he said before we finished the meeting.

Q  Did he express -- why did he mention this to you?

A  I don't know. I would say that Mr. Avakov likes to keep lines of communication open to all sides and -- but I cannot say why he chose to share that information.

Q  Did he express any concerns about this?

A  He thought it was the wrong thing to do. He thought Lutsenko was a fool to have made a private trip and to have done what he did.

Q  Do you know whether he was aware of Mr. Giuliani's connection to President Trump?

A  Mr. Avakov?

Q  Yes.

A  Mr. Avakov is a very well-informed person, and I'm absolutely sure he knew who Giuliani was connected to.

Q  Did you, after learning this information, what, if anything -- what if any conversations did you have with anyone else about the information you learned?

A  I cannot say with complete certainty, but I know that I shared the information that Avakov passed to me with others.

Q  Who else?

A  Based on my normal procedures I would guess that I shared it with people who followed Ukraine in the European Bureau, as well as with the leadership of or embassy in Kyiv.

Q  Do you know what mud Lutsenko and Giuliani were discussing in connection to you?

A  I did not know, no.

Q  At that time you did not know?

A  I still don't know.

Q  You haven't seen memoranda that --

A  I've seen the letter that I signed in April 2016. I don't know if that's all. I've seen a fake list that had my business card that I used temporarily in 2015, when I was at the embassy as acting DCM. The business card was the one I used in 2015, the letter itself was completely fake with lots of misspellings. But I have never -- no one has ever shown me what Lutsenko might have been passing to Giuliani. So I did not know then and I still do not know now.

Q  You mentioned the documents that the State IG had provided to Congress. Have you reviewed those?

A  They were not -- no one shared this with me, no. So I -- what I have been told, I first learned about it from reporter who emailed me, a person I'd never had contact with, and to whom I did not respond, who claimed that she had seen the documents and asked me a question, and with the many dozens of emails from media over the last several weeks, since this story started, I didn't answer a single one, I forwarded them all to our press officer.

Q  Was this recent?

A  This was after -- it was probably a day or 2 after the IG came up and passed documents.

Q  Did you speak to Ambassador Yovanovitch about the conversation that you had with Mr. Avakov?

A  I did not -- well, I cannot say for certain. I mean, again, the conversation was February 11th. That was the day of the seminar. I could say -- I cannot say for certain whether I talked or whether I sent a brief email.

Q  Okay.

A  My guess is, to the best of my recollection, I conveyed the information.

Q  Did you become aware of whether Ambassador Yovanovitch had also spoken with Mr. Avakov around this time?

A  I believe it may have been that conversation that she shared that she had had a similar conversation with him.

Q  At that point did you understand what Rudy Giuliani's interest was in meeting with Lutsenko?

A  I did not have any visibility. I had better insights into the mind of Yuriy Lutsenko than I did of Rudy Giuliani

Q  And what were those insights into Mr. Lutsenko?

A  Mr. Lutsenko is somebody with whom the embassy had a long relationship dating back to the Orange Revolution period, which is when I first met him. And at that time he was a seemingly pro-Western politician. We met with him, he's a very gregarious, outgoing person. He was imprisoned for 2 years under former President Yanokovitch, and he came out and resumed politics. When Shokin was forced out, the intent of then-President Poroshenko was to appoint someone he trusted. Yuriy Lutsenko is also the godfather of his kids. And the question was whether someone who didn't have a law degree could be a reliable partner to try to reform the prosecutorial service.

So I had a series of meetings with him in the spring of 2016 to judge and assess whether he would be a serious partner for us. And so, that was the initial, if you will, renewal of a relationship. Subsequent to that time, it was very clear that Mr. Lutsenko was not any more serious about reforming the corrupt prosecutorial service than Viktor Shokin had been. And at that point, our relationship -- not personal to me, but the relationship between the embassy and Mr. Lutsenko began to sour.

Q  So it was the embassy and the U.S. view that Mr. Lutsenko was another corrupt prosecutor general?

A  That was our assessment, yes.

Q  When you spoke to Mr. Avakov, did you learn whether Mr. Giuliani was working with anyone else on matters related to Ukraine?

A  He just mentioned his -- his -- this is, by the way, aside. Again, he's a Ukraine politician serving as minister of interior, he was talking about another Ukraine politician serving as prosecutor general, and his focus was on that dynamic. And because he said he'd heard my name mentioned, he’d passed that along.

Q  When was the next time that Rudy Giuliani came up in conversation?

THE CHAIRMAN: A question if I could, just for clarification. You mentioned a letter with misspellings and forgery.

MR. KENT: Yes?

THE CHAIRMAN: Can you tell us what that letter was and what you know of its provenance?

MR. KENT: Well, that was part of series of news articles that came out I believe starting March 20th, this spring. There with a number of articles that were initially led by John Solomon of The Hill, who gave -- who took an interview with Yuriy Lutsenko earlier in March. And so, there was, I believe, video somewhere, there certainly were pictures of them doing interview. And it’s part of a series of articles, it was an intense campaign. One of those articles released because the interview on the first day Lutsenko had claimed that Ambassador Yovanovitch had given him a list in their first meeting of people not to prosecute. Several days later, a list of names was circulated on the internet, with -- the photograph had a copy of my temporary business card that I used for a short period of time in 2015. So it was a real -- it didn't look like a regular business card. It was the one that we did on the embassy printer. So I think the card was genuine, and someone attached that to a list of names that was a hodgepodge of names.

Some of the people I had to google, I had not heard of. Half the names were misspelled. Not the way that any American, or even Ukrainian, or Russian would transliterate Ukrainian names. My best guess, just from a linguistics semantic point is the person who created the fake list was either Czech or Serbian.

THE CHAIRMAN: So when you referred earlier to a forged letter, you were referring to the forged do-not-prosecute list?

MR. KENT: That was -- yeah. This was the -- it wasn't a letter, it was just a list of names with my actual business card attached.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

BY MR GOLDMAN:

Q  When was the next time that you learned anything being Mr. Giuliani's involvement in Ukraine, after February 11th?

A  Well, Mr. Giuliani was almost unmissable starting in mid-March. As the news campaign, or campaign of slander against, not only Ambassador Yovanovitch unfolded, he had a very high -- a media promise, so he was on TV, his Twitter feed ramped up and it was all focused on Ukraine, and it was focused on the four story lines that unfolded in those days between March 20 and 23rd.

Q  Where do those story lines unfold?

A  They unfolded both in the U.S. media and the Ukrainian media, simultaneously in peril.

Q  What U.S. media outlets?

A  Well, Mr. Solomon started off in The Hill, as I recall. There was a lot of tweeting, and of people that I had not previously been aware of, and then that also then played into late night television, subsequent days, both the Hannity Show and the Laura Ingraham Show covered this topic extensively.

Q  That original John Solomon article, was that based on accurate information?

A  It was based on an interview with Yuriy Lutsenko.

Q  And was the information that Mr. Lutsenko provided accurate, to your knowledge?

A  No. It was, if not entirely made up in full cloth, it was primarily non-truths and non-sequiturs.

The interview was broken into two parts. The first part was focused on any corruption efforts in which he went after the Ambassador and other actors on anticorruption issues. I think that is where he claimed that we hadn't shared his money, meaning his assistance to the prosecutor general's office.

And the second half of the first wave theme was looking back at the 2016 campaign and allegations that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau head, a person name Artem Sytnyk, had somehow provided the list of people taking money from the discredited pro-Russian party, Party of Regions, back in 2016.

So that was day one. There were two story lines that were launched more or less in parallel that were covered extensively in the U.S. press, first by The Hill and amplifiers, and in Ukraine by what are known as Porokhobots, trolls on the internet, particularly Facebook, in support of then-President Poroshenko and against the people that are perceived to be Poroshenko's opponents.

Q  You said there were some, I think you said, surprising Twitter --

A  I honestly -- I have forgotten my Twitter password. I'm not on the Twittersphere. So they are just names that did not mean anything to me until they all of a sudden became very active, talking about Ukraine and particularly the activities of our embassy in Ukraine.

Q  Were you aware of whether the President retweeted this John Solomon article?

A  To the best of my recollection, the President may have retweeted something affiliated with the Hannity Show the second day.

Q  Did it reference John Solomon, as you recall?

A  I honestly, again, I have started following Twitter more than I did before March, but I was not an active follower at that point.

Q  Prior to the initial Hill article between February 11th and March 20th, was there any engagement that you had, either with the Ukrainian -- on the Ukrainian side, or with any State Department officials about any of these issues related to Rudy Giuliani?

THE CHAIRMAN: If I could -- just for clarification again, I think I mentioned one or two of the story lines, but you said there were four story lines. Can you tell us what the other story lines were?

MR. KENT: The third story line that came out the next day was focused on the Bidens and Burisma, that was the third story line. The fourth one that came out of day after was going after some civil society organizations, including anticorruption action center that were described as Soros organizations?

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  I want to -- we're going to go through these four a little bit in more depth, but I want to make sure that there's nothing else that occurred between February 11th and March 20th of note on this topic?

A  I received an email from our embassy on March 19th, the deputy director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau for Ukraine, usually referred to as NABU, that was set up in 2015 and proved very effective at trying to investigate high-level corruption as it was intended to do. The deputy director was a former Georgian national named Gizo Uglava. And he came into the embassy and described his conversation the night before with a completely inebriated, drunk, Yuriy Lutsenko, and Lutsenko was angry. He said he'd given an interview with an American journalist 2 weeks prior and that interview that he had accused the embassy of undermining him, and that was his motivation, and that the embassy had been supportive of the Democrat party, and was not supportive of the Trump party and that -- so basically the lines of attack that then came out in the subsequent articles, Lutsenko shared with this other law enforcement individual, who then came and shared what he had heard from Lutsenko the night before.

Q  To the embassy?

A  To the embassy, yes.

Q  And prior to March 19th, there was no other indication other than television or --

A  To the best of my recollection, the story was not in play publicly until the first articles appeared. And to the best of my recollection, somebody from The Hill reached out to us in the early evening, or the very end of the work day on the 19th, and asked the press officer of the European Bureau whether we had reaction to a number of assertions, allegations.

Q  All right. Let's go through -- just give me one minute.

[Discussion off the record.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  So did you understand why the Ukrainian law enforcement source went to the embassy to describe what a drunk Lutsenko had said?

A  I believe, first of all, Mr. Uglava had a very good working relationship with the embassy. His organization, NABU, was one of the key anticorruption organizations that had been stood up after the Revolution of Dignity. It was in its first year, it was functioning surprisingly well, meaning it was putting together investigations on high-level corrupt individuals. And because of its initial effectiveness, which I think surprised a lot of people, it then became a target of people in places of influence, because it had been effective. And one of the people that was looking to destroy NABU as an effective Bureau was Yuriy Lutsenko.

Q  And did the information that you received about this, was that in writing or was it on the phone?

A  I received it in an email from the embassy. And that email should be part of the records collected, not individually, but the State Department has a system, that is supposed to automatically be able to pull all emails and cables that have key words. That's my understanding of how that material should be provided eventually to the committees after review.

Q  Could you just summarize for us the four lines that you -- lines of --

A  I think the four story lines that played out in the media, the first one was the anticorruption line in which the embassy was attacked, and anti corruption actors in Ukraine were attacked. The second line was the 2016 cycle, allegations that somehow, somebody, whether it was Ukrainians or people at the embassy had animus towards Paul Manafort. The third line was a line of reporting related to the Bidens, and the interconnectivity between Vice President Biden's role alleged interconnectivity between Vice President Biden's role and pushing our anticorruption agenda, and the presence of his son, Hunter Biden, on the board of the gas company Burisma. And the fourth line of attack was alleging that certain civil society organizations were funded by the Soros organization.

Q  Now, based on your time as DCM there, which would have overlapped with some of these events, as well as your expertise in the area and your current role as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, did you believe that there was any merit to any of those four story lines?

A  I did not.

Q  I believe our time is up so I yield to the minority.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  What did your State Department officials do to try to counteract these stories that you believe were totally fabricated?

A  Correct.

Q  What did you or State Department officials do to try to counteract these stories?

A  When stories, media occurs about any of the issues in our area of responsibility, particularly when they touch on allegations or assertions about U.S. policy, or U.S. issues, the responsible part of the State Department with the press officers and the team in embassies work together to prepare press guidance, and that can be a combination of either guidance, if asked, or if a situation warrants it, statements that would usually come out by the spokeswoman.

Q  Right, so what did you do?

A  So immediately since our Ambassador and embassy was being attacked with allegations that we felt were completing baseless, we prepared press guidance, and I believe the record -- the public record would show that the media outlets quoted that press guidance.

Q  And was that it?

A  That was it for those initial days, yes. In terms of the public stance in response to media articles.

Q  Was that sufficient to counteract the narrative?

A  The narrative continued to be pushed until the narrative was still out there. It accelerated on whatever that Sunday was, because the son of the President issued a Tweet in which he suggested that we needed more like Ambassadors like Rick Grenell and fewer, I believe he may have hashtagged Obama appointee was the point, and it was taken by people as an attack on Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Q  So what else did the State Department do? I mean, this seems like it is a major threat to the Ambassador, and major threat to the State Department. What type of additional full-throated maneuvers did the State Department take here?

A  The request from the embassy endorsed by the European Bureau, there should be a high-level endorsement of Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Q  And then what happened there?

A  There was no high-level Department endorsement of Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Q  What did the State Department do? You described a series of complete falsehoods in your words.

A  Yes.

Q  Fabrications, a fake list, that is going to the heart of the ability of the Ambassador to serve effectively.

A  Correct.

Q  And so is it fair to say this was a big league crisis for the Ambassador?

A  This particularly after there were Tweets by members of the Presidential family, it was clearly a crisis for Ambassador Yovanovitch and a crisis that was threatening to consume the relationship. So our recommendation to our superiors was that there should be a clear statement of support for Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Q  Clear statement of support, and obviously there was a media statement --

A  The initial media guidance that we released and was quoted extensively was, I think, complete fabrication, utter nonsense as well as in rebutting Prosecutor General Lutsenko's allegation that somehow we had misdirected assistance met for the prosecutor general. We said something along the lines that we had a fiduciary responsibility to the American taxpayer and when our assistance was not going to good use, we redirected it for more productive purposes.

And so, those were the initial lines in that first couple of days. When we got to the weekend, past the Sunday morning talk shows, saw the President's Tweet against the Ambassador. The question that consumed us was what do we need next? And how do we show support for Ambassador Yovanovitch?

Q  And what does the State Department do? It didn't seem like the efforts were sufficient.

A  There were exchanges at this point with officials, including, to the best of my recollection, Under Secretary Hale. It may have included the Counselor of the Department, Brechbuhl, at that point. And there was a suggestion made, and I can’t remember by whom, initially, but eventually, Gordon Sondland, our Ambassador to U.S. EU also joined some of the back and forth that Ambassador Yovanovitch should issue a statement, or do a video or tweet declaring full support for the foreign policy of President Trump, essentially asking her to defend herself as opposed to having the State Department defend her.

Q  You talked about the four lines. And the first one you said was the anticorruption actors were being attacked, was that part of the non prosecution list?

A  The non prosecution, or the allegation that Ambassador Yovanovitch, in her first meeting with Yuriy Lutsenko, which, if I recall correctly, occurred in October 2016. He alleged that there had been this list. There was no such list, and that was part of our reason for pushing back firmly. And -- but that was part of, I would say, a cluster of issues around the anti corruption theme.

Q  Has the embassy ever communicated names not to prosecute for any reason?

A  That's not what the purpose of our advocacy, or our program is. Our advocacy is to help, in terms of programming, is to build capacity, so they can have the ability to go after corruption and effectively investigate, prosecute, and then a judge allege criminal activities. The issue of whether we asked at any time that they follow up on a prosecution, if there is a criminal nexus in the United States, we have several different ways of conveying that interest. We have something called the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, or MLAT. We also have FBI agents known as legal attaches overseas. So we can do it in writing direct from the Department of Justice, or we can have the legal attaches engage their counterparts.

But what Lutsenko alleged was that we were not doing a law-enforcement-to-law-enforcement request based on a criminal nexus in the United States but that we were politically asking them not to prosecute Ukrainians. And we just don't do that.

[11:37 a.m.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  At any point in time were names of officials, whether it was for any reason, shared with the prosecutor's office in connection with do not prosecute?

A  Well, again, we don’t go in and say do not prosecute. The types of conversations that we have that might be construed are different.

Q  You mentioned the name Sytnyk earlier?

A  Artem Sytnyk who is the still and the first head of the so-called NABU, National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.

Q  And was he ever in the cross hairs of Lutsenko?

A  He was.

Q  Was he being investigated?

A  To the best of my knowledge, yes, there were open prosecutor general investigations on Mr. Sytnyk.

Q  Do you know if anyone at the embassy ever asked Lutsenko not to investigate Sytnyk?

A  What I would say, I would characterize the interactions as different because what we warned both Lutsenko and others that efforts to destroy NABU as an organization, including opening up investigations of Sytnyk, threatened to unravel a key component of our anti corruption cooperation, which had started at the request of Petro Poroshenko.

Q  I mean, could reasonable people interpret that as a request not to investigate Sytnyk?

A  I am sure that Mr. Lutsenko has claimed that, but he also claimed that there was a list, and there was no list, and he made a lot of other claims. And so as I said, this is an issue of believabi1ity about someone who routinely lies.

Q  You're familiar with the name Shabunin?

A  Vitali Shabunin perhaps? Is that --

Q  Yeah. And could you identify him for us?

A  He is one of the leaders of the NGO known as AnTAC, it's the anti corruption center in Ukraine.

Q  What's AnTAC's role?

A  AnTAC is an advocacy group that is designed to both publicly bring attention to issues related to corruption, to advocate for better laws and better prosecutions, and on occasion it has also participated in some of the capacity-building activities that were funded by the U.S. Government.

Q  Who funds AnTAC?

A  AnTAC is an organization, has funding that, to the best of my knowledge, includes primarily funds from the European Union and the U.S. Government. It has also received grants from the International Renaissance Foundation, which is the Ukrainian name and arm of the Open Society Institute.

Q  And who runs the Open Society Institute?

A  The Open Society Institute was initiated 20-odd years ago by George Soros.

Q  Can you remember -- sorry. Do you know if the name Vitali -- I apologize for these pronunciations.

A  That's okay.

Q  I'm not familiar with how to do this properly, and I apologize. I mean no disrespect.

A  I'm not Ukrainian, so --

Q  Vitali Shabunin, do you know if he was ever the subject of a prosecution in Ukraine by Lutsenko?

A  I do not know. To the best of my knowledge, he was subject to harassment by the securities service known as the Security Bureau of Ukraine. There was an incident where someone threw what’s known as bright green, it's iodine-based disinfectant, and they actually threw it on his face near his house. It can damage eyes but is oftentimes done as a form of intimidation in the former Soviet Union.

So because Shabunin was outspoken, he was certainly the target of harassment. But I don't know for certain whether there was an active criminal investigation by the prosecutor general's office.

Q  Was he ever up on charges of hooliganism or something to that effect?

A  I believe when the person who was picketing his house and throwing this green material on him, and claiming to be a journalist even though he wasn't, provoked him, and Shabunin pushed him near his house. Yes, he was then -- I think there was a charge of alleged hooliganism.

Q  Do you know if anyone ever tried to communicate with Lutsenko's office that this was not a worthwhile charge to pursue?

A  I think, you know, if we're going back -- I don't know specifically about that particular incident or charge, but as a matter of conversation that U.5. officials had with Ukrainian officials in sharing our concern about the direction of governance and the approach, harassment of civil society activists, including Mr. Shabunin, was one of the issues we raised, yes.

Q  Was Shabunin on this list that you described as fake?

A  I don't know if that list has been provided to the committee. You could show me the list and I might have some recollection. But I --

Q  Okay. Do you have any recollection of who was on that list?

A  There were about 15 names, and I remember it was very odd. It included the country's leading rock star Slava Vakarchuk, who is now the leader of one of the parties in parliament. It included very bizarrely a person who was a friend of the current -- the ex-President Poroshenko and was head of the overseer of the defense industry named Gladkovskiy, and in parentheses it had his previous name, Svinarchuk. The reason why that's memorable is because it means a pig or a pig farmer, and he changed his name before he went into government so he didn't have a name that said basically Mr. Piggy. But no one knew that that was really -knew that was his name when the list allegedly was created in 2016. That was a story line from 2019.

There were a couple of young so-called Euro optimist MPs where friends had joined Poroshenko's party but then become sort of critics of President Poroshenko. Their names include Mustafa Nayyem, Svitlana Zalishchuk, and Serhiy Leshchenko.

I believe the former defense minister, who was running for President at the time, Anatoliy Hrytsenko, was at the list. There was a judge I'd never heard of. And there may have been other people on that list. I just don't remember the full list.

Q  What do you know about Leshchenko?

A  Serhiy Leshchenko was a journalist for Ukrainskaya Pravda, which is an online -- the leading online news source in Ukraine. He ran for parliament as one of the young pro-western members of then-President Poroshenko's party. He continued to act as an investigative-style public figure even as a member of parliament.

He did not get reelected in the parliamentary elections in September. And because he was an active parliamentarian, because he had been an investigative journalist, he was someone that the U.S. Embassy had known for years.

Q  What was his role in the Manafort issue?

A  To the best of my recollection he was one of the individuals who helped popularize the information that came out of the black book. I believe Andy Kramer from The New York Times was the first person to write a story in English about it. Andy came and talked to me sometime in late 2015, 2016. I do not recall. He was based in Moscow, so he was not there in Kyiv that often.

But at some point Andy shared with me where he had heard the first information. And so I believe, although I cannot say for sure, that Mr. Kramer may have shared that he had talked to Leshchenko as one of his sources for that early article.

Q  Were there other sources of information regarding Manafort pushing out of Ukraine?

A  About -- well, Mr. Manafort operated in Ukraine for over a decade. So are you specifically saying about his entire time, or what's the specific --

Q  Around that timeframe, which of course is -- you know, mid-2016 is when he became involved with the President's campaign.

A  Right. Because Mr. Manafort had spent a decade in Ukraine, Ukrainians followed his reemergence as a U.S. figure very closely.

Q  And was Leshchenko the primary person bringing that to the attention of The New York Times and the other --

A  No. I think, all Ukrainians, they didn't need a single person doing it. Because Mr. Manafort first appeared in Ukraine in 2005 when he was hired by former Prime Minister Yanukovych who tried the steal the election that became the Orange Revolution, that was the end of 2004.

To the best of my recollection, in this case it's actually quite good because I was with Ambassador Herbst at the time when Yanukovych told us that he’d hired Manafort, and that was the spring of 2005. So Mr. Manafort's time in Ukraine started in 2005, and according to public records, he participated up through the campaigns of 2014.

Q  Now, the allegation that the embassy shared an animus about Manafort or was interested in pushing information to the forefront, is that an accurate description of the second narrative that was pushed in the March 2019 timeframe?

A  That is part of what Yuriy Lutsenko in that narrative pushed, yes.

Q  Okay.

A  It's, again, inaccurate, not accurate characterization.

Q  Okay. Is it accurate that somebody in the Ukraine, not from the embassy, but somebody, maybe Ukrainians, were pushing this narrative?

A  I think it would be accurate to say, given what President Yanukovych did to the country, which was loot tens of billions of dollars, that there were many Ukrainians who in part blamed Paul Manafort for that success because he proved to be a brilliant political technologist in giving Yanukovych advice that helped him win the presidency.

Q  And do you think people in the U.S., supporters of President Trump that saw this information come out of the Ukraine may have wondered if this was an effort to attack the President or the President when he was a candidate?

THE CHAIRMAN: Counsel, are you asking what the American public -- an opinion about what the American public might believe?

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  No. Is it reasonable -- I'll restate it.

A  Well, I will just say, I was in Ukraine at the time so I don't know what the reaction was.

Q  Is it reasonable to conclude that if you are in President Trump's world and you're seeing these stories coming out of the Ukraine that it appears to have the look of a political attack?

THE CHAIRMAN: The witness can answer if they wish, but you're asking the State Department witness a question about how to evaluate the public response to --

MR. MEADOWS: Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, with all due respect, we didn't cross-examine you or -- you're not the counselor.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Meadows, I said the witness can answer, but it seems --

MR. CASTOR: Okay. Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: But it seems that you're asking for an answer that's beyond the knowledge of a State Department witness.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Was that part of the second narrative that you described that, you know, injecting the Manafort was an effort to attack then-candidate Trump?

A  Again, I can't say how any individual, any American would react to a narrative. I can only answer for myself and the knowledge I had. And I'll tell you what I told Ukrainians in 2016. I said that Paul Manafort was an extremely successful political adviser who had helped President Yanukovych win, and no one should underestimate his abilities to help any candidate that he advised. And that was my assessment of his professional ability to help a candidate win, regardless of the country.

Q  Do you think the second narrative that either Lutsenko is pushing or the journalist he was dealing with in the United States were pushing, do you think that related to trying to spin up President Trump's supporters?

A  You're asking me to speculate on what Yuriy Lutsenko, Rudy Giuliani, and John Solomon were doing, and I would suggest that's a question for those three individuals.

Q  Did it have the effect of that though?

A  It's hard for me to make an assessment since there were so many story lines put in play at the same time to assess how any one of those story lines had an effect on any given audience.

Q  Did the State Department zero in on that particular story line, or did they approach all of these four at the same time?

A  Our primary concern was that our Ambassador and our embassy were being subjected to inaccurate accusations. But as situational awareness, we followed or tried to follow because the volume was intense, the various different stories.

Q  The third story line was relating to Burisma?

A  Correct.

Q  And what's your knowledge of Burisma's corruption history and efforts to prosecute Burisma?

A  I first became aware of the owner of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, when I first went to our embassy in mid-January 2015. I went for a short period of time. At the time I was the senior anti corruption coordinator, but I'd already been selected to be the next deputy chief of mission.

So my predecessor had a 3-week break. He was going back to , and I was asked to go out, because so much was happening at the time, the Russians were pushing the final push to take as much territory as they could, that they needed an extra officer. And as well, Ambassador Pyatt thought I could be helpful in the anti corruption front.

I was asked by our professional Department of Justice former prosecutor, who was engaged in capacity building, if I would be willing to go in and talk to the prosecutor general's office, because in late December 2014, somebody in the prosecutor general's office of Ukraine -- this is, to be clear, pre Lutsenko, pre Shokin, a different corrupt, ineffective prosecutor -- who inexplicably had shut the criminal case that had been the basis for a British court to freeze $23 million in assets held by Mykola Zlochevsky.

That was an issue of our interest because we had made a commitment to the Ukrainian Government in 2014 to try to recover an estimated tens of billions of dollars of stolen assets out of the country. The first case that U.S., U.K., and Ukrainian investigators worked on was a case against Zlochevsky, and that's because the British Serious Crimes Office had already opened up a case, an investigation against Zlochevsky.

We spent roughly half a million dollars of State Department money in support of the FBI and this investigation and to build capacity to track down stolen assets. And so, again, I had a fiduciary responsibility -- I'd previously been the director of the office which provided that funds to find out what had happened and why were our monies being wasted.

So armed with the facts that the DOJ rep gave me, we asked for a meeting at the prosecutor general's office. They made the deputy prosecutor general named Donylenko available. And so I went into his office, February 3, 2015, and said, how much was the bribe and who took it? And he laughed and said, ha ha ha ha, that's what President Poroshenko asked us last week. And I said, and what did you tell him? And he said $7 million, and it happened in May before our team came in, May of 2014.

I said, wrong. Somebody, a prosecutor under your command, signed a letter on December 25 -- which is not Christmas in Ukraine. They celebrate it late -- and provided it to the lawyer who provided it to the British judge before the FBI and the Serious Crimes Office could react. So that was 6 months after your team came into the office.

He did not offer the name of anyone he suspected of having taken the bribe. He did, however, say, well, I've been friends with Zlochevsky for 21 years, and he's in Dubai right now. Here's his phone number. Do you want it? And I said, no, I think you should actually arrest him next time he comes back to Ukraine.

But I want to make very clear the seriousness with which the U.S. Government takes this because we spent months and hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to help your country get your stolen assets back, and somebody in your office took a bribe and shut a case, and we're angry.

So that was my introduction. And the focus at that point was on Zlochevsky the person, the ex-minister, when he was minister of ecology, which oversees the unit that issues the licenses to do substrata geologic exploration for gas. He awarded it to a series of companies that happened to be either through shell companies or affiliated with the holdings, which was known as Burisma.

But the focus at the time, the case in 2014, in the frozen assets, was the assets frozen for Zlochevsky, the minister, not directed to the conduct of Burisma, the company.

Q  Okay. But he controlled Burisma?

A  Yes. Whatever the roster may say, he's the beneficial owner, as they say.

Q  And did they suffer from allegations of corruption, the company?

A  The company, which is actually a major player, thanks to all the licenses he granted to himself, when he was a minister, is a serious gas producer, but its reputation in the industry is a company that throws elbows and uses political strings. So it's a legitimate company, but it does not have a good reputation in Ukraine.

Q  Because it has a history of corruption?

A  Because it has a history of not just competing on quality of service.

Q  Okay. But is that a euphemism for corrupt activities?

A  He was the minister and he granted himself licenses to explore gas.

Q  Okay. But you're agreeing with me, right, this is --

A  Yes. And it was the position of the U.S. when I went into that office in February 3 that the prosecutor general should, first of all, prosecute whoever took the bribe and shut the case, and second of all, there was still the outstanding issue of trying to recover the stolen assets.

Q  You had some firsthand experience with anti corruption issues in 2014, 2015, and then you went to Kyiv in 2015, correct?

A  Correct.

Q  What else can you tell us about issues relating to the company, related to corruption?

A  Well, I think, that pretty much sums it up. If you're asking about the corruption of the company, there is the issue of how they got the licenses and then their reputation. And so our concern was primarily focused on the fact that we, working with the U.K. and Ukrainian law enforcement authorities, had frozen assets that, to the best of my knowledge, were in accounts that were under his name.

Q  When did that occur?

A  The action -- this was all in 2014. And, again, to the best of my knowledge, the reason why this was the first effort to try to recover stolen assets is because the U.K. Serious Crimes Office had opened up a case in the spring of 2014, and as we were talking to the Ukrainians, how can we be of help, there was a stolen assets recovery conference in London co-hosted by the attorney general and the U.K. counterpart and the World Bank that this became the test case for our ability as partners in the U.S., U.K. playing a key role together to try to recover stolen assets from the previous government.

Q  Did the company ever engage in, you know, public efforts to rehabilitate their image?

A  Yes.

Q  And what were those?

A  I later became aware -- I did not know it at the time because, again, my focus was on Zlochevsky -- that one of the ways that they did was to appoint westerners to their board.

Q  Corporate governance experts?

A  Westerners.

Q  But not corporate governance experts?

A  I don't know all the members' backgrounds. And I've served my entire life in government service, so I'm not familiar with corporate boards.

Q  Do you know who they appointed to their board?

A  The big name in Ukraine was former President of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski.

Q  And why was he appointed to the board?

A  I don't know. I've never met Mr. Zlochevsky, and I do not know why they did what they did.

Q  Anybody else that you recall appointed to the board?

A  It's become clear in public knowledge that Hunter Biden, the son of then-Vice President Biden, was also appointed to the board.

Q  Any idea why they wanted to name him to the board?

A  Again, I've never had a conversation with Zlochevsky, so I don't know.

Q  But it was probably because his dad was the Vice President?

A  That's a question for Zlochevsky. That's, I think, how people have interpreted it.

Q  That's a reasonable interpretation, right?

A  As I said, I have never had a conversation with Mr. Zlochevsky.

Q  Did he have any experience in the natural gas business?

A  I have never met nor do I know the background of Hunter Biden.

Q  Okay. So you don't know if he spoke any of the relevant languages?

A  I do not know.

Q  Do you know if he moved to Ukraine?

A  I don't know.

Q  Do you know how much he got paid?

A  I have not seen any documents. I've heard people make suggestions.

Q  Did he get paid a lot?

A  I'm a U.S. Government employee. I don't know how much corporate board members get in any country, but I understand a lot of people get paid a lot of money.

Q  It wasn't a nominal fee.

A  Again, I don't work in the corporate sector so I don't know what standard board compensation would be.

Q  Okay. I mean, it's been reported that it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000 a month or more?

A  I have read articles, and I have no idea how much Burisma may pay its board members.

Q  Have you ever met with -- during your time in Kyiv, did you ever meet with anybody on the board of Burisma? Did they pay a courtesy call on the embassy?

A  I personally never met and I don't know if board members met with the embassy. I don't know.

Q  Did anybody affiliated with the company ever pay a courtesy call in the embassy to try to help the embassy understand the company is engaging in rehabilitating their image?

A  Again, I can only speak for myself. And there was no one affiliated with Burisma that asked to come to the embassy to meet me. But that's me as the DCM over a 3-year period of time.

Q  In engaging with some of these anti corruption-focused organizations, whether it's NABU or AnTAC, did you have any firsthand experience of the efforts that Burisma was trying to rehabilitate their image, whether -- you know, did NABU communicate that to you?

A  That would not have been a conversation that we had with NABU. I will say that now that you mention it, there apparently was an effort for Burisma to help cosponsor, I guess, a contest that USAID was sponsoring related to clean energy. And when I heard about it I asked USAID to stop that sponsorship.

Q  Why?

A  Because Burisma had a poor reputation in the business, and I didn't think it was appropriate for the U.S. Government to be cosponsoring something with a company that had a bad reputation.

Q  When was that?

A  I would believe that would be sometime in mid-2016.

Q  Okay. Any other communications with, you know, AnTAC officials or NABU about Burisma and their effort to rehabilitate themselves?

A  I do not recall direct communications with anybody from AnTAC. I do know that the former Ambassador to Ukraine, John Herbst, whom I mentioned previously, had been on the board, I believe, of AnTAC. And he recounted to me an exchange with another member of the AnTAC board named Daria Kaleniuk, who criticized him because the Atlantic Council, where he runs the Ukraine Project, agreed to take Burisma as a corporate sponsor. And so Daria criticized the Atlantic Council for doing so.

Q  When was Ambassador Herbst -- when was his tenure?

A  He was Ambassador to Ukraine between 2003 and 2006.

Q  So before --

A  Before Bill Taylor.

Q  Well, before -- okay. Maybe it would be helpful to just go through the chronology of the ambassadors. We've got Herbst, and then -- to the extent you remember. This isn't a quiz.

A  Again, I went to -- I was then serving in Thailand afterwards, so I wasn't necessarily focused on Ukraine. We had Ambassador Herbst. We had Ambassador Taylor, I believe from 2006 to the 2009. The next Ambassador, I believe, was John Tefft. And then the next Ambassador after that was Geoff Pyatt. And then there was Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Q  The fourth narrative you identified, you know, going after the civil society organizations --

A  Right.

Q  -- and you identified NABU and AnTAC, right?

A  Right. NABU was a -- well, it was -- AnTAC was a civil society organization, and the other one that I recall being mentioned early on was something called the Ukraine Crisis Media Center, which was set up to help be a sort of platform for information about Ukraine starting during the Revolution of Dignity, 2014.

Q  Any other organizations you can think of that fall into that fourth bucket?

A  In the initial press coverage, AnTAC was clearly the main target, but these story lines continued to repeat and combine. So, for instance, in May former Mayor Giuliani alleged that former Ambassador Yovanovitch was going to work for a Soros organization and after she left post, which was false. She went to work, still as a U.S. State Department employee, as a diplomat teacher/lecturer at Georgetown.

Q  Was there any basis to that allegation? Like, had she considered it, or was there any talks with any of these organizations?

A  Absolutely none.

Q  Okay. So it was totally, from your point of view, totally fabricated?

A  Fake news. It was, you know. He stated something that was fake, not true, publicly.

Q  So you said the U.K. -- or, I'm sorry, the Ukraine Crisis Media Center, NABU, and AnTAC. Any other organizations sort of fit into that --

A  Those were the only ones that I remember having been mentioned, but, again, there are a lot of stories out there.

Q  Going back to Shokin’s tenure as prosecutor general.

A  Yes.

Q  You indicated that he was not well regarded for his legitimate prosecutions?

A  Correct.

Q  And the same can be said of Lutsenko?

A  Correct.

Q  With regard to Shokin, it really seemed that the IMF and the U.S. Government adopted an official position that Shokin had to go?

A  Correct.

Q  And that's the subject obviously of the Vice President. You know, he made some statements that have been videotaped about how he played a role in removing Shokin, and as a result, you know, $1 billion in aid was freed up. Are you familiar with that?

A  Yes.

Q  And is it fair to say that it was the U.S. Government's official position Shokin needed to go?

A  Yes.

Q  And what did the U.S. Government do to demonstrate that position, in addition to what the Vice President did and said?

A  Right. Again, as I’ve stated before, U.S. State Department officials feel when we're spending taxpayer money in a country we have a fiduciary responsibility. So I'd like at this point to explain what we felt our fiduciary responsibility had been and why this became an issue of policy.

We had been asked by President Poroshenko to help with a project in -- to reform the prosecutor general's office. The previous year we'd worked with Minister of Interior Avakov, whom I mentioned earlier to the launch of what was known as the patrol police. It was an immediate success. They were trained by the California Highway Patrol, brand new police, highest female police officer percentage in the world at the time.

And so he asked us to do something similar in making a quick victory reform in the prosecutor general's office. He appointed, he, Poroshenko, appointed a new deputy prosecutor general named David Sakvarelidze, that's a Georgian name. Just like the deputy head of NABU, there were a lot of Georgians that Poroshenko brought in who had a proven track record in Georgia.

And asked us to work with him and another deputy prosecutor general, with whom we had a good relationship via the FBI, named Vitaly Kasko. And the focus was to create an inspector general's unit inside the prosecutor's office that could go after corrupt prosecutors.

So that was stood up in the -- Shokin was appointed in February. We started -- I think Sakvarelidze may have been appointed in March. We started working on that project, and they hired a bunch of young, enthusiastic prosecutors.

And then in the summertime they launched what was going to be their first case, in the central province of Poltava, as a test case. They had a businessman who complained he was being shaken down by a couple of corrupt prosecutors. He agreed to be a cooperating witness.

They worked with the security service, which had wiretap authority, and they tapped these two prosecutors whose names I believe are Shapakin and Korniyets. Don't know their first names. And then they went in to get the warrants and arrest them.

And the reason why I'm going through all this detail is it's important to understand that one of those two prosecutors that was the first case turned out to have been the former driver of Shokin, who he made his driver a prosecutor.

So the people in the IG unit had no idea that the first corrupt prosecutor -- and there were a lot of them -- that they were targeting happened to have been the former driver and very close, personal friend of the prosecutor general.

When they arrested him -- and the only reason they could arrest him is because the deputy prosecutor general heard about it and tipped them off, except he tipped off the wrong corrupt prosecutor in the province -- Shokin went to war. He wanted to destroy anybody connected with that effort. They tried to fire and put pressure on the judges who would issue the warrants. They tried to fire all of the inspector general prosecutors.

He eventually managed to force out everybody associated with that, including the deputy head of the security service, the intel service, who had provided the wiretapping coverage. It was absolute warfare protecting his associate, and he destroyed the inspector general unit that we'd been standing up.

So then that was the wasting of U.S. taxpayer resources, and so that is the reason why the IMF, the U.S., and the European Union said collectively the justice sector and the prosecutor is so important for the success of this country and it's so important to reform it that Victor Shokin has shown that he’s actively wasting U.S. taxpayer dollars and he's preventing reform.

And because in the conditionality of our sovereign loan guarantees, the U.S. Government guaranteed loans for Ukraine to borrow in the market, 2014, 2015, and 2016, reform, anti corruption reforms, and the prosecutor's reforms were key conditionality.

The conversations that went between the embassy and the State Department were then brought ahead of the Vice President going to Ukraine in December of 2015, and Shokin's removal then became a condition for the loan guarantee.

Q  What year was this?

A  The visit that we're talking about by the Vice President was in December 2015, I believe.

Q  And what official overt acts did the U.S. Government take with regard to Lutsenko?

A  At that point he was not the prosecutor general. He was actually the head of -- he was basically the majority leader in parliament.

Q  No. I'm talking about during Lutsenko's reign as the prosecutor general.

A  Okay. So we're now shifting from the 2015 period to 2016 to 2019. When you say official acts, what do you mean?

Q  Well, there was a number of official acts that, you know, it was the official U.S. Government's position that Shokin needed to go.

A  Right.

Q  And there were similar issues with Lustenko that he wasn't a tremendous prosecutor. Is that correct?

A  Correct. But we never said that Lutsenko should go.

Q  Okay. So the U.S. Government never took an official position that Lutsenko needed to go?

A  We didn't. We complained about some of his actions, but --

Q  It didn't amount to the concern that you have with Shokin?

A  That, I believe, would be an accurate assessment, yes.

Q  Okay. Mr. Jordan.

MR. JORDAN: Well, I would just ask, why? I mean, you said Mr. Shokin was terrible. I think the term you used earlier was he's a typical Ukrainian prosecutor --

MR. KENT: Yeah.

MR. JORDAN: -- didn't do his job, and that you all wanted him gone. You said his kids were -- him and Poroshenko were godfather to each other's kids.

MR. KENT: Yeah.

MR. JORDAN: And then you get the new guy, Lutsenko, who you said is just as bad, also kids are -- you know, kids with -- Mr. Poroshenko and him are godfather to each other's children. Lutsenko is showing up drunk, making statements. And, oh, by the way, he's not even a lawyer. And so I think the counselor's question was, where was the outrage with Mr. Lutsenko that was there for Mr. Shokin?

MR. KENT: First of all, the first phase -- Yuriy Lutsenko was prosecutor general for over 3 years, almost 3 and a half years. Shokin was for a year. And his unwillingness to do anything and his venality and his undermining U.S.-supported projects started within several months.

Yuriy Lutsenko, as I say, is a charming person, and so it was not clear how he would end up being as a prosecutor general in actively undermining reforms immediately. Several months after he became prosecutor general in the spring of 2016, for instance, former President Poroshenko in one of his calls with then-Vice President Biden asked for a former, I believe, New Jersey State prosecutor by name

had served for 2 years as an anti corruption adviser under contract to the Department of Justice in Ukraine and spoke Ukrainian fluently. And, in fact, Poroshenko had thought about appointing him as the first head of the NABU, this National Anti-Corruption Bureau. It turned out he was too old. He was already 65, and you had to be under 65 to be appointed.

So Poroshenko had actually helped recruit him for a previous anti corruption job. So he asked by name whether the U.S. Government would be willing to bring him back to Ukraine as an adviser. The U.S. Government agreed and so the embassy's part of the section that does anti corruption work and law enforcement reform brought on contract as an adviser inside the prosecutor general's office to help mentor Lutsenko, to help stand up an IG unit to replace the informal team that had been destroyed by Shokin.

So for the first period of time it appeared that we were going to be able to work with Mr. Lutsenko on prosecutorial reform, which was both a necessary precondition for a successful country and a priority for the U.S. Government programming.

MR. JORDAN: It's been reported that there was broad international consensus on Shokin. Who led that charge? Was that everyone was equally involved and invested in moving him, or was that led by the U.S.?

MR. KENT: When it comes to certain conditionalities, the IMF, particularly in the economic sphere, has, I would say, the primary voice. When it comes to certain other efforts the U.S. oftentimes is the lead voice. That includes in the security sector where we provide the most military assistance. And we coordinate through the European Command with willing allies, like the Poles, Lithuanians, U.K., Canada, and in the justice sector, as well, the U.S. played -- also had a lead voice.

MR. JORDAN: So the United States would be the lead one pushing for the new prosecutor?

MR. KENT: I would say the U.S. has had more skin in the game on --

MR. JORDAN: Oh, of course.

MR. KENT: -- justice sector reform over the last 5 years.

MR. JORDAN: That's understandable. Right. Thank you.

MR. ZELDIN: If I could follow up to that, if you don't mind, Steve.

So did Shokin ever investigate actual corruption?

MR. KENT: I am not aware of any case that came to conclusion, but I do not have insight into what all the prosecutors do in Ukraine, and there are about about 25,000 of them.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware of him ever having an investigation into actual corruption?

MR. KENT: I do not know, again, what happens behind closed doors. I think proof is in the pudding. Am I aware of any case on corruption that went to court and was settled when he was prosecutor general? I'm not aware of that.

MR. ZELDIN: I'm not asking that.

MR. KENT: Okay. What are you asking?

MR. ZELDIN: If you ever had an investigation. I'm not asking about the conclusion of the investigation.

MR. KENT: Honestly, sir, I can't answer that question. I do not know.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. Earlier on in response to the questions you were asked with regards to Burisma and Zlochevsky, it sounded like you were talking about actual corruption. No?

MR. KENT: When I was talking about Zlochevsky, when I was talking to Mr. Danilenko, the deputy prosecutor general, prior to Shokin coming in, that was based on a specific case that had been developed in 2014 before I came to Ukraine. And by time I got there, that case had been dismissed by the team against Zlochevsky, the person, by the team of prosecutors that were there prior to Mr. Shokin going into office.

MR. ZELDIN: But you did testify that Shokin had an investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky, correct?

MR. KENT: I did not say that.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware that Shokin had an open investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky?

MR. KENT: I have read claims by people that there were investigations, but I have no specific knowledge about whether those investigations were open or what the nature of them might be.

MR. ZELDIN: When did you learn of an investigation by Shokin into Burisma and Zlochevsky?

MR. KENT: I just told you, I did not learn of an investigation. I've read claims that there may have been an investigation.

MR. ZELDIN: When did you first read of claims that there may be an investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky?

MR. KENT: I read stories referencing that in the last several months after the series of articles starting in March brought this set of issues to the fore.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. So before the last several months when you started reading about a case against Burisma and Zlochevsky, you were never previously aware of an investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky?

MR. KENT: Specifically during Shokin's time, no.

MR. ZELDIN: And one followup. With regards to the EU and the IMF, was there a U.S.-led effort to get the EU and the IMF to also target Shokin, or was that something that EU and IMF did totally on their own?

MR. KENT: The IMF keeps its own counsel, but oftentimes when they go on factfinding missions they often have conversations with embassies. Here in Washington, the U.S. Treasury is the U.S. Government liaison with the IMF.

In terms of the European Union, traditionally in a country like Ukraine, the European Union Ambassador and the U.S. Ambassador coordinate very closely. And since 2014 and the German presidency of the G7, there is a coordinating process for the G7 ambassadors plus the head of the European Union mission. And they meet almost weekly, and they discuss issues and they go into issues like this in very deep detail.

MR. ZELDIN: So the United States and the EU were coordinating with regards to the effort to target Shokin?

MR. KENT: The U.S. and the EU shared their assessments at the time. And I have to say that in particular, if we're talking about the period of time between Thanksgiving, 2015, and March of 2016, I was not in Ukraine. I was back here to take Ukrainian for several months.

My understanding is that the ambassadors spoke and compared views on their concerns that Shokin's continued presence as prosecutor general prevented any hope of prosecutorial reform.

MR. JORDAN: Mr. Secretary, you said you didn't know for sure if Shokin was investigating Burisma, but you knew Burisma was a troubled, corrupt company, right?

MR. KENT: As I said, Burisma had a reputation for being, first of all, one of the largest private producers of natural gas in Ukraine but also had a reputation for not being the sort of corporate, cleanest member of the business community.

MR. JORDAN: And you were so concerned about that that you advised USAID not to do any type of coordinated activity --

MR. KENT: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: -- sponsoring any type of corporate or contest with them? Okay.

MR. KENT: Correct.

MR. MCCAUL: Sort of following up on that question, and thank you for your service, yeah, you referred to Burisma as it had a bad reputation essentially?

MR. KENT: That is what I was told by the members of our embassy community who focused on economic issues and had liaison with the U.S. business community, yes.

MR. MCCAUL: And so you instructed USAID to pull back on funding for a clean energy conference, is that right, that Burisma was headlining?

MR. KENT: To the best of my awareness, it was one of these sponsor programs where it invited school kids or young Ukrainians to come up with ideas for a clean energy campaign, and there may have been something like a camera for the best proposal.

And the cosponsorship was between a part of USAID that worked on energy and economic issues. And when I heard about it I had concerns, so I raised those with the mission head of USAID in country at the time and she shared my concerns.

MR. MCCAUL: So when the State Department evaluates foreign assistance to countries isn't it appropriate for them to look at the level of corruption in those countries?

MR. KENT: Yes. Part of our foreign assistance was specifically focused to try to limit and reduce corruption. And we also tried, to the best of our knowledge and abilities, to do due diligence to make sure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are being spent for the purposes that they were appropriated and that they are as effective as they can be.

MR. MCCAUL: In fact, if you look at Central America, corrupt governments down there, isn't it appropriate to evaluate the corruption factor and where the money goes to on foreign assistance?

MR. KENT: I will be honest with you, sir, I've never served in the Western Hemisphere, and I've only made one trip to Panama as part of my National Defense University industrial study group. So I would defer to my colleagues who are working on Central American policy.

MR. MCCAUL: But in line with your previous statements, the whole notion of looking at corruption in foreign governments and predicating foreign assistance on that, is an appropriate thing.

MR. KENT: I believe that my colleagues who have worked on international narcotics and law enforcement see when there are funds appropriated by Congress to try to fight drug trafficking and improve the law enforcement systems in Central America. It's intended to help our national interests to both stop the drug trafficking and improve the justice system so that corruption can be contained.

MR. MCCAUL: And I think based on your testimony, Ukraine has a strong and long history of corruption. Is that correct?

MR. KENT: I would say that corruption is part of the reason why Ukrainians came out into the streets in both 2004 when somebody tried to steal the election and again in 2014 because of a corrupt, kleptocratic, pro-Russian government, which eventually collapsed. The Ukrainians decided enough was enough.

And so Ukraine, yes, is a country that has struggled with these issues, but I would say also in the last 5 years has made great progress.

MR. MCCAUL: And just for the record, I signed with Chairman Engel a letter to obligate the funding security assistance to Ukraine. But is it not appropriate for the President of the United States to bring up with a foreign leader issues of corruption when the foreign leader brings up Javelin missiles? Is it not appropriate to discuss going after corruption in a country where we are providing foreign assistance?

MR. KENT: Issues of corruption have been part of the high-level dialogue between U.S. leaders and Ukrainian leaders regardless of who is the U.S. leader and who the Ukrainian leader is. So that is a normal issue of the diplomatic discussion at the highest level.

MR. MCCAUL: Thank you.

MR. MEADOWS: Steve, can I just get one clarification?

It's not long.

MR. CASTOR: Of course.

MR. MEADOWS: Did I hear you say that Shokin, prosecutor Shokin, really, his reputation within 3 months of being appointed was really negative from your standpoint? Is that what you said?

MR. KENT: That's what I said.

And it's not just my personal opinion. If you look at the political polling, if you go to IRI or NDI, both of which have done extensive polling in Ukraine since 2014, President Poroshenko, who was elected with roughly 55 percent of the vote in 2014, maintained that support through the first year. And then as this controversy over the corrupt godfather of his kids, Prosecutor General Shokin, exploded in what was known as the diamond prosecutor affair -- because one of the things they confiscated from his former driver was a cache of diamonds -- his support levels, Poroshenko's support levels, as polled by the International Republican Institute in particular, plummeted from about 55 percent to the mid-20s over that period of time.

And so that was the issue that destroyed Poroshenko's credibility and his high-level support in the eyes of the Ukrainian people.

MR. MEADOWS: So timeframe, was that 2015?

MR. KENT: Yes, sir.

MR. MEADOWS: And so when in 2015 would your opinion have been this is a bad guy, we can't trust him?

MR. KENT: Our concerns about Shokin's conduct in office were triggered by the reaction to the so-called diamond prosecutor case.

MR. MEADOWS: Yeah. And when was that?

MR. KENT: That took place in late summer, early fall of 2015.

MR. MEADOWS: All right. Steve, go ahead.

MR. CASTOR: With all the time I have left, I'd like to open up a new topic. I'm just kidding. I'm out of time.

MR. KENT: And if we could take a break.

THE CHAIRMAN: Yeah. Actually, what I was going to suggest is let's take a half an hour lunch break. Let's resume promptly at 1:00.

I want to remind all Members that may not have been here for prior sessions, although we have not discussed classified information today, we are in a closed deposition, and under House Rules, Members are not to discuss testimony in a closed session.

I know, Mr. Jordan, I've had very little luck in getting members to abide by that. But those are the rules, and I'm just reminding Members and staff they're not to discuss the substance of the testimony.

[Recess.]

[1:10 p.m.]

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Let's go back on the record.

Mr. Secretary, I want to just ask you a few questions to follow up on my colleague's questions, and then I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Mitchell to continue going through the timeline with you.

One question I have though is, we've come to learn of a meeting between Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Lutsenko, and there were some Ukrainians that were apparently -- apparently came to believe that President Trump had called into that meeting.

Do you know anything about that?

MR. KENT: I do not. ,

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Earlier in response to some questions from my colleagues in the minority you mentioned that there was an effort to get the top level of the State Department to issue a statement of full-throated support for the Ambassador and that statement was not forthcoming. Is that right?

MR. KENT: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And was the hope that that statement would come from Secretary Pompeo?

MR. KENT: The statements of that nature could come from a variety of people or levels. So I think we were looking for a statement of support from a high-ranking State Department official.

THE CHAIRMAN: And would it have been most helpful coming from the Secretary himself?

MR. KENT: It's always most helpful if the top leader issues a statement, but to be honest, I cannot recall during that week whether he was on travel. If he were on travel then Deputy Secretary Sullivan might have been the top-ranking official in the building. I just don't recall on those particular days who was essentially in charge.

THE CHAIRMAN: And did you ever learn why no statement was issued by a top-level official at the State Department?

MR. KENT: No.

THE CHAIRMAN: You mention, I think, that in this context that the suggestion was made to the Ambassador that instead of or because there would be no statement coming from the top that maybe the Ambassador should go out herself, defend herself, and express her personal support for the President.

MR. KENT: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: Where did that idea come from?

MR. KENT: I think I recall being copied on emails in which Under Secretary David Hale made the suggestion. Separately, Gordon Sondland made the suggestion. I think with Gordon he made the suggestion specifically to be aggressive on Twitter or to tweet. But in any case, there were a number of suggestions that Ambassador Yovanovitch herself speak out against the campaign against her.

THE CHAIRMAN: And how did you come to know Ambassador Sondland's advice?

MR. KENT: I believe I was copied on the email. It may not have been -- I don't think it was from him, but it was an exchange between Ambassador Yovanovitch and my guess would be leaders in the European Bureau. Again, that is an email that should be a record that was collected and is part of the document collection.

THE CHAIRMAN: Part of the document collection that has not yet been provided to Congress?

MR. KENT: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And in that email communication, that's where you would have learned of Ambassador Sondland's suggestion that the Ambassador tweet out a defense of herself and express her support for the President?

MR. KENT: And the President's foreign policy, yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: You mentioned that there are appropriate legal channels that can be used if the United States is conducting an investigation --

MR. KENT: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: -- and wishes to get overseas evidence through LEGAT and through the MLAT process. Is that right?

MR. KENT: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: There have been a number of public press reports that Attorney General Bill Barr and others at the Justice Department are essentially doing an investigation of the investigators into the origins of the Russia investigation.

Do you know whether Mr. Barr or anyone else at the Justice Department has sought information to bolster, I think, what you describe is a bogus theory about the 2016 election that had been part of that John Solomon series?

MR. KENT: I am not aware of any Justice Department inquiries to Ukraine regarding 2016, no.

THE CHAIRMAN: I think you testified in an answer to my colleague's questions that at the time that it was U.S. policy and IMF policy and the policy of other allies and allied organizations that Shokin needed to go. This was based on Shokin essentially dismantling an inspector general office the U.S. had helped fund to fight corruption in Ukraine, particularly in the prosecutor's office. Is that right?

MR. KENT: That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: And at the time that the State Department and these other international organizations were seeking to have Shokin removed, you weren't even aware whether Shokin had any investigation of Burisma?

MR. KENT: I do not recall that being part of the conversation. The conversation was very much focused, first and foremost, on the so-called diamond prosecutors case that involved these corrupt prosecutors, Korniyets and Shapakin, and the campaign that Shokin conducted to destroy and remove from office anyone associated with it regardless of what part of government those officials served in, prosecutors, investigators, judges, even security officials who had been involved in the wiretapping.

THE CHAIRMAN: And what was your position at the time?

MR. KENT: At the time this was occurring, in 2015, I was in the capacity of the number two at the embassy, the deputy chief of mission.

THE CHAIRMAN: So as the number two in the embassy, at this time, you weren't even aware of even an allegation that there was an investigation underway by Shokin involving Burisma?

MR. KENT: That was not something that I recall ever coming up or being discussed.

THE CHAIRMAN: My colleague also asked you about whether it was appropriate to bring up the conversation -- bring up a discussion of corruption in the context of the President of Ukraine asking for more javelins or expressing the need for more javelins.

I want to ask you actually about what the President said, because he didn't talk generically about corruption. He asked for a favor involving an investigation into CrowdStrike and that conspiracy theory and for an investigation into the Bidens. Is it appropriate for the President of the United States in the context of an ally seeking military support to ask that ally to investigate his political rival?

MR. KENT: The first time I had detailed knowledge of that narrative was after the White House declassified the transcript that was prepared -- not transcript, the record of conversation that was prepared by staff at the White House. As a general principle, I do not believe the U.S. should ask other countries to engage in politically associated investigations and prosecutions.

THE CHAIRMAN: Particularly those that may interfere with the U.S. election?

MR. KENT: As a general principle, I don't think that as a matter of policy the U.S. should do that period, because I have spent much of my career trying to improve the rule of law. And in countries like Ukraine and Georgia, both of which want to join NATO, both of which have enjoyed billions of dollars of assistance from Congress, there is an outstanding issue about people in office in those countries using selectively politically motivated prosecutions to go after their opponents. And that's wrong for the rule of law regardless of what country that happens.

THE CHAIRMAN: And since that is really U.S. policy to further the rule of law and to discourage political investigations, having the President of the United States effectively ask for a political investigation of his opponent would run directly contrary to all of the anti corruption efforts that we were making. Is that a fair statement?

MR. KENT: I would say that request does not align with what has been our policy towards Ukraine and many other countries, yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Mitchell.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  Good afternoon, sir.

A  Afternoon.

Q  I'm going to pick up where Mr. Goldman left off, which was the end of March of this year, 2019. And you testified earlier that you met with the deputy director of NABU on about March 19.

A  I did not. I was here in the United States. Somebody at the embassy did.

Q  And you received correspondence regarding a meeting that the deputy director of NABU had with someone in the embassy in Kyiv. Is that correct?

A  Correct. Somebody in the embassy sent an email recounting a conversation that was held with Mr. Gizo Uglava, deputy head of NABU.

Q  And that email relayed a conversation that the deputy director had with Mr. Lutsenko --

A  Correct.

Q  -- about an interview that Mr. Lutsenko had given with an American journalist?

A  Correct.

Q  Was that the first time that you got wind of this interview that Mr. Lutsenko had had with, what you later learned to be, Mr. Solomon?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. And the following day, March 20, was the day that Mr. Solomon published the article in which there was video of part of the interview that he had with Mr. Lutsenko. Is that correct?

A  That's my recollection of what happened on the 20th of March.

Q  And once you saw that article, is this when the State Department issued or shortly thereafter issued these denials saying that it was a complete fabrication, it was false?

A  Yes. It would have been on March 20 that the U.S. Embassy, which is 7 hours ahead of us, and the press team at the European Bureau would have worked to prepare guidance in response to attacks against our Ambassador.

Q  Were you involved in that?

A  Yes, I was.

Q  Okay. What was your involvement?

A  I reviewed the language, as I do any proposed press guidance related to any of the six countries over which I have policy oversight, and I have the ability to either clear -- with just that word "clear" -- or make suggestions and edits for the text.

Q  Okay. And in this particular case, what did you do?

A  I believe I may have toughened up the language, so complete fabrication may have been from me. But I cannot tell you in detail because press guidance is just that. It's then provided by a press officer in response to press inquiries.

Q  Okay. But you agreed at the time, as you do now, that it was, in fact, a complete fabrication?

A  Yes. I can tell you that it was my language about the fiduciary responsibility, the same language you heard me use here today, because of my background in being the director of the office which had the responsibility for undertaking these programs.

And so that language about we have the fiduciary responsibility to ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used appropriately, and when they're not we redirected them to better purposes, that was language that I added.

Q  And based on your personal experience and your personal knowledge of these allegations?

A  Correct.

Q  And then at some point -- and the chairman asked you questions about this as well -- there was an effort or discussion, let me say it that way, about whether the State Department should issue a full-throated defense for the Ambassador?

A  Yes.

Q  And that was done over email?

A  Yes.

Q  And that was Ambassador Sondland, Under Secretary Hale, and counselor -- you think Counselor Brechbuhl might have been on those emails as well?

A  Two separate strings. Ambassador Sondland's communications would have been with Ambassador Yovanovitch, and then she would have communicated with the Department. There would have been potentially communications with the European front office with Under Secretary Hale and Counselor Brechbuhl.

Q  Were you on all of those communications that you've just described?

A  The emails that I've described are because I was copied on the emails, and that's why in the process of collecting documents relevant to the subpoena research, my memory was refreshed of the email traffic on which I was copied.

Q  And what was the time period for that email traffic in relation to the article that came about on or about March 20?

A  It would have been over the next perhaps 10 days, basically the last 10 days of March.

Q  Okay. And during that time period, were there also additional articles that came out by Mr. Solomon?

A  The articles came out, if not daily, almost daily, and they oftentimes combined two of the four themes I laid out before. To the best of my recollection, there was never a new line of attack, but many articles combined two of the previous four themes.

Q  Okay. And the suggestion was made to the Ambassador to release a tweet or make some sort of strong statement herself. Is that right?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay. And did the Ambassador do that?

A  This back and forth was done in the context of the upcoming, at that point, first round in the Ukrainian presidential elections that took place, I believe, on March 31.

So Ambassador Yovanovitch, in consultation with her press attache, made a decision, she informed us, to record some preelection videos encouraging Ukrainians to vote. And as part of that process, she included in that a statement of support of the administration and the foreign policy, the administration of President Trump and its foreign policy.

Q  Okay. And those videos that you just described, the purpose of them was to publish them in Ukraine. Is that correct?

A  Correct. These were videos that the embassy was already planning to issue in a preelection encouragement for Ukrainians to engage in their civic duties. And so Ambassador Yovanovitch used that metaphor of civic duty in making reference to support as a career nonpartisan public official who supported and carried out the foreign policy of President Trump as she had with other Presidents.

Q  So was the intended audience of those videos people within the United States as well?

A  My understanding based on the email back and forth that I received from Ambassador Yovanovitch, including her press officer, was that her intent was to send a signal such as was being suggested by her within the context of something that was already being planned that was focused on electoral and presidential politics.

Q  Okay. And do you know whether that video was forwarded to anyone within the White House?

A  I do not know.

Q  Do you know why the Department of State elected not to do a full-throated defense of the Ambassador?

A  I think that's a question that the committees could ask those outside of the European Bureau.

Q  You do not know why?

A  I do not know why.

Q  Did you have any conversations at any point with anyone who would have made that decision?

A  The State Department is a hierarchical organization. I work for the acting assistant secretary. Normally the acting assistant secretary is the one who engages officials above our bureau, to include the Under Secretary of Political Affairs, David Hale, who has oversight over our bureau; on occasion, the counselor of the Department, Ulrich Brechbuhl; and then depending on the situation, as appropriate, the Secretary himself.

Q  Okay. So these are all the individuals that would have made that decision?

A  These are the leaders of the Department of State.

Q  Okay. But did you have any conversations with them --

A  No.

Q  -- about their decision not to issue a full-throated defense of the Ambassador?

A  I did not have conversations with them, no.

Q  Are you aware of anyone from the Department of State at around the end of March or beginning of April reaching out to Sean Hannity?

A  Yes.

Q  What do you know about that?

A  I believe, to the best of my recollection, the counselor for the Department, Ulrich Brechbuhl, reached out and suggested to Mr. Hannity that if there was no proof of the allegations, that he should stop covering them.

Q  And how do you know that?

A  Because I was informed of that in an email.

Q  By who?

A  I cannot say for certain who was the sender. It could have been from the counselor, and it could have been from Acting Assistant Secretary Reeker.

Q  Okay. And why would they have informed you of this communication to Hannity?

A  Because I'm the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State overseeing our relations with Ukraine, and I am normally the one who would have primary communications with our ambassadors or charges for the six countries over which I have policy oversight.

Q  Okay. So is it fair to say that you were in communication with Ambassador Yovanovitch pretty frequently during this time period, end of March, beginning of April, about these issues?

A  It is fair to say that when she was Ambassador and I was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, we were in regular communication about everything that went on in the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.

Q  Okay. And do you know whether this communication from Counselor Brechbuhl to Sean Hannity had any effect?

A  I unplugged when we moved back to the U.S. and so we don't have a TV at home, so I do not watch TV at night.

Q  Okay. But the situation regarding Ambassador Yovanovitch and the allegations against her was something that you were keenly aware of during this time period?

A  Correct. However, the week you're referring to is the week of the Ukrainian presidential election, and so my focus that week was on the first round of results and what would be the potential impact on U.S. national interests if, as seemed likely at that time, there would be a new President.

Q  Do you have any recollection as to when Counselor Brechbuhl reached out to Hannity?

A  I do not. If you had asked me that question before you gave me a timeframe, I would have given you a rough timeframe. I do not remember the exact days. End of March, early April is what I would have said.

Q  But, again, it's memorialized in an email to the best of your recollection?

A  To the best of my recollection, there is some sort of email regarding that, yes.

Q  Okay. Are you aware that at the beginning of March Ambassador Yovanovitch was asked to extend her stay in Embassy Kyiv?

A  Yes.

Q  How do you know that?

A  The first person who asked her to consider extending her stay was me, and that was in January when she was back for the chief of mission conference. We had a challenge in the process of finding someone that we would nominate to replace her. And because of a different assignment, it was clear that that was not going to happen on schedule.

And we had concern -- I had concern that the country, Ukraine, would be going through transition and we might not have an Ambassador there. So I initially asked her to consider staying on through the election season in Ukraine.

Q  When you say through the election season, what time period did that encompass?

A  There were two elections scheduled for this year in Ukraine. There was presidential elections in the spring and then there were parliamentary elections scheduled no later than the fall.

Q  So when you talked to Ambassador Yovanovitch in January of 2019 and you floated the idea that she extend her stay you thought of extending her stay through the fall of 2019?

A  My proposal was through the end of the year to give us a chance to find a potential number -- another nominee that the White House could put forward and possibly be confirmed and be out in Ukraine, or at the very least having an experienced Ambassador there through the most critical part of transition and then possibly have the Charge.

Q  Had you talked to anyone else at the Department of State prior to making this proposal to the Ambassador in January 2019?

A  Not that I recall, but it is possible that I talked with Wess Mitchell, who was our assistant secretary at the time.

Q  Okay. Is it fair to say that you wouldn't have proposed this to Ambassador Yovanovitch had you thought that it would have met any resistance at the Department of State?

A  Correct.

Q  And that's because Ambassador Yovanovitch was a well-respected Ambassador?

A  She was the senior-most career Ambassador in Europe, yes.

Q  And what was Ambassador Yovanovitch's reaction when you offered her this possibility in January of 2019?

A  Well, I asked her if she would be willing to stay longer, and she said that she would think about it. And she came back and said she would be willing to consider it.

Q  Okay. When did she say that?

A  Again, we started the conversation in January. My guess is that she thought about it for a little bit and got back to us, to me some point over the next month, which was prior to the conversation that you were referring to in March.

Q  Okay. So between the time that she came back to you and said that she was willing to extend her stay and the conversation that you had in March, what happened with regard to this extension?

A  So the conversation in March was not with me. It was with Under Secretary David Hale. He visited Ukraine the first week of March. I accompanied that visit. And Under Secretary Hale asked her to stay until 2020.

Q  Had you spoken to Under Secretary Hale about his proposal before he made it to the Ambassador?

A  No.

Q  Okay.

A  Not that I recall.

Q  And did you speak with Ambassador Yovanovitch about Under Secretary Hale's offer?

A  Well, I was there on the trip, and so by time she told him that she was willing to stay, because what she said was she wanted to have clarity because she had a 91-year-old mother with her and needed to also plan for other issues, by time Under Secretary Hale flew away she had indicated her willingness to stay essentially an extra year through 2020 to give the State Department and the administration time to find a nominee that could be nominated and confirmed and sent out so that we would have an experienced Ambassador in an important country at a time of transition.

Q  When did you first learn that the offer for an extension had been rescinded?

A  I don't know I heard, per se, that the offer for an extension had been rescinded. The offer was on or about the 5th of March. The 5th to 7th of March, I think, was the time when Under Secretary Hale was there. The media storm that was launched with Mr. Solomon’s interview of Prosecutor General Lutsenko started on March 20, 2 weeks later.

Q  Okay. So the talk about potentially recalling Ambassador Yovanovitch and the rescinding of the extension were one and the same?

A  To be clear, there were two people representing leadership of the State Department, first I, the deputy assistant secretary, and then the under secretary who asked Ambassador Yovanovitch about her willingness to stay longer. What then happened was a media campaign against her, and then subsequent to that was a request for her to come back.

Q  Okay. And when was that request made for her to come back?

A  To the best of my recollection, she indicated on April 25 that she'd been instructed to get on a plane to come back to Washington as soon as possible.

Q  So she indicated to you?

A  Yes.

Q  Was that the first that you heard that she'd been recalled?

A  I believe that was the first time I heard that instructions had been sent for her to come back to the U.S., yes.

Q  Okay. So you learned for the first time that she had been instructed to come back from the Ambassador herself?

A  To the best of my recollection, yes.

Q  And did she provide any -- at any time, has she provided any reasons why she was recalled?

A  I understand that, because it was part of her opening statement that was published, she referred to a conversation she had with the Deputy Secretary of State.

Q  Other than her opening statement?

A  I believe that I did hear about that conversation subsequently, and I cannot say whether it was from her or from one of the people above me, like acting assistant secretary. But I did hear an account of that session. I heard of it before reading it on Friday, yes.

Q  Okay. And whatever you heard before, was it consistent with what you read on Friday?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. Who else did you speak to, if anyone, on the 7th floor regarding the recall of Ambassador Yovanovitch and the reasons for that recall?

A  I was not having conversations with anybody on the so-called 7th floor State Department leadership about this issue.

Q  Anyone else at the State Department?

A  I or other people having conversations with the 7th floor?

Q  People that you had conversations with.

A  I did not have further conversations about that effort. It was presented as a decision, so it was, she was recalled. And I believe she came back on the 26th of April for consultations.

Q  Well, what was your reaction to learning that she'd been recalled?

A  I, on a personal level, felt awful for her because it was within 2 months of us asking her, the Under Secretary of State asking her to stay another year. And within a very short order she was being recalled.

Q  But you never sought a time to investigate why or find out why she was being recalled?

A  My position is not to investigate. Decisions had been made by the leadership of the State Department and ambassadors serve at the pleasure of. So when an instruction comes down that is a decision that was being made.

Q  So on May 6 the State Department issued a statement saying that Ambassador Yovanovitch was ending her assignment in Kyiv as planned.

A  I believe --

Q  Do you recall that statement?

A  I believe that was something issued by the embassy in Kyiv not by the State Department, and it was in the form of a management notice.

Q  Do you recall seeing that at the time?

A  I did.

Q  Okay. And what was your reaction to that embassy notice?

A  If I'd been the DCM, I don't think that’s how I would have had that news be released to the embassy community.

Q  Okay. Can you explain?

A  I think of a situation of that magnitude I would have called a townhall meeting and talked to people face to face. Also the fact that it was leaked to the Ukrainian press within 2 hours was another indication of why issuing a management notice to roughly 600 people would not have been the way to introduce that information to 600 employees that their boss was no longer going to be their supervisor.

Q  Okay. So I take it that you took issue with the way in which it was communicated, but what about the substance of the message itself, and specifically that it said that she was leaving her post as planned?

A  Again, this was an embassy management notice. If I had still been the deputy chief of mission, I would have handled notification of the embassy staff differently, so that's -- I am now the -- that was my job from 2015 to 2018. My job now is as a deputy assistant secretary for oversight of policy and programming. It's not running an embassy.

Q  On May 14, Rudy Giuliani told Ukrainian journalists that the Ambassador was recalled because she was part of the efforts against the President. Were you aware of Mr. Giuliani's statement at the time?

A  I do not know that I saw that statement at that time, no, but I did see an interview that he gave with a Ukrainian publication, censor.net, that I believe was published on May 27 that expressed a variant of that opinion, yes

[1:40 p.m.]

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  And what was your reaction to Mr. Giuliani's statement?

A  Mr. Giuliani, at that point, had been carrying on a campaign for several months full of lies and incorrect information about Ambassador Yovanovitch, so this was a continuation of his campaign of lies.

Q  So you did not think it was true at the time that the Ambassador was removed because she was part of the efforts against the President?

A  I believe that Mr. Giuliani, as a U.S. citizen, has First Amendment rights to say whatever he wants, but he's a private citizen. His assertions and allegations against former Ambassador Yovanovitch were without basis, untrue, period.

Q  How did Bill Taylor come to be appointed as the Charge d’ affaires?

A  When it became clear that Ambassador Yovanovitch was going to be recalled, one of my responsibilities as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State was to try to find and resolve how we are going to ensure that our key missions have appropriate leadership.

One of the unfortunate elements of the timing was that we were also undergoing a transition in my old job as deputy chief of mission. The person who replaced me had already been moved early to be our DCM and Charge in Sweden, and so we had a temporary acting deputy chief of mission. So that left the embassy not only without -- the early withdraw of Ambassador Yovanovitch left us not only without an Ambassador but without somebody who had been selected to be deputy chief of mission.

So collectively we all knew -- and the "we" is the people who ran our policy towards Europe -- that we needed to find an experienced hand that could help the embassy in transition, help the relationship in transition, and also be a mentor to the new incoming deputy chief of mission, who had not yet arrived and had never been the deputy chief of mission.

There was a process of looking to see who was available, who might be good. I had at one point thought of Bill Taylor, but because he had not been a career Foreign Service officer but had been a senior executive civil servant, I knew that it would be very difficult to go through the process of recalling him and getting in him in a position to go out.

In a conversation with Kurt Volker, then the special representative for Ukraine negotiations, Kurt mentioned again that he thought Bill would do a good job. And I told him, I agree, but I just don't know if it's possible. So I started that process of engaging the lawyers and the people who deal with personnel issues to see if it were actually possible to recall someone who had been an Ambassador, had been a senior executive, but had not been a senior Foreign Service officer back to serve as Charge. And that took us 3 or 4 weeks, but we eventually got to the answer that we achieved, which was yes, and he went out as Charge, arriving June 17th or 18th.

Q  And did you have conversations with Bill Taylor about this possibility of him becoming the Charge d'affaires during this time period?

A  Extensive conversations.

Q  On April 29th, Bill Taylor sent a WhatsApp message to Kurt Volker describing a conversation that you had with Bill Taylor in which you talked about two, quote, two snake pits, one in Kyiv, and one in Washington. And then Mr. Taylor went on to say that you, Mr. Kent, described much more than he knew, and it was very ugly.

Do you recall having that conversation along these lines with Mr. Taylor?

A  I had many conversations with Charge Taylor, and my reference to the snake pits would have been in the context of having had our Ambassador just removed through actions by corrupt Ukrainians in Ukraine as well as private American citizens back here.

Q  And what corrupt Ukrainians in the Ukraine were you talking about?

A  The series of corrupt former -- or still current prosecutors who engaged former Mayor Giuliani and his associates, and those included former Prosecutor General Shokin, the then Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, who no longer is, the special anti corruption prosecutor, Nazar Kholodnytsky, and anther deputy prosecutor general named Kostiantyn Kulyk.

Q  And when you say engaged, what do you mean by engaged?

A  Well, those individuals -- when I say engaged, they apparently met, they had conversations. Some of them were interviewed -- Mr. Kulyk was interviewed, I believe -- by Mr. Solomon. Mr. Giuliani publicized his meeting with Nazar Kholodnytsky in Paris about the same time that he gave an interview to censor.net and accused former Ambassador Yovanovitch, me, and the entire U.S. Embassy of partisan activity in 2016. And we’ve already talked about his engagement with Shokin and Lutsenko.

Q  Do you have any any information about money being exchanged between any of these Ukrainians that you described to Mr. Giuliani?

A  I have no knowledge of any money being exchanged.

Q  It doesn't mean that they didn't exchange money, you just have no knowledge of it?

A  I have no information to suggest that happened.

Q  Okay. Now, Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman have also appeared in the news recently?

A  Yes.

Q  Were you aware of Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman's existence at the end of April, beginning of June 2019?

A  Yes.

Q  How did you become aware of them?

A  I first heard their names through a series of conversations with a variety of people.

Q  Okay. When was the first time you heard of Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman?

A  There is a U.S. -- I'll give you a series of points and I'm trying in my mind sort out what I heard from whom, when, but we're talking about the period primarily starting in April, possibly in March. I'm not sure that I heard of their names before then.

There is a U.S. businessman who's active in gas trading to Ukraine named Dale Perry, his name came up publicly last week because he was interviewed by AP. He sent an open letter complaining about corruption and pressure that he was facing, including he said, an effort to unseat the American Ambassador in Ukraine.

And he fingered three individuals that he said were attempting to move into the gas business, and those included Harry Sargeant III from Florida and then two, he said, people who came from Odesa, referencing Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. So that was the first source that I recall hearing.

Second, I heard from people when I went to Ukraine in the first week of May that Giuliani associates were coming to Ukraine, and the names that were mentioned were Fruman and Parnas. One of the people I met was an affiliate of the new President -- President-elect at that point; he was not yet President -- and his name was Ivan Bakanov. He has since become head of their security service. And he mentioned Fruman's name, and he said and there’s another one, I don't remember his name. And later on he WhatsApp'd me the business cards of Fruman and Parnas.

And also on that trip before I met with Bakanov, I met with Minister of Interior Avakov, the person whom I'd had the conversation I detailed in Washington in February, and he mentioned them as well, and said that they were coming in to Ukraine and that he -- that was the first time that I heard that Rudy Giuliani was planning to come that week as well.

Q  So the first time that you spoke with Mr. Avakov in February he did not mention Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman is that correct?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay. But then he did at the beginning of May?

A  Correct.

Q  And when what day say exactly about Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman?

A  He said that he had heard that they were coming to town and that their associate Rudy Giuliani was coming as well.

Q  Okay. You said it was the first week of May?

A  That's when I was in Ukraine, yes. So I was in Ukraine I believe May 8th and 9th, and I believe I may have met Avakov the first day I was there, that would be the 8th, and he mentioned that he heard that Parnas and Fruman were coming, and that they were coming with their associate, the Mayor Giuliani.

He also told me that when he had been, he, Avakov, had been in the United States in February, he had communication that Mayor Giuliani had reached out to him and invited him to come and meet the group of them in Florida. And he told me that he declined that offer.

Q  Did Mr. Avakov explain why he declined that offer?

A  He told me he had a tight schedule and needed to get back Ukraine. But he said did say that he was planning to have coffee with them, they had asked, and he was planning to meet them in Kyiv. I don't know if they met or not. I met him before that, but he said that if they want to meet, I'll meet and have coffee with them.

Q  During the May trip?

A  The May trip, yes.

Q  And did Mr. Avakov explain to you why Mr. Parnas, Mr. Fruman, and Mr. Giuliani were traveling to Ukraine at the beginning or mid-May?

A  He did not, no.

Q  No indication whatsoever?

A  He did not.

Q  If I recall when you had this conversation with Mr. Avakov in February, Mr. Avakov thought it was unwise what Mr. Giuliani was doing. Did I get that right?

A  He told me in February that he thought that it had been unwise that Yuriy Lutsenko, the prosecutor general of Ukraine, made a private trip to New York to see Rudy Giuliani.

Q  Was that because -- well, why?

A  I can't answer that question. I mean, that was his assessment as the minister of interior that the prosecutor general of his country should not make a private trip to the United States. That was my understanding of his assertion in February.

Q  Now, you indicated that you had another conversation with -- I can't read my own writing, Bakanov?

A  Bakanov.

Q  Bakanov. And what was his relationship with then-candidate Zelenskyy at the time of this meeting at the beginning of May?

A  He was President-elect Zelenskyy's oldest childhood friend. Zelenskyy told me the first time we met the December of 2018 that the person he had known the longest, that he had grown up on the same corridor in their apartment block from kindergarten was Ivan Bakanov.

Q  Okay. And can you describe that conversation?

A  In December 2018?

Q  No, I'm sorry, in May of 2019.

A  So my conversation with Ivan Bakanov?

Q  Yes.

A  To the best of my recollection that was a conversation where we talked about what might happen since it was in between post election, pre-inauguration. I asked him what jobs he thought he might be interested in or appointed to since his childhood friend was now the President-elect, and he described to me his interest in either being chief of staff or the new prosecutor general.

Q  And what did Mr. Bakanov say with regard to Mr. Fruman, Mr. Parnas, and Mr. Giuliani?

A  He did not mention Mr. Giuliani. To the best of my recollection, the only name in that meeting that I wrote down -- and that's part of the records which I provided to the State Department -- was Fruman. And then later on he followed up because he couldn't remember the other name, which turned out to be Parnas.

And he said, these guys want to meet me, what do you think? And since I had met with Mr. Avakov in the morning, I repeated what Avakov told me. He told me, you can always meet and have a cup of coffee with people, you don't have to make any commitments.

Q  Okay. At the time did you have any understanding of what Parnas and Mr. Fruman might be doing in Ukraine with Mr. Giuliani?

A  I understood that they were associates of Mr. Giuliani, and this was now 2 months into the campaign that had led to the, ultimately, unfortunately, to the removal of our Ambassador. But I did not know their specific purpose in coming to Ukraine on or about the 10th and 11th of May.

Q  Did there come a time when you did learn what their purpose would be?

A  I only read subsequent to leaving Ukraine the press coverage of the former Mayor of New York's stated intent to go to Ukraine, and then to notice that he canceled his trip.

Q  And when you say Mr. Giuliani's public statements about the purpose of his trip that he ultimately canceled, what is your recollection of what Mr. Giuliani said?

A  I don't recall what Mr. Giuliani said in the paper about his reasons for canceling, other than the fact that I believe he may have criticized some individuals around President-elect Zelenskyy.

Q  And do you recall that his statements were also about investigating the Bidens?

A  I honestly don't remember what he may have been saying or tweeting. As I said earlier, at this point I was not a regular -- I don’t tweet personally, and I don't follow all the tweets of everybody.

Q  When you learned that Mr. Giuliani was going to travel to Ukraine at the beginning of May, May 9th or May 10th, did you have any discussions with anyone at the Department of State about his upcoming trip?

A  Not that I recall, no. I learned about it when I was in Ukraine.

Q  Were you at all concerned about his trip?

A  He's a private citizen. Private citizens have the right to travel. The extent that I might have had concern, it would be what he might try to do as a private citizen involved in the U.S.-Ukraine official relationship.

Q  To the extent that it could interfere with the ordinary diplomatic channels that would be handled by the Department of State?

A  To that extent, yes. Again, I did not know the purpose of his trip, I only heard that he might be coming in.

Q  I think my time is up.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  We talked this morning about what the State Department did in the press to counteract these narratives?

A  Correct.

Q  The John Solomon stories and so forth.

A  Yes.

Q  Did the State Department undertake any effort to convince the White House, not the press, but the White House, that these stories are not grounded in good facts?

A  That is not -- relations between or communications between the leadership of the State Department and the White House at that level do not go through the regional bureau.

Q  Okay.

A  So I'm not aware of the conversations that would have happened.

Q  Do you know if there was any effort, I mean, they would have kept you in the loop if they were trying to make the case that, hey, you can't be believing this stuff. And if you're thinking about removing Yovanovitch, hold on, let me -- let us make our case. Did that opportunity occur?

A  My understanding is that there were high-level discussions between the leadership of the State Department and the White House prior to the decision to recall Ambassador Yovanovitch, but those obviously were ultimately unsuccessful, and the account that I heard at the time is in accordance with what I read Ambassador Yovanovitch had in her statement on Friday.

Q  Okay. Because you mentioned at one point the White House got involved with the visa application for Shokin?

A  I didn't say that. What I said was that after the State Department made clear that it was not ready to issue, it was our understanding that former Mayor Giuliani reached out to the White House, and then that was the point at which Deputy Chief of Staff Blair was tasked with calling us to find out the background of the story.

Q  And ultimately Shokin didn't get the visa?

A  He didn’t get the visa, correct.

Q  So Mr. Blair was sympathetic to your point of view and didn't push the issue anymore?

A  My understanding is -- what I recall him saying is I heard what I need to know to protect the interest of the President. Thank you. And that was the end of that conversation.

Q  Okay. So there certainly was at least one incident where you had some positive back and forth with the White House that led to a result consistent with your interests?

A  Correct. That was -- I believe that conversation occurred on the 11th of January, specifically about this issue of a visa for the corrupt former prosecutor.

Q  Do you know if Shokin had come to the United States on a visa before?

A  Yes.

Q Okay. So he had been granted visas in the past?

A  He had had visas at some point in the past, correct.

Q  And do you know when?

A  I do not know.

Q  Okay. Do you recall if it was during your time when you were in Kyiv?

A  I do not know.

Q  Was the denial of his visa, was this the first time he had made an attempt to travel to the United States but had been denied?

A  I do not know that. To the best of my knowledge he didn't try to travel to the U.S. and was denied, he did not have a visa. To the best of my recollection, because of the acts of corruption affiliated with undermining U.S. programming and policy goals, we probably, if the visa had not expired prudentially, revoked the visa under the assumption that we don't want corrupt individuals coming to the United States.

Q  Was Lutsenko on par with Shokin in terms of being an unreliable prosecutor?

A  Well, I think -- how would you define unreliable prosecutor?

Q  Well, you talked at great length that Shokin was not prosecuting corruption cases?

A  Correct. Yeah.

Q  There were cases of corruption where he just simply, you know, looked the other way and caused them not to be prosecuted. And then I think you mentioned that he prosecuted people that weren't doing anything wrong?

A  Yeah, I think Shokin's record and his nearly year tenure was not of prosecuting crime. Lutsenko was in office 3 years, and so he had more opportunity to take some action. He did lead a number of cases that led to small scale convictions as well as settlements and payments of fines to allow companies to continue to operate in Ukraine.

Q  But what was the position of the embassy about Lutsenko, was he a --

A  So I would say the breaking point of our disillusionment with Yuriy Lutsenko came in late 2017, by that point he had been in office for a year and a half, and there was a specific case, and it was as emblematic as the diamond prosecutor case had been for Shokin.

The National Anti Corruption Bureau, NABU, became aware because of complaint that there was a ring of Ukrainian state officials that were engaged in selling biometric passports, Ukrainian passports, to people who did not have the right to the passports, including foreigners.

And the ring included deputy head of the migration service, a woman named Pimakova (ph), as well as people collaborating in the security service of Ukraine.

And, obviously, for our own integrity, you know, we want to know that a passport from a country is issued to the correct person. And as this case was developing, Lutsenko became aware of it, and this corrupt official who was sort of the apex of the scheme went to him or to the prosecutors and became essentially a cooperating witness for them. And so they basically busted up the ring or they busted up the investigation by NABU. And then he went further and exposed the undercover agents that had been a part of this case.

So that's obviously a fundamental perversion of law and order to expose undercover agents. They were actually engaged in pursuing an actual crime, whereas, he was essentially colluding with a corrupt official to undermine the investigation.

And so this case was critical to us because when we searched the database it turned out that a number of the passports that had been issued as part of these schemes had gone to individuals who had applied for U.S. visas.

So we were very angry and upset because this threatened our security, and it potentially also threatened their ability to retain their visa free status in the European Union.

Q  So did the State Department take a position that Lutsenko had to go?

A  We didn’t say that. What we said was that all the officials that were involved in this ring needed to be held to account and prosecuted, and we needed to see that they were taking seriously our concerns about the integrity of their passports.

Q  Had Lutsenko had any open investigations at that time into any oligarchs?

A  Again, there are a lot of prosecutors in the country, and I don't know which investigations he might have had open.

Q  But you didn't know whether there was any specific investigations into somebody like Zlochevsky?

A  I do not know if there was an investigation into Zlochevsky, the individual, Yuriy Lutsenko has said publicly that he investigated Burisma on nonpayment of taxes. And as I recall, there was a settlement where Burisma paid a penalty for nonpayment of taxes, and at that point Zlochevsky returned from his external home in Monaco and resumed a public life in Ukraine.

Q  Going back to the passport issue. Did it present a risk that terrorists would get credentials?

A  That was a potential theoretical risk, and that is exactly what I told in the first meeting that we had with the new deputy foreign minister, the deputy justice minister, the deputy head of the migration service, the deputy head of the security service, when we had occasion, the essentially, DCMs of the European Union Ambassadors, embassies, and with me as the U.S. DCM, we all raised our great concerns that this uncovered ring posed a threat to our interests as well as Ukraine's continued access to for visa free travel to the European Union.

Q  What would it have taken for the U.S. Government to take a stronger position as it did on Shokin with regard to Lutsenko?

A  I think that the -- Yuriy Lutsenko, apart from this NABU case where he actively undercut an investigation that was in our interests, Lutsenko's actions did not raise to the same level. We did, however, I mentioned earlier that at the request of Petro Poroshenko, we made available a former New Jersey prosecutor , we let that contract lapse after roughly 9 months because it was clear that Lutsenko was not going to push forward reform as he had promised to us.

So what we did was we curtailed our capacity building assistance to the prosecutor's office under Lutsenko while we continued to engage Lutsenko personally as well as other leaders on the continuing need for reform. And we made clear that we were willing to resume assistance with their political will to actually take the steps that were necessary to reform the prosecutor's office.

Q  What type of decisionmaking would have had to have occurred at the State Department to take an official position that Lutsenko needed to go?

A  Well, I mean, it's -- I would say that we're now talking about late 2017, and we were beyond having the potential leverage of sovereign loan guarantees. Ukraine's economy had stabilized. And I would say that there was less consistent high-level engagement on Ukraine.

Q  Okay. In March of this year, Ambassador Yovanovitch gave a speech at the Ukraine Crisis media Center?

A  Correct.

Q  Are you familiar with that? Where she called on Kholodnytsky to be removed?

A  Correct.

Q  What can you tell us about that.

A  Nazar Kholodnytsky was selected by Viktor Shokin as, in our view, the weakest of the three final candidates to become the special anti corruption prosecutor. This is a new unit that was semi-independent within the prosecutor's office, and it was set up specifically to prosecute cases of high corruption that were developed by NABU. We worked intensively with Nazar for almost 2 years, until we reached a breaking point with him. And that intensive work included U.S. prosectors who were brought in, and FBI agents embedded as mentors. Intensive training trips to the U.S., training in Ukraine. A mentoring trip to Romania where Laura Kovesi is a very well-known anti corruption prosecutor and now the lead prosecutor in Europe. Because even though we saw Kholodnytsky as an imperfect person, he was the new anti corruption prosecutor, and his success, would be Ukraine's success, would be our success.

However, we reached a breaking point in a case that was known as the fish tank case. There was suspicion that he had been involved in corrupt acts, and under a Ukrainian warrant a bug, a tap was put in his fish tank in his office. And in the course of the first 2 weeks, he was caught trying to suborn a witness, coach him to lie, as well as obstruct justice in a case that involved his hometown, in an effort to bribe the minister of health, Ulyana Suprun, So agreed to wear a tap for NABU and caught the effort on trying to give her a bribe.

So we had a case involving corruption, and he was caught on tape suborning the witness and trying to obstruct justice. At that point it was no longer possible for the U. S. Government, despite 2 years of investment, to continue to work with Nazar.

We called him into the embassy to have a conversation. This is before it went public. And I and the director of the international narcotics and law enforcement section of the embassy had the conversation, tough conversation with him, and suggested that if he were to resign quietly, given the information that was clearly available, that he was young enough that it wouldn't necessarily destroy his career, but that we, the U.S. Government, could no longer work with him.

And that if he were to remain as the anti corruption prosecutor, we would cease cooperating with him. And he stood up, walked out, and you know, tweeted, you know, before he left the embassy compound that he was going to have a defiant attitude. So we stopped cooperating with him once presented with evidence that he was actively suborning a witness and obstructing justice.

Q  You have regaled us over the course of many, many minutes today about the deep issues of corruption in the Ukraine. You talked in extensive detail that the problems are in the Shokin era, during the Lutsenko era, and even now with Kholodnytsky. Is it fair to say that if the President had a deep-rooted skepticism in Ukraine's ability to fight anti corruption, that was a legitimate belief to hold?

A  It is accurate to say that Ukraine has a serious problem with corruption, and the U.S. is committed where there's a political will to work with Ukrainians, inside and outside government to make changes, but absent that political will, this will be a problem that will stick with Ukraine and stick with the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.

Q  So we send a lot of money to Ukraine, correct?

A  I would not say that we send money. Congress appropriates money. The accusation by former prosecutor Lutsenko is that we didn't show him the money, but that fundamentally misunderstood how our assistance is administered. And this was the issue in the letter that I think is part of the packet that you may have received that I signed in April 2016.

He accused us, or they accused because it was before Lutsenko came in, of -- and then he just picked up the accusation, that somehow we didn't hand them the money. I talked to one of his temporary deputy prosecutors who was a reformist who later chose not to work with him. And she told me that they actually thought that we, the U.S. Embassy, had bags of cash that we would hand to her or to her predecessors, and that's how we, the U.S. Government, did business.

The way the U.S. Government and the Embassy supports anticorruption programming in Ukraine is that we sign agreements with implemented. One of those is the Department of Justice. They have this program, OPDAT, Overseas Prosecutorial Development and Training. Another was with the U.N. organization called IDLO, International Development Law Organization. Another was the OECD, which has a strong and vigorous anticorruption component. And finally, a civil society association, AnTAC, the anti-corruption center.

Those are the four organizations with which the U.S. Government signed contracts or grants to administer our justice programming for the reform of the Prosecutor General's Office.

Q  How much grant money does AnTAC get?

A  I do not know the exact amount.

Q  Do you know a ballpark?

A  Huh?

Q  Do you know a ballpark?

A  I do not. I would hesitate to offer a number because I don't -- it's been years since I've seen any spreadsheets.

MR. JORDAN: Secretary, Mr. Kent, I just want to go back to questions Steve asked earlier. What was it going to take for the government to take the same position with Mr. Lutsenko that you took with Shokin, and I've just been making a list. He wasn't a lawyer. He actually talked about showing him the money, I think you just said. We know that he's been drunk on certain occasions. He was selling passports, potentially to terrorist.

MR. KENT: He was not selling passports. He undermined an investigation of people selling passports.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. I guess we'll live with that distinction. It's pretty minor. And the guy he hired for this new prosecutor's office was every bit as bad. The one guy he picked -- he hired Kholodnytsky, right?

MR. KENT: Shokin hired Kholodnytsky. So his predecessor hired Kholodnytsky.

MR. JORDAN: Kholodnytsky was working when Mr. Lutsenko was prosecutor?

MR. KENT: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: He didn't bring him in line?

MR. KENT: After -- he did not.

MR. JORDAN: So I think it sort of underscores Mr. Castor's question. What was it going to take for the United States Government to say this guy has got to go as well?

MR. KENT: We made our concerns about the ineffectiveness of Mr. Lutsenko clear to his patron, the then President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, but that assignment is made by the nomination of the Ukrainian President, and the dismissal requires a vote in the Ukrainian parliament.

MR. JORDAN: Thank you.

MR. PERRY: Thank you. Scott Perry, down here, from Pennsylvania. I just want to clarify something that's been kind of veered on numerous occasions before you got here and today. Are you familiar with the transcript of the call between the President of the United States and President Zelenskyy? Are you familiar with it?

MR. KENT: I read it after it was declassified by the White House, yes.

MR. PERRY: Okay. So you have some, and if you need it, we can give it to you. But in a kind of exchange on the last round the implication was is that there was a favor asked by the President for an investigation. Do you know anywhere in the transcript where the President uses the word investigation?

MR. KENT: I don't have the transcript in front of me.

MR. GOLDMAN: Can we admit it as an exhibit?

MR. PERRY: Sure.

[Majority Exhibit No. 1 Was marked for identification.]

MR. KENT: But I will say that at the time I didn't have access to the transcript, so --

MR. PERRY: But you've had it now.

MR. KENT: After it was declassified.

MR. PERRY: You had it up until today. And I just want to let you know, it doesn't say an investigation. The President doesn't say an investigation. When he uses -- do you see it as, or it was implied that the President is asking for a favor for him, but when he says, do us a favor, do you see that as the United States or the President of the United States when he says do us a favor?

MR. KENT: Sir, I was not on the call.

MR. PERRY: I know you weren't, but I'm reading it to you right now. It's on page 3 at the top.

MR. GOLDMAN: Could we provide him one?

MR. KENT: So sir, could you repeat. Could you repeat your precise question again.

MR. PERRY: The implication was in the last round that the President was asking to do him a favor. Do the President of the United States a favor, but the verbiage says do us a favor. Do you see that as doing a favor for the United States or the President himself personally?

MR. KENT: As I'm reading the paragraph, it refers to CrowdStrike and Mueller and then so on and so forth, and so that is the first time I'd ever heard of this line of thought. That does not strike me as being related to U.S. policy.

MR. PERRY: Okay. And, again, in regard to the, do us a favor line, it has nothing to do with Biden or Burisma in this paragraph on the top of top page 3?

MR. KENT: That's, as I'm reading through this again, it's --

MR. PERRY: Well, I'll let you know --

MR. KENT: It's not in that paragraph. Yeah --

MR. PERRY: There's nothing referred to in on page 3 regarding Biden or Burisma that can be connected with the line, do us a favor. The words, do us a favor.

MR. KENT: I would agree with you that it's not in that paragraph.

MR. PERRY: Right.

MR. KENT: As put together by the staff at the National Security Counci1.

MR. PERRY: Right. Okay. And do you remember anywhere in this transcript where the President says, you know, for the -- the President of the United States says to President Zelenskyy to dig up or get some dirt?

MR. KENT: Again, I think the National Security Council account is what it is.

MR. PERRY: Yeah. It's not in there is my point. It's not in there. And I just want to make the record clear because for hours and hours in testimony over the course of days here there's a continual characterization of these events that are not true, that are not correct, per the transcript.

Moving on, in the past round you were asked about your opinion about the President, is it proper for the President to ask another country for an investigation into a political rival? I think that was the general characterization. I want to explore that a little bit. And in your answer you said that it would not be the standard. And my question is, do you have -- does the Department of State have a standard in that regard?

MR. KENT: I believe it is a matter of U.S. policy and practice, particularly since I have worked in the area of promoting the rule of law, that politically related prosecutions are not the way of promoting the rule of law, they undermine the rule of law.

MR. PERRY: But is that written as a policy somewhere or is that just standard practice?

MR. KENT: I have never been in a position or a meeting where I've heard somebody suggest that politically motivated prosecutions are in the U.S. national interest.

MR. PERRY: Okay. So would you say that if the United States was interested in pursuing justice of a past incident, of an incident that occurred in the past regarding someone that had a political office, is that off limits to the United States of America?

MR. KENT: I think if there's any criminal nexus for any activity involving the U.S., that U.S. law enforcement by all means should pursue that case, and if there’s an international connection, that we have the mechanisms to ask either through Department of Justice MLAT in writing or through the presence of individuals representing the FBI, our legal attaches, to engage foreign governments directly based on our concerns that there had been some criminal act violating U.S. law.

MR. PERRY: One more, Steve.

Regarding your conversation about Ambassador Yovanovitch's release, and you heard her viewpoint because you heard it previous, and then you saw it related in her opening statement here. Right? Do you think there's another viewpoint? I know you know that viewpoint, is there a potential for another viewpoint?

MR. KENT: A viewpoint about what?

MR. PERRY: About her release. You heard her viewpoint. This is what happened to me. This is why I was released.

This is why she was released as the Ambassador. That's her viewpoint. You heard that, you knew that. Correct?

MR. KENT: As I mentioned, I heard that that was the view expressed and conveyed by the Deputy Secretary of State to her. Correct.

MR. PERRY: Right. And do you think there could be another viewpoint other than hers?

MR. KENT: That was the viewpoint of the Deputy Secretary of State.

MR. KENT: And it's also hers, correct?

MR. KENT: She conveyed what she heard from the Deputy Secretary of State.

MR. PERRY: But there could be another viewpoint, that's my point.

MR. KENT: Theoretically there are multiple points about --

MR. PERRY: Right. And whose decision ultimately is that?

MR. KENT: What decision about what?

MR. PERRY: Who serves as an Ambassador from the United States to another country?

MR. KENT: All Ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the President.

MR. PERRY: So if an Ambassador is relieved for whatever reason, is that something that would normally be investigated by the Secretary Department of State?

MR. KENT: All Ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the President. And that is without question, everybody understands that.

MR. PERRY: All right. Thank you. I yield.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  When is the first time you heard about the call between the President and President Zelenskyy?

A  Which call?

Q  The July 25th call, the one that is the subject of the exhibit?

A  Well, can you repeat the question.

Q  When did you hear about the call?

A  I heard that the call was going to take place on -- I heard that it would take place the day before on the 24th.

Q  Okay. Did State Department officials want the call to occur?

A  Yes. I was informed that it was finally scheduled by Lieutenant Colonel Alex Vindman, who's the director at the National Security Council responsible for Ukraine. And I then emailed the Embassy suggesting that they send a communications officer over to the presidential office to check the quality of the line because it had been a long time since we had had a formal call, and sometimes those lines don't work when they get calls. So as far as I know, the embassy did that to ensure that when the White House situation room called out the call would go through.

Q  Okay. You said finally scheduled, so there had been some process over time to get this call scheduled?

A  There had been discussions on and off for awhile for a followup call to the congratulatory call on April 21st, the day that Zelenskyy won the presidency, and the timeline slipped until it was after the parliamentary elections. Those occurred on July 21st, and the call eventually happened 4 days later on the 25th.

Q  Everyone was in favor of making this call happen after the parliamentary elections?

A  The State Department was supportive of a call.

Q  And was there anybody who was not supportive of the call in the U.S. Government?

A  I have read that there were officials that had some reluctance.

Q  What did you read?

A  I think that’s a question you could ask people that work at the National Security Council.

Q  So you read there were some issue from the National Security Council about scheduling the call?

A  I read that there were some people who had some misgivings about the call, yes.

Q  Okay. But you didn't know about those misgivings prior to the call?

A  I may have heard that there were some views, I did not understand what the views were behind that expression.

Q  Okay. Who held those views?

A  I don’t know.

Q  Okay. So you didn't have any personal knowledge of any officials at the National Security Council being uncomfortable with the idea of having a call?

A  I got the impression that there was at least one official uncomfortable, but I didn't understand what that was about. I, the State Department, was in favor of a congratulatory call after the election.

Q  Did Alex Vindman tell you anything that gave you pause?

A  Before the call, no.

Q  Okay. So it's finally scheduled, it happens on July 25th. You weren't on the call, right?

A  Correct.

Q  Was anyone from the State Department, to your knowledge?

A  I believe I was aware that the White House Sit Room was going to try to patch through the counselor of the department, Ulrich Brechbuhl.

Q  Okay. Any other folks from the Department?

A  That was the only name that I or office that I heard mentioned.

Q  Okay. Nobody in Kyiv?

A  It would not be normal to have the embassy patched into the phone call.

Q  Okay. And then after the call occurs, did you get a read-out from anybody?

A  I did.

Q  Who did you get the read-out from?

A  From Lieutenant Colonel Vindman.

Q  And when was the read-out?

A  It was not the same day. It may not have been the day after, but it could have been either July 26th or 27th, several days after.

Q  What did he tell you to the best of your recollection?

A  It was different than any read-out call that I had received. He felt -- I could hear it in his voice and his hesitancy that he felt uncomfortable. He actually said that he could not share the majority of what was discussed because of the very sensitive nature of what was discussed.

He first described the atmospherics and compared it to the previous call, which was April 21st. That had been a short, bubbly, positive, congratulatory call from someone who had just won an election with 73 percent. He said this one was much more, the tone was cooler, reserved. That President Zelenskyy tried to turn on the charm, and he is a comedian and a communicator, but that the dynamics didn't click in the way that they had on April 21st.

Again, he did not share the majority of what was said. I learned the majority of the content after reading the declassified read-out. He did share several points. He mentioned that the characterization of the Ambassador as bad news. And then he paused, and said, and then the conversation went into the direction of some of the most extreme narratives that have been discussed publicly. That's all he said.

Later on, he said that he made reference to a back and forth about the prosecutor general, that would be Lutsenko, saying, you've got a good guy, your prosecutor general, and he's being attacked by bad guys around you, is how I recall Lieutenant Colonel Vindman characterizing it. And then he, in summation, he said in his assessment, Zelenskyy did not cross any line. He said that Zelenskyy said, if anything bad had happened in the past, that was the old team. I'm a new guy, I've got a new team, and anything we do will be transparent and honest.

Q  And is that as much as you can remember from your --

A  And then there was -- I think the last thing that Lieutenant Colonel Vindman mentioned was there about a brief mention by Zelenskyy about U.S. -- interested in working on energy-related issues. Previously, I should have said, at the front earlier in the conversation, that he said that Lieutenant Colonel Vindman told me that President Zelenskyy had thanked the U.S. for all of its military assistance. That the U.S. did a lot for Ukraine. And Lieutenant Colonel Vindman told me that the President replied, yes, we do, and it's not reciprocal.

Q  Is that pretty much what you can remember?

A  That is I think the summation of everything I can recall.

Q  Did he tell you anything about the Bidens?

A  He did not mention, to the best of my recollection, including the notes that I took, which I've submitted to the State Department. He did he -- Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, did not mention the specifics. He just said, as I said at the beginning, he said the majority of the conversation touched on very sensitive topics that I don't feel comfortable sharing.

Q  Did he mention Burisma?

A  He did not mention any specifics.

Q  And he didn't mention 2016?

A  He did not mention that to me, no.

Q  And did you make any followup inquiries with him like, hey, can I come over and speak with you in a secure environment or learn more about this call --

A  None.

Q  It seems like there's some issues relating to one of the countries that I have responsibility for?

A  I did not, and no.

Q  What was your expectation where you would next learn more?

A  That was the second conversation between the two Presidents in April, May, June, July, 4 months. We at that point were focused on trying to sort through why the Office of Management and Budget had put a hold on security assistance. We were also focused on the way forward and potentially trying to arrange a meeting possibly on the 1st of September in Warsaw on the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II, possibly in New York during the UN General Assembly.

So those were the next step issues in the relationship, both functionally in terms of military assistance, as well as in procedurally in terms of the possibility of a meeting.

Q  And the meeting you said could have happened in Warsaw. What was the date that Warsaw was supposed to be?

A  The start of World War II was the 1st of September 1939, so the commemorations were the 1st of September 2019 in Warsaw.

Q  You said the General Assembly was the 26th, if I'm correct?

A  That week, I believe the Monday may have been the 24th or the 23rd, so maybe the 23rd through the 27th was the week of the leaders' participation.

Q  Okay. And so then you never -- did you learn any more about that call from any other officials?

A  No.

Q  So between the time that you had the conversation with Vindman, it was on the telephone, right?

A  A secure call between NSC and the State Department, yes.

Q  And the time when the transcript was declassified, did anybody else give you a read-out or any information about the call?

A  No.

Q  When the transcript was released on September -- I think it was September 25th, did you have an advanced copy of it or --

A  I was up in New York engaged in meetings with leaders in my area of responsibility and, no, I did not have any advanced knowledge.

Q  Okay. Now, did you have any communications after the call after you spoke with Vindman, did you then subsequently debrief anybody about what happened on the call?

A  I may have shared with other people in the European front office, which had a focus on that, and that includes people like Tyler Brace, who is our one political appointee, schedule C, former staffer for Senator Portman, who has a specific interest in Ukraine and Russia, as well as the acting assistant secretary.

Q  Uh-huh. Any other individuals that you discussed the call with?

A  In terms of giving a substantive read-out, I do not recall having a substantive discussion. We have a weekly secure video conference call with the leadership of Embassy Kyiv, now led by Charge Bill Taylor, it is possible that I discussed part of that with him subsequently.

Q  Now, during this time period had you been having communications with Ambassador Yovanovitch?

A  At this point she was back in the United States, and so we did have reason to have communications, yes.

Q  Okay. And how frequently were you speaking with her?

A  I would say we're now talking about the end of July through the month of August, perhaps once or twice a week.

Q  And into September?

A  Right. The second half of August I was on vacation with my family , so there's no contact there. We got together for dinner in early September. Her mother and my wife were very close socially when we were in Washington, I'm sorry, in Kyiv, so it essentially was a social gathering, a meal shared.

Q  And did you relate anything to her when you had dinner with her in early September about the call?

A  I may have made some reference to the negative characterization of her.

Q  Okay. Do you remember anything else that you may have related to her about that call?

A  I would not have -- to the best of my recollection in general, I wouldn't have discussed the substance of the call in part because the read-out of the call I got was not substantive, and second of all, I wouldn't have been appropriate.

Q  Okay. So you're having dinner with Ambassador Yovanovitch, it's early September, and you made brief mention?

A  I may have made brief mention of negative characterization of her personally.

Q  And what was her reaction?

A  I honestly don't remember.

Q  How long were you having this discussion with her at dinner?

A  Generally, this would have been a very short conversation because her mother and my wife were part of it, and we generally avoided talking about anything related to work when we were together.

Q  Did she have any followups for you? I mean, the President of the United States -- you know, you related to her that the President of the United States may have mentioned her on a call with President --

A  As I think she may have said to you Friday, in part because of the what the Deputy Secretary of State told her, she aware of the President's views of her.

Q  So presumably this was really interesting information that you had and you related to her, and I'm just wondering whether there was any additional back and forth. I mean, did she --

A  No, not that I recall. Ambassador Yovanovitch is an intensely private person, she's an introvert. And, again, she's also someone who follows very strict what is deemed proper and proprietary, and so that's -- we did not linger on any conversation of that nature.

Q  Now, when you related this information to her, did you provide any characterization about your view of the call?

A  Not that I recall.

Q  Okay. Did you provide a characterization of your view of how the President conducted himself on the call?

A  No, that wouldn't have been appropriate, and no.

Q  Okay. And after the dinner, early part of September, you know, leading up to the release of the transcript on the 25th, did you have any additional discussions with her?

A  I was on travel for the mid-part of the month. I was back for a couple of days, and then I was up in New York for the U.N. General Assembly meetings, which was, as you said on the 25th, I was in New York when that occurred. So, again, to the best of my recollection, no.

Q  And she was at Georgetown at this point on a fellowship?

A  She was teaching -- yes, a course on diplomacy at Georgetown.

Q  And your office is at the State Department. Did you have an occasion to visit with her during the workday? I mean, did she come over to the State Department? Did you appear at Georgetown at any point in time?

A  No. She at one point asked -- commented that the students in the Masters program at Georgetown had superior oral briefings skills, but lacked fundamental writing skills. And I had mentioned that previously we used to run essentially remedial writing seminars for the officers in the European bureau as well as Embassy Kyiv, that I helped conduct, and she asked if I had the notes from that, and I said I did. And so I passed her essentially the notes of presentations I had made about writing well.

Q  Okay. And then you mentioned that you spoke to her on a somewhat regular basis, but the call never came up other than the dinner?

A  To the best of my knowledge, I cannot recall.

Q  Okay. The communication you had with Vindman on the 29th, and that was an estimated date.

A  It could have been a day or two earlier. It could have been the 29th, honestly. It's several days later, depending on what day the call happened, during the week, it could have been the next Monday, it could have been the Friday, I just don’t remember.

Q  Fair enough. And you said that was your only communication you had with the NSC about it?

A  I did not seek to revisit that issue nor did I talk to anybody else at the NSC about the call.

Q  Who else was on the call with NSC, do you remember?

A  That call between Lieutenant Colonel Vindman and I was just a call between the two of us.

Q  Okay.

MR. CASTOR: I think I'm out of time here.

MR. ZELDIN: How much time is left?

MR. CASTOR: About 1 minute.

MR. ZELDIN: Okay. I am interested. Why wouldn't you asked for more information about the call?

MR. KENT: Lieutenant Colonel Vindman was clearly extremely uncomfortable sharing the limited amount of information that he did. So he shared what he felt comfortable sharing, and that constituted the read-out that I received from him.

MR. ZELDIN: But you didn't want to have more information?

MR. KENT: He made clear to me that he felt uncomfortable sharing as much as he had actually shared. So the relationship between a director of the NSC and say someone at my level is a relationship, it's intense, it's frequent, and you have to develop a trust factor. And he made clear to me that he had shared as much as he felt comfortable sharing, and I respected that.

MR. ZELDIN: We're out of time, but we might revisit that.

THE CHAIRMAN: Why don't we take a 10-minute break and use the facilities, and we'll come back. And try to be prompt in 10 minutes.

[Recess.]

THE CHAIRMAN: All right. Let's go back on the record. Secretary, I have a few questions for you. I think a couple of my colleagues do, and then we'll go back to the timeline with Mr. Goldman.

I just very briefly wanted to go through a bit of the call records since that was raised by my colleagues in the minority. If you turn to page 2 of that call record at the bottom, this is again the July telephone call between President Trump and President Zelenskyy. The very last sentence reads: We are ready to -- this is President Zelenskyy: We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps, specifically, we are almost ready to buy more javelins from the United States for defense purposes.

And there, Mr. Secretary, he's referring to Javelin anti-tank weapons?

MR. KENT: That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: That are important in terms of fighting off either Russia troops or separatists in Donbass?

MR. KENT: That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: Immediately after President Zelenskyy raises this desire to purchase more javelins, the President says, I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it, I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they said CrowdStrike. Do you know what that refers to, CrowdStrike?

MR. KENT: I would not have known except for the newspaper media coverage afterwards explaining what that was a reference to.

THE CHAIRMAN: And the President goes on to say, I guess you have one of your wealthy people, the server they say Ukraine has it. Do you know what server the President believes Ukraine had?

MR. KENT: I can only again refer to the media articles that I have read subsequently about this explaining that there is, the founder of CrowdStrike who is a Russian American, and the media as said that that was a confused identity. But that's again -- the only basis I have to judge that passage is what I've read in the media.

THE CHAIRMAN: And further on in the paragraph, the President says: I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people, and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. Do you have any reason to question the accuracy of that part of the call record?

MR. KENT: I wasn't on the call, and the first time I saw this declassified document record of conversation was after it was declassified by the White House.

THE CHAIRMAN: Now, you mentioned that you when you spoke with -- is it General Vindman?

MR. KENT: Lieutenant Colonel Vindman.

THE CHAIRMAN: Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. When you spoke to Colonel Vindman, he said there was certain very sensitive topics he did not feel comfortable mentioning. Was this one of the topics that he did not mention?

MR. KENT: This whole passage, which you just went through, he made no reference to it. That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: If this were a matter of standard U.S. policy of fighting corruption, that wouldn't be a sensitive topic, would it, if the President was actually advocating that Ukraine fight corruption?

MR. KENT: If he had read this to me, I would have asked him what is CrowdStrike and what does that mean, because it's just not clear to me just reading it. As I said, other people interpreted what the context was for that, but again, I'll go back to what I said before.

Understanding that this is a reference to concerns about 2016. If anybody did anything in 2016 that violated U.S. elections or election laws that, you know, there's a reason to investigate something with the U.S. nexus, we should open that investigation. And if the Ukrainians had a part in that, then that would be natural for us to formally convey a request to the Ukrainians.

THE CHAIRMAN: But if it were a legitimate law enforcement request or if it were a generic discussion of corruption in line with U.S. policy, it wouldn't have been a sensitive matter and Colonel Vindman could have raised it with you, right?

MR. KENT: If it was a normal matter, he probably would have. Again, when he said that there were sensitive issues that he didn't feel comfortable talking about, I did not know what exactly he meant until I read this declassified memorandum of conversation.

THE CHAIRMAN: Let me ask you about another matter that it appears he did not bring up with you. The President, on the top of page 4, says: The other thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son. That Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution. So if you can look into it.

Was that another one of the very sensitive topics that Colonel Vindman did not feel comfortable sharing with you?

MR. KENT: That passage -- he made no reference that would have in his limited read-out to me that would have matched that passage of the memorandum of the conversation.

THE CHAIRMAN: So the dual request to look into the Bidens and to look into this CrowdStrike 2016, for lack of better description, conspiracy theory, Colonel Vindman didn't feel comfortable informing you that either one of those things was raised by the President during the call?

MR. KENT: That's correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Quigley.

MR. QUIGLEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, thank you for your service and for being here. Earlier you mentioned that media campaign against the Ambassador took place. Were you aware of who was involved with that media campaign?

MR. KENT: I could only see the figures that voluntarily associated themselves with that campaign in both countries.

MR. QUIGLEY: And who was that in Ukraine and who was that in the U.S?

MR. KENT: Well in Ukraine, very clearly, the prosecutor general at the time, Yuriy Lutsenko, his press spokeswoman retweeted the tweet of Don Trump, Jr. attacking the Ambassador. So very clearly, it wasn't just him personally as a Ukrainian, but the institution.

There were -- I made references earlier to what were known as the Porokhobots, the trolls on social media who were active in support of Poroshenko. And 10 days before the election, rather than attacking Russia or attacking his political opponents, as they normally did, they were attacking Ambassador Yovanovitch and me by name.

So I would say that is cluster of the Ukrainians who were actively promoting this campaign. And then obviously the people in the United States that were promoting it.

MR. QUIGLEY: Sure. Referencing Mayor Giuliani, you became aware of his activities in Ukraine. What was your understanding while this was happening of what his role was? A personal attorney working somehow for the government working as a campaign person's attorney?

MR. KENT: His role in orchestrating the connections with information from Yuriy Lutsenko seemed to be a classic, you scratch my back, I scratch yours, issue. Yuriy Lutsenko told, as I mentioned, Gizo Uglava, that he was bitter and angry at the embassy for our positions on anti-corruption.

And so he was looking for revenge. And in exchange, it appeared that the campaign that was unleashed, based on his interview, was directed towards Americans, principally the Ambassador, as well as organizations that he saw as his enemies in Ukraine, the National Anti Corruption Bureau as well as the Anti Corruption Center.

Several Ukrainians at the time told me that they saw what Lutsenko was trying to do was get President Trump to endorse President Poroshenko's reelection. This was happening in March before the election. That did not occur. It would not have made a difference either because Zelenskyy, as noted before, won with 73 percent.

MR. QUIGLEY: To your knowledge, was Mr. Giuliani ever tasked, coordinated, briefed with anyone at the State Department to do what he was doing?

MR. KENT: To the best of my knowledge, in the first phase of Mr. Giuliani's contact with Ukrainians and his efforts to orchestrate the media campaign, nobody from the State Department had contact with him. When I say the first phase, that is essentially the phase involving Prosecutor General Lutsenko through the election of President Zelenskyy, which occurred on April 21st.

MR. QUIGLEY: So the first phase, but at any time other time and after the fact, were you aware of any tasking, briefing, coordination that took place?

MR. KENT: Yes.

MR. QUIGLEY: And could you detail that?

MR. KENT: At a certain point, I believe in July, then special representative for Ukraine negotiations, Volker, told me that he would be reaching out to Rudy Giuliani.

MR. QUIGLEY: And --

THE CHAIRMAN: I just want to mention, we intend to go through this in a timeline.

MR. QUIGLEY: First of all, it's somewhat news to me, and I'll pass it back if that's what you want, but it seems --

THE CHAIRMAN: We're going to get into all of this.

MR. QUIGLEY: All right.

THE CHAIRMAN: And it may be more orderly to do it in chronological order though.

MR. QUIGLEY: Very good. I'll ask one more question. In your belief, in your understanding, in your experience, why was the Ambassador recalled?

MR. KENT: Based on what I know, Yuriy Lutsenko, as prosecutor general, vowed revenge, and provided information to Rudy Giuliani in hopes that he would spread it and lead to her removal. I believe that was the rationale for Yuriy Lutsenko doing what he did.

Separately, there are individuals that I mentioned before, including Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who started reaching out actively to undermine Ambassador Yovanovitch, starting in 2018 with a meeting with former Congressman Pete Sessions on May 9th, 2018, the same day he wrote a letter to Secretary Pompeo impugning Ambassador Yovanovitch's loyalty and suggesting that she be removed. And others also in 2018 were engaged in an effort to undermine her standing by claiming that she was disloyal.

So that's the early roots of people following their own agendas and using her as an instrument to fulfill those agendas.

MR. QUIGLEY: Okay.

THE CHAIRMAN: Ms. Speier, any questions on what we covered so far?

MS. SPEIER: Thank you for your lifetime of service on behalf of the country. Secretary, as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, it would seem to me that you would be familiar with the efforts by the administration to engage with Ukraine. Is that --

MR. KENT: Correct.

MS. SPEIER: So in that circumstance, you were read into that July 25th phone conversation by the Lieutenant Colonel but were not actually on the call?

MR. KENT: Correct. I've never in 27 years been on a call made by a President of the United States.

MS. SPEIER: So that is not consistent with your role then. Okay.

MR. KENT: I have never served at the National Security Council, I've only served at the State Department and at embassies overseas.

MS. SPEIER: All right. You said earlier that you provided all of your documents to the State Department for them to make available to us. Forgive me if I don't think they're re going to be forthcoming. But if you were to identify certain documents in particular, you mentioned a few already today, but if you were to mention certain documents that you think are particularly important for us to have access to, what would they be?

MR. KENT: The, if you will, I guess, the unique records that I generated in the course of my work would include notes to the file and conversations that I took down in my handwritten notes.

MS. SPEIER: Anything else that comes to mind?

MR. KENT: Likely the WhatsApp exchange between me and Ambassador, or sorry, Charge Taylor.

MS. SPEIER: So is it typical for you to use WhatsApp in communicating with your colleagues?

MR. KENT: In parts of the world, WhatsApp has become a very active method of communication for a variety of reasons, it's considered encrypted, although I don't think text messages are secure. I believe the voice encryption is still secure. And in countries like Ukraine there's actually no data charge for use WhatsApp, and that's what drives the use of social media, so they pay for text messages, but when they use social media apps they don't actually pay for that data. So that has altered communications in parts of world by rate setting and how people communicate.

So in Latin American, for instance, and in parts of Europe and Asia, applications like WhatsApp have become the dominate form of communication.

MS. SPEIER: There has been a lot of conversation earlier today from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle about Burisma as being a company that lacked some ethical commitments and moral compass of sorts. Are there other companies in Ukraine that would fall in that same category?

MR. KENT: There are many companies in Ukraine that might fall into that category, yes.

MS. SPEIER: Could you give us some examples?

MR. KENT: If you took the roster of the richest Ukrainians, they didn't build value, they largely stole it. So we could go down the richest 20 Ukrainians and have a long conversation about the structure of the Ukrainian economy, and certainly most of the billionaires in the country became billionaires because they acquired state assets for largely under valued prices and engaged in predatory competition.

MS. SPEIER: Burisma doesn't stand out as being different from any number of companies?

MR. KENT: I would say that Mr. Zlochevsky's actions stood out in one way that he was the actual minister who awarded himself the licenses to explore for gas exploration.

MS. SPEIER: Okay.

MR. KENT: Other people may have just had the minister on their payroll.

MS. SPEIER: Okay. Going back to that July 25th call, there was a lot of exchanges between Ambassador Sondland, Mr. Volker, and also the Charge Taylor about whether or not the aid would be forthcoming, whether or not the statement would be written. Were you privy to any of that?

MR. KENT: I did not participate in those exchanges by virtue of the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, you don't have me as a participant in those exchanges, and none of those have been released.

I did have my own dialogue with Charge Taylor in the course of our work, in the same way that I had a dialogue with Ambassador Yovanovitch and with our ambassadors in Moldova, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and our Charges in Georgia and Belarus.

THE CHAIRMAN: And I would like to address my colleague we're going to get to that through the timeline.

MS. SPEIER: I'm particularly interested in 2017. Are you going to take care of that?

THE CHAIRMAN: We are. Can I suggest that we have the counsel continue with the timeline, and then as we get through it members can add in with questions. Thank you.

Mr. Goldman.

MR. GOLDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Focusing your attention on May of this year when I believe you said that Rudy Giuliani met in Paris with Nazar Kholodnytsky, who was the prosecutor of the anti-corruption.

A  The special anti corruption prosecutor, yes.

Q  Anti corruption, okay. And he had already been removed by that point, right?

A  No, he had been under pressure for over a year. We stopped cooperating with them approximately in March of 2018 when the so-called fish tank scandal emerged.

Q  Okay. Just to summarize. You have testified today that Mr. Giuliani met with Yuriy Lutsenko in January, that he advocated to get the former Prosecutor General Shokin a visa in January. And then he met with a special prosecutor in May, who the U.S. had ceased all former relations with. And Lutsenko and Shokin are generally, the general consensus belief is that they either are or, at this point, or were corrupt prosecutor generals. Is that an accurate summary of Mr. Giuliani's meetings with prosecutors in Ukraine?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. And you also indicated that by May of this point, Mr. Giuliani had been on television and in the media advocating for the four story lines that you summarized from those March articles. Is that right?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay. And then in May you went to Ukraine and you had meetings with Ukrainian officials, two of whom mentioned to you that Mr. Giuliani wanted to meet with them. Is that right?

A  Mr. Avakov mentioned Giuliani. I can't recall if Mr. Bakanov mentioned Giuliani when we first talked, the one name that I wrote down in my notes was that he mentioned Fruman, he said he didn't remember the other name, and later he sent me the business card of Fruman and Parnas.

Q  Thank you for clarifying that. But he knew that Fruman and Parnas were associates of Giuliani, right?

A  Correct.

Q  Now, you would agree, right, that high-level Ukrainian officials don't meet with every private American citizen who travels to Ukraine. Correct?

A  Correct.

Q  So the Ukrainians certainly understood that Mr. Giuliani was not a regular private citizen. Is that right?

A  Correct.

Q  And would you assess that they understood that he represented President Trump?

A  They understood that Mr. Giuliani asserted he represented Mr. Trump in his private capacity. Yes.

Q  Did they understand what that meant? Private capacity versus official capacity?

A  Ukrainians such as Arsen Avakov are experienced players willing to meet with anybody. The team of the incoming president at that time, President-elect Zelenskyy, had spent their entire careers as a tight-knit group of entertainment company executives who had no experience in politics. So they were looking to try to figure out to understand how to navigate political networks.

Q  And did you speak to any of the incoming officials about Mr. Giuliani in this May, June timeframe?

A  My conversation with Mr. Bakanov, as I recounted part of it before when he gave the names of the associates, one of whom he knew, the other he couldn't remember, when he asked for my counsel, I had suggested, as I said, someone like you who’s an associate could meet and hear somebody out without making commitments. But at this time it would be my best counsel to you to shield your President-elect from private citizens.

Q  And to your knowledge was Mr. Giuliani promoting official U.S. policy in Ukraine at this point?

A  Mr. Giuliani is a private citizen who was not a U.S. Government official.

Q  But I understand that, but is what he was pushing consistent with official U.S. policy?

A  Mr. Giuliani was not consulting with the State Department about what he was doing in the first half of 2019. And to the best of my knowledge, he's never suggested that he was promoting U.S. policy.

Q  And the actual efforts that he was making, just to be very clear, were they consistent with what official State Department policy was?

A  The U.S. has a lot of policy interests in Ukraine. It involved promoting the rule of law, energy independence, defense sector reform, and the ability to stand up to Russia. As a general rule, we don't want other countries involved in our own domestic political process, no.

Q  So around this -- at the end of May, there was the inauguration of President Zelenskyy. Is that right?

A  Correct. I believe it may have been May 20th, to be precise.

Q  Were you involved at all in the discussions about who would represent the United States at that inauguration?

A  Yes.

Q  Can you just summarize for us what your involvement was and what those discussions entailed?

A  The starting point was the conversation between Presidents Trump and President-elect Zelenskyy on election day. President Zelenskyy asked if it would be possible for President Trump to come to inaugural. There was no date at that point. President Trump suggested that he would talk to Vice President Pence, and schedules willing, that he hoped it could work out, but in any case, the U.S. would have representation at the inaugural. That was April 21st.

By the time we got close to when the inauguration date was set, which was on very short notice, the outgoing Ukrainian parliament voted on May 16th, which was a Thursday, to have the inauguration on May 20th, which was a Monday, leaving almost no time for either proper preparations or foreign delegations to visit.

So we scrambled on Friday the 17th to try to figure out who was available. Vice President Pence was not available. Secretary of State Pompeo was traveling. And so we were looking for an anchor, someone who was a person of stature and whose job had relevance to our agenda.

I suggested to Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, since there oftentimes is this dialogue between the State Department and the NSC for inaugural delegations, to having the NSC ask Secretary of Energy Perry. Because he had traveled to Ukraine, understood the issues, and energy was one of the top three issues that we were working with Ukraine. So that was the start of that conversation, and then it was a matter of building out possibilities.

Inaugural delegations are determined by the White House. So whatever the NSC and the State Department worked together as options, ultimately the decision is made elsewhere. As an example, when President Yushchenko was inaugurated in Ukraine in 2005, and I was the control officer on the ground at the time, the delegation was Secretary Colin Powell in his last act as State of State, and five Ukrainian Americans. That's it.

In this case, we proposed a group of officials that we thought were relevant, those included a number of Senators and as well as Marcy Kaptur, the head of the Ukrainian American Caucus in the House. It included some Ukrainian American leaders here in the United States, as well as officials. That was about 15 in total to play with.

Former National Security Advisor Bolten weighed in at some point in the process, and eventually the White House settled on a list, which was, in the end, Secretary Perry, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman representing the NSC, Ambassador Sondland, Ambassador Volker, and then our Charge in country at the time, Acting Joseph Pennington.

Q  Was Ambassador Sondland on the State Department's original list?

A  He was not somebody that we initially proposed, but Ambassador Sondland has his own networks of influence, including chief of staff Mulvaney. So it did not surprise us when he weighed in, his name emerged.

Q  Why did it not surprise you. What did you understand Ambassador Sondland's role in Ukraine to be by March 17th of this --

A  Ambassador Sondland had started cultivating a relationship with the previous Ukrainian President Poroshenko. He visited, as I recall, a ship visit to Odesa, which may have been where he first met Poroshenko and other leaders. And so in the same way that he had expressed an interest in our relationship with Georgia starting late in 2018, early this year he expressed an interest in playing a role in managing our relationship with Ukraine.

[3:24 p.m.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  And you described an independent relationship that he had with the chief of staff. What do you know about that?

A  Well, I think the proof in the pudding is, after the delegation went to the inauguration on May 20th and had a meeting with President Zelenskyy -- and that included Senator Ron Johnson, who was there not as part of the Presidential delegation but separately. But he sat in the meeting with Zelenskyy, and then he joined a briefing to the President in the Oval Office on May 23rd.

It was Ambassador Sondland's connections with Mulvaney that got them the meeting with the President. It was not done through the NSC staff, through Lieutenant Colonel Vindman and Ambassador Bolton.

Q  I don't understand what you mean.

A  Well, normally for international issues, meetings would appear on the President's calendar because they were proposed by the National Security staff and pushed through the National Security Advisor. In this case, the out-brief to the President of the inaugural happened because of Ambassador Sondland's connections through Chief of Staff Mulvaney, to the best of my knowledge.

Q  So you're talking about President Trump's debriefing after the inauguration on May 23rd.

A  The inauguration on May 20th. The Oval Office meeting to talk about that and the way forward occurred in the Oval Office on May 23rd.

Q  Before the inauguration, you just mentioned that you were not surprised that Ambassador Sondland was added to the list because of his relationship with the chief of staff. Were you aware of Ambassador Sondland having any significant role in Ukrainian policy for the State Department by mid-May?

A  Again, I don't remember when the ship visit was to Odesa, but I think Sondland's visit to Ukraine to Odesa for the U.S. port visit was the start of his involvement.

Q  I understand that. I'm asking way ahead. If that was during the time that President Poroshenko was the President, that was earlier.

A  But it was the last month of his presidency. So he did call President Poroshenko in March for instance after the attack started on Ambassador Yovanovitch to suggest the Porosheno back off. So his acceleration of his involvement in Ukraine and in our relationship was in one phase, just starting the last month or two of Poroshenko's presidency, and it accelerated after President Zelenskyy's assumption of office on May 21st.

Q  Did it also accelerate after Ambassador Yovanovitch was recalled?

A  Ambassador Yovanovitch was recalled on the 26th of April, and she was out of the country by the time President Zelenskyy was inaugurated on May 20th. So it was coterminus. She essentially ceased serving as Ambassador, the functions of Ambassador, on April 26th.

Q  Right. And after that, did Ambassador Sondland's role increase in Ukraine?

A  Yes.

Q  Were you aware of whether that went through official channels or how that came to be?

A  The way that came to be was the main three U.S. officials, executive branch officials, Secretary Perry, Ambassador Sondland, and Special Representative Volker, were part of that briefing of the President. And they came out of that meeting asserting that going forward they would be the drivers of the relationship with Ukraine.

Q  Before the inauguration did you have any conversations with the Ambassador Sondland about Ukraine generally?

A  To the best of my knowledge, before May, likely during the chief of mission conference where all ambassadors come back for several days in mid-January, Ambassador Sondland came through the office suite where my office is to see my colleague who works with Western Europe. Julie Fisher (ph) is her name. And she introduced him to the other people in the office. So I shook his hand. There was no conversation, but that was the first time I had met him, without a substantive conversation, in January.

Q  So you did not speak to him again after January?

A  To the best of my recollection, we had no direct conversation and were not in each other's presence until the U.N. General Assembly week, the last week in September.

Q  So you did not attend that Oval Office meeting on May 23rd, right?

A  I did not.

Q  Okay. Did you get a readout of what occurred?

A  There were several readouts. That particular week I was -- my eldest daughter graduated from Boston University and I then took my kids and my wife up to Acadia National Park we were hiking on Cadillac Mountain so I was not in Washington those days where the readout occurred May 23rd.

Q  So did you subsequently learn what occurred?

A  So there were several readouts provided secondhand from representatives who had been in that meeting and presumably those will be part of the documents that were collected as part of your requested documents and --

Q  So you're -- sorry. You're referring to written readouts?

A  Written readouts. I believe there were three separate readouts. Again not from anyone that I got that was forwarded by email. Specifically Fiona Hill whom I'm gathering that the committee talked to yesterday. She gave a readout to my office director who was probably acting for me that week, , normally office director of Eastern Europe. Kurt Volker gave a readout to his then-special assistant, Chris Anderson (ph), who is currently a language student. And Gordon Sondland would have given a readout to somebody that would have been forwarded to us.

So when I came back from my New England vacation, I had three different versions of that conversation in my inbox.

Q  And so what did you -- just quickly, what did you understand to have occurred at that meeting?

A  I should say that in addition to those secondhand accounts I eventually heard Kurt Volker's account directly from him, the way he characterized it to a number of interlocutors when we were together in Toronto on the 1st and 2nd of July for the Ukraine Reform Conference and the interlocutors included President Zelenskyy himself. He said that President Trump had been very angry about Ukraine, he said that they were corrupt, and they had wished him ill in 2016. So that was one part of the discussion.

On the other hand, by the end of the meeting there was agreement that they would work moving forward to work towards an Oval Office visit, a visit to the White House which Presidents Zelenskyy and Trump had talked about in that initial call on April 21st. And that energy issues would be of importance going forward, keeping in mind not only Secretary' Perry's presence, but the concern that the Russians were going to cut all gas transit through Ukraine on New Year's day the way they had done three times since 2006.

Q  You --

A  And finally sorry. The last point that I recall from the readouts was that there would be an accelerated search for a political nominee for Ambassador, as opposed to having a career Foreign Service officer proposed from the State Department.

Q  Were you aware of any evidence that Ukraine was involved in any way, Ukrainian officials were involved in any way in interfering with the 2016 election?

A  I'm not aware of any evidence to that effect, no.

Q  And you're familiar with the Intelligence Community assessment about Russia's interference?

A  I have read the documents that have been made available to me as part of my read. The Office of Intelligence and Research briefs me twice a week, but that does not mean that I've read every document about Russia, no.

Q  No, I understand, there is specific document that the Intelligence Community assessment about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Are you familiar with the conclusion?

A  I know that it exists. I can't say -- I don't recall reading any special confidential version of it. And to the extent that it has been discussed in general in the media I'm aware of those findings.

Q  And you're aware that the Intelligence Community uniformly determined that Russia interfered in the election?

A  I'm aware of that general conclusion, yes.

Q  And are you aware that Special Counsel Mueller indicted I believe 12 Russians and laid out an indictment --

A  Yes.

Q  -- how Russia interfered. Right?

A  Yes.

Q  Do you have any reason to believe that both of those either the indictment or the Intelligence Community assessment is wrong in any way?

A  I have no reason to believe that, no.

Q  Okay. You mentioned this April 21st call. And we haven't touched upon it touch. You said you were not on the call. Did you get a readout of that call as well?

A  I did.

Q  And what did you learn that was discussed on that call?

A  Again, I received that readout from Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. It was a very short and nonsubstantive call, as you might expect. As I recall April 21st was Easter Sunday in the United States. Again, Ukrainians are Orthodox. Different calendar. And we were very pleased that the President agreed to call on election day on a Sunday. We had presumed that it might happen the next workday, which was a Monday. And as you might expect on a Sunday call when it was probably past midnight in Ukraine on election night, President Zelenskyy was in a good mood, President Trump was very positive and congratulated him on a great win.

And President Zelenskyy, as I recall what Alex told me, said that he had studied President Trump's win in 2016 running as an outsider and had adopted some of the same tactics. And invited President Trump to his inaugural, the date to be determined. And President Trump, as I said, acknowledged he would try to find somebody appropriate to attend. And said, we'll try to work on getting you to Washington.

And that was more or less the extent that probably was something more said, but you know on an election day the point is what Alex summed up was, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, those types of calls are designed to build rapport and he thought it was successful doing so.

Q  Following the May 23rd Oval Office meeting, where there was a -- you testified there was a decision to try to arrange a White House meeting. You know, what if any actions did you take or were -- did other Ukraine-focused government officials take to try to set that up?

A  That's the function of the national security staff. To the extent that there is input, they ask for input from other officials, other offices. We obviously stand ready to be supportive but that's -- that's their function. That's not our function --

Q  Were you supportive of a White House meeting?

A  I was, the State Department was. Ukraine is an important country that Congress appropriates roughly in the ballpark $700 million a year in assistance and Zelenskyy won a clear mandate for change and so we were supportive of a visit to the White House, yes.

Q  Did you have any reason to doubt Zelenskyy's sincerity about his anticorruption views?

A  I had no reason to doubt the sincerity of Zelenskyy trying to represent change for his country based on the series of meetings I had with him dating back to December 2018. Starting from the beginning it was clear that he had a prior association with a fairly notorious oligarch named Ihor Kolomoisky and that was going to be a mark of his willingness to really make a break from past relationships and stand on principle.

So from not necessarily our first conversation in December, but in the second conversation in March prior to the election, we were already talking about Kolomoisky and the down sides of association with somebody who had such a bad reputation.

Q  And how important is -- would a White House meeting be to President Zelenskyy?

A  The President of the United States is a longtime acknowledged leader of the free world, and the U.S. is Ukraine's strongest supporter. And so in the Ukraine context, it's very important to show that they can establish a strong relationship with the leader of the United States. That's the Ukrainian argument and desire to have a meeting.

The foreign policy argument is it's a very important country in the front lines of Russian malign influence and aggression. And the U.S. spends a considerable amount of our resources supporting Ukraine and therefore it makes sense. But that's the arguments for a meeting. The time on a President's schedule is always subject to competing priorities.

Q  Following that meeting you said that Secretary Perry, Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Volker had asserted that they were leading Ukrainian policy efforts? Did I get that right?

A  Correct.

Q  Who had asserted that?

A  Well, the three of them asserted that. And citing the fact that they had briefed the President coming out of that meeting, they felt they had the mandate to take the lead on coordinating efforts to engage the new Ukrainian leadership.

Q  And what engagements with the new Ukrainian leadership occurred following that meeting up until the conference on July 1st that you're aware of?

A  I do not -- I do not recall. Special Representative Volker traveled frequently to Ukraine so it is possible that he may have gone in late May. I just don't recall precisely. He traveled frequently there.

There was a coordinating meeting in the Department of Energy in mid-June, on June 18th. So Secretary Perry chaired that. Ambassador Sondland, Ambassador Volker from the State Department, Acting Assistant Secretary Reeker, my direct supervisor, Tyler Brace, all attended that meeting in Secretary Perry's office, and they also connected recently arrived Charge Taylor from Kyiv.

So I would say that, to the best of my knowledge, after that May 23rd meeting, this June 18th meeting was the next meeting where a number of officials got together specifically to talk about policies and programs towards Ukraine.

Q  And in June and early July, are you aware of any conversations that Ambassador Sondland might have had with the Chief of Staff Mulvaney about Ukraine and President Zelenskyy?

A  I'm not aware of conversations between Sondland and Mulvaney, but frankly that's a relationship that I would not be a part of. To the best of my -- what I am aware of is that subsequent to the June 18th meeting, there was a June 28th conference call between Secretary Perry, Sondland, Volker, and involving Charge Taylor, at the end of which they were patched through to President Zelenskyy.

Q  And what did you learn about that conversation?

A  I do not recall. I got a readout of that conversation. Initially I have an email suggesting that Ambassador Sondland on June 27th had written Charge Taylor to suggest that that would be a U.S. -only meeting or a U.S. -only call. But in the end, on the next day, it turned into a call with President Zelenskyy after a pre-conversation among the Americans, based on what Charge Taylor has told me.

Q  Was it unusual that you were not included on that conference call?

A  Well, if it involves the Secretary of Energy it's not necessarily unusual. But again, that was I think a period of time where the direction of our engagement with Ukraine shifted into shall we say unusual channels.

Q  And what do you mean by unusual channels?

A  Well, I think it's somewhat unusual to have an Ambassador to the E.U., plus the Secretary of Energy engaged deeply in the policy towards a country that is not a member of the E.U. It was just -- again, we had our Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, and I know you've talked to former Ambassador Volker. His listed responsibilities were focused on negotiating with Russia over their war in Ukraine, and then Charge Taylor as the lead representative in country.

And so frankly, in that constellation Charge Taylor was the primary voice for our full interests as the Charge of our mission in Kyiv.

Q  And one more question, you said that you learned of the call from Charge Taylor.

A  Correct.

Q  But he did not give you a substantive readout of the call?

A  He did give me a readout, yes. He gave me a readout of prebrief with the Americans.

Q  And what was that readout?

A  He indicated that there was a discussion about the need to raise a sensitive issue with Zelenskyy. And in that discussion Ambassador Volker volunteered that he would be seeing Zelenskyy in person the next week in Toronto and that was the meeting in which I participated on July 2nd.

Q  Do you know what the sensitive issue was?

A  Kurt Volker told me that it was giving guidance to Zelenskyy on how he needed to characterize his willingness to be cooperative on issues of interest to the President.

Q  Such as?

A  I did not have the full details of what exactly that was, but I think it was sending signals about potential investigations.

Q  I think our time is up. We yield to the minority.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Vindman was on the July 25th call?

A  The July -- yes.

Q  And was he on the April 21st call?

A  Yes.

Q  Was he in the meeting with the President on May 23rd?

A  I do not know and I think not.

Q  Okay. You said you got three readouts, one from Fiona Hill, one from Sondland, and one from Volker?

A  The initial readouts I got were, yes secondhand from these three people. It was my understanding.

Q  -- in on the meeting?

A  My understanding is again Fiona didn't give it directly to me. My understanding is that she may have gotten it from deputy -- then deputy national security advisor Kupperman.

Q  She sent you the readout?

A  No. She had a conversation with , who was the acting deputy assistant secretary at the time. To the best of my knowledge. I received the readout from once I came back from my vacation.

Q  Okay. You said when you returned to your office you had three emails. Is that --

A  Yes. I believe I got an email with readout of a conversation with Fiona, Chris Anderson's readout that he got from Kurt Volker and a third readout from someone in the State Department who worked with our mission to the European Union that would have had Ambassador Sondland's version.

Q  So Sondland gives a readout to his staffer who writes it up, sends an email.

A  Yes.

Q  Volker produces one with Christina Anderson?

A  Chris Anderson.

Q  Chris Anderson. And so then help me understand again. Like who produced the one from the NSC?

A  So Fiona had a conversation. To the best of my recollection, she had a conversation with , who is normally the director for Eastern Europe and, while I was away at my daughter’s , was acting in my stead as acting deputy assistant secretary.

Q  Oh, okay. So he's a State Department employee.

A  He's a State Department employee, yeah.

Q  Was she in the meeting?

A  My understanding is -- again, I did not talk to her, but my understanding was that her version of the readout came from Mr. Kupperman, the then deputy to Ambassador Bolton. But I'm not sure.

Q  Was he in the meeting?

A  I'm not sure. My understanding again, this is now third hand from is that Fiona's readout came from Kupperman, not from her participation in the meeting. But I don’t know. I have not talked to Fiona about that.

Q  Okay. Was Kupperman in the meeting?

A  My understanding from what I heard from relaying what he heard from Fiona his impression was that that came from Kupperman who was in the meeting. But I can’t --

Q  He was in the meeting?

A  Huh?

Q  He was in the meeting?

A  That is the impression I received from talking to .

Q  Did any of these readouts have a list of officials in the meeting?

A  No.

Q  Okay. Can we just go through who we think was in the meeting? We know Secretary Perry, Senator Johnson.

A  To the best of my knowledge, the principals --

Q  Ambassador Volker.

A  -- the briefers to the President were those that represented lead officials and that would be Secretary Perry, Ambassador Sondland, Ambassador Volker and Senator Johnson.

Q  And they brought staff to the meeting?

A  I do not know. I was -- again, I was on leave status.

Q  Okay.

A  And I wasn't in the meeting and wouldn't have been in the meeting even if I were in Washington.

Q  Okay. Who from the NSC was in the meeting?

A  To the best of my understanding, all I know is that Charlie Kupperman -- or Kupperman. I don’t know first name, sorry. Kupperman, former deputy National Security Advisor Kupperman may have been in the meeting.

Q  Okay. But Vindman wasn't?

A  That is my understanding, correct.

Q  Did Vindman tell you subsequently that he wasn't in the meeting?

A  I didn't ask if he was in the meeting, because when I returned from work I had three different version or readouts of the meetings from others.

Q  But you had regular communications with Vindman. Right?

A  I did.

Q  And did he ever at any point in time tell you that he wasn't in the meeting or was being excluded from things?

A  We didn't have a conversation along those lines. No.

Q  Do you think he was excluded?

A  I honestly don’t know. And I had three different versions of the meeting so I wasn't looking for a fourth.

Q  And in your regular communications with Vindman do you have any reason to believe that he's been cut out of any of these discussions? Not just about the May 23rd meeting, but about subsequent relevant events?

A  Again, I don’t -- I go over to the NSC when there are meetings that the NSC does not want to allow the State Department to be on the secure video conference system, but apart from specific meetings that I'm invited over, I don't go over there on a regular basis just because it takes time. It's easier if they'll allow us to be on video conference. It is a better use of my time. So I would say I have more communications with Lieutenant Colonel Vindman by email and phone call.

Q  Okay. And in any of those emails or phone calls has he alerted you that he -- he's been cut out of the process?

A  He is a lieutenant colonel and colonels who have served in staff positions generally aren't people who complain. He's a -- he was a campaign planner before he came over to the NSC and he has that campaign planning mentality, you know, what's the goal and he'll plow forward. That's just his personality.

Q  Okay. And do you think he is plowing forward?

A  He's very active at scheduling interagency meetings and asking the State Department to write papers for him.

Q  But plowing forward, does it have some sort of connotation that he's going through a tough time and he's --

A  No. He's a lieutenant colonel who spends his day working on campaign plans. That's what his -- that was his job at the Joint Chiefs of Staff before he was brought over as a detailee to the NSC. I think if you talk to most State Department employees will have an opinion that the role of the National Security Council is to coordinate the work of other agencies, not to task us. We don't respond to them. And occasionally we have to remind them of that.

Q  You have to remind him of that?

A  My staff oftentimes complains that they feel that he thinks that they work for him the way he works for other people at the JCS and have asked me on numbers of occasions to gently point out to him that we don't report to him. So I have supported my staff in gently suggesting that he remember what the roles of the National Security Council staff are vis-à-vis a bureau and an executive agency like the State Department.

Q  Did he receive that warmly?

A  He received it with a smile and that's -- we have a good working relationship. I would say there's more tension perhaps between him and the staff that work for me, but we have a respectful working relationship.

Q  Okay. And in Fiona Hill's readout what was her -- what can you remember from her readout?

A  I think -- what I recall and I can’t say the specific details particularly since there were three versions floating around that I read in rapid succession, just by tonality that the meeting was perhaps more problematic than the initial readouts that we got through secondhand knowledge of what Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Volker said.

I believe one element and I can’t remember where this came from that initially the President did not want to sign a congratulatory letter. And he actually ripped up the letter that had been written for him. But by the end of the meeting, he’d been convinced and the version I recall hearing was Ambassador Sondland helped draft it. And to be honest, the second version of the letter actually read better than the first version. I wasn't involved in either of them because I had been on leave and eventually that letter was signed.

Q  At the State Department in the wake of Ambassador Yovanovitch's, her recall, can you describe the morale with those closest to her?

A  When you say those closest to her, are you referring to the embassy staff that had been working for her in Kyiv?

Q  And her close confidants here in Washington.

A  I don't know who her close confidants in Washington would be. I was, as I mentioned, in Ukraine and Kyiv at the embassy on May 8th. I did offer to have a restricted townhall meeting for Americans, essentially, in our version of the SCIF, and the country team, the meeting room, where we'd have -- and anyone who wished to have a conversation about what had happened and the way forward.

And my sense was -- one of them actually said that when the attacks started in March, particularly after members of the President's family started attacking her, at some level they realized that she was going to be recalled, and it was a matter of when, not if. Their question, as people working at the embassy, was what was going to be the impact on them, on the embassy, and on our policy towards Ukraine.

And so, while I did -- basically I was willing to answer any questions, I think they were more focused, at that point, already, having digested that she had been removed, and they wanted to know what was going to happen next. So I assured them that our policy was our policy and it would remain our policy. And that we were in the process of trying to find an experienced person that temporarily would lead the mission and would be a good leader for the people working there, the 250 Americans working in our embassy, and also someone that could be a voice and face for U.S. policy in Ukraine.

I honestly cannot remember, but probably did not say that it was going to be Ambassador Taylor. He was the one we all wanted at that point, but we still had to work out whether we could bring him back. And those details with the personnel system had not yet been finalized.

Q  Would Ambassador Taylor have fit the mold for the type of person that was discussed in the meeting with the President?

A  When you said the person discussed in the meeting with the President, meaning what?

Q  Well, the meeting with the President, you related that President Trump seemed angry, that he was, you know, Ukraine was corrupt. That there are those in the Ukraine that wished him ill in 2016 and they were going to work towards an Oval Office meeting, energy issues were important and then you mentioned that there was a decision to put in a new political Ambassador.

A  So Charge Taylor, notwithstanding the fact he was nominated and confirmed by the Senate, nominated under president George Bush, was not a permanent nominee for the position of Ambassador.

Q  Okay.

A  He was called back essentially to government service because he knew all the players. He's a bundle of positivity and gets along with everyone and he's a real leader. He was a long time senior executive at the State Department, but he was a graduate of West Point who joined the 101st, and he was platoon leader in Vietnam and in Germany. So it is hard to find anybody hasn't been impressed by Bill Taylor.

Q  And is there still an effort afoot to find a permanent political Ambassador?

A  There is. And that is the job of the White House because it is the President's prerogative to appoint, nominate an Ambassador and then the Senate's role to confirm.

Q  During his tenure as Vice President, Joe Biden had a role with regard to Ukraine. Is that correct?

A  Correct.

Q  And what was the role as you understood it? And you were in country at the time, right?

A  I was, although his involvement in Ukraine predated my return to the Ukraine account. I believe -- it should be a matter of record, but I believe as Vice President he visited Ukraine six times, which probably is unusual for any country outside of the usual countries like Germany, like -- one of which I believe would've been when the former leader Yanukovych was there and then the subsequent visits afterwards.

By the time I came back on the account, it was clear that President Obama, towards the end of his administration, had delegated several foreign policy issues in Europe to Vice President Biden to take the lead. Ukraine was one of them; Cyprus was the other.

So, if you will, Vice President Biden was the top cover. The State Department's lead official post-Russian-invasion-of-Ukraine/occupation-of-Crimea was Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland. And then we had a very active Ambassador, Geoff Pyatt, at the time. And so those were the chief voices on our Ukraine policy: Pyatt as chief of mission, Toria as the assistant secretary, and Vice President Biden as Vice President.

Q  When he got involved with advocating for the removal of Shokin, what type of planning went into that? Was that something that was planned for on the Vice President side of things or did the embassy or the State Department tee him up with the right information he needed to weigh it into that?

A  Geoff Pyatt allowed me to go back to my family at Thanksgiving. I had come out on an emergency basis for my predecessor . And I came out on 24 hours' notice to Ukraine the beginning of October for my third stint. So I was not in country at the time of the visit and planning.

My understanding is that the conversations that were near-daily between Ambassador Pyatt and Toria Nuland regarding what to do on the way forward then included pitching the Office of the Vice President to push President Poroshenko to remove Shokin.

There was a similar push against Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, who had several different corrupt political backers. And there was one named Martynenko who was involved in all sorts of dirty business, including nuclear fuel supplies from Russia. And so we pressured Yatseniuk to have one of his corrupt cronies resign, and Martynenko resigned.

And there was also the pressure on Poroshenko, on the corrupt prosecutor general, and Shokin was not dismissed, I believe, until early March, so 3 weeks after Vice President Biden's visit in December 2015.

Q  The Vice President, he relates to some of these details on a video that's been published on I think the Wall Street Journal. Have you seen that video?

A  I did. To the best of my recollection, he was at some conference, maybe Council on Foreign Relations, sometime in 2018, and he was telling the story in a sort of folksy manner.

Q  He was folksy. And he describes a quid pro quo where, you know, $1 billion worth of aid would be held up until they fired Shokin. Is that what your understanding of the way he tells it?

A  That is -- sounds more or less like what he said on that stage. Yes.

Q  And going back to 2016 when it actually happened, was that the way it went down?

A  Again, I was in -- briefly in Ukrainian language training at the time of his visit so I was not in Ukraine. I would think that the State Department could produce documents related to the sovereign loan guarantees and the timing of those three guarantees to align the timing.

We provided one in 2014, one in 2015, and one in 2016. And I do not recall the exact timing of the issuance of those loan guarantees, but I'm not aware that they aligned perfectly with his visit to Ukraine on December 2015.

Q  Okay. But you think it is fair to say that this was a bottom up initiative?

A  To the best of my knowledge, the idea came from Ambassador Pyatt in discussion with Assistant Secretary Nuland and then was pitched to the Office of the Vice President.

Q  Okay. So if we're going to pursue additional information on that, we would probably have some documents to inform us that we could ask for.

A  That would be my impression. I would just note having read the subpoena that the document request was date timed I believe starting January 20 or 21st, 2017. And we're talking about events that happened in November, December, 2015.

MR. ZELDIN: Steve, if I can ask, did you know at the time of the Vice President's visit when he had made that threat that he was going to make that threat? I mean, or was it some other expectation more narrowly tailored towards advocating for Shokin to be removed?

MR. KENT: Yeah. I know as was discussed earlier, the U.S. the IMF, the European Union countries, we had all come to the conclusion in the wake of the diamond prosecutors affair that there was going to be no progress for reform on the prosecutor general under Shokin.

But specifically about how the Vice President's trips messaging was managed by that point. I left the day before Thanksgiving to fly back to the U.S. and to go into Ukraine language training. So at that point I was not privy to those discussions in the two weeks prior to the Vice President's visit.

MR. ZELDIN: So you don't know whether or not the Vice President was going to threaten the loss of $1 billion?

MR. KENT: My understanding, as I explained, is that that was an approach that was discussed between Ambassador Pyatt and Assistant Secretary Nuland to use his visit as leverage. This was an issue that Ambassador Pyatt and Assistant Secretary Nuland in her visits that was an agenda item that they were pushing. And in the same way that the Department of Justice official asked me to go in to the prosecutor general office office in February 2015 and ask who took the bribe and how much was it to shut down the case against Zlochevsky, the Ambassador and Assistant Secretary Nuland asked the office of Vice President if the Vice President could push this tough message.

MR. ZELDIN: And to be clear, was Ambassador Pyatt and Assistant Secretary Nuland advocating to threaten the loss of $1 billion?

MR. KENT: I believe that is the case. But again, we're now relying on my memory of almost 4 years ago. So I believe it was pushing the Ukrainians essentially for an additional what would be called a prior action before we would issue the sovereign loan guarantee. But I think that's something that we would have to look at the documents from that period of time.

MR. ZELDIN: You as the deputy chief of mission were not involved in that process.

MR. KENT: So in parts of 2015 I went out as essentially the acting deputy chief of mission. I then came back to the U.S. the day before Thanksgiving and was in the U.S. for 3.5 months for language training and then returned to Kyiv in late March 2016. So in the 2 weeks prior to the Vice President's visit, I was already back in the U.S. as a language student as opposed to being an active participant in the conversations.

MR. ZELDIN: And you referenced Ambassador Pyatt, you referenced Assistant Secretary Nuland. Of anyone involved in that process, are you aware of anyone in contact with Hunter Biden at the time other than the Vice President?

MR. KENT: I am not aware of, no.

MR. JORDAN: One quick question.

Mr. Secretary, you leave 2 weeks before the Vice President gets there. But this policy, this idea that we were going to call for Shokin's removal it didn't just develop in those two weeks.

MR. KENT: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: You weren't involved in a discussion and a decision to say this is going to be our official policy we're going to ask the Vice President to do this.

MR. KENT: I think someone made a reference to Ambassador Pyatt's speech in September. Earlier -- at some point today, he gave a strong, hard-hitting speech against corruption, and it was clear then that we were pushing for Shokin's ouster. And so we had taken a harder line against Shokin in the wake of the diamond prosecutor affair in mid-2015.

So months prior to Vice President Biden's visit, this was an issue that U.S. officials including our Ambassador and our Assistant Secretary of State were pushing in their meetings with the Ukrainians.

MR. JORDAN: I guess I'm asking, though, was there a decision made between Ms. Nuland, the Ambassador, and you to say, we’re going to ask the Vice President to do it on this trip. And if so when was that made?

MR. KENT: Again, I do not -- I could not -- I was not part of -- I would say that on a daily basis Ambassador Pyatt and Assistant Secretary Nuland had conversations, that was conversations that the Ambassador would have on his office with her on a secure phone and I'm sure there were additional email back and forths. But I cannot give you a precise date other than to say that --

I would say that on the record Ambassador Pyatt's speech in Odesa, which I believe was in September of 2015 was a powerful public statement of U.S. concern about the lack of progress. And I believe it may have specifically mentioned both the shortcomings of prosecutor Shokin and reference to our concern that the case against Zlochevsky had been shut down and frozen money was released.

And so I think that speech is a matter of public record September 2015, Vice President Biden's visit happened October, November, December, 3 months later.

MR. JORDAN: Do you think they told the Vice President the 2 weeks prior to him getting there when you had left do you think that they talked to the Vice President when he got there in country?

MR. KENT: Again, the way a trip would normally be staffed, there would be conversations prior, there would be paper prepared and conversations prior to the trip. And that oftentimes would be someone like Assistant Secretary Nuland going over and participating in a pretrip brief.

MR. JORDAN: When did you learn that the Vice President made this demand on the Ukrainians and specifically the President?

MR. KENT: I think I -- I don't recall -- I mean, he gave a public speech and in the well of the Ukrainian parliament. But this demand would have been delivered in private in his meeting with President Poroshenko.

MR. JORDAN: You never got a readout on how it all went down?

MR. KENT: I was a language student for a period of several months in the U.S. I was aware that he'd made the request. I was also aware that Shokin remained an embattled prosecutor general for several months more until there was a vote held in their parliament to remove him.

MR. MEADOWS: So let me follow up one last time. So who made the decision that Vice President Biden should be the one that communicated this? You know, if you all are having all these discussions for so many months, who made that decision that says, let's wait until the VP goes over to make this request?

MR. KENT: Yeah. Well, there was no waiting, as I mentioned.

MR. MEADOWS: Well 3 months.

MR. KENT: Well that was a -- I gave an example of a publicly available speech that was a statement, a very strong statement on the record of --

MR. MEADOWS: Yeah, but your inference was is that that was the start of it.

MR. KENT: No, I wouldn't say that. It's just that I think that's a public mark where people could see this is the American Ambassador speaking on the record about our concerns about the lack of progress and the rule of law reform in 2015 a year and a half after the Revolution of Dignity. At the same time, there was constant private messaging, messages and meetings that Ambassador Pyatt had in Kyiv, conversations or meetings when Assistant Secretary Nuland would travel, and conversations would happen when Vice President Biden would talk to both President Poroshenko as well as then prime minister Arseny Yatseniuk.

MR. MEADOWS: So before you went away to language school, you had no recollection that the decision had been made that the Vice President was going to make this? Is that your statement?

MR. KENT: No. I would say that -- well, again, we're now talking about conversations, of which I was not a part, that happened 4 years ago. I do not think -- my guess, to the best of my ability, I would anticipate that the issue of Shokin’s status was raised prior to the Vice President's trip, possibly during a conversation. But I was not on those calls between the Vice President of the United States and the President of Ukraine.

MR. MEADOWS: But wouldn't it be a big deal if the Vice President is going to demand a curtailment of $1 billion? Wouldn't that have registered with you, since your passion and --

MR. KENT: Right. Well, as I said, my understanding of how that decision got to the point of having the Vice President raise that in the first week of December when he came to Kyiv started with conversations between Ambassador Pyatt and Assistant Secretary Nuland and then a recommendation that Vice President Biden pushed that issue when he visited.

That's my understanding of how the information, the idea, the flow pattern occurred and then he made the request when he came out.

MR. MEADOWS: Okay, Steve.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  At the time was there any discussion of perceived conflicts of interest either on the part of the Vice President or his son?

A  You're now talking about a period leading up to his visit in December 2015.

Q  Well, Hunter Biden he was first reported that he was on the board in mid-2014?

A  Correct.

Q  And the Vice President's involvement with Ukraine is pretty significant at that point in time and it remained until he, you know, through 2016. Correct?

A  Yes.

Q  And the question was, you know, were there any discussions of a perceived conflict of interest on the part of either Hunter Biden or the Vice President?

A  When I was -- the first time I was in Ukraine as acting deputy chief of mission in the period of mid-January to mid-February 2015, subsequent to me going into the deputy prosecutor general on February 3rd and demanding who took the bribe and how much was it to shut the case against Zlochevsky I became aware that Hunter Biden was on the board. I did not know that at the time.

And when I was on a call with somebody on the Vice President's staff and I cannot recall who it was, just briefing on what was happening into Ukraine I raised my concerns that I had heard that Hunter Biden was on the board of a company owned by somebody that the U.S. Government had spent money trying to get tens of millions of dollars back and that could create the perception of a conflict of interest.

Q  And what did the person on the other end of the line tell you?

A  The message that I recall hearing back was that the Vice President's son Beau was dying of cancer and that there was no further bandwidth to deal with family related issues at that time.

Q  Was that pretty much the end of it?

A  That was the end of that conversation.

Q  Okay. That was in mid-2015?

A  That would have been in February, because to the best of my recollection Beau Biden died that spring. I then returned to Ukraine in August of 2015 and I believe he passed before then. So the only time that conversation could have happened is in that narrow window between January, February, 2015.

Q  And subsequent to that, did you ever think through with other State Department officials about maybe we should try to get Hunter Biden to leave the board or maybe we should get the Vice President to transition his key responsibilities on Ukraine to some other senior U.S. official?

A  No. It's easy in a conference room like this to have a considered discussion about things. In Ukraine at that time, we had a war with Russia occupation, we had an embassy staff going from 150 Americans to 250 Americans, from no Special Force U.S. Government soldiers to close to 70 in country, our assistance went from $130 million to nearly a billion.

And we were working nearly nonstop. Ambassador Pyatt, I can tell you from working for him, would wake up between 4:58 and 5:01, because that was when I got the first email from him, and went to bed between 12:59 and 1:01, because that's when I would get the last email. He had an internal clock. He only slept 4 hours. And it was nonstop, 20 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Q  Okay. Gotcha.

You referenced earlier the President's congratulatory note to President Zelenskyy.

A  His call.

Q  No, the note.

A  Yes.

Q  It was ripped up?

A  That is what I heard from others, yes.

Q  Was that the May 29th letter?

A  If there's a letter that's signed May 29th that would be the second version that was then signed.

Q  Okay. So that's the only letter we're talking about, right?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay. In the letter they talk about a White House meeting as a prospect.

A  I believe so.

Q  I can make it an exhibit or I can read it whatever your preference is?

A  If I could look at it that would be helpful.

Q  Okay. So this will be Exhibit 2.

Do you guys need copies or are you good?

A  Very positive letter, yes.

[Minority Exhibit No. 2
Was marked for identification.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Yes. The penultimate paragraph says, to help show that commitment -- the last sentence of the penultimate paragraph says, I'd like to invite you to meet with me at the White House in Washington, D.C. as soon as we can find a mutually convenient time.

A  Yes.

Q  So this was the spiffed up letter or --

A  This is the letter that I understand that Ambassador Sondland helped arrange, yes, sir.

Q  I think you'd characterize the new letter as possibly better than the original?

A  Yes.

Q  What were the difference to the extent you remember?

A  Just I think stylistically I liked the second version. I don't know who the drafter of the first version was and I don't know how many people were involved in production of the language of the second one. I just thought the second one read better.

Q  Okay. And do you know why the President was disappointed with the first version?

A  It wasn't he was disappointed with the version of letter, he -- based on what the readout I heard from Kurt Volker and others that he was disappointed with Ukraine.

Q  Okay. And so the new letter was offered the to the President for his signature somewhat later in time?

A  My understanding, and I think this may have been the version from Gordon Sondland that while the President was angry obviously at the point that he point and tore up the letter. By the end of the meeting he agreed to sign a revised version and this is the version that he signed.

Q  Okay. And the offer or the invite to come meet at the White House, is that something that is customarily offered to an ally without specific the meeting will happen on this date?

A  Well, as I mentioned before, President Trump and President-elect Zelenskyy had this discussion on April 21st when President-elect Zelenskyy had invited President Trump to come to his inauguration, and he said, well, I will send somebody there, but I'd like to get you to the White House.

So this was following up on that theme. President Trump had offered it in concept in April. He put it in writing in May. But, you know, as anyone who's ever staffed not just the President but a principal, you can have an agreement in principle to meet but then schedules are complicated, particularly when you're dealing with two Presidents of two countries.

Q  So it is not uncommon for the meetings to be proposed suggested, discussed and then take a while to put together?

A  That's a fair statement, yes.

Q  And sometimes the meetings don't actually happen.

A  That would also probably in certain circumstances also be a fair assessment.

Q  Okay. Because these issued are complicated?

A  Because schedules are busy, yes.

Q  If I heard you correctly you mentioned that in March Ambassador Sondland contacted President Poroshenko to urge him to back off attacks on Ambassador Yovanovitch was it? Did I hear that right?

A  That is probably close to what I said. And it that is what I recall seeing in an email exchange, yes.

Q  Okay. So in March Poroshenko is about to lose the election? Right?

A  He doesn't realize it but the rest of the country does, yes.

Q  Okay. And so in urging him to back off the attacks on Yovanovitch, do you have any idea whether Poroshenko genuinely knew that his apparatus was attacking her?

A  When I visited in May I had the prime minister, and three ministers, and a former prime minister tell me that Poroshenko authorized the attacks -- let me be careful. He authorized Lutsenko to share the information with Giuliani that led to the attacks on Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Q  Okay. And where did you learn of Sondland's content?

A  With Poroshenko in March that I referred to.

Q  Okay.

A  In an email I believe from the embassy it could have been Ambassador Yovanovitch, it could have been from the DCM at the time, Pam Tremont.

Q  Okay. Did Sondland tell you himself?

A  I did not hear it directly from Sondland, no.

Q  Do you have an understanding of like how this conversation was put together?

A  My understanding based on also seeing how Ambassador Sondland has engaged Georgian leaders, because I also have responsibility for Georgia, is that when he meets leaders in Brussels -- or, in the case of the Ukraine, he met President Poroshenko and other leaders in Odesa during the U.S. trip visit, he hands them his business card, he gets their business card, and then starts direct communication via WhatsApp or phone calls.

Q  With world leaders?

A  With world leaders.

Q  Okay. And he did that with President Poroshenko?

A  Yes. To the best of my knowledge, he did that with President Poroshenko as well as the then Georgia prime minister.

Q  I'm going to mark Exhibit 3.

[Minority Exhibit No. 3
was marked for identification.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  This is a letter to Poroshenko from Senators Menendez, Durbin, and Leahy about the Mueller investigation.

Does anybody need copies? Do you have enough?

Take as much time as you need to check this out.

Have you ever seen this letter before?

[4:23 p.m.]

MR. KENT: I do not recall, but I can't rule out. The U.S. Congress does not, as a matter of course, copy embassies on its correspondence with other countries, but we oftentimes do receive courtesy copies sometimes through the State Department.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Do you know if the State Department has provided us a copy?

A  I honestly cannot remember, but I at least recall hearing about a communication which could have been this letter.

Q  Okay. And what do you remember about this communication?

A  Well, that there were some people expressing interest in whether Ukraine had possibly stopped cooperating. This is not the first time I've heard it, but I honestly could not give you precisely, you know, information. Again, this was not a communication that went through the embassy --

Q  Of course.

A  -- nor did we go to the prosecutor general to raise the concerns of the three Senators who sent this letter.

Q  Okay. Do you know if anyone in the leg affairs --

A  At the time, I was working in Kyiv, so I would not necessarily have been aware. My predecessor was Bridget Brink, who is now serving as our Ambassador in Slovakia. So she was the Deputy Assistant Secretary at the time, so I'm not sure if this letter was passed through and was discussed.

Q  If the State Department found out about this, do you think they would dispatch their legislative liaisons to talk with the Senators or their Senator's staff to --

A  Honestly, again, I was in Kyiv at the time, so I do not have knowledge of any interaction between the Senate's -- three senators, their staff --

Q  Fair enough.

A  -- and either Hill liaison or the European Bureau.

Q  Were you aware of any questions about whether Lutsenko was failing to cooperate with Special Counsel Mueller?

A  Again, I didn't have any conversations with Mr. Lutsenko as a general rule. By this point in May of 2018, our relations with him had soured. And so we didn't have a complete break in communications, but we did not -- we, the U.S. Embassy, did not meet with him frequently.

Q  Do you know if anyone at the State Department had a -- picked up the phone and called the Justice Department and said, you know, this Lutsenko fellow is not so great. If you are getting information from him, you might want to better understand that he is not well-regarded at this point?

A  To be honest, I have no knowledge of that, and I can't say either yes or no.

Q  Okay. I'll ask you one last question, and then our time is about to expire after this round.

There was some discussion about instances where Mayor Giuliani was operating in Ukraine and having meetings. And we know that he has got some clients and other interests. It's fair to say the Ukrainians are aware of his celebrity status, at least some Ukrainians?

A  I think some Ukrainians, like many Americans, remember him from the time he was Mayor of New York at the time of the attacks, September 11. Besides I mentioned, in a positive light, former heavyweight boxing champion, Mayor of Kyiv, Klychko. The other individuals that former Mayor Giuliani has chosen to associate in Ukraine have far less positive reputations in Ukraine.

Q  Right. But, you know, he was at least somebody that was, you know, considered to be an international, you know, political figure from his time as Mayor of New York.

A  Right. Although, again, that would have had less impact in Ukraine, which was focused on its own issues and challenges at the time.

Q  Right. But his ability to get meetings is understandable?

A  I mean, he had an existing relationship with the mayor of Kyiv, and I think Mayor Klychko would probably see him at any moment. I would say that is the level of an easy ask. It was well known in Ukraine that his main paying clients in Ukraine at the time were the mayor of Kharkiv and a Russian Ukrainian oligarch named Pavlo Fuks.

Q  Is this before 2016 -- I'm sorry, before 2018 in the --

A  I believe that Mayor Giuliani's association with Mayor Kernes and Pavlo Fuks contractually began in 2017.

Q  Okay. Thank you.

MR. KENT: And if I could take another break.

THE CHAIRMAN: Let's gets a 5-minute break. We still have a lot of material to get through, and we want to try to get you out as a reasonable hour. So let’s try to come back as soon as possible after a quick break.

[Recess.]

THE CHAIRMAN: Let's go back on the record.

Secretary, I have just a few questions before I hand it back to Mr. Goldman. My colleagues asked you a great deal about the Bidens and Burisma. I want to go back to one of the origins of the narrative they were getting at. You mentioned there were four false narratives in the Solomon article back in April of 2019. Is that right?

MR. KENT: Well, there were four narratives that were introduced, led off by the Solomon articles. But I'm not sure that all four were introduced by Solomon. The first two were definitely part one, part two, but there were a number of different platforms in play that week.

THE CHAIRMAN: And part one, was that Lutsenko's claim that Biden pressured Poroshenko to fire Shokin because of the prosecutor general's office investigation of Burisma?

MR. KENT: No. I believe that the first day the two themes that were introduced were the anticorruption theme, and that was targeting the embassy, including the letter that I had signed in April 2016, and NABU, as in an organization, and then the 2016 conversation. The discussions of the Bidens and Burisma was the third narrative theme that was introduced a day or two later.

THE CHAIRMAN: So that was the third false narrative you referred to?

MR. KENT: Right.

THE CHAIRMAN: And, in fact, that false narrative that the Vice President had pressured the firing of Shokin over Burisma, Lutsenko himself would later recant. Did he not?

MR. KENT: Mr. Lutsenko has held many positions on many issues that are mutually exclusive, and including on this issue.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, in mid-May of 2019, Mr. Lutsenko, were you aware, did an interview with Bloomberg in which he said he had no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son. Are you familiar with that interview?

MR. KENT: I am more familiar with the interview that he gave to The L.A. Times, in which he said that the activities related primarily to Zlochevsky's actions as minister, which occurred several years before Hunter Biden came on to the board. So his interviews this year, subsequent to leaving office, are more in accord with the facts as I understood them at the time, than his assertions as prosecutor general.

THE CHAIRMAN: So let me ask you a little bit more again about this false narrative since recanted. Just to be absolutely clear about this, when the Vice President was asked to make the case, or help make the case for Shokin's firing, this was the policy of the State Department, and the State Department was asking the Vice President to assist with the execution of that policy?

MR. KENT: That would be a correct assessment, yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: And it was the policy of other international organizations as well that recognized that Shokin was corrupt?

MR. KENT: Correct. He was not allowing for reform of the prosecutor general service, and in contrast, he actually was actively undermining reform of the prosecutor general service and our assistance.

THE CHAIRMAN: And this involved, as you said, an effort to undermine the very inspector general office that the State Department had assiduously worked to help the Ukrainians establish to root out corruption within the prosecutor force?

MR. KENT: Correct.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Goldman.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Picking up off of that June 28 conference call that you referenced, following that, you said that you were in Toronto for a meeting where President Zelenskyy also was present?

A  Correct. This was the Ukraine Reform Conference. It essentially is the primary friends, donors of Ukraine. This was the third edition. The first one was held, I believe, in Denmark; second in London; and the third was hosted in Canada by the Canadian Government. And Kurt Volker and I were the ranking U.S. officials who attended for the U.S.

Q  And who was there from Ukraine?

A  President Zelenskyy himself.

Q  And any of his senior aides?

A  Many of his senior aides. In the meeting that we had on July 2, to the best of my recollection, those included his chief of staff, Andriy Bohdan, who is a very controversial figure; it included his two closest personal assistants, a person named Shefir, and another one named Yermak; it included a professional in the presidential apparatus, Igor Zhovkva; their ambassador to Canada, Andriy Shevchenko, and an interpreter.

Q  And what was discussed at that meeting?

A  The whole range of U.S.-Ukraine relations, because of special representative for Ukraine negotiation Volker's focus on the Donbas conflict. That was one segment of the conversation.

When we got to more general bilateral relations, that was the first time, I mentioned earlier, that I heard directly from Kurt his assertion that Perry, Sondland, and Volker were now in charge of Ukraine policy. He made that assertion to President Zelenskyy.

Coming out of the meeting with the President, he explained how the meeting had gone on May 23 in the Oval Office, that the three officers were the ones leading the charge, and that -- he said that we're working on a phone call with the President.

And Zelenskyy cut him off at that point and said, just a phone call? How about the visit? And Volker said, first a phone call, which this is a conversation happening on July 2. He said, We’ll aim for that perhaps next week, and hopefully that will lead into a meeting by the end of the month, July 29 and 30, which was roughly, I think, the dates that were discussed in the June 18 meeting that Secretary Perry chaired.

Q  Was there any discussion in that meeting in Toronto trying to understand. You have a reputation of loving and cherishing this U.S.-Ukraine relationship and dedicating your life toward strengthening the relationship between the United States and Ukraine. That is something that I've heard. And you get a readout from Lieutenant Colonel Vindman that doesn't have a lot of details, and you don’t try to get any more information about the call. I just want to better understand your mindset that, once you got that readout that was lacking substance, that you chose not to try to get any more information. This is what you've dedicated your life towards strengthening this relationship. And I don't understand that. Can you better explain that?

MR. KENT: I think some people try to be in the middle of everything, and some people try to do their job based on the conditions which they are issued. So, again, I don't work at the White House. There are conversations and meetings that I do not take part in. My job is to represent the State Department and try to promote our national interests through the policies that have been discussed and agreed to in the interagency format and to use the mechanisms that the State Department has under its ability, including programming funded by appropriations from Congress, to pursue those national interests. So that's my job. It's also my job for six countries.

Now, admittedly, Ukraine is the biggest country.

MR. KENT: As I stated earlier, in my 27 years in the Foreign Service, I've never been on a Presidential call, and that is not normal for officials that are at the Embassy or at the State Department. The people who normally are on a Presidential call are staff at the National Security Council and the White House. And I have not served as a detailee to the National Security Council in my career.

MR. ZELDIN: As far as the participants on the call, you testified earlier that you got a readout of the call from Lieutenant Colonel Vindman?

MR. KENT: Correct.

MR. ZELDIN: Was there anyone else on the call who would typically give you a readout of that phone call?

MR. KENT: I would say that it was standard procedure for the director to give a readout to the Deputy Assistant Secretary. So, for instance, it was also Lieutenant Colonel Vindman who gave me the readout in April after the inaugural -- sorry, the election day victory call. So that was standard practice, that the director for a country would give a readout to the DAS so that the policy DAS at State would know the substance of what was discussed so we could make sure that our policy going forward was aligned with the conversations had by the President.

MR. ZELDIN: We only have a couple minutes left, but something that is still outstanding from a previous round I'm Ambassador Yovanovitch at the same time?

MR. KENT: I have not been a part of the meeting with Zelenskyy since this call happened, and since I also -- since I first saw this text 2 weeks ago. And of the meetings that I had with Zelenskyy previously, the meeting in March of 2019, which is when he was running as a candidate that was Under Secretary Hale, Ambassador Yovanovitch, and myself, when I came back in May, when he was President-elect Zelenskyy, Ambassador Yovanovitch had already been recalled. So the only meeting that was in the room at the same time with Ambassador Yovanovitch and Zelenskyy was in March, and the principal in the meeting was Under Secretary Hale.

MR. ZELDIN: Did you have an opportunity to observe any direct interaction between President Zelenskyy and Ambassador Yovanovitch?

MR. KENT: I only saw when he was Candidate Zelenskyy with her, and at that point, the focus was on Under Secretary Hale as the ranking visitor.

MR. ZELDIN: So no indications from that exchange that would help us understand that statement from President Zelenskyy with regards to loyalty to a previous President and not accepting Zelenskyy?

MR. KENT: I have no way of explaining why he said that, no.

MR. ZELDIN: Why weren't you on the July 25th call? President Zelenskyy says something back --

MR. ZELDIN: You're looking at page 4?

MR. KENT: Right.

MR. ZELDIN: There is a full paragraph of President Zelenskyy in the middle of the page, and towards the bottom of that paragraph, President Zelenskyy speaks about Ambassador Yovanovitch?

MR. KENT: Yep.

MR. ZELDIN: And in it, part of what President Zelenskyy says, quote: Her attitude toward me was far from the best as she had admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as the new President well enough, end quote.

Do you know where President Zelenskyy would have developed the belief that Ambassador Yovanovitch was loyal to a previous President?

MR. KENT: I have no idea because I do know that President Poroshenko thought she was not a fan of him.

MR. ZELDIN: And I recall you testifying to that earlier.

MR. KENT: Yeah.

MR. ZELDIN: That President Poroshenko had targeted Ambassador Yovanovitch, which is why I wanted to ask you about this particular quote from President Zelenskyy. Did you have an opportunity to meet with President Zelenskyy and particular meetings.

MR. ZELDIN: The United States policy towards Ukraine over the course of the last couple of years with regards to aid, support for Ukraine, would you assess it as getting stronger?

MR. KENT: I would say that, thanks to the appropriators on the Appropriation Committee, the amounts made available for assistance to Ukraine has increased yearly since 2014, yes.

MR. ZELDIN: And how important is it to Ukraine to have access to Javelin.

MR. KENT: I am the son of a submarine captain. I'm not the son of an Army cav or infantry officer, but I understand from my colleagues who do have such experience -- and our Belarus desk officer was an officer who used Javelins -- is that they are incredibly effective weapons at stopping armored advance, and the Russians are scared of them.

MR. ZELDIN: Earlier on, in one of the rounds, I believe this morning, there was discussion with regards to the firing of Ambassador Yovanovitch, and later on, you testified that you read the July 25th transcript. Do you recall the part of the transcript where President Zelenskyy is speaking about Ambassador Yovanovitch?

MR. KENT: I have the transcript here, and yes, I believe somewhere our President says something, and then cases. Was there a person, an office, that you would communicate with?

MR. KENT: The Ambassadors, I believe, collectively, the G7 Ambassadors, plus the EU Ambassador, when they had a meet with President Poroshenko, my understanding is this was the type of issue that was raised. Again, starting in August 18, I was back in Washington, so I did not participate in those meetings. The trend line and the deterioration started about the time I came back here to Washington.

MR. ZELDIN: When communicating with Ukraine with these lists, was Lutsenko or any of the people from his office present in any of those meetings?

MR. KENT: I can't say for certain. I do not think it was normal for the prosecutor general to be attending the meetings when, you know, eight Ambassadors come in to see President Poroshenko. It's not like they met that often. Prosecutor General Lutsenko, in my experience, occasionally, would summon Ambassadors or Embassy representatives to have meetings with him for sort of exchange on the situation, the current status of rule of law in the country.

MR. ZELDIN: It's a possibility that somebody representing Lutsenko might be present at any of these meetings?

MR. KENT: Again, this trend line started last summer about the time I came back, so I don't know who was in any the names associated with the cases?

MR. KENT: On any given month, there would have been perhaps cases that rose to the fore as being emblematic of the direction. For instance, last December, 2018, one of the candidates for President, Anatoliy Hrytsenko, was assaulted in a parking garage in the city of Odesa. A former Defense Minister running for President was assaulted by thugs, and there was no effort to investigate that. That is a classic example of intimidation, and the lack of an investigation is a suggestion that those in power were not interested in holding the people to account because the accounts indicated that they were probably connected to the power organizations.

MR. ZELDIN: Did you keep track of these individual cases that we were engaging Ukraine with?

MR. KENT: The Embassy, as part of its advocacy, would have no doubt kept a running list and, in my experience from when I was there, would have discussed this extensively with the other likeminded Ambassadors. And there was a collection of Ambassadors to the G7 countries, plus the Ambassador to the EU, met almost weekly. And the issue of the deterioration of the rule of law and the lack of accountability and impunity for these attacks was a frequent topic.

MR. ZELDIN: With regards to this list of cases, who would you speak to on the Ukraine side about the individual the case of Katia Handziuk became a clarion example of the failure for the country to move forward in the same way that the murder of Georgiu Gongadze in 2000 encapsulated the failure of then President Kuchma to move the country forward.

MR. ZELDIN: But this would be a case that Ambassador Yovanovich would be very familiar with?

MR. KENT: This is a case that was under great discussion. The initial attack occurred in the summer of 2018, I believe, that the activist eventually died in roughly November of 2018.

MR. ZELDIN: Yeah, I just don't want to put any words in your mouth, that's why I'm asking the question. This would be a case that Ambassador Yovanovitch would have been very familiar with?

MR. KENT: I would imagine so, yes.

MR. ZELDIN: And were there many other cases that you have recall of individual names of cases as you sit here today, without having to go through the entire list?

MR. KENT: I honestly -- the number of uninvestigated assaults on members of civil society, the media, and the opposition, as I said, eventually reached 100, and that was a trend line and a message to everybody. So I cannot cite all 100.

MR. ZELDIN: I wasn't asking. I just wanted to ask, though, if necessary, there are many cases that you recall the media, and members of the opposition.

In the year before President Poroshenko ran for reelection, there were over a hundred such attacks against civil society, the media, and occasionally political opponents, none of those were prosecuted by Yuriy Lutsenko.

MR. ZELDIN: Do you recall the names of -- any of the names of the individual cases that you spoke to or Ambassador Yovanovitch spoke to Ukraine about?

MR. KENT: I would say that, in the last 3 years, the most prominent case was this anti corruption activist that I mentioned. Her name is Katia Handziuk, H-a-n-d-z-i-u-k. She was in a town in Kherson, and according to activists, civil society, and journalists, there were politicians connected to President Poroshenko, which was also Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko's party, as well as the party connected to Yuliya Tymoshenko. And despite this general knowledge, there was no firm action taken by the prosecutor general.

MR. ZELDIN: And this was a case important to you and Ambassador Yovanovitch?

MR. KENT: This was a case important for the rule of law under a President who had run to change Ukraine, starting with the Revolution of Dignity. So, if you were to ask a Ukrainian over the last year, if they had to cite one case that encapsulated the failures of President Poroshenko and his team, which included Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, prosecutor in Ukraine about any of the Ukraine cases?

MR. KENT: During the period of time when Yuriy Lutsenko was prosecutor general, and he became prosecutor general before Ambassador Yovanovitch arrived at post in August 2016, the U.S. Government had concerns that Ukrainian law enforcement, prosecutorial, and intelligence services were occasionally harassing and investigating without merit civil society activists, members of the media, and political opponents.

And so it was a matter of concern that those in office were using that office not to prosecute criminals but to put pressure on civil society, the media, and political opponents. In that context, yes, both the Ambassador and I raised concerns specifically about action taken without evident merit to pressure civil society, the media, and political opponents.

MR. ZELDIN: Was this a conversation solely in general, or were there discussions about specific cases?

MR. KENT: When, in a country whose leading journalist was murdered on the orders of a President in 2000, when journalists are attacked, when an anticorruption activist has acid thrown in her face at the orders of people that were politically connected and after 12 operations she died, yes, we raised specific cases of concern regarding the misuse of state office to go after civil society activists, members of

MR. ZELDIN: Assistant Secretary Nuland's name has come up a few time, Kathy Kavalec?

MR. KENT: Kathy Kavalec.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware of Assistant Secretary Nuland instructing Kathy Kavalec to speak to Christopher Steele during the 2016 campaign?

MR. KENT: I was in Kyiv, and Kathy Kavalec was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Russia, and so I was not aware of what the nature of engagement between Assistant Secretary Nuland and Deputy Assistant Secretary Kavalec would have been, no.

MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware of Ambassador Yovanovitch ever having conversations with Ukraine officials on specific individual cases before the prosecutor?

MR. KENT: When you say "specific cases," what do you mean?

MR. ZELDIN: In any of the prosecutor's cases, any of the Ukraine's prosecutor's cases, are you familiar with any conversations Ambassador Yovanovitch had with that Ukraine prosecutor about any of those cases?

MR. KENT: Which prosecutor are you referring to?

MR. ZELDIN: Well, I was referring to the state prosecutor, but with regards to Ukraine's state prosecutor or any cases within the Ukraine Government, are you aware of Ambassador Yovanovitch having any conversations with any terminology "when Volker released his tweets"?

A  I should have said WhatsApp messages; I'm sorry.

Q  And so I just wanted to circle back to that, that I don't believe Ambassador Volker has released anything himself. He provided documents to the committees, and then, you know, the committee -- is that your understanding?

A  I do not know how that information made it into the public domain.

Q  Uh-huh.

A  I do not engage the media and have studiously avoided the media before coming here. I cannot say that's been Kurt's approach.

Q  Okay. But you're not aware of him releasing his text messages like affirmatively on his own?

A  I do not know how his WhatsApp messages made it into the public domain.

Q  I mean, it's conceivable that somebody on the Hill side, I know that might come as a shock, would push certain messages out. Is that something that --

A  That's one option.

Q  Okay. So you think that maybe he's pushing his own messages out on his own?

A  I do not know.

Q  Okay.

MR. CASTOR: Mr. Zeldin. with this, and that was the mechanism.

Q  You don't have concerns with that, do you?

A  That sounds like an appropriate centralized way of gathering documents from many people.

Q  So the function of the State Department collecting the documents and going through the documents, organizing the documents, and producing them to Congress is what you understand to be ordinary course?

A  Well, my role as an identified record collector was to go through all of my records and identify information and provide that information. So that's what I did. What happens after that is a process that I don't have --

Q  Okay. You don't have a lot of experience with that?

A  This is the first time that I've gone through this process, yes.

Q  Okay. So you're not in a position to evaluate whether the process undertaken here has been irregular or improper?

A  This is the first time I've done this type of process where I've had to go through all my handwritten notes and other forms of communication to find evidence that might be responsive to the subjects that were listed in the subpoena.

Q  Okay. And then a couple times you used the weeks was, the State Department did that automatically, but there were these other records that would not have been accessed automatically, and those included memos that were written but never logged and sent to a principal like the Secretary, handwritten notes, or other communications.

Q  Okay. Did I understand your testimony that you were concerned about the integrity of the document collection process?

A  What I said was, when we had our meeting on the 3rd of October, based on instructions that had been prepared by others that I presumed were in our congressional liaison in the legal office, that when they identified potential chief record collectors, that there were individuals that were not included that were in the listing, and, therefore, there were additional people that were asked to check for records.

Q  Okay. And I may have heard this incorrectly, but it's not your understanding that the State Department officials look for documents and then send them in to Congress individually, right?

A  It was clear in the instructions that, as part of the process of collecting documents, the records should be identified, and then there would be a central repository for the processing of those documents. And that's in an office that is under our what's known as the A Bureau, the Administrative Bureau. So I guess there's a unit that deals testimony or your testimony?

A  I have not talked to Masha since Friday, no.

Q  Okay. And to the extent you reference her testimony, it's the prepared statement?

A  It was made available and, I read it online, I think The New York Times.

Q  Okay. This morning, we were talking about the State Department's record collection procedure and responding to the subpoena. Have you ever been involved with a congressional records request?

A  The only previous record request that I have seen, although I was not specifically named as a record collector, was the Senate's Select Intelligence Committee's request for documents related to Paul Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik.

Q  How did the -- as far as you know, the ordinary process work for producing documents to Congress?

A  Well, again, I have been present or seen the process happen twice, once when I was at an Embassy and, the other time, the past 2 weeks at the State Department. At the Embassy, there was a mechanism where our information management resource, our specialists who work with the information systems, went through and were able to extract from the system of backups any emails that had reference to the individuals listed.

And what was different about this search the last 2

Q  Did you have any communications with anyone at the State Department about your testimony here today, other than the ones you've described with the lawyers and --

A  Well, I described early on a communication about the document search. Subsequent to that, I did not have any discussions or coordination about what I would say personally. The conversations with the counsel, legal office counsel, then went through counsel with I got several letters that were signed by Under Secretary of Management Brian Bulatao, and then there were a number of conversations that had, which I did not participate in.

Q  But nobody has tried to influence your testimony. Is that correct?

A  No. That is correct.

Q  And did you talk to Ambassador Yovanovitch after or before her testimony with us?

A  When you say "talked," what's your timeframe? What are your time --

Q  Since she appeared, which was last Friday?

A  I have not had any conversations with her since then. My wife, I believe, has because of the health of her mother. And my wife visited her mother in hospital and then had a conversation with Masha.

Q  Okay. But you didn't speak to her about her been the same week and certainly was within the same month. He came over from Joint Chiefs at the end of the summer of 2018.

Q  Do you know when his detail was up?

A  Generally, again, I've never worked at the NSC, but my general understanding is it's 1-year renewable. And generally, because of the budget and staffing patterns, they ask for detailees, which the host agencies pay for. And generally they come from State, Office of Secretary of Defense, or JCS in the Intel Community, and Treasury also provides individuals. Under Secretary Tillerson, when he had our staff freeze, he tried to limit all detailees. So, as a result, the number of State Department officials on detail at the NSC dropped dramatically, and that required, in order to staff it at similar levels, an increase in detailees from the Intel Community, the Pentagon, and JCS.

Q  Do you know when his detail is up?

A  Well, he's obviously in his second year now, and I get the sense that there are mechanisms to allow for renewable, even though that's not standard. Those jobs are incredibly draining, so most people are happy to do 1 year and move on. But he clearly got an extension to a second year, but I've never discussed that issue with him. But my presumption is that, at some point, it was extended by a second year. Vindman's interactions with your staff?

A  Yes. He would reach out -- I'm the Deputy Assistant Secretary, but there's an office that works on Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus, and those are three countries for which he had responsibility within the NSC, although he was actually recruited to work on Russia, but he ended up working on Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus, so he is a staff of one for those three countries. So it was natural that he would turn to an office that had multiple people working on those countries to see if they could be supportive.

Q  Okay. And you explained that he had, from time to time, made a lot of requests of your staff?

A  From time to time, he asked for -- a very short fuse -- detailed documentation that the members felt, first of all, was impossible to meet on his deadline and, second of all, distracted them from the work they had to do. And usually they would raise their complaints to their office director, . And , if he did not feel his conversations with Alex could provide sufficient relief, he would ask me to weigh in.

Q  How long has this he been going on?

A  Well, I mean, I believe that Alex came on to the account at the end of the summer of 2018. So my return from Kyiv, I started work the day after Labor Day in September 2018, and his arrival to the NSC staff may have

Catherine doing her 1-year stint, she had worked at the Ukraine desk at the State Department. And there was an officer named who had been working at the Embassy in Kyiv, and he came back and did a year stint at NSC.

So my principal interlocutor when I would go to the NSC to have conversations generally was the State Department director,

Q  Generally, directors at the NSC do not travel on their own, but they often accompany principals. I can say that Victoria Nuland was Assistant Secretary, sometimes Celeste Wallander and Charlie Kupchan would travel with her to countries, whether that would be Russia or Ukraine.

Q  And, again, I spend most of my life in support of others, and so it hurts me to say this, but generally people remember who the principal on the trip was and not all the staff who actually do most of the work.

Q  You talked earlier about Lieutenant Colonel almost all of which were Ukrainian, in the black book.

Q  Would it be fair to say that there were some Ukrainians that were trying to influence the outcome?

A  I honestly do not know. I was in Ukraine, and so I was not privy to whatever activities may have been happening here in the United States.

Q  when I would go to the NSC, the person I would normally talk to directly was the State Department detailee, the woman I mentioned previously, Catherine Croft, who has been working with Kurt Volker, she was a director at the NSC for Ukraine. And prior to

Q  Who was the Deputy Assistant Secretary at the time? A It would have been Bridget Brink, my predecessor.

Q  So, other than this, you know, reading this story, you did not ever come into any firsthand information relating to ?

A  No.

Q  Or learn about any initiative on behalf of the DNC to promulgate some of this information?

A  No.

Q  The story walks through Serhiy Leshchenko's role in publicizing the Manafort ledgers.

A  The so-called black ledgers, yes.

Q  What do you recall about that?

A  About the black ledgers?

Q  Yeah.

A  I recall that those were documents apparently found at the former estate of the previous President who fled to Russia, Viktor Yanukovych, and it indicated individuals who had been receiving payments by the former ruling party.

Q  And at the time Leshchenko, at least it's reported here, suggested that his motivation was partly to undermine Trump?

A  He's a Ukrainian citizen. I don't know what his motivations are. I know that he was an investigative journalist, and there were, as I recall, hundreds of names,

[5:37 p.m.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  And when you read this article, did you do any followup, communicate with anybody at the State Department about the validity of this?

A  I was in Ukraine. They were in Washington. And I presumed that people had read it. But it's an article by two journalists that I don't think I've met. But, you know, it was -- obviously, people were talking about it because of the allegations --

Q  Are you familiar with the Embassy's posture during this time period with Ambassador Chaly?

A  Again, at this time, which we're talking about the period of the election, which is November 16, and this article coming out the month of the inaugural in 2017. I was in Ukraine, Kyiv, not here in Washington. That said, I do know Ambassador Chaly. I met him for the first time in the fall of 2004 when he was the think tank --

Q  And he had written an op-ed, I guess, that said some less than positive things about Candidate Trump?

A  It's possible. I mean, "he" being Ambassador Chaly?

Q  Yeah.

A  If you say so. Honestly, again, I was in Ukraine focused on that end of the relationship. to some things just and ask you whether you have any awareness or ever remember this issue coming up. I'm not going to ask you to, you know, adopt the article as, you know, personal endorsement or anything.

Were you aware that a Ukrainian American named was, you know, a consultant for the Democratic National Committee and had made some overtures to the Ukrainian Embassy?

A  I was not aware of that. I did at the time read this article nearly 3 years ago now. But, yes, I read this article.

A  What I said --

Q  Could you just go through that again?

A  Right.

Q  I haven't heard that name lately.

A  That was a message -- that was described in the shorthand of the desire to have -- this was the Gordon Sondland messaging of what the Ukrainians need to say in shorthand 2016. And in shorthand, it was suggested that the Ukrainians needed -- Zelenskyy needed to go to a microphone and basically there needed to be three words in the message, and that was the shorthand.

Q  Clinton was shorthand for 2016?

A  2016, yes.

Q  Okay. Are you aware of the narrative that there were some Ukrainians that tried to influence the outcome of the election?

A  I recall reading a Politico article to that effect in the spring of 2017, yeah.

[Minority Exhibit No. 4
Was marked for identification.]

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  Okay. I'm going to mark as exhibit -- what are we up to, 4? These guys love this article. This is a Politico article by Ken Vogel dated January 2017. It’s, like, 18 pages. It goes into some depth. I'm just going to point you she said, why? And he says, that's how I communicate. So if you want to communicate with me, the prime minister of Ukraine, you need to go back to the embassy and have them download those apps.

So she came back to the embassy. We checked with our communications and Diplomatic Security specialists. The assessment was that Viber was not as secure as WhatsApp, and that we were authorized to use WhatsApp for communications as long as records were saved.

Q  Okay. So the use of WhatsApp by U.S. official, State Department official, White House official, presents no problems as long as everything is saved?

A  I didn't say that, but at least we're in --

Q  Like, what kind of problems would it present as long as everything is saved?

A  Well, I think there always is a challenge with the integrity of data. And, for instance, Minister Avakov of Ukraine, who I've referenced several times, minister of interior, told me and another member of the staff, in 2018, that there were now ways, thanks to Israeli code writers, of cracking the alleged encryption of text messages on WhatsApp. So for people who thought they were encrypted and therefore safe, at least the text messages, the texts as opposed to the voice could be accessed by people.

Q  Okay. Moments ago you referenced the name Clinton? actively promoting the request for Ukraine to open these investigations.

Q  Okay. And it would be inconsistent with your understanding if these investigations were for Ukrainians to open matters into misdeeds by Ukrainian -- genuine misdeeds by Ukrainians, whether it relates to Burisma or 2016?

A  We obviously want Ukraine to have effective law enforcement and justice sector institutions. That's in order to be able to investigate, prosecute, and judge any criminal acts. Again, as I said, I think the issue for what we ask them to do in certain cases should start from whether there's a criminal nexus in the U.S. because that's our role as the U.S. Government, not to dictate that you should investigate this person because it's in our political interest.

Q  Okay. You've mentioned WhatsApp a few times. That's a completely standard messaging application to use for State Department officials, correct, as long as everything is saved first?

A  In certain countries it’s almost required for business. And I'll give you the example of how I ended up first using WhatsApp. When Ambassador Yovanovitch had her first meeting with the then new prime minister of Ukraine, Volodymyr Hroysman, who is 41 years old, and she arrived in August, so I'm presuming it was late August or early September, he asked if she were on WhatsApp and Viber. And We both wanted the best for Ukraine. We both wanted the best for U.S.-Ukraine relations. He saw Rudy Giuliani as an issue to be addressed, and potentially an ally to be incorporated to get the U.S. President to where we wanted our relationship to be, which is having a meeting.

My concern could be summed up by the means don't necessarily justify -- you know, the ends don't necessarily justify the means, that if we're trying to put trade space on the table of an investigation, that can violate a principle that undermines what we're trying to do on a matter of policy.

Q  My understanding of what -- how he looked at Rudy was that he thought Mr. Giuliani was amplifying a negative narrative, meaning a false narrative, meaning that whatever Rudy Giuliani was communicating, you know, about to the President was something that needed to be fixed. And since the President and Rudy Giuliani had communications on a somewhat regular basis, he thought that it was a relationship he had to try to work on if he could.

A  Yeah. That is my understanding of his rationale for engaging the former mayor of New York.

Q  Okay. And by no means was he adopting the narrative that Rudy Giuliani was proselytizing?

A  I don't know what Kurt's view was about the narrative. What I know is that by September, Kurt was inconsistent with your understanding?

A  Well, I think I can only share the conversation I had with Kurt, and the conversation was framed differently.

Q  Okay.

A  But, again, I wasn't here. I haven't seen the transcript of what he said to you. So I can only share my recollection of my conversations with him.

Q  Sure. And did he communicate that differently, or did you just maybe understand it differently, or is there a possible disconnect there, or are these two different things?

A  I think that there are two people who -- we're talking at this point about a conversation that took place 3 months ago, that neither of us were taking notes. We were standing up. And so, I would say that, you know, he has shared his recollection of the conversation, and I shared mine.

Q  Okay. But your recollection was that they were pushing for political investigations that had no merit?

A  When he said that he was going to engage Rudy Giuliani about Ukraine, because Rudy Giuliani was clearly influencing the President's views of Ukraine, I reminded him what Rudy Giuliani was doing in Ukraine and about Ukraine, about which I had concerns.

That's why I say that I think Kurt was approaching -- in my understanding, he was approaching this issue tactically.

Q  But he thought that it may have -- that the aid may be contingent on this?

A  I have subsequently seen his tweets, which -- or not his tweets, the WhatsApp messages that Kurt Volker issued. And so it appears to me, having seen those WhatsApp messages, that he was sharing his concerns with Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Volker.

MR. GOLDMAN: Okay. I think our time is up. So we will yield to the minority.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q  When Volker was communicating to you about various investigations that would occur in the Ukraine, whether it relates to Burisma 2016, is it possible -- the way I understood his -- you know, we spoke to Volker.

A  Right.

Q  He was in here. The way I understood his -- the way he communicated it was that if there were Ukrainians engaged in misdeeds, corruption, then, you know -- and it could relate to Burisma, it could relate to bringing Hunter Biden on the board, it could relate to Ukrainians doing nefarious things in the run-up to the 2016 election, then the Ukrainians ought to investigate fellow Ukrainians.

A  So you're saying that's what Ambassador Volker said to you and the committee?

Q  That was my understanding of what he said. Is that Ukraine is known as the YES Conference. That used to stand for Yalta European Strategy back when Crimea and Yalta were under Ukrainian control.

And it was going to happen, start in a couple of days. I flew out to Ukraine to take part in that conference as did Ambassador Volker. And Charge Taylor indicated that Ambassador Sondland was pushing a line that included having President Zelenskyy give an interview potentially with CNN during the YES Conference that weekend in which he would send this public signal of announcing a willingness to pursue investigations.

Q  And did Ambassador Sondland discuss a White House visit in the context of that statement?

A  I think the anticipation or the hope was that sending that signal would clear the way for both the White House visit as well as the resumption or the clearing of the administrative hold on security assistance, which had been placed by 0MB. Although, Charge Taylor asserted to me that both Tim Morrison and Gordon Sondland specifically said that they did not believe that the two issues were linked.

Q  What was Ambassador Taylor's reaction to this whole conversation?

A  He told me he indicated to Gordon, he said, This is wrong. That's what I recall him saying to me, again, orally reading out of a conversation of which I was not a part. And Gordon had told him, Tim, and Tim told Bill Taylor, that he, Gordon, had talked to the President, POTUS in sort of shorthand, and POTUS wanted nothing less than President Zelenskyy to go to microphone and say investigations, Biden, and Clinton.

Q  And in return for what?

A  That was not clear to me. I wasn't part of this exchange. But Bill Taylor then followed up with a video conference, our normal Monday call in which he elaborated on his conversations with both senior director Morrison on the 7th as well as with Ambassador Sondland on the 8th.

Q  And what did he say?

A  He said that Morrison indicated that Rudy Giuliani had recently talked to the President again, and he said, as you can imagine, that creates difficulties managing the Ukraine account.

On his conversation with Ambassador Sondland on the 8th, I believe they went into more detail about Ambassador Sondland's efforts to try to facilitate a proper approach, in his view, to open up the possibility of a visit to the White House.

Q  So can you explain a little bit?

A  Well, this was taking place -- this conversation was taking place with Ambassador Taylor and I on the 9th of September. The biggest annual conference on Ukraine in Colonel Vindman or his boss, which was Fiona Hill and then now has become Tim Morrison.

Q  Right. And I thank you for that clarification. So official U.S. policy remain the same, but there's sort of a secondary or shadow policy that was now being perpetrated by U.S. officials? Was that what you learned?

A  I had growing concerns that individuals were pushing communications with Ukrainians that had not been discussed and endorsed in the formal policy process, yes.

Q  Now, it sounds like you went on vacation right after you wrote this memo to file, which, just as an aside, I assume you also provided to the State Department --

A  I did.

Q  -- to turn over.

Did you have any subsequent conversations with anyone about this revelation that you had?

A  Well, I believe -- I went away. I came back after Labor Day. The next communication or data point that I can recall was a WhatsApp message that Charge Taylor sent me on September 7, which would have been, I think, the Saturday after Labor Day.

Q  And what did that WhatsApp message say?

A  Charge Taylor indicated that he had talked to Tim Morrison, who is the senior director for Europe, who replaced Fiona Hill. And Tim indicated that he had talked to Gordon. Presidents is never easy. President Poroshenko spent several years also trying to get a visit to the White House, and that was more happenstance, the visit he made in June 2017. So I have an appreciation that just because a leader of a country wants to visit Washington and have an Oval Office visit doesn't mean it that happens.

So I would say there was one track of trying to get a visit. There was another track of what we were engaging Ukraine formally through normal channels. And then this particular moment was the time where not just what I read on tweets by private citizens, but a greater understanding of actions taken by U.S. officials, in this case, Ambassador Volker, that my concerns grew.

Q  And just so we can understand, you sort of described just there kind of two parallel tracks of official U.S. policy. Is that an accurate assessment?

A  I think official U.S. policy are policies that are determined and endorsed. And in this administration there's the National Security Presidential Memorandum 4 that was issued in April of 2017, and that actually is what determines the formal policy process for formulating U.S. policy on any issue or country.

And what we're talking about now are issues and approaches that were not discussed in the interagency process as staffed by the NSC and the person of either Lieutenant

A  Those align with the Rudy Giuliani tweet. I think it was June 21, as well as some of the other story lines from earlier in the spring before President Zelenskyy was elected.

Q  Right. I just want to be clear that when you say politically motivated investigation --

A  That is what I'm referring to, yeah.

Q  -- that's what you're referring to. Okay.

Were you aware of efforts to convince the Ukrainian Government to issue a statement a couple days before the August 15 time period?

A  I was not aware of the effort to negotiate the text of the statement that came out as a result of Ambassador Volker's testimony here, and the tweets that he released, no, not until I had read those.

Q  So you were completely unaware of those discussions related to a possible statement about investigations?

A  Correct.

Q  Now, at that point, on August 15, when you look back on the previous 2 months, let's say, the readout from the June 28 call that you got from Ambassador Taylor, the conversation that you had with Ambassador Volker in Toronto, did you have a different view on what this White House visit and the interplay between a potential White House visit and these investigations?

A  As I mentioned before, arranging visits between

And so after having had these two conversations, I wrote a note to the file saying that I had concerns that there was an effort to initiate politically motivated prosecutions that were injurious to the rule of law, both in Ukraine and the U.S.

I informed the senior official still present and the European Bureau at 7:30 on a Friday night in the middle of the summer, which was Michael Murphy, and informed him of my intent to write a note to the file, which he agreed was the right thing to do.

Q  And when you say politically motivated investigations, are you referring to investigations that were also referenced in that July 25 call record?

A  At the time, I had no knowledge of the specifics of the call record, but based on Bill Taylor's account of the engagements with Andriy Yermak that were the engagements of Yermak with Kurt Volker, at that point it was clear that the investigations that were being suggested were the ones that Rudy Giuliani had been tweeting about, meaning Biden, Burisma, and 2016.

Q  And I understand you didn't know the contents of the call record, but now being able to read the call record as you have, you are referring to the Biden investigation that the President mentioned, as well as the CrowdStrike 2016 investigation. Is that right? what I described to Catherine the day before, which is the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty option. And I told Bill Taylor, that's wrong, and we shouldn't be doing that as a matter of U.S. policy.

Q  What did he say?

A  He said he agreed with me.

Q  Now, had you had any conversations with Ambassador Taylor after July 25 and prior to August 16 about this issue?

A  Not that I can recall.

Q  Had you had any conversations with -- well --

A  About this issue, I mean, we had a --

Q  Yes.

A  -- regularly scheduled weekly teleconference that involved teams, and if there were anything sensitive, we could finish up in a one-to-one. We also had a relationship that if there were needs, just like with any ambassador, they could call me up, you know, for an unscheduled conversation.

Q  And that never occurred in that 3-week span?

A  I do not recall us having a conversation specifically, you know, if you will, out of the regular schedule until Friday, August 16. And I say it's a Friday, because I was scheduled to get on a plane, leave my house at about 6:00 a.m. to go to the airport, fly out to California to go hiking in Yosemite with my family. So I had a very time-bound limit. ideas. Some of them are great; some of them are not so good. And part of the role of the special assistant as well as people like me is to ensure that the ideas stay within the bounds of U.S. policy.

Q  And what was her response?

A  She took that onboard.

Q  But why was that conversation important to you to crystalize what was going on?

A  Well, because there had been a lot of talk, you know. Frankly, what a private citizen tweets is an exercise in one way of First Amendment rights, but when you have U.S. Government employees, or in this case, a special U.S. Government employee potentially seemingly to align to that view, that's when it became real for me and a matter of concern.

And that was, as I said, I said the 15th and 16th, because the next day, I had a conversation with Charge Taylor in which he amplified the same theme. And he indicated that Special Representative Volker had been engaging Andriy Yermak; that the President and his private attorney, Rudy Giuliani, were interested in the initiation of investigations; and that Yermak was very uncomfortable when this was raised with him, and suggested that if that were the case, if that were really the position of the United States, it should be done officially and put in writing, essentially mouth, but there was a significance to August 15 and 16. What was the significance to those dates in your mind?

A  On August 15, the new special assistant to Special Representative Volker, Catherine Croft, came to my office and asked me, said she was trying to find out some information on behalf of Kurt. And she said, you, George, know about our relations with Ukraine, particularly in law enforcement. Have we ever asked the Ukrainians to investigate anybody?

And I told her, I said, well, Catherine, there are two ways of looking at that question. If there is a crime that was committed in the United States and any nexus for us to take action, we have two mechanisms: We have the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, and we have the legal attaches at the embassy, and that's the way a law enforcement investigation should engage the Ukrainians.

The other option, which I -- from the context of what has been spoken about in the press, maybe what you're asking is the political option. And if you're asking me have we ever gone to the Ukrainians and asked them to investigate or prosecute individuals for political reasons, the answer is, I hope we haven't, and we shouldn't because that goes against everything that we are trying to promote in post Soviet states for the last 28 years, which is the promotion of the rule of law.

And I also then told her, I said, Kurt has a lot of

Q  Understood. But given everything that you knew, and you certainty have indicated today that you were aware of the public narratives --

A  Yeah.

Q  -- what did you understand him to mean?

A  I had presumed at the time, and I may have put in my notes just in parentheses, Giuliani, and that was the way I interpreted what he said. But, again, he was very uncomfortable having the conversation. He initiated the conversation, but it was very clear he was uncomfortable sharing this limited summary, including not going into the detail of the call itself.

Q  Did you come to learn whether or not Ambassador Volker -- in real time, at the time, did you come to learn that Ambassador Volker did meet with Mr. Giuliani?

A  Kurt told me he was going to meet, and so, I had every reason to believe that he then followed up on what he said he was going to do. But he did not share with me the exact contents of his discussions with the Mayor, no.

Q  Did you know at any point whether Ambassador Volker had introduced Andriy Yermak to Mr. Giuliani?

A  I believe I became aware of that in mid-August.

Q  So you said that earlier, a few minutes ago, you said that August 15, 16 time period was when you seemed to confirm that -- well, I don't want to put words in your

A  That's as much as I recall. But, again, as I said, it was a conversation that had a personal component that had nothing to do with work, and then part of the conversation had to do with work.

Q  So when did you become aware that President Trump and President Zelenskyy were going to speak on July 25?

A  I believe I was informed by Lieutenant Colonel Vindman on July 24, the day prior. And as I mentioned before, that's when I sent a message to the embassy suggesting that they test the line to make sure the call went through.

Q  And I believe you said the only readout you got from the call was from Lieutenant Colonel Vindman?

A  Correct.

Q  When you described that readout in addition to emphasizing how Mr. Vindman was uncomfortable and the sensitive nature of the call, so he wasn't comfortable talking about it, you did say, I wrote down here, that he mentioned that there was a -- that President Trump had discussed the extreme narratives that had been discussed publicly. Is that --

A  At that point, I don't think he said that President Trump discussed. What I recall is that he said at this point the conversation went into the most extreme narratives. And that was him making a summary without providing any detail. any conversations with the Chief of Staff Mulvaney on this topic?

A  As I mentioned before, it was clear to me that Ambassador Sondland had a direct connection with Chief of Staff Mulvaney, and that's actually how the May 23 readout was put on the President's schedule. It was not, to the best of my knowledge, done through the national security staff and Ambassador Bolton. It was done Ambassador Sondland directly to Chief of Staff Mulvaney.

Q  Right. But I'm asking now in July. When Dr. Hill talked to you and voiced concerns about Sondland, did she mention anything about Sondland's relationship with Mr. Mulvaney?

A  She may have, but I do not remember.

Q  Okay. Do you recall anything else that she said about Ambassador Sondland in that meeting -- was it a meeting or a phone call?

A  It was a conversation, but I will say that it was also not entirely about work. We have a mutual friend whose wife died of cancer, and he is a Foreign Service officer and studied in St. Andrews with Fiona, and that's where he met his wife. And so she had passed away. So part of the conversation was just about our mutual friend who died.

Q  And the part that was about Ukraine, was there anything more that -- call or a meeting, discussion. But, again, I don't remember the content, and also, keep in mind that we had responsibilities -- I only had responsibilities for six countries. She had responsibilities for many more.

Q  Right. Okay. So you don't remember if she voiced any concerns about what was going on with Rudy Giuliani or anything related to that?

A  I honestly can't remember the content of that conversation apart from I know that she had some concerns about nonstandard actors. I believe, in that conversation, she expressed concern with Gordon Sondland's approach.

Q  What concerns did she express with Gordon Sondland?

A  To the best of my recollection, she had concerns possibly based on having been in conversations in the Oval Office that he made assertions about conversations that did not match with what had actually been said in the Oval Office.

Q  Can you elaborate with any more detail?

A  I was not in those conversations, so --

Q  I'm just asking what she told you. I understand you weren’t in them.

A  I think she may have been as direct as saying that Gordon Sondland lies about conversations that occur in the Oval Office.

Q  Did she indicate to you that Gordon Sondland had

A  Yes.

Q  -- for production to Congress and pursuant to the subpoena?

A  Yes.

Q  Okay. So let me just make sure I understand. You heard from Ambassador Taylor at the end of June that there was -- correct me if this summary is wrong -- that at the end of June, that there was a conversation with Taylor, Ambassador Sondland, Volker, and Secretary Perry where they discussed the need for President Zelenskyy to initiate some -- I think you said investigations was the readout you got in that call?

A  Well, sending the right signal without the details of the --

Q  Without the details. And the Ambassador Volker reaffirmed that to you directly before the meeting with President Zelenskyy in Toronto?

A  Correct.

Q  Okay. Up until the July 25 call, from July 2 to July 25, did you have any more discussions with anyone about the notion of Ukraine pursuing these investigations either specifically or more generally in terms of cooperation?

A  I do not recall any additional conversations that I had in July. But I can't rule it out. Again, I had a conversation with Fiona, I remember that, a sort of farewell

A  It was different than the State Department assessment, and it was different than the assessment of Secretary Perry, Sondland, and Volker.

Q  Okay. But the President was listening to the Giuliani, Orban, Putin contingent --

A  I don't know.

Q  -- according to Dr. Hill?

A  According to Dr. Hill, in assessing the change from late April to late May, but then we had also the instructions coming out of that meeting leading to the signing of the letter on May 29 and the efforts to help Ukraine particularly in the energy sector.

Q  Dr. Hill told us that she departed on July 19, and that prior to leaving, she had a conversation with you.

A  That -- again, I recall us speaking sometime in July. I honestly don't recall the content of that. One reason why I recall more specifics from May is that as I was looking through my notes to find records to provide to the State Department to be responsive to the subpoena, I found notes that I took when I talked to her in May. When I was going through my notes I did not find notes of our conversation in July. But, yes, I do recall that we talked in July.

Q  And did you provide the notes from that May call to the Department --

Q  And did Dr. Hill think that that had an impact on President Trump's outlook?

A  I cannot recall what she said in that meeting besides giving me the brief readouts of those two meetings, but that was my takeaway, and that those two world leaders, along with former Mayor Giuliani, their communications with President Trump shaped the President's view of Ukraine and Zelenskyy, and would account for the change from a very positive first call on April 21 to his negative assessment of Ukraine when he had the meeting in the Oval Office on May 23.

Q  And it was your understanding that Sondland, Perry, Volker, when they came back from the inauguration they were very positive about President Zelenskyy. Is that right?

A  That is correct.

Q  And that generally the State Department had a positive outlook on President Zelenskyy?

A  We were cautiously optimistic that this was an opportunity to push forward the reform that Ukraine needs to succeed in resisting Russian aggression, building a successful economy, and, frankly, a justice system that will treat American investors and Ukrainian citizens equally before the law.

Q  But the message from Orban, Putin, and Giuliani was different than the message that the State Department was relaying. Is that right? Security Council?

A  She was scheduled to leave at the end of July. I don't recall which particular day of which particular week.

Q  Did you have a meeting or a conversation with her before she left?

A  Yes, I did.

Q  And did you discuss any of these issues that we've been talking about today with her?

A  Yes, but to be honest, I don't recall the last time we had a conversation, and when we had the conversation would be important to what we talked about. A conversation that I recall, and I took notes actually dated to mid-May in which we talked about the change of attitude and approach towards Ukraine, and that was in the wake of meetings that President Trump had, a meeting with Viktor Orban, the leader of Hungary, as well as a call he had with Russian President Putin in early May.

Q  And what was the change following those two conversations with Orban and Putin?

A  Fiona assessed the conversations as being similar in tone and approach. And both leaders, both Putin and Orban, extensively talked Ukraine down, said it was corrupt, said Zelenskyy was in the thrall of oligarchs, specifically mentioning this one oligarch Kolomoisky, negatively shaping a picture of Ukraine, and even President Zelenskyy personally. any activities with regard to the advocacy for these investigations?

A  We are, in your exploration of a timeline, not yet to the point where that became apparent to me that this is where U.S. policy -- or not U.S. policy, where U.S. engagement was headed.

Q  Okay. And we'll probably get there, but when would you say that time is?

A  Well, I think in retrospect, from the release of the WhatsApp messages, it started earlier than I was aware.

Q  When were you ultimately aware?

A  I would say that the middle of August, specifically August 15 and 16, was when I became aware that this was actively in play.

Q  Okay. So did you get -- we're going to get there, but did you get a readout from that July 10 meeting from anybody?

A  I do not recall. I was on the road for -- because it was a multi-country trip. I was on the road for more than a week. I saw the picture that was tweeted out, maybe from Kurt Volker, maybe from Gordon Sondland, that had the two Ukrainians, which were Oleksandr Danylyuk and Andriy Yermak, close assistant and associate to President Zelenskyy, as well as the Americans.

Q  Do you recall when Fiona Hill left the National

A  I wouldn't say that I was cut out of the loop. As I indicated, Kurt and I continued to have a back and forth. I was aware that obviously other players had come into the picture. And you had Secretary Perry convening a meeting with a number of State Department officials.

You had Gordon Sondland giving a public interview that the three amigos were now in charge of Ukraine, and by that he meant Perry, Sondland, and Volker. I heard Volker say that to President Zelenskyy in Toronto, but I was in that meeting.

Q  Volker called them the three amigos to Zelenskyy?

A  No. Sondland, in a public interview, called themselves three amigos. Volker just stated that coming out of the meeting with President Trump at the Oval Office, that those were the three officials that would be taking the lead on our policy towards Ukraine.

Q  Were you speaking regularly with Bill Taylor in June and July?

A  Yes. There’s a schedule of -- every Monday there is a generally scheduled secure video conference. It's not just one-on-one. Usually it's with office director, deputy director from my side, and members of the country team on his side. That was the schedule that dated back --

Q  Well, let me rephrase the question. Did you speak to Charge Taylor about the three amigos, or Rudy Giuliani or and lower my profile in Ukraine.

Q  Who told you that?

A  The message was relayed from my supervisor, Acting Assistant Secretary Reeker message relayed from Under Secretary Hale.

Q  Do you know if it became from above Under Secretary Hale?

A  All I know is that Assistant Secretary Reeker, after a meeting with Under Secretary Hale said that Under Secretary Hale had directed me to keep my head down and a lower profile in Ukraine.

Q  And what did you understand a lower profile in Ukraine to mean, given that you oversaw the policy for the State Department on Ukraine?

A  Well, I oversee policy for six countries, and this was a day or two before I was going on leave to go visit -- attend my daughter’s and go hiking in Maine. And so I said, Fine, you're not going to hear me talk about an; country for the next week and a half. And I did cancel sot public appearances on Ukraine in June, sort of think tank sessions around Washington.

Q  And at that point, did you sense that you were cut out of the loop in terms of State Department policy discussions and dealings with Ukraine given this Volker, Sondland, Perry triumvirate? I have since been made aware by seeing the WhatsApp messages that Kurt released that he said he had breakfast with Giuliani on July 16th, so it would make sense that my conversation with Kurt happened before then -- July 19th -- because he was telling me that he would reach out to Mayor Giuliani .

Q  Did you discourage him from reaching out to Mayor Giuliani?

A  I asked him what his purpose was, and that's when he said, as I relayed earlier, that because, clearly, former Mayor Giuliani was an influence on the President's thinking of Ukraine that he, Kurt Volker, felt it was worthwhile engaging --

Q  Right. I know. But did you think it was worthwhile engaging?

A  What I understood was Kurt was thinking tactically and I was concerned strategically.

Q  Did you have any discussions with anyone else at the State Department by mid-July, any time up to mid-July or prior to, about Mr. Giuliani's potential influence on the President and the fact that what he was advocating may be contrary to official U.S. policy?

A  I did not, in part because after Giuliani attacked me, as well as Ambassador Yovanovitch and the entire embassy, in his late May interview, I was told to keep my head down a dinner for heads of delegation to which Kurt was invited. I was not because there was just one U.S. attendee. So, for instance, whatever the anchor night was, he went to the leaders meeting, and I met with other Ukrainians who were there.

Q  Are you familiar with a July 10 meeting at the White House involving senior Ukrainian officials and senior American officials?

A  I saw pictures tweeted outside after the meeting. At the time I was on a multi-country swing that included, among other countries, Moldova and Ukraine.

Q  So you were unaware -- prior to the meeting occurring, you were unaware that it was happening?

A  I knew that there was going to be a meeting. The principals for that meeting were Ambassador Bolton and Oleksandr Danylyuk, who'd been appointed the head of the National Security and Defense Council in Ukraine, which doesn't have an analogous role to our National Security Council but has a name that sounds similar. And Oleksandr Danylyuk is a Ukrainian official well-known to many of us who have worked on Ukraine.

Q  Now, just to be clear, the conversation that you had with Kurt Volker, even if you aren't sure that it was in Toronto, it occurred before your European swing?

A  I can't tell you for certain when in July it was. the rule of law. And that was the nature of the exchange, at some point in July, either at Toronto or perhaps, more likely, mid-July in the State Department.

Q  Now, Ambassador Volker is a longtime, you know, Foreign Service officer, right?

A  He is.

Q  What was his reaction when you said that this would undermine the rule of law and everything that we stand for?

A  I do not recall him giving a verbal response.

Q  Okay. And so presumably you and Kurt Volker were in Toronto for some time, right?

A  We arrived, to the best of my recollection, on the 1st and departed late afternoon of the 3rd. We did not travel together.

Q  Did you spend any time together there?

A  We were in many meetings together, yes.

Q  Did you spend any meals together?

A  I do not recall us having working meals together, but it was a hectic trip and generally, his -- or hectic, not trip, but set of meetings. There were a lot of Ukrainians there, and I had a lot of sidebar meetings with attendees at the conference.

Q  So --

A  I should also say that there was a -- because Kurt was head of delegation, the Canadian foreign minister hosted the meeting.

Q  And what was your reaction to the ask as you understood it from Volker at the time?

A  At the time, I was interested to see where this thought pattern would go. I do not recall whether the follow-on conversation I had with Kurt about this was in Toronto, or whether it was subsequently at the State Department. But he did tell me that he planned to start reaching out to the former Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani.

And when I asked him why, he said that it was clear that the former mayor had influence on the President in terms of the way the President thought of Ukraine. And I think by that moment in time, that was self-evident to anyone who was working on the issues, and therefore, it made sense to try to engage the mayor.

When I raised with Kurt, I said, about what? Because former Mayor Giuliani has a track record of, you know, asking for a visa for a corrupt former prosecutor. He attacked Masha, and he's tweeting that the new President needs to investigate Biden and the 2016 campaign.

And Kurt's reaction, or response to me at that was, well, if there's nothing there, what does it matter? And if there is something there, it should be investigated. My response to him was asking another country to investigate a prosecution for political reasons undermines our advocacy of cooperation with President Trump?

A  What I was aware of was that there was an interest, and Kurt was sending a signal of a desire to have Zelenskyy be cooperative, but I did not know the details of what the ask was on that date, July 2.

Q  Okay. Did Kurt Volker explain to you what he discussed with President Zelenskyy in that pull-aside afterwards?

A  No. But he explained -- he was, I would say, relatively transparent beforehand. This is what I'm going to do, and this is my message and this is why.

Q  And how did you -- what did he say the why was?

A  Well, I think his goal, to my understanding, based on my conversations with him, he was trying to get through what seemed to be a hiccup in the communications, and wanted to get President Trump and President Zelenskyy together, counting on Zelenskyy's personal interactive skills to build rapport and carry the relationship forward.

Q  Okay. But that's the why he was doing it?

A  That was my understanding, based on what I heard from Kurt prior to the meeting, yes.

Q  And what did he tell you after about the meeting?

A  It was, you know -- it was a several-minute exchange, and so I just presumed that he had said and raised the ask in the way that he had described to me right before signaling something in his cooperative attitude towards something the President was interested in.

Q  And at that point you did not know what the President was interested in?

A  At that point, Kurt Volker did not say, nor was I aware of what the President was interested. Rudy Giuliani was tweeting what Rudy Giuliani thought, but Rudy Giuliani was and is -- remains a private citizen, not an official of the U.S. Government.

Q  Right. Did you understand why Kurt Volker needed to have this in a private pull-aside -- have this conversation in a private pull-aside meeting rather than with everyone there?

A  Well, it was clear that he both wanted to restrict knowledge of it, and considered the matter sensitive. But, again, I had not been on the June 28 conference call. I heard about that subsequently from Charge Taylor.

And I had also not been involved in any of the conversations that had gone on. I wasn't there at the June 18 nor the May 23. So sometimes I can get readouts officially of meetings, but if you're not there, you miss the sidebar conversations that can take place.

Q  So it's your testimony that you did not -- you were not aware at that point of what the sensitive issue that Kurt Volker needed to talk about related to President Zelenskyy's on July 2 about the investigations that Rudy Giuliani had been promoting?

A  There was not a discussion in the full format of everyone on both sides of the table. However, prior to the meeting, Ambassador Volker told me that he would need to have a private meeting separately with the President, that he would pull him aside. And he explained to me that the purpose of that private conversation was to underscore the importance of the messaging that Zelenskyy needed to provide to President Trump about his willingness to be cooperative.

And that happened -- as the meeting broke up, he announced that he needed to have a private meeting. He went around to the Ukrainian side of the table and pulled Zelenskyy, his chief of staff, Bohdan, and the translator. I was standing about 10 feet of the way, introducing myself to Andriy Yermak and talking to him. So that was -- Volker had several minutes with Zelenskyy, his chief of staff and the interpreter.

Q  You said the messaging about the willing -- or cooperation.

A  Yeah.

Q  Cooperation about what?

A  The details at that point were not clear to me. I would say that Kurt Volker had not provided additional details. It was more that President Zelenskyy needed to be Georgia is a country which Congress appropriates over $100 million a year. And so I am juggling responsibilities for these six countries and traveling to all six countries. So we are focusing on one of six countries today for which I have responsibility. So I do not live, breathe every single second of my life focused on Ukraine, no.

MR. GOLDMAN: I think that's time.

Ambassador Kent, you've been here a long day and I'm sure --

MR. KENT: I'm not Ambassador.

MR. GOLDMAN: I'm sorry. Mr. Kent. The members are going to have to go vote I think in about 20 minutes. So I know you've just sat through another hour and a half. Would you like to take a 5-minute break --

MR. KENT: I'd appreciate that.

MR. GOLDMAN: And then we'll come right back. Okay. Let's do that.

[Recess.]

MR. GOLDMAN: Back on the record. It's 6:20, and it's the majority's round. Mr. Kent, thank for your patience and diligence today, we are nearing the end.

Mr. Mitchell.

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  Sir, in the last round, you mentioned security assistance. Can you just generally describe what Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative is?

A  Well, that is a specific term that refers to money appropriated in the Defense budget as opposed to the State Department budget. Traditionally, foreign assistance was appropriated under what's known as foreign military financing in State Department budget. Several years ago, Congress started appropriating monies in the Defense budget. And so the Ukraine Security Initiative is monies that are made available in the Defense budget. And that is something that was started maybe 3 years ago and has grown in scope. The fiscal year 2019, which just concluded, it was $250 million.

Q  Are you generally familiar then with both USAI and FMF?

A  Generally familiar, but I did not ever have line authority over security assistance in the way I had for a rule of law and justice sector assistance.

Q  And when you say "authority," do you mean both when you were in Ukraine as well as in your current position?

A  The way security assistance works, regardless of what budget it is appropriated in, the monies are executed by agents usually affiliated in the case of Ukraine with European Command, and we have an Office of Defense Cooperation in the Embassy. And the direction in how we spend that money is usually determined in a joint military commission between EUCOM and the Ukrainian general staff administrative heads.

Q  Are you generally familiar with the way in which, the process by which USAI funds are released?

A  Are you now talking about a budgetary process here in Washington?

Q  So, for example, does Ukraine need to meet certain benchmarks before those funds can be released?

A  The authorizers in Congress have put conditionality for the last several years on the second half. So, for instance, this past year, $250 million, there was a conditionality on the second $125 million. In a previous year, I don’t know if it was the previous year -- I don’t know if it’s the previous 2 years ago or the first year 3 years ago -- there was that conditionality, but the appropriators did not appropriate as much money as the authorizers authorized. So the conditionality did not kick in. But, yes, generally the authorizers and appropriators worked together to put conditionality on the monies in the USAI.

Q  And what was your involvement, if any, on determining whether the conditionality had been met?

A  The conditionality is set by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. My counterpart, Laura Cooper, plays a principal role in that, and the determination to Congress is made by the Secretary of Defense.

Q  And is there an interagency process that takes place with regard to the release of the funds?

A  Once the funds are in the hands of the U.S. military -- and specifically, I believe, they are held with the Defense Security and Cooperation Agency -- the State Department does not have a role, no. On the front end, discussing what might be appropriate conditions, there is a discussion, but ultimately that is a process, and the specific conditions, and whether they have been met, is determined by the Office of Secretary of Defense.

Q  What about with regard to FMF, how does that work?

A  Foreign military financing, the State Department has a greater role in determining what the policy goals are and how that money would be applied, but that is also very much a collaborative process. And, ultimately, the FMF is also cut over to the U.S. military, specifically, the DSCA is the executive military agent. We don’t spend and implement the programming the way that we would, say, for law enforcement programming. It, again, is monies where we have a greater policy role upfront and voice, but in the end, it’s executed by U.S. military components.

Q  And what is your personal involvement in FMF then?

A  I have frequent conversations with my counterpart, Laura Cooper, not just about Ukraine. She covers more countries, but there’s a lot of assistance going to Georgia, and so we have conversations about multiple countries, and we also talk about the conditionality in Ukraine.

Q  Did you attend any of the PCC or sub-PCC meetings in July regarding security assistance for Ukraine?

A  Yes.

Q  Which ones did you attend?

A  The first one where this issue came up was July 18th. It was a sub-PCC, to the best of my recollection, and the intended topic was

Q  Was there any discussion of the meeting at the sub-PCC level on July 18th about any sort of freeze of the security assistance to Ukraine?

A  Yes.

Q  Can you describe that discussion?

A  It was described as a hold, not a freeze. There was a representative of the Office of Management and Budget. I was at the State Department in a security video conference, I did not recognize the face. And I believe the individual representing OMB at the time was not normally the person who did. It was the summer vacation cycles. And he just stated to the rest of the those participants, either in person or video screens, that the head of the Office of Management and Budget who was the acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, at the direction of the President had put a hold on all security assistance to the Ukraine.

Q  Mulvaney had put a hold at the direction of the President. Is that what you heard?

A  That is what the representative of the Office of Management and Budget stated in the sub-PCC on July 18th, yes.

Q  Was there any discussion following that announcement?

A  There was great confusion among the rest of us because we didn’t understand why that had happened.

Q  Did anyone ask at that sub-PCC meeting why that happened?

A  We did. And the individual said that he apologized, that he normally did not deal with these issues, but this was the message he was asked to convey and he conveyed it.

Q  And the individual being this gentleman from OMB?

A  The representative from the OMB in that particular meeting, yes.

Q  Was that the end of that discussion on this topic?

A  Yes.

Q  On that day?

A  Yes.

Q  Did you have any internal discussions at the Department of State on or about July 18th after this pronouncement had been relayed to you?

A  I did.

Q  And who did you have those discussions with?

A  Tyler Brace, our schedule C political appointee, former staffer for Senator Portman, who understand budgetary processes in great detail.

Q  When did you have that conversation?

A  I believe I had it subsequent to the sub-PCC, same day.

Q  And can you just describe what you talked about?

A  We discussed what the significance of that was because none of us could understand why. Since there was unanimity that this was in our national interest, it just surprised all of us.

Q  When you say "unanimity" that it was in our national interest, what do you mean by that?

A  I believe that it is a factually correct statement to say that there’s broad support among both parties in Congress, both Houses in Congress, and among the State Department, the Defense Department, Joint Chiefs, and other elements of the U.S. Government for the security assistance programs.

Q  Prior to this July 18th meeting, had you gotten any sort of wind or idea that this aid would be frozen or held?

A  No.

Q  And it was your understanding on July 18th that all conditions had been met?

A  For?

Q  To release funds.

A  That was my understanding. You’re talking about the funds for USAI and the FMF fund?

Q  Correct.

A  That was my understanding, yes.

Q  Has your understanding since changed?

A  Well, eventually, the hold was released on September 11th, and the funds were then apportioned by OMB to the extent that it was possible to spend them by the end of the fiscal year, yes.

Q  So do you know anything that changed between July 18th and when they were actually released in September?

A  When you say what changed?

Q  Any sort of conditions.

A  In Ukraine?

Q  Anywhere.

A  My understanding of what happened after that date was that Senior Director Tim Morrison started going up the chain of the interagency process according to National Security Presidential Memorandum 4, and that meant holding a policy coordinating committee meeting, which he scheduled for July 23rd, followed by a deputy small group meeting, which I believe may have occurred on July 26th. And then Senior Director Morrison was looking to schedule a principal small group meeting that would involve the Secretary of State personally, Secretary of Defense, and Ambassador Bolton so they could discuss the issue and then take it to the President.

Q  Were you present for the PCC meeting on July 23rd?

A  I believe I was, yes, as a back-bencher. I was not the principal.

Q  I should have asked you. On the 18th, did you take any notes of that meeting?

A  I did.

Q  And are those among to notes thank you provided to the Department of State to produce to Congress?

A  They should be. I photocopied quite a lot of notes, but certainly the statement of conclusions should be included, although now I’m thinking -- I’m not sure if sub-PCCs have statement of conclusions. Those may be only for PCC meetings. But to the extent I took notes on that meeting, I would have included them, yes.

Q  For July 23rd, you said were you a back-bencher at the PCC meeting?

A  Yes.

Q  And was this topic of the hold of the Ukraine aid discussed at that meeting?

A  That was the purpose of the meeting.

Q  What was discussed?

A  To the best of my recollection, the conversation was everybody going around the table and saying they supported the lifting of the administrative hold so that the State Department and the Office of Secretary of Defense, Pentagon, could move forward. We were ending -- approaching the end of the fiscal year, and I believe that Laura Cooper, speaking on behalf of the Pentagon, indicated that the DOD comptroller had determined that they needed to move forward by August 6th in order to spend the money and meet Congress’ intent.

Q  Was there any discussion of the legality or illegality of the hold?

A  There was discussion about the standing of OMB to put an informal hold. Normally, the conversations with OMB prior to notification to Congress is a courtesy, not something required under law. And that is why the position was expressed by Laura Cooper, to the best of my recollection, that DOD counsel had determined that they would move forward by August 6th regardless. And I recall Senior Director Morrison suggesting that the State Department also review its legal requirements and be prepared to have that briefed at the next meeting, which he set 3 days later, as a deputy small group meeting.

Q  So, if OMB did not move forward by August 6th, what would be the implication?

A  Again, this is about an account that was not appropriated to my department nor executed in my department, so I would defer to my colleague, Laura Cooper. But to the best of my recollection, what she said in that meeting was that, according to DSCA, they may not be able to execute all of the requirements by the end of the fiscal year. My understanding is that USAI monies are 1-year monies. The monies in the State Department FMF account are 2-year monies.

Q  What did OMB say, if anything, in response to Laura Cooper’s --

A  OMB’s position was what it had been on the 18th, that they were under the direction of their boss to put -- hold all security assistance to Ukraine.

Q  Did they provide a reason?

A  They said it was at the direction of the President.

Q  Who was present for the July 23rd meeting?

A  That would be a matter of record because that was a PCC, and there’s a statement of conclusions. And in the statement of conclusions, on the first page, there’s a listing of all participants in the meeting.

Q  Did you receive a copy of the statement of conclusions for this meeting?

A  I believe I did, and that would have been provided to the document request.

Q  Did OMB provide any reasoning beyond simply it was at the direction of the President?

A  Not to my recollection, no.

Q  So they didn’t describe why the President had placed this hold?

A  There was a lack of clarity.

Q  What do you mean by that?

A  The participants who up until that point had thought that there was unanimity that this was in our national interest did not receive an explanation for why this particular action was taken.

Q  Okay. So, to your knowledge, no one at the PCC meeting on July 23rd knew why the President was making the decision or at least they didn’t express it at that meeting?

A  I do not recall any coherent explanation, no.

Q  Was there any explanation at all, coherent or incoherent?

A  OMB placed a hold on a process that -- traditionally, that is the office that has a voice on how the executive branch spends money.

Q  Was that unusual, in your experience?

A  According to, in my conversation with Tyler Brace, who again has worked here as a staffer, the previous cycle, OMB head, Acting Chief of Staff Mulvaney, had attempted a rescission at the end of the year, and indeed the next week, at the beginning of August, he sent out a data call with the intent potentially to execute a rescission involving billions of dollars of assistance worldwide, not just Ukraine.

Q  Okay. So, in your experience, though, was this unusual?

A  I had read about Mr. Mulvaney’s attempt to push a rescission at the end of the last fiscal year. My understanding was that Secretary Pompeo protested vigorously, and the effort to have a rescission was then suspended.

And, ultimately, the same thing happened this year, this overall greater effort to have a rescission held up the process for much of August, but it was also lifted, and that left us with just the hold on Ukraine assistance.

Q  The Ukraine assistance that you just mentioned, is that FMF, or is that the USAI?

A  It affected both accounts, the Department of Defense $250 million, and the $141 million under FMF.

Q  Okay. And you said that that was still being held in August?

A  That hold, the OMB-directed hold, was lifted on September 11th.

Q  What happened at the July 26th deputies’ meeting?

A  I did not participate in that meeting. Under Secretary Hale represented the State Department, and I cannot recall the exact outcome. That would also be documented in the document call, but it did not change the ultimate situation.

Q  Did you see a readout of that particular meeting?

A  I did.

Q  And is it in a similar form as the statement of conclusions?

A  To the best of my knowledge, yes.

Q  And what do you recall from that readout?

A  The main takeaway for me was that Senior Director Morrison was trying to find out when Secretary of State Pompeo and the Secretary of Defense would both be in Washington so they could have an in-person principal small group meeting to discuss the same issue and then take it to the President.

Q  Was there any discussion at the July 26th deputies’ committee meeting about the reasons for the hold?

A  I honestly cannot recall if there was any detail. The bottom line was the hold remained, and we needed a principal small group to carry the process forward.

Q  But it’s your understanding at the July 26th meeting that, again, there was unanimous support to release the funds to lift the hold. Is that right?

A  With the exception of OMB, yes.

Q  Then you mentioned that there was planning to have a meeting on July 31st. Did that meeting actually take place?

A  I didn’t say that, but I believe that may have been one of the dates that Senior Director Morrison was attempting to schedule a principal small group meeting.

Q  Was there a principals meeting at any point?

A  To the best of my knowledge, because of the travel schedules of the two Secretaries, no.

Q  So what happened next, as far as you know, with regard to the lifting of this hold?

A  I am aware that many Senators, particularly from the Republican side, who had traveled to Ukraine from the relevant committees, called and talked to the President. I’m aware that -- I saw an email that Senator Inhofe had had about a 20-minute conversation. He had visited twice when I was in Ukraine because Oklahoma National Guard was doing training at the main training base. Senator Portman called, including the day it was lifted. And my understanding is that Senate Majority Leader McConnell also called.

Q  Was there any discussions at State between July 31st and when the funds were actually released about the freeze that you partook in?

A  The State Department was concerned. Obviously, we wanted to get the hold lifted so that we could get the money apportioned by OMB and then obligated. And so we were -- at the direction of Senior Director Morrison, exploring what was the absolute minimum amount of time that would be necessary to obligate the money once the hold was lifted. So we were preparing for a decision so that we could ensure that the money could be obligated before the end of the fiscal year.

Q  When was the first time that you heard that the security assistance might somehow we be linked to this White House visit or investigations conducted by Ukraine?

A  Because everyone was unclear why this had happened, I think, in the vacuum of a clear explanation, people started speculating. So there was a coincidence of timing, but as I referenced earlier in the communication with Charge Taylor, he indicated to me that, in his communications with both Senior Director Morrison and Ambassador Sondland, and this would have been the weekend of the 7th and 8th of September, that both of them insisted that there was not a direct link.

Q  And that was based on what?

A  This was a conveyed conversation. That was their assertions. According to Charge Taylor, separately, Senior Director Morrison, with whom he had a conversation on the 7th of September, and Ambassador Sondland, with whom he had a conversation on the 8th of September, had asserted that the two were not directly linked.

Q  And how do they know?

A  I cannot answer for them. That would be the question to direct to Senior Director Morrison and Ambassador Sondland.

[6:44 p.m.]

BY MR. MITCHELL:

Q  They didn’t provide any information as to their source?

A  I was not part of that conversation. I was having a conversation with Charge Taylor.

Q  And this conversation with Charge Taylor, was that over WhatsApp or was that in person or --

A  That was a part of our regularly scheduled Monday secure calls, video conferences. And that part of the conversation we ask all of our staff to leave, so it is just one on one in a secure communication.

Q  Okay. And what else did Charge Taylor tell you about these conversations that he had had?

A  I recounted to the best of my knowledge what those conversations were. That was Senior Director Morrison talking about his concern that Rudy Giuliani had had another conversation with the President, as well as what Sondland relayed Rudy to be his interaction.

Q  And did you memorialize that conversation that you had had?

A  Yes. That was part of a note to the file which I provided to the document collection process.

Q  Did you talk to anyone else at the Department of State about what Charge Taylor told you?

A  I believe I shared my concerns with my colleagues in the European front office. That would be the ones immediately near my office. Included Deputy Assistant Secretary Michael Murphy, who oversees our relations with the Baltics and Nordics and NATO. And for large stretches of time earlier in 2019 it was our senior Bureau official and also the deputy assistant secretary, , who oversees our relations with Western Europe, and that includes relations with Ambassador Sondland and the mission he leads in Brussels.

Q  When you said you shared concerns, what do you mean by that?

A  I shared the -- I shared the sense that I had heard from Charge Taylor that Ambassador Sondland was engaged in the types of conversations that he was engaged in on Ukraine even though that was not part of his portfolio as our ambassador to the European Union.

Q  And again, was this a conversation that you had with Deputy Assistant Secretary Murphy and Fisher in writing or in person?

A  Their offices are between 5 and 10 feet away from my office and so I -- this was a direct conversation in their office.

Q  And what was their reaction?

A  They were aware of the challenge of dealing with Ambassador Sondland who has a, I would say, track record of freelancing, would be one way of putting it, but working on issues other than the reason why he was sent to Brussels to work our relationship with the European Union.

Q  Did they indicate that they would try do anything about it?

A  I don’t think there is anybody at the level of deputy assistant secretary of state who can do anything about what Gordon Sondland chooses to do.

Q  Do you know when they escalated the issue?

A  I do not.

Q  At any point were you given a reason why the hold was put in place?

A  Not that I recall. Well, I believe, at least in relation to the USAI, there were some concerns expressed in the Pentagon, Office of Secretary of Defense, did a review and responded that they felt that the conditions and concerns that we had had been met and that the programming should go forward. But that was a specific review about USAI, which is not State Department controlled, and so that was an issue between the Pentagon and I guess the White House and NSC.

Q  Do you know whether a similar review was conducted with regard to FMF?

A  We were not asked for a similar review. The media coverage was focused on the 250 million of USAI. If you look at those articles at the time they were not mentioning $391 million, which would have been the total FMF plus USAI.

Q  Do you know whether a similar review of FMF has since been conducted?

A  The hold was lifted on September 11th and we moved forward with notifying Congress and ensuring the funds were obligated before the end of the fiscal year. We were not asked and we proceeded with what we needed to do in order to obligate the funds as to meet the congressional intent in appropriating them.

Q  Okay. So to the best of your knowledge, you have no knowledge of any plan to conduct any such review?

A  We did not see it necessary nor were we asked to do so.

Q  All right. Now, when you were in Ukraine, Ukraine was receiving USAI and FMF funds at the time, correct?

A  They were receiving FMF, yes, and I believe the start of USAI was while I was there. I do not recall specifically which fiscal year USAI funds started to be appropriated.

Q  Okay. So based on your experience in Ukraine, as well as your experience here in Washington, D.C., how important are these funding programs for Ukraine security?

A  I would assess that they are critically important. The Ukrainian defense establishment was unprepared to fight a war with Russia when Russia began its war in 2014. And therefore, the training that we do, which is probably the most valuable in training Ukrainians to fight, as well as the equipping that we do, have been critical to the success of the Ukrainian armed forces in defending their country.

At the same time I would say that we probably derive more benefit from the relationship than the Ukrainians do.

Q  How so?

A  That would be something to discuss in a classified manner, particularly with my colleagues from the defense and intel agencies.

Q  But suffice to say that it was in both Ukraine’s national interests as well as the United States’ national interest that these funds be released to the Ukraine?

A  Very much so.

Q  And that’s true not just for the time period that you were in Ukraine but also for 2019 when you were back here in D.C.?

A  Correct.

Q  Have you had any conversations with anyone about what the Ukrainians’ perspective was on the freeze?

A  They were confused, to the best of my understanding.

Q  Okay. And how did you get that understanding?

A  Charge Taylor was in Ukraine trying to figure out how to explain what went on. My most recent trip to Ukraine, I arrived on September 11th. Fortunately that was the day that the hold was lifted. So by the time I started engaging Ukrainians in person, it was a good news story.

Q  Had you prepared to answer their questions about the hold?

A  I was prepared for the possibility that it would not be lifted and therefore the conversations would be very difficult and I would not be able to provide an adequate understanding or answer.

Q  Did you try to get an adequate understanding or answer prior to your trip?

A  Fortunately, I didn't have to worry about that hypothetical because it was resolved essentially as I arrived in Ukraine.

Q  Right. But prior to you arriving in Ukraine did you attempt to find out why the hold was in place so that you could actually have a meaningful conversation with the Ukrainians about this issue?

A  We -- it was very clear that this issue was only going to be resolved they very highest level, and that's why Tim Morrison wanted to have Secretary Pompeo and SecDef Esper in the same place at the same time to have that conversation.

That was the level at which the conversation needed to happen. It didn't matter what the deputy assistant secretary or an assistant secretary or an under secretary or a deputy secretary thought.

Q  Okay. To the best of your knowledge, did that meeting happen?

A  To the best of my knowledge, there was never a principal small group meeting on this issue.

Q  What did Taylor, Charge Taylor, say to you about his conversations with Ukrainians about the hold?

A  I honestly don't recall in detail. I think it was clear starting, if not from July 18th, certainly from July 23rd, that this was an issue that had to be resolved in Washington, and it was a tough nut for everyone to crack without a lot of clarity.

Q  It was your understanding at the time, though, that the issue had to be resolved at the principals level?

A  Once we cleared the deputy small group meeting, which I believe was July 26th, it was clear it had to be resolved at a principals level and above. And so that was clear I think to everyone after July 26th.

Q  Okay. And when you say above, you mean specifically the President of the United States?

A  Well, the principal small group, members of the Cabinet, who then could take the issue to the President.

Q  And again there was never a PCC as far as you know?

A  There was a PCC on July 23rd. So in the sort of climbing the ladder we started with a sub-PCC on the 18th. There was a policy coordinating committee on the 23rd. There was a deputy small group on the 26th. And there was an attempt to schedule but lack of principals subsequent. That was Tim Morrison driving the interagency policy review process in the way it was intended.

Q  So to the best of your knowledge, this issue ultimately was not resolved by the principals, it was resolved by the President?

A  Correct.

Q  You testified earlier about August 15th and August 16th. At the time did you think that the aid might in any way be linked to the investigations that were being pushed by Mr. Giuliani or that were discussed by the President in the July 25th call?

A  I personally did not associate them, no.

Q  Has your thinking changed in any way since then?

A  This is a personal opinion. It strikes me that the association was a meeting with the White House, at the White House, not related to the security assistance. But again, that's just my personal opinion, other people may have different opinions.

Q  What was Charge Taylor's opinion?

A  I think there is the WhatsApp exchange where he expressed concerns that it might be linked.

Q  But what did he tell you?

A  I don't recall having a conversation where he expressed the same opinion to me that he shared in the WhatsApp messages that apparently were leaked, but in any case were handed over by former Special Representative Volker.

He did in one conversation with me share a conversation he had with Ambassador Sondland in which Ambassador Sondland, who had told him that there was no quid pro quo with the security assistance, said, on the other hand, you know, the President's a businessman and if you're going to sign a check for $250 million why not ask somebody for something.

Now, that was sort of an informal comment that Ambassador Sondland made to Ambassador -- to Charge Taylor and that he conveyed to me. But the same person, Ambassador Sondland, said there was no quid pro quo on security assistance.

Q  When did Charge Taylor relay this conversation that he had had with Ambassador Sondland?

A  I cannot recall if it was in our secure conference call that I described on September 9th or, since I then flew to Ukraine and stayed with him over that weekend, whether he may have shared that with me in person. But I believe I did write that note up and share it with the records. So it's part of the records that were collected by the State Department.

Q  And the Ukraine trip was on or about September 11th?

A  I arrived in Ukraine on September 11th, that's correct.

Q  What did you do with the -- this memo that you wrote up on or about the 9th of September or 11th of September?

A  I added it to the note on file that I had initially written on the 16th of August and then subsequently amended it with the conversations I had with Charge Taylor in person in Ukraine.

Q  And who did you give that memo to?

A  It was a note to the file, so it stayed as a note to the file until I submitted it to the document collection when those were requested.

Q  Okay. When you say to the document collection, you're talking about -- were you referring to the subpoena?

A  I am referring to the subpoena.

Q  Okay. So you didn't specifically give this memo to Deputy Assistant Secretary Murphy, for example?

A  To the best of my recollection, when I returned from Kyiv I wrote the note to the file and I orally briefed Deputy Assistant Secretary Murphy, Deputy Assistant Secretary Fisher, and Acting Assistant Secretary Reeker.

Q  It is a different brief than the ones we were talking about earlier?

A  Correct. The previous time when I talked -- yes, because this is sequential. So I had two conversations with two individuals on the 15th and 16th of August. That was the first time I wrote a note to a file. I had subsequent conversations with Ambassador -- Charge Taylor on the 9th of September, another note to the file. And then travel to Ukraine, conversations there, return, note to the file, oral brief.

Q  Okay. And the oral briefing was with Fisher, Reeker, and Murphy?

A  To the best of my knowledge, yes, but I did -- I know that I included in my note to the file the officials whom I briefed orally. So I wrote it up and then I briefed and I added that as a note in the file that I -- precisely whom I had oral briefed.

Q  Was this one oral briefing or multiple oral briefings?

A  It was -- it would have been sequential because those are three different individuals. And so two of them, again, offices are collocated with mine, then Acting Assistant Secretary Reeker's office is across the hall.

Q  And what were their reactions?

A  At this point it was clear the nature of the interactions that Special Representative Volker and Ambassador Sondland were having, so it was more confirmation of the conversations that had been clearly ongoing between Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Volker with Ukrainians.

Q  And do you recall what Reeker's reaction was specifically?

A  I do not recall precisely. I think they were all concerned.

Q  Did they commit to doing anything about this?

A  Not that I recall.

Q  Did they say that they were going to escalate the issue?

A  I do not recall.

Q  You testified earlier this afternoon about a conversation that you had with Charge Taylor about Zelenskyy making some sort of TV interview or address, public address.

A  I mentioned what Ambassador Sondland had told Charge Taylor and that he conveyed to me, yes.

Q  Okay. And when did Charge Taylor have that conversation with you?

A  I believe that's what I conveyed to you regarding the conversation I had with Charge Taylor on the 9th of September, referencing his conversation with Ambassador Sondland that occurred on the 8th of September.

Q  Did you have any further conversations with Charge Taylor about this topic after September 11th, I guess it was?

A  Yes.

Q  And when was the next conversation?

A  The next conversation would have happened at the breakfast table Sunday morning, which I believe was September 15th.

Q  And where were you at that time?

A  I was his house guest in the ambassador's residence in Kyiv.

Q  Okay. Can you describe -- who else was at that --

A  That was just Ambassador Taylor and me. He went out for a run, and I went down to breakfast, and we met and talked 7:30 in the morning more or less.

Q  What did you talk about?

A  We talked about the meeting that ambassador -Charge Taylor and Special Representative Volker had had the night before with Andriy Yermak, the close personal aide of President Zelenskyy.

Q  And what were you told?

A  Well, that meeting was the one meeting on Kurt's schedule in Ukraine that he felt uncomfortable with me joining. He said that it was because of numbers. It was not clear whether it would be just Yermak or whether he would also bring a gentleman named Novokov (ph), whom I have not met, and who is responsible for U.S. relations in the Presidential office.

Kurt said he felt that having three Americans on one Ukraine was too much, and he said if there were a second Ukrainian I could come. I decided not to push it since we were involved in another event, as well as anticipating that there was going to be an awkward conversation, which there was. And Charge Taylor provided me the details of that conversation over breakfast.

Q  Which were?

A  Well, besides -- the main part of the conversation was about negotiations with the Russians, and I won't mention that and that's not germane.

But the more awkward part of the conversation came when Special Representative Volker made the point that the Ukrainians, who had opened their authorities under Zelenskyy, had opened investigations of former President Poroshenko, he didn't think that was appropriate.

And then Andriy Yermak said: What? You mean the type of investigations you're pushing for us to do on Biden and Clinton?

And at that point Kurt Volker did not respond.

Later on in the conversation, when it came to the potential for Zelenskyy and President Trump to meet, according to Charge Taylor, Special Representative Volker said: And it's important that President Zelenskyy give the messages that we discussed before.

And Charge Taylor told me that he then said: Don't do that.

Q  Who said don't do that?

A  Charge Taylor.

Q  So Taylor was concerned about the way in which this conversation took place?

A  My understanding is that he was concerned. And when Kurt made a suggestion that Charge Taylor felt was inappropriate he weighed in with his own personal opinion, which that was not appropriate.

Q  And Volker was directly linking the White House meeting and the investigations that were being pushed by the President. Is that correct?

A  It was an elliptical readout that -- by the readout that I heard from Charge Volker -- sorry, Charge Taylor -that Kurt, Special Representative Volker, was referring to prior conversations that he had with Yermak and prior advice, meaning you should deliver the messages as we've discussed before.

Q  Do you know what those messages were?

A  This goes back to the signaling for a public appearance. The hoped-for interview with CNN with Zelenskyy did not happen during the conference. Fareed Zakaria was one of the hosts, but there was no special interview. So there was discussion that President Zelenskyy would have an interview with CNN the week of the U.N. General Assembly leaders meetings, which was the week of September 23rd to 27th.

Q  And the message that Mr. Volker wanted President Zelenskyy to provide during the CNN interview was what?

A  That Zelenskyy should message that -- his willingness to open investigations in the two areas of interest to the President and that had been pushed previously by Rudy Giuliani.

MR. MITCHELL: I think my time is up at this point.

MR. GOLDMAN: Yield to the minority.

MR. CASTOR: We don't have any questions at this point.

We might subsequently.

MR. GOLDMAN: I think we're almost finished. So we'll take it back for a few minutes.

MR. CASTOR: Thank you.

MR. GOLDMAN: And then give you an opportunity at the end.

MR. CASTOR: Okay.

MR. GOLDMAN: Okay?

We are nearing the end. Just 1 second.

[Discussion off the record.]

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  A few wrap-up questions here.

That breakfast meeting that you had on September 15th that we were just discussing, did you memorialize that as well?

A  I wrote that to note to file when I returned to the U.S., yes.

Q  When you get back to the U.S.?

A  Subsequent to Ukraine, I went to Belarus, where I was in Belarus for 2 days, including the three-quarter day visit of Under Secretary Hale.

And then after that I went to Lithuania to outbrief our Lithuanian allies about the advances in the U.S.-Belarus relationship, because we -- Under Secretary Hale announced that we were going to return an ambassador to Belarus, which we have not had since 2008.

So I returned to the U.S. in the evening of the 19th of September, I was in the office on Friday, the 20th, and then took a train up first thing Monday morning to be in New York for the U.N. General Assembly meetings.

Q  Were there any conversations that week on the -- in the U.N. General Assembly week -- that you were aware of or were present for or that related to these investigations into Biden in 2016 that we've been discussing?

A  No.

Q  You had neither had any nor heard of any?

A  I was not involved in any meetings, no -- of that nature, no. It was very much focused on the intense engagement of many foreign leaders who were there at that time.

Q  Because you said that as of September 15th there was still a hope, for example, that President Zelenskyy would give an interview with CNN when he was in New York for the General Assembly and specifically mention those investigations, right?

A  That was my understanding of what Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Sondland were requesting of the Ukrainians, yes.

Q  But you don't know whether anything came of that?

A  To the best of my knowledge, President Zelenskyy did not give an interview to CNN while in New York with that sort of messaging, no.

Q  Did you have any meetings with any Ukrainians officials during that September 11th to 15th timeframe yourself where they expressed -- where they discussed these investigations at all?

A  The only meeting that I was a part of where this came up obliquely was with the foreign minister, Vadym Prystaiko. And that was a meeting with Kurt Volker, Charge Taylor, and myself in which the foreign minister said: You guys are sending us different messages in different channels.

Q  And what did you understand that to mean?

A  Well, in that meeting all three of us, Kurt Volker, Charge Taylor, and I, all reiterated that it would not be appropriate for the Ukrainians to engage in any activity that could be construed as interfering in the U.S. election.

Q  And so what was the conflicting message that they were receiving?

A  Well, I would suggest that what was said later on that night, in the meeting I was not a part of, to Andriy Yermak was the conflicting message. And as I recounted, there were two messages, there was what Ambassador Volker said and what Charge Taylor said, and those themselves were conflicting messages.

Q  Because -- just to be clear -- because Ambassador Volker was saying not to investigate Poroshenko?

A  No. Ambassador Volker suggested that Andriy Yermak should ensure that the agreed-upon messaging was delivered by President Zelenskyy. And Charge Taylor said: Don't do that.

Q  I see.

You made some reference to Yermak responding to something that either Ambassador Volker or Charge Taylor said about Poroshenko a few minutes ago.

A  Yes.

Q  Explain that conversation again. I didn't quite catch the whole thing.

A  So this was -- again, I did not go into detail about the bulk of the conversation because that was about negotiating tactics vis-à-vis the Russians.

As the conversation was moving away from that into a new set of issues, according to Charge Taylor, based on his notes, I didn't participate in the meeting, one of the issues that Kurt wrote -- raised -- was the fact that there were a series of investigations being opened by Ukrainian authorities against former President Poroshenko. And Kurt advised Yermak that was not a wise way forward for the country.

Q  And what did -- how did Yermak respond, according to Charge Taylor?

A  According to Charge Taylor, his response was: Oh, you mean the types of investigations you're asking us to open against Clinton and Biden?

Q  And it would seem that as someone who was responsible for anti corruption efforts that that's exactly the message that you would be concerned about on this. Is that accurate?

A  As I've stated here previously, it's my belief that it is inappropriate for us to ask another country to open up an investigation against political opponents, whether it is political opponents domestically in the U.S. context or, in the case of countries like Ukraine or Georgia, opening up selective prosecutions against perceived opponents of those in power.

Q  And did you think it was appropriate for Vice President Biden to condition the release of the loan guarantees on the firing of Prosecutor General Shokin?

A  Prosecutor General Shokin was an impediment to the reform of the prosecutorial system, and he had directly undermined in repeated fashion U.S. efforts and U.S. assistance programs.

And so, because we had a strategic interest in seeing the Ukrainian prosecutor system reformed, and because we have a fiduciary responsibility for U.S. taxpayer dollars, it was the consensus view that Shokin needed to be removed so that the stated goal of reform of the prosecutor general system could move forward.

Q  And so when you mentioned that that connection was a quid pro quo, you're not saying that that was an improper quid pro quo?

A  I didn't say that it was a quid pro quo, but it is the case that both the IMF and the U.S. Government do use conditionality for assistance, whether it is macroeconomic assistance provided by the IMF or, in the case of our sovereign loan guarantees, we put conditionality that related to management of the gas system, meeting macroeconomic stability goals proposed by the IMF, social safety nets, and issues related to anticorruption. And that involved the National Anticorruption Prevention Council, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, as well as the prosecutor general's office.

MR. GOLDMAN: Okay. Mr. Malinowski has a few questions.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Thank you.

MR. GOLDMAN: One thing.

And just to be clear, what Vice President Biden was doing was very fundamentally different than any advocacy for a politically oriented investigation. Is that your assessment?

MR. KENT: The request for the dismissal of Shokin was related directly to him, to his actions in the diamond prosecutors case, in his undermining of our assistance to Ukraine.

MR. GOLDMAN: And that's distinct from your concerns that you've raised today about advocacy for an investigation into Biden or the 2016 election?

MR. KENT: That's how I would look at the two issues, as distinct, yes.

MR. MALINOWSKI: The distinction is between conditionality to advance the national interest and conditionality to advance a personal interest.

MR. KENT: One might say national interest versus partisan interest, yes.

MR. MALINOWSKI: I just have a couple of other subjects that I wanted to ask you about. And thank you so much for your patience and precision today and for the integrity that you have shown in every part of your career, Mr. Kent.

You mentioned at one point a conversation with Fiona Hill in which she had relayed to you that the President had had phone conversations with Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, and Putin in which she told you that they had both, I think you said, talked down Ukraine to the President.

Can you say a little bit more about that? What do you recall of that?

MR. KENT: Well, to the best of my recollection, Fiona gave me a readout of both conversations at the same time. It was a phone call with President Putin on or about May 3rd.

It was a meeting at the White House, so it was an in-person meeting on or about May 13th. The President's engagement of Orban included a 1-hour one-on-one, and then subsequently the Hungarian foreign minister, Szijjarto, and Ambassador Bolton joined.

MR. MALINOWSKI: In your judgement, what motivation would Orban and Putin have had to try to talk down Ukraine, Zelenskyy, to President Trump?

MR. KENT: Well, Putin's motivation is very clear. He denies the existence of Ukraine as a nation and a country, as he told President Bush in Bucharest in 2008. He invaded and occupied 7 percent of Ukraine's territory and he's led to the death of 13,000 Ukrainians on Ukrainian territory since 2014 as a result of aggression. So that's his agenda, the agenda of creating a greater Russia and ensuring that Ukraine does not survive independently.

Viktor Orban’s beef with Ukraine is derived in part to his vision, in my opinion, of a greater Hungary. And there are about 130,000 ethic Hungarians who live in the trans-Carpathian province of Ukraine.

And ahead of next year, which is the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon, post-World War I, which resulted in more ethnic Hungarians living outside Hungary than inside, this issue of greater Hungary is at the top of Orban's agenda.

And so he has picked this particular issue and, for instance, blocked all meetings in NATO with Ukraine at the ministerial level or above because of this particular issue. So his animus towards Ukraine is well-known, documented, and has lasted now 2 years.

MR. MALINOWSKI: So both of these leaders would have an interest in the United States and the President of the United States ending or diminishing our support for an independent Ukraine?

MR. KENT: I would say that that's Putin's position. I think Orban is just happy to jam Ukraine.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Okay. All right, okay. And then finally on the broader corruption issue. You know Ukraine extremely well. You were also responsible for anticorruption efforts in EUR for some time.

Imagine that the President of the United States were to call you in. President Trump, his predecessor, and that he said: George, look, I really, really believe this is a fundamental issue for the United States in Ukraine. The corruption is the obstacle to the transformation to this country that we seek. And I am prepared to use some leverage to do something about corruption in Ukraine, maybe even hold up a meeting, maybe even condition some assistance on the Ukrainians really taking this seriously. George, what would be the three or four or five top things we should be demanding, we should be asking the Ukrainians to do if we really wanted to get serious on this issue, what would be -what would you say, what would be on your list?

MR. KENT: I think for Ukraine as well as other countries that have never prosecuted any large-scale crook, putting one of the big fish, so-called big fish in jail would be a great start as a signal that there isn't impunity. And that's, again, not unique to Ukraine. I think that's the biggest one.

I think demonstrating that there's integrity in the prosecutor general's office is absolutely critical, particularly for post-Soviet countries. There were two institutions that were the instruments of oppression in the Soviet Union. It was the prosecutor's office and the KGB or the secret police. And those two institutions in many of these countries are fundamentally still not reformed 28 years later.

So if you want to see the successful transformation of any of the post-Soviet countries, reform of the security service in Ukraine, that's known as the SBU (ph) , and reform of the prosecutor general's office are the fundamental keys to transforming the country.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And some of these might require legislative changes, legal reforms?

MR. KENT: Yes.

MR. MALINOWSKI: More than just go after this person or that person?

MR. KENT: Yes.

MR. MALINOWSKI: To your knowledge, then -- well, let me ask you, if that is going to be your policy, if you're going to condition something that a country wants in exchange for that country doing something that we want in our national interest, it's logical that we would then tell that country, here are the things that we want you to do if you want to get your meeting, if you want to get your aid, or whatever it is worth conditioning, correct?

MR. KENT: Correct.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Okay. To your knowledge, did any of the so-called "three amigos," if we can call them that, ever in their engagements with the Ukrainian authorities, especially in conversations around getting this meeting with the President or perhaps getting the aid restored, ever urge the Ukrainians to pursue those deeper anticorruption measures, reforms that you just referred to?

MR. KENT: What I referred to is strategic and institutional, and what they were working on was tactical. And that was what it would take to send a message to send a meeting.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And it wasn't reform the security services, it was not reform the prosecutor's office, it was one investigation -- well, two investigations, 2016 and the Biden --

MR. KENT: Signal of intent to open an investigation.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Which is not anticorruption.

MR. KENT: In and of it itself is not anticorruption, no.

MR. MALINOWSKI: It is basically selective prosecution or investigation.

MR, KENT: That was the phrase I used, yes.

MR. MALINOWSKI: And you've worked in and around a lot of dictatorships in your life, Uzbekistan, Thailand now, you know, not Ukraine, but certainly a country struggling to build democracy. Is it not a very common feature of authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes that they selectively prosecute people for corruption for political purposes?

MR. KENT: Unfortunately that is the case, yes.

MR. MALINOWSKI: The people who you know in Ukraine who are dedicated to fighting corruption, the activists, the reformers, and who saw the United States of America as a champion of their cause, do they see the United States of America as a champion of their cause today?

MR. KENT: I still believe they count on the U.S. as their best hope to get through very difficult times, yes.

MR. MALINOWSKI: Thank you.

MR. GOLDMAN: Before I go to Chairman Engel, I just have two quick questions for you.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  Are you familiar with someone by the name of Sam Kislin or Semeon (ph) Kislin?

A  I am familiar with the name only recently and only based on what I've read.

Q  You have no individual or other than press reports you're not aware of this individual?

A  Correct.

Q  And you, much earlier today, I think you were describing what may have been a conversation that you had with former Ambassador Yovanovitch about the July 25th call.

A  Right.

Q  And I think you said that you may have discussed some aspects of it and that you don't recall what her response was. Is that accurate?

A  To the best of my recollection. And if there is other information that people want to provide context to try to trigger additional information, I'm open to that.

Q  So you -- it appears to us at least as if, A, you took a lot of notes about these events, and, B, you may have reviewed them prior to coming here today to testify. Is that --

A  That's accurate. I would not have -- no, I did not review them before coming to testify. In order for the Department to respond to the subpoena for document collections I went through my notebooks to find any notes from meetings that would be responsive to those -- that document request. That's why I reviewed them, as information.

Q  Did you have any notes from your discussion with Ambassador Yovanovitch about the July 25th call?

A  I did not and would not because that would have happened informally, not in the office.

Q  So if she has a different recollection as to what you guys discussed, do you think that that --

A  That's possible. She could have been much more specific about a conversation we had and the issues we've been discussing. My timeline starts several years earlier than hers. So I do not rule that out.

MR. GOLDMAN: Okay.

Chairman Engel, would you like to?

MR. ENGEL: Yeah. Well, I guess in closing I want you to know I stumbled in here before they told me Clark Kent was here. So I thought he was you.

But, anyway, thank you so much for your testimony. And thank you for what you -- not only for what you're doing now, but for what you've done through the years.

It's really so critical that we learn the facts and your detailed, very careful testimony today, it's just so important, so important for our country, so important. And it should also not be used by the administration or the Department of State to retaliate against you or anybody else.

I have been very much chagrined over the fact of the way employees at the Department of State have been treated for the past couple of years. Morale is down. It's just unconscionable. And I think it takes people like you who have not only had commendable records through the years, but who have the guts to come in and speak from the heart. It really helps all of us moving forward.

And of course we will move forward. We have to move forward. And what you're doing, sir, is a tremendous accomplishment and tremendously important for the State Department and for the country as a whole.

I know that Chairman Schiff already explained on the record earlier today why any retaliation against you or anybody else would be unlawful and just wrong. Your service to our country for nearly three decades is commendable and I hope it continues without harassment or undue interference from the Department you have honorably served.

So let me just again thank you as the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, thank you personally, and let you know that I and the Foreign Affairs Committee will hold the Department accountable to treat employees properly and with the respect you deserve.

Thank you.

MR. KENT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. GOLDMAN: All right. I believe that's it from the majority, we used 20 minutes in this record. So I yield to the minority if you would like any further questions.

MR. ZELDIN: I know we stepped out. Did we have -- did our side have a round while we were out voting or was that the majority the whole time?

For the record, one thing of concern is Chairman Schiff appropriately earlier made a disclaimer to all Members and all staff that we are in a deposition, that deposition rules apply, and that there should not be any leaks. This is something that the minority side takes extremely seriously, and it has been disappointing that during the brief time that we stepped out to go vote that we are reading on Twitter substance from today's deposition being cited by name to Chairman Schiff and to Gerry Connolly.

It's really important that if the deposition rules apply, where Members are not allowed to talk about the substance of what is discussed today, that that is applied equally to both the majority and minority, and I want to state that for the record.

We are also still waiting a ruling we started two depositions ago with a request -- actually it was the second deposition -- a request as to what rule is governing this entire process. We still have not received an answer as to what House rule governs any of this process.

The start of the last deposition we had a phone call with the House parliamentarian which started with a question of what House rule is governing any of this entire process. We are reiterating that we still have not received an answer. The minority whip, Steve Scalise, just made that request on the House floor and was not provided an answer.

And we would be very interested in knowing, and if that answer can't be provided now, at the start of tomorrow morning's deposition, what House rule is governing this entire process for this impeachment inquiry.

MR. BITAR: For the record, your interest is noted.

MR. JORDAN: Mr. Secretary, let me just go back. So on the July 25th call between President Trump and President Zelenskyy, just to walk through it again, you were not on that call.

MR. KENT: Correct.

MR. JORDAN: Lieutenant Colonel Vindman was.

MR. KENT: Yes.

MR. JORDAN: And at some point subsequent to that call you were on a call with the lieutenant colonel or you had some kind of meeting with him?

MR. KENT: It was a call and he gave me a very limited readout, correct.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. And on that limited readout on that call with the lieutenant colonel did he tell you not to talk about what you discuss with anyone else?

MR. KENT: I don't recall how he characterized it. It's just that he said that the information obviously was of very sensitive nature and that's why he could not give me the normal readout of the full content that he normally did.

MR. JORDAN: And the call you had with Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, was that the 26th, the 27th? What day with a that?

MR. KENT: It was a subsequent day. I do not -- I cannot say for certain which day he called. Normally I kept my notes in a notebook. On this particular occasion I grabbed a piece of paper and started writing. So it was not in a sequential notebook day by day.

MR. JORDAN: Was it within a week or was it in August?

MR. KENT: It was within a week, to the best of my recollection.

MR. JORDAN: So most likely some time in July?

MR. KENT: If the call happened -- the earliest it could have been was the 26th. To the best of my recollection, there were several days. So my guess is the 27th. There's a weekend in there somewhere. I'm not sure which the weekend was. So I would say the last week of July would be the best I could bound it.

MR. JORDAN: And then you discussed what Lieutenant Colonel Vindman told you with whom?

MR. JORDAN: I cannot recall the exact content, particularly since I didn't get as much content as I just got a tonal poem. So I can't recall directly.

MR. JORDAN: Did the lieutenant colonel tell you, look, I'm sharing this with you but no one else, or did you get the impression that he had shared this information with other people maybe in the State Department or other people in our government or anyone else?

MR. JORDAN: I am not aware of who else he might have given a readout to. In the general course of readouts of that nature, I would be the natural person for him to give a readout at the State Department.

MR. JORDAN: Is the fact that he -- okay. So normally you would get a readout. So was this the normal process that Lieutenant Colonel Vindman would let you know about this call or was this somehow different?

MR. KENT: It was the normal process. He had given me a similar readout for the April 21st call. What was different was that -- his concern that he did not feel at liberty to share all the substantive details of the call. That was what was different. But the readout, that he was giving me a readout, was the normal procedure.

MR. JORDAN: And why wouldn't he share everything with you if it's the normal process that you get briefed, you get a readout of calls between the President of the United States and foreign heads of state in your area, your area of the world that you're responsible for and that you deal with? And on the April call he gave you a full readout. Is that right?

MR. KENT: Correct, although it was a short, nonsubstantive conversation.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. Well, were there other occasion where Lieutenant Colonel Vindman gave you a readout from calls between President Trump and foreign heads of state?

MR. KENT: To the best of my knowledge, these were the only two calls between President Trump and a head of government of the six countries for which I have responsibility.

MR. JORDAN: Got it. Got it. So you have these two. And you got a full readout from the April 21st call or April call, but you didn't --

MR. KENT: In July, correct.

MR. JORDAN: And did you find that unusual?

MR. KENT: He made clear his extreme discomfort that there was discussions in the call that were -- what he described at the beginning was the majority of the call was very sensitive and he would not be giving me a full readout.

MR. JORDAN: And, well, I guess I'm trying to figure out if he's supposed to give you a readout, why didn't he give you the full readout?

MR. KENT: Again, all I can describe is his discomfort in sharing what he shared without -- with his disclaimer right up front that he was not going to give me the full normal readout.

MR. JORDAN: Okay. Thank you.

MR. ZELDIN: In an earlier round we were discussing individual cases where the United States Government had spoken with the Ukrainian Government with regards to cases under the jurisdiction of Ukraine. You cited one case specifically as possibly the highest profile case that you were tracking.

MR. KENT: After --

MR. ZELDIN: Or one of highest profile cases?

MR. KENT: For that period of time, the second half the 2018, yes.

MR. ZELDIN: Were any of these conversations with the Ukraine Government about corruption cases that we felt Ukraine shouldn't prosecute?

MR. KENT: I’m not aware of us ever telling Ukraine not to prosecute a corrupt individual or a person believed to have engaged in corruption, no.

MR. ZELDIN: Is it true that Ukraine prosecuted cases that were classified as a corruption case but were inappropriately classified as such?

MR. KENT: I will give you a specific example. The National Agency to Prevent Corruption was set up to review the asset declarations of the initially top 1,000 and then they expanded to even more Ukrainian officials.

In the first year of their operations they went after two individuals. One, the reformist head of customs who paid herself an $18 bonus on Women's Day when all the women in her office got it. And they also had launched an investigation of Serhiy Leschenko, the aforementioned member of parliament and former investigative journalist, who purchased an apartment. And those were the only two investigations that they did, and they were both reformers who were also critics of people who were not engaged in reform.

And there were dozens of billionaire oligarchs and other individuals, and there were no investigations of people whose reputations were that they had engaged in corruption for years.

MR. ZELDIN: So that I understand your testimony correctly, you cited two cases where two individuals were accused of corruption but shouldn't have been.

MR. KENT: As far as I recall, those are the only two individuals or officials of Ukraine that the National Agency to Prevent Corruption went after based on the asset declarations of high ranking officials and members of parliament.

MR. ZELDIN: And to be clear, you just used the word Ukrainian officials. Is there a different answer with regards to Ukrainian citizens or when you said officials did you mean Ukrainians at large?

MR. KENT: I was just trying to give a very specific example for a new institution that we initially helped stand up to help contain corruption based on asset declarations. And instead of using the asset declaration system to identify those who may have used public office to enrich themselves they went after two reformists who were noted critics of the lack of reform in certain parts of the Ukrainian Government.

MR. ZELDIN: And what was the timeframe for this answer?

MR. KENT: I believe the NAPC, as it was known, was stood up in 2015, and so this would have been 2015, 2016.

MR. ZELDIN: I understand that in a recent round you were answering questions based off of information that you obtained from others related to aid from the United States to Ukraine and the allegation of a quid pro quo. Do you have any firsthand knowledge of United States aid to Ukraine ever being connected to the opening of a new investigation?

MR. KENT: I do not have direct knowledge, no.

MR. ZELDIN: Thank you. That's it.

MR. GOLDMAN: Is that it? All right.

Two more things, 2 minutes.

BY MR. GOLDMAN:

Q  I just wanted to touch upon your -- some of the documents that you have been discussing today.

Do you have an understanding as to whether there may be emails or other documents in the custody of the State Department that reflect expressions of concern about some of the topics that we discussed today, separate and apart from your memos to file or other emails that you have referenced?

A  I would have imagined that there are quite a number of emails, yes.

Q  You discussed having two specific conversations with Fiona Hill, one in May and one you remember less of in July. And obviously you had other conversations with Lieutenant Colonel Vindman and Tim Morrison.

Were you ever aware of whether there was a separate either individual or individuals at the National Security Council who were providing information to the President on the Ukraine matter outside of ordinary channels?

A  I did not hear about it and have no information about that, no.

Q  Are you familiar with someone by the name of Kash Patel?

A  I am not aware that I've ever met anybody by that name, no.

Q  Have you ever heard that name?

A  I think Patel is a fairly common South Asian last name.

Q  How about Kash?

A  I -- less common. I do not -- I cannot imagine -or I can not recall any time where I was either in the presence of or heard a reference to Kash Patel.

MR. GOLDMAN: Okay. Thank you.

I think we are done. And thank you very much, Mr. Kent, for a long day. Really appreciate it.

And we're adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 7:42 p.m., the interview was concluded.]

Correspondence to White House Counsel

A logo: Compass Rose Legal Group.

COMPASS ROSE LEGAL GROUP, PLLC
1250 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
Suite 700
Washington, DC 20036

Telephone: 202.570.4896
Fax: 202.478.5201
www.CompassRosePLLC.com

Andrew P. Bakaj, Esq.
Managing Partner
APB@CompassRosePLLC.com

November 7, 2019

Pat A. Cipollone
Counsel to the President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20002

Dear Mr. Cipollone:

I am writing out of deep concern that your client, the President of the United States, is engaging in rhetoric and activity that places my client, the Intelligence Community Whistleblower, and their family in physical danger. I am writing to respectfully request that you counsel your client on the legal and ethical peril in which he is placing himself should anyone be physically harmed as a result of his, or his surrogates’, behavior.

It goes without saying, although it appears that it must be said, that the Office of the President is the most powerful elected office in the nation. The occupant of the office is often referred to as the “Leader of the Free World”, representing the principles and ideals of liberty and freedom. As the leader of the world’s remaining global superpower, the words of the President carry great weight and have the ability to change the course of history.

To that end, President John F. Kennedy used his voice to challenge our nation to seek out new heights and “go to the moon” and strive to achieve things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard”. President Ronald Reagan consoled a shocked and grieving nation following the Challenger disaster by reminding all Americans that the astronauts who perished will never be forgotten, particularly the indelible memory of the crew as they prepared for their journey, waved goodbye, and then “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.” President Abraham Lincoln, whom President Trump reportedly aspires to emulate, consoled a torn nation in the midst of the Civil War in his eloquent Gettysburg Address where he extolled the sacrifices of those who died in defense of our nation’s principles. President Lincoln said:

That these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Respectfully, your client’s rhetoric and behavior fall well beneath the dignity of the office. In fact, contrary to President Lincoln’s words about the government existing of the people, by the people, and for the people, your client instead appears intent on consistently attacking private citizens—the people. As of late, his fixation has been on my client for reasons that I submit are self-evident.

While engaging in foreign affairs at the United States Mission to the United Nations in New York on September 26, 2019, the President equated whistleblowers and my client—as well as my other whistleblower client—with “spies”, stating:

You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right? We used to handle it a little differently than we do now.[1]

In the “old days,” spies were summarily executed.

Recently while speaking with members of the press, the President specifically discussed my client and encouraged journalists to report who they suspect the whistleblower to be, saying:

[The press] know[s] who it is. You know who it is. You just don’t want to report it . . . You know, you’d be doing the public a service if you did.[2]

Finally, the President quoted Pastor Robert Jeffress by writing the following on social media:

. . . If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War[-]like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.[3]

These are not words of an individual with a firm grasp of the significance of the office which he occupies, nor a fundamental understanding of the significance of each word he articulates by virtue of occupying that office. The three examples I provide above, which constitute only a small fraction of his rhetoric against my client, equate lawful whistleblowing to something that may permanently fracture a nation, such as a civil war. His calls to the public to identify my client by name and his suggestion that he would support acts of violence against my client are, candidly, some of the most dangerous and reckless things a President of the United States can say.

In the best of light, such statements seek to intimidate my client—and they have. As I am sure you are aware, my firm was in the process of coordinating with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to have my client deposed by congressional investigators. However, as a direct consequence of the President’s irresponsible rhetoric and behavior, my client’s physical safety became a significant concern, prompting us to instead state our willingness to only answer written interrogatories. In light of this, it is reasonable to submit that your client’s activity constitutes a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512, Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant. Furthermore, because my client is a lawful whistleblower and a prospective congressional witness, any threats to influence, obstruct, or impede my client’s cooperation is a violation of 18 U.SC. § 1505, Obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies, and committees. Finally, reprisal against my client for cooperating with a congressional inquiry would be a violation of 18 U.SC. § 1513, Retaliating against a witness, victim, or an informant.

Let me be clear: should any harm befall any suspected named whistleblower or their family, the blame will rest squarely with your client.

I submit that it is in your client’s best interest to cease and desist in calling for the public disclosure of my client’s identity and to cease in rhetoric that may endanger their life and the lives of their family. Should anyone be physically harmed, my co-counsel, Mark Zaid, and I will not hesitate to take any and all appropriate action against your client. Those who are complicit in this vindictive campaign against my client, whether through action or inaction, shall also be responsible, be that legally or morally.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

A signature: Andrew P. Bakaj.

Andrew P. Bakaj

Enclosures: None

cc:

Speaker of the House of Representatives
Minority Leader of the House of Representatives
Senate Majority Leader
Senate Minority Leader
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Chairman and Vice Chairman

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

Chairman and Ranking Member

[1] Maggie Haberman and Katie Rogers, Trump Attacks Whistle-Blower’s Sources and Alludes to Punishment or Spies, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 26, 2019 (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/us/politics/trump-whistle-blower-spy.html).

[2] Remarks by President Trump Before Marine One Departure, THE WHITE HOUSE, (Nov. 3, 2019) https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-marine-one-departure-74/.

[3] Donald J. Trump (@RealDonaldTrump), TWITTER, (Sept. 29, 2019, 8:11 PM), https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1178477539653771264.

Opening Statement before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Opening Statement before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Jennifer Williams

Special Advisor to the Vice President

November 19, 2019

Thank you, Chairman Schiff, Ranking Member Nunes, and other Members of the Committee for the opportunity to provide this statement. I appear today pursuant to a subpoena and am prepared to answer your questions to the best of my abilities.

I have had the privilege of serving as a Foreign Service Officer for nearly fourteen years, working for three different presidential administrations—two Republican and one Democratic. I joined the State Department in 2006 after serving in the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Michael Chertoff. It was with great pride and conviction that I swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, administered by a personal hero of mine, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. As a career officer, I am committed to serving the American people and advancing American interests abroad, in support of the President’s foreign policy objectives. I have been inspired and encouraged in that journey by the thousands of other dedicated public servants whom I am proud to call colleagues across the Foreign Service, civil service, military, and federal law enforcement agencies.

I have served overseas tours in Kingston, Jamaica; Beirut, Lebanon; and London, United Kingdom. I have worked to implement humanitarian assistance programs to millions of victims of the Syria conflict, and served as an advisor on Middle East issues to the Deputy Secretary of State. And this spring, it was the greatest honor of my career to be asked to serve as a Special Advisor to the Vice President for Europe and Russia. Over the past eight months, I have been privileged to work with the dedicated and capable men and women in the Office of the Vice President to advance the Administration’s agenda. I have also worked closely with talented and committed colleagues at the National Security Council (“NSC”), State Department, Department of Defense, and other agencies to advance and promote U.S. foreign policy objectives. In this capacity, I have advised and prepared the Vice President for engagements related to Ukraine.

As you are aware, on November 7th, I appeared before the Committee for a closed-door deposition pursuant to a subpoena. I would like to take this opportunity to briefly summarize my recollection of some of the events I expect the Committee may ask me about.

President Zelensky’s Inauguration

On April 21st, Volodymyr Zelensky won the Ukrainian presidential election. On April 23rd, the Vice President called to congratulate President-elect Zelensky. During the call, which I participated in, the Vice President accepted an invitation to attend President-elect Zelensky’s upcoming inauguration, provided that the scheduling worked out. The Vice President had only a narrow window of availability at the end of May, and the Ukrainian parliament would not meet to set a date for the inauguration until after May 14th. As a result, we did not expect to know whether the Vice President could attend until May 14th at the earliest, and we made only preliminary trip preparations in early May. On May 13th, an assistant to the Vice President’s Chief of Staff called and informed me that President Trump had decided that the Vice President would not attend the inauguration in Ukraine. She did not provide any further explanation. I relayed that instruction to others involved in planning the potential trip. I also informed the NSC that the Vice President would not be attending, so that it could identify a head of delegation to represent the United States at President-elect Zelensky’s inauguration.

Hold on Ukraine Security Assistance

On July 3rd, I learned that the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) had placed a hold on a tranche of security assistance designated for Ukraine. According to the information I received, OMB was reviewing whether the funding was aligned with the Administration’s priorities.

I subsequently attended meetings of the Policy Coordination Committee where the hold on Ukrainian security assistance was discussed. During those meetings, representatives of the State and Defense Departments advocated that the hold should be lifted, and OMB representatives reported that the White House Chief of Staff had directed that the hold should remain in place.

On September 11th, I learned that the hold on security assistance for Ukraine had been released. I have never learned what prompted that decision.

July 25th Call Between President Trump and President Zelensky

On July 25th, along with several of my colleagues, I listened to a call between President Trump and President Zelensky—the content of which has since been publicly reported. Prior to July 25th, I had participated in roughly a dozen other presidential phone calls. During my closed-door deposition, Members of the Committee asked about my personal views and whether I had any concerns about the July 25th call. As I testified then, I found the July 25th phone call unusual because, in contrast to other presidential calls I had observed, it involved discussion of what appeared to be a domestic political matter.

After the July 25th call, I provided an update in the Vice President’s daily briefing book indicating that President Trump had a call that day with President Zelensky. A hard copy of the memorandum transcribing the call was also included in the book. I do not know whether the Vice President reviewed my update or the transcript. I did not discuss the July 25th call with the Vice President or any of my colleagues in the Office of the Vice President or the NSC.

September 1 Meeting Between the Vice President and President Zelensky

On August 29th, I learned that the Vice President would be traveling to Poland to meet with President Zelensky on September 1st. At the September 1st meeting, which I attended, President Zelensky asked the Vice President about news articles reporting a hold on U.S. security assistance for Ukraine. The Vice President responded that Ukraine had the United States’ unwavering support and promised to relay their conversation to President Trump that night. During the September 1st meeting, neither the Vice President nor President Zelensky mentioned the specific investigations discussed during the July 25th call.

*     *     *

Thank you again for the opportunity to provide this statement. I would be happy to answer any questions.

Opening Statement of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander S. Vindman Before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Opening Statement of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander S. Vindman

Before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

November 19, 2019

Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, thank you for the opportunity to address the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence with respect to the activities relating to Ukraine and my role in the events under investigation.

Background

I have dedicated my entire professional life to the United States of America.

For more than two decades, it has been my honor to serve as an officer in the United States Army. As an infantry officer, I served multiple overseas tours, including South Korea and Germany, and I was deployed to Iraq for combat operations.

Since 2008, I have been a Foreign Area Officer specializing in European and Eurasian politico-military affairs. I served in the United States embassies in Kiev, Ukraine and Moscow, Russia.

In Washington, D.C., I was a politico-military affairs officer for Russia for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff where I drafted the Armed Forces’ global campaign plan to counter Russian aggression and Russian malign influence. In July 2018, I was asked to serve at the White House’s National Security Council.

At the NSC I am the principal advisor to the National Security Advisor and the President on Ukraine and the other countries in my portfolio. My role at the NSC is to develop, coordinate, and implement plans and policies to manage the full range of diplomatic, informational, military, and economic national security issues for the countries in my portfolio. My core function is to coordinate policy with departments and agencies partners.

The Committee has heard from many of my colleagues about the strategic importance of Ukraine as a bulwark against Russian aggression. It is important to note that our country’s policy of supporting Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, promoting Ukrainian prosperity, and strengthening a free and democratic Ukraine, as a counter to Russian aggression, has been a consistent, bi-partisan foreign policy objective and strategy across various administrations, both Democrat and Republican, and that President Zelenskyy’s election, in April 2019, created an unprecedented opportunity to realize our strategic objectives.

Relevant Events

In the Spring of 2019, I became aware of two disruptive actors—primarily Ukraine’s then-Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko and former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney— promoting false information that undermined the United States’ Ukraine policy. The NSC and its inter-agency partners, including the State Department, grew increasingly concerned about the impact that such information was having on our country’s ability to achieve our national security objectives.

April 21, 2019: President Trump Calls Ukraine President Zelenskyy

On April 21, 2019, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected President of Ukraine in a landslide victory on a unity, reform, and anti-corruption platform. President Trump called President Zelenskyy on April 21, 2019, to congratulate him for his victory. I was the staff officer who produced the call materials and was one of the staff officers who listened to the call. The call was positive and President Trump expressed his desire to work with President Zelenskyy and extended an invitation to visit the White House.

May 2019: Inauguration Delegation Goes to Ukraine

In May, I attended the inauguration of President Zelenskyy as part of the Presidential delegation led by Secretary Perry. Following the visit, the members of the delegation provided President Trump a debriefing offering a positive assessment of President Zelenskyy and his team. After this debriefing, President Trump signed a congratulatory letter to President Zelenskyy and extended an invitation to visit the White House.

July 10, 2019: Danylyuk Visit

On July 10, 2019, Oleksandr Danylyuk, then Ukraine’s National Security Advisor, visited Washington, D.C. for a meeting with National Security Advisor Bolton. Ambassadors Volker and Sondland and Secretary Rick Perry also attended the meeting. I attended the meeting with Dr. Hill.

We fully anticipated the Ukrainians would raise the issue of a meeting between the two presidents. Ambassador Bolton cut the meeting short when Ambassador Sondland started to speak about the requirement that Ukraine deliver specific investigations in order to secure the meeting with President Trump.

Following this meeting, there was a short debriefing during which Amb. Sondland emphasized the importance of Ukraine delivering the investigations into the 2016 election, the Bidens, and Burisma. I stated to Ambassador Sondland that this was inappropriate and had nothing to do with national security. Dr. Hill also asserted his comments were improper. Following the meeting Dr. Hill and I had agreed to report the incident to the NSC’s lead counsel, Mr. John Eisenberg.

July 25, 2019: Parliamentary Election Call

On July 21, 2019, President Zelenskyy’s party won parliamentary elections in another landslide victory. The NSC proposed that President Trump call President Zelenskyy to congratulate him.

On July 25, 2019, the call occurred. I listened in on the call in the Situation Room with White House colleagues.

I was concerned by the call, what I heard was improper, and I reported my concerns to Mr. Eisenberg. It is improper for the President of the United States to demand a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen and political opponent. It was also clear that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the 2016 election, the Bidens, and Burisma, it would be interpreted as a partisan play. This would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing bipartisan support, undermine U.S. national security, and advance Russia’s strategic objectives in the region.

I want to emphasize to the Committee that when I reported my concerns -- on July 10, relating to Ambassador Sondland, and on July 25, relating to the President -- I did so out of a sense of duty. I privately reported my concerns, in official channels, to the proper authorities in the chain of command. My intent was to raise these concerns because they had significant national security implications for our country.

I never thought I would be sitting here testifying in front of this committee and the American public, about my actions. When I reported my concerns, my only thought was to act properly and to carry out duty. Following each of my reports to Mr. Eisenberg, I immediately returned to work to advance the President’s and our country’s foreign policy objectives. I focused on what I have done throughout my career, promoting America’s national security interests.

Conclusion

I want to take a moment to recognize the courage of my colleagues who have appeared and are scheduled to appear before this Committee. I want to state that the vile character attacks on these distinguished and honorable public servants is reprehensible. It is natural to disagree and engage in spirited debate, this has been our custom since the time of our Founding Fathers, but we are better than callow and cowardly attacks.

The uniform I wear today is that of the United States Army. The members of our all-volunteer force are made up of a patchwork of people from all ethnicities, religions, and socio-economic backgrounds who come together under a common oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. We do not serve any particular political party, we serve the nation. I am humbled to come before you today as one of many who serve in the most distinguished and able military in the world. The Army is the only profession I have ever known. As a young man I decided that I wanted to spend my life serving the nation that gave my family refuge from authoritarian oppression, and for the last twenty years it has been an honor to represent and protect this great country.

Next month will mark 40 years since my family arrived in the United States as refugees. When my father was 47 years old he left behind his entire life and the only home he had ever known to start over in the United States so that his three sons could have better, safer lives. His courageous decision inspired a deep sense of gratitude in my brothers and myself and instilled in us a sense of duty and service. All three of us have served or are currently serving in the military. Our collective military service is a special part of our family’s story in America.

I also recognize that my simple act of appearing here today, just like the courage of my colleagues who have also truthfully testified before this Committee, would not be tolerated in many places around the world. In Russia, my act of expressing my concerns to the chain of command in an official and private channel would have severe personal and professional repercussions and offering public testimony involving the President would surely cost me my life. I am grateful for my father’s brave act of hope 40 years ago and for the privilege of being an American citizen and public servant, where I can live free of fear for mine and my family’s safety.

Dad, my sitting here today, in the US Capitol talking to our elected officials is proof that you made the right decision forty years ago to leave the Soviet Union and come here to the United States of America in search of a better life for our family. Do not worry, I will be fine for telling the truth.

Thank you again for your consideration, and I would be happy to answer your questions.

Chairman Schiff Releases Opening Statement for Open Hearing With Lt. Col. Vindman and Jennifer Williams

A seal:

For Immediate Release:
Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Contact: Patrick Boland, Patrick Boland
(202) 225-4176

Chairman Schiff Releases Opening Statement for Open Hearing With Lt. Col. Vindman and Jennifer Williams

Washington, DC — Today, Chairman Adam Schiff released his opening statement for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s open hearing with Lt. Col. Vindman and Jennifer Williams as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald J. Trump.

Full statement below as prepared:

Last week, we heard from three experienced diplomats who testified about President Trump’s scheme to condition official acts — a White House meeting and hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. military aid to fight the Russians — on a “deliverable” by the new Ukrainian President Zelensky, two politically-motivated investigations Trump believed would help his reelection campaign.

One of those investigations involved the Bidens and the other involved a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine and not Russia was responsible for interfering in our 2016 election.

As Ambassador Sondland would later tell career Foreign Service Officer David Holmes immediately after speaking to the President, Trump “did not give a” - he then used an expletive - about Ukraine. He cares about “‘big stuff’” that benefits the President “like the ‘Biden investigation’ that Giuliani was pushing.”

To press a foreign leader to announce an investigation into his political rival, President Trump put his own personal and political interests above those of the nation. He undermined our military and diplomatic support for a key ally, and undercut U.S. anticorruption efforts in Ukraine. How could our diplomats urge Ukraine to refrain from political investigations of its own citizens, if the President of the United States was urging Ukraine to engage in precisely the same kind of corrupt and political investigation of one of our own citizens?

At the White House, career professionals became concerned that President Trump, through an irregular channel that involved his acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland and Rudy Giuliani, was pushing a policy towards Ukraine at odds with the national interest.

This morning we hear from two of the national security professionals who became aware of these efforts.

Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, whose family fled oppression in the Soviet Union when he was a toddler, is a career Army officer, an Iraq War veteran who was awarded a Purple Heart, and an expert in Russia and Ukraine who has worked at the highest levels of the Pentagon. In July 2018, he was detailed to the White House, in part to coordinate policy on Ukraine.

Jennifer Williams is a career Foreign Service Officer who is currently detailed to the Office of the Vice-President and responsible for Europe and Eurasia issues.

Following his initial and congratulatory phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky on April 21, Trump asked Vice-President Pence to represent him at Zelensky’s upcoming inauguration. Ms. Williams was working on logistics for the trip. Pence would be a coveted attendee, second in significance only to the President, and it would have sent an important signal of support to the new Ukrainian President.

In early May, however, Rudy Giuliani had been planning to go to Ukraine to pursue the President’s interest in having the Bidens investigated, but had to call off the trip after it became public. Among others, Giuliani blamed people around Zelensky for having to cancel, and claimed they were antagonistic to Trump. Three days later, the President called off the Vice President’s attendance at Zelensky’s inauguration.

Instead, a lower level delegation was named: Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Ambassador Sondland, and Ambassador Kurt Volker — the Three Amigos. Senator Ron Johnson and Lt. Col. Vindman would also attend.

After returning from the inauguration, several members of the delegation briefed President Trump on their encouraging first interactions with Zelensky. They urged Trump to meet with the Ukrainian President. But Trump instead criticized Ukraine and instructed them to “work with Rudy.”

A few weeks later, on July 10th, Ambassador Sondland met at the White House with a group of U.S. and Ukrainian officials, including Col. Vindman, and informed the group that according to Chief of Staff Mulvaney, the White House meeting sought by the Ukrainian President with Trump would happen if Ukraine undertook certain investigations.

National Security Advisor Bolton abruptly ended the meeting and said afterwards that he would not be “part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up on this.”

Undeterred, Sondland brought the Ukrainian delegation downstairs to another part of the White House and was more explicit, according to witnesses: Ukraine needed to investigate the Bidens or Burisma, if they were to get a White House meeting with Trump. After this discussion, which Vindman witnessed, he went to the National Security Council’s top lawyer to report the matter. Vindman was told to return in the future with any further concerns, and he would soon find the need to do so.

A week later, on July 18, a representative from the Office of Management and Budget announced on a video conference call that Mulvaney, at Trump’s direction, was freezing nearly $400 million in military assistance to Ukraine which was appropriated by Congress and enjoyed the support of the entirety of the U.S. national security establishment.

And one week after that, Trump would have the now infamous July 25th phone call with Zelensky. During that call, Trump complained that the U.S. relationship with Ukraine had not been “reciprocal.” Later, Zelensky thanks Trump for his support “in the area of defense,” and says that Ukraine was ready to purchase more Javelins, an antitank weapon that was among the most important deterrents of further Russian military action. Trump’s immediate response: “I would like you to do us a favor, though.”

Trump then requested that Zelensky investigate the discredited 2016 conspiracy theory, and even more ominously, look into the Bidens. Neither was part of the official preparatory material for the call, but they were in Donald Trump’s personal interest, and in the interests of his 2020 reelection campaign. And the Ukrainian President knew about both in advance — because Sondland and others had been pressing Ukraine for weeks about investigations into the 2016 election, Burisma and the Bidens.

Both Col. Vindman and Ms. Williams were on the July 25th call. Vindman testified that due to the unequal bargaining position of the two leaders and Ukraine’s dependency on the U.S., the favor Trump asked of Zelensky was really a demand. After the call, multiple individuals, including Vindman, were concerned enough to report it to the National Security Council’s top lawyer. It was the second time in two weeks that Vindman had raised concerns with the NSC lawyers.

For her part, Williams also believed that asking Zelensky to undertake these political investigations was inappropriate, and that it might explain something else she had become aware of — the otherwise inexplicable hold on U.S. military assistance to Ukraine.

Both Col. Vindman and Ms. Williams also took note of the explicit use of the word Burisma by Zelensky, a fact conspicuously left out of the record of the call, now locked away on an ultra-secure server. Col. Vindman believed that Zelensky must have been prepped for the call, to be able to make the connection between Biden and Burisma, a fact that other witnesses have now confirmed.

In the weeks that followed the July 25th call, Col. Vindman continued to push for a release of the military aid to Ukraine, and struggled to learn why it was being withheld. More disturbing, word of the hold had reached Ukrainian officials prior to it becoming public. By mid-August, the Ukrainian Deputy Ambassador asked Vindman why the United States was withholding the aid. Although Vindman didn’t have an answer, Sondland made it explicit to the Ukrainians at a meeting in Warsaw: They needed to publicly commit to these two investigations if they hoped to get the aid.

******

Ms. Williams, we all saw the President’s tweet about you on Sunday afternoon and the insults he hurled at Ambassador Yovanovich last Friday. You are here today, and the American people are grateful. Col. Vindman, we have seen far more scurrilous attacks on your character, and watched as certain personalities on Fox have questioned your loyalty. I note that you have shed blood for America, and we owe you an immense debt of gratitude.

Today’s witnesses, like those who testified last week, are here because they were subpoenaed to appear, not because they are for or against impeachment.

That question is for Congress, not the fact witnesses. If the President abused his power and invited foreign interference in our elections, if he sought to condition, coerce, extort, or bribe an ally into conducting investigations to aid his reelection campaign and did so by withholding official acts — a White House meeting or hundreds of millions of dollars of needed military aid — it will be up to us to decide, whether those acts are compatible with the office of the Presidency.

###

Impeachment Inquiry: Ms. Jennifer Williams and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman

IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY: MS. JENNIFER WILLIAMS AND

LIEUTENANT COLONEL ALEXANDER VINDMAN

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

U.S. House of Representatives,

Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,

Washington, D.C.

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:08 a.m., in Room HVC-304, Capitol Visitor Center, the Honorable Adam Schiff (chairman of the committee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Schiff, Himes, Sewell, Carson, Speier, Quigley, Swalwell, Castro, Heck, Welch, Maloney, Demings, Krishnamoorthi, Nunes, Conaway, Turner, Wenstrup, Stewart, Stefanik, Hurd, Ratcliffe, and Jordan.

The Chairman. The committee will come to order. Good morning, everyone. This is the third in a series of public hearings the committee will be holding as part of the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess of the committee at any time. There is a quorum present.

We will proceed today in the same fashion as our first hearing. I will make an opening statement, and then Ranking Member Nunes will have the opportunity to make a statement. Then we will turn to our witnesses for their opening statements and then to questions.

For audience members, we welcome you and respect your interest in being here. In turn, we ask for your respect as we proceed with today's hearing. It is the intention of the committee to proceed without disruptions. As chairman, I will take all necessary and appropriate steps to maintain order, and ensure that the committee is run in accordance with House rules and House Resolution 660.

With that, I now recognize myself to give an opening statement in the impeachment inquiry into Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States.

Last week, we heard from three experienced diplomats, who testified about President Trump's scheme to condition official acts, a White House meeting and hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. military aid to fight the Russians, on a deliverable by the new Ukrainian President Zelensky to politically motivated investigations that Trump believed would help his reelection campaign. One of those investigations involved the Bidens, and the other involved a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine and not Russia was responsible for interfering in our 2016 election.

As Ambassador Sondland would later tell career Foreign Service Officer David Holmes immediately after speaking to the President, Trump did not give a -- he then used an expletive -- about Ukraine. He cares about big stuff that benefits the President, like the Biden investigation that Giuliani was pushing.

To press a foreign leader to announce an investigation into his political rival, President Trump put his own personal and political interests above those of the Nation. He undermined our military and diplomatic support for a key ally and undercut U.S. anticorruption efforts in Ukraine. How could our diplomats urge Ukraine to refrain from political investigations of its own citizens if the President of the United States was urging Ukraine to engage in precisely the same kind of corrupt and political investigations of one of our own citizens.

At the White House, career professionals became concerned that President Trump, through an irregular channel that involved his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland, and Rudy Giuliani, was pushing a policy towards Ukraine at odds with the national interest.

This morning, we hear from two of the national security professionals who became aware of those efforts. Lieutenant Colonel Alex Vindman, whose family fled oppression in the Soviet Union when he was a toddler, is a career Army officer, an Iraq war veteran, who was awarded a Purple Heart, and an expert in Russia and Ukraine who has worked at the highest levels of the Pentagon. In July 2018, he was detailed to the White House, in part, to coordinate policy on Ukraine.

Jennifer Williams is a career Foreign Service Officer who is currently detailed to the Office of the Vice President and responsible for Europe and Eurasia-related issues.

Following his initial and congratulatory phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky on April 21st, President Trump asked Vice President Pence to represent him at Zelensky's upcoming inauguration. Ms. Williams was working on logistics for the trip. Pence would be a coveted attendee, second in significance only to the President, and would have sent an important signal of support to the new Ukrainian President.

In early May, however, Rudy Giuliani had been planning to go to Ukraine to pursue the President's interest in having the Bidens investigated, but had to call off the trip after it became public. Among others, Giuliani blamed people around Zelensky for having to cancel, and claimed that they were antagonistic to Trump.

Three days later, the President has called off the Vice President's attendance at Zelensky's inauguration. Instead, a lower-level delegation was named: Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Ambassador Sondland, and Ambassador Kurt Volker, the Three Amigos. Senator Ron Johnson and Lieutenant Colonel Vindman would also attend.

After returning from the inauguration, several members of the delegation briefed President Trump on their encouraging first interactions with Zelensky. They urged Trump to meet with the Ukrainian President, but Trump instead criticized Ukraine and instructed them to work with Rudy.

A few weeks later, on July 10th, Ambassador Sondland met at the White House with a group of U.S. and Ukrainian officials, including Colonel Vindman, and informed the group that, according to Chief of Staff Mulvaney, the White House meeting sought by the Ukrainian President with Trump would happen if Ukraine undertook certain investigations. National Security Advisor Bolton abruptly ended the meeting and said afterwards that he would not be part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up on this.

Undeterred, Sondland brought the Ukrainian delegation downstairs to another part of the White House, and was more explicit, according to witnesses. Ukraine needed to investigate the Bidens or Burisma if they were to get a White House meeting with Trump.

After this discussion, which Vindman witnessed, he went to the National Security Council's top lawyer to report the matter. Vindman was told to return in the future with any concerns. He would soon find the need to do so.

A week later, on July 18th, a representative of the Office of Management and Budget announced on a video conference call that Mulvaney, at Trump's direction, was freezing nearly $400 million in military assistance to Ukraine, which was appropriated by Congress and enjoyed the support of the entirety of the U.S. national security establishment.

And 1 week after that, Trump would have the now infamous July 25th phone call with Zelensky. During that call, Trump complained that the U.S. relationship with Ukraine had not been reciprocal. Later, Zelensky thanks Trump for his support in the area of defense, and says that Ukraine was ready to purchase more Javelins, an antitank weapon that was among the most important deterrence of further Russian military action. Trump's immediate response: I would like you to do us a favor, though.

Trump then requested that Zelensky investigate the discredited 2016 conspiracy theory, and even more ominously, look into the Bidens. Neither was part of the official preparatory material for the call, but they were in Donald Trump's personal interest and in the interest of his 2020 reelection campaign. And the Ukrainian President knew about both in advance, because Sondland and others had been pressing Ukraine for weeks about investigations into the 2016 election, Burisma, and the Bidens.

Both Colonel Vindman and Ms. Williams were on the July 25th call. Vindman testified that due to the unequal bargaining position of the two leaders and Ukraine's dependency on the U.S., the favor Trump asked of Zelensky was really a demand. After the call, multiple individuals, including Vindman, were concerned enough to report it to the National Security Council's top lawyer. It was the second time in 2 weeks that Vindman had raised concerns with NSC lawyers.

For her part, Williams also believed that asking Zelensky to undertake these political investigations was inappropriate, and that it might explain something else that she had become aware of, the otherwise inexplicable hold on U.S. military assistance to Ukraine.

Both Colonel Vindman and Ms. Williams also took note of the explicit use of the word "Burisma" by Zelensky, a fact conspicuously left out of the record of the call now locked away on an ultra secure server. Colonel Vindman believed that Zelensky must have been prepped for the call to be able to make the connection between Biden and Burisma, a fact that other witnesses have now confirmed.

In the weeks that followed the July 25th call, Colonel Vindman continued to push for a release of the military aid to Ukraine, and struggled to learn why it was being withheld. More disturbing, word of the hold had reached Ukrainian officials prior to its becoming public. By mid-August, the Ukrainian Deputy Ambassador asked Vindman why the United States was withholding the aid. Although Vindman didn't have an answer, Sondland made it explicit to Ukrainians at a meeting in Warsaw. They needed to publicly commit to these two investigations if they hoped to get the aid.

Ms. Williams, we all saw the President's tweet about you on Sunday afternoon and the insults he hurled at Ambassador Yovanovitch last Friday. You are here today, and the American people are grateful.

Colonel Vindman, we have seen far more scurrilous attacks on your character, and watched as certain personalities on FOX have questioned your loyalty. I note that you have shed blood for America, and we owe you an immense debt of gratitude. I hope no one on this committee will become part of those vicious attacks.

Today's witnesses, like those who testified last week, are here because they were subpoenaed to appear, not because they are for or against impeachment. That question is for Congress, not the fact witnesses. If the President abused his power and invited foreign interference in our elections, if he sought to condition, coerce, extort, or bribe an ally into conducting investigations, to aid his reelection campaign and did so by withholding official acts, a White House meeting, or hundreds of millions of dollars of needed military aid, it will be up to us to decide whether those acts are compatible with the Office of the Presidency.

I now recognize Ranking Member Nunes for any remarks he'd like to make.

Mr. Nunes. I thank the gentleman.

I'd like to address a few brief words to the American people watching at home. If you watched the impeachment hearings last week, you may have noticed a disconnect between what you actually saw and the mainstream media accounts describing it when you saw three diplomats who dislike President Trump's Ukraine policy, discussing secondhand and thirdhand conversations about their objections with the Trump policy. Meanwhile, they admitted they had not talked to the President about these matters, and they were unable to identify any crime or impeachable offense the President committed.

What you read in the press were accounts of shocking, damning, and explosive testimony that fully supports the Democrats' accusations. If these accounts have a familiar ring, it's because this is the same preposterous reporting the media offered for 3 years on the Russian hoax. On a nearly daily basis, the top news outlets in America reported breathlessly on the newest bombshell revelations showing that President Trump and everyone surrounding him were Russian agents. It really wasn't long ago that we were reading these headlines: From CNN: Congress investigating Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials. This was false. New York Times, Trump campaign aides had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence, also false. Slate: Was a Trump server communicating with Russia? This was false. New York Magazine: Will Trump be meeting with his counterpart or his handler? This was false. The Guardian: Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian Embassy, also false. BuzzFeed: President Trump directed his attorney to lie to Congress about the Moscow Tower project. All of these were false.

There was no objectivity or fairness in the media's Russia stories, just a fevered rush to tarnish and remove a President who refuses to pretend that the media are something different from what they really are, puppets of the Democratic Party. With their biased misreporting on the Russia hoax, the media lost the confidence of millions of Americans; and because they refuse to acknowledge how badly they botched the story, they've learned no lessons and simply expect Americans will believe them as they try to stoke yet another partisan frenzy.

In previous hearings, I've outlined three questions the Democrats and the media don't want asked or answered. Instead of shedding light on these crucial questions, the media are trying to smother and dismiss them. Those questions start with: What is the full extent of the Democrats' prior coordination with the whistleblower and who else did the whistleblower coordinate this effort with?

The media have fully accepted the Democrats' stunning reversal on the need for the whistleblower to testify to this committee. When the Democrats were insisting on his testimony, the media wanted it too. But things have changed since it became clear the whistleblower would have to answer problematic questions that include these: What was the full extent of the whistleblower's prior coordination with Chairman Schiff, his staff, and any other people he cooperated with while preparing the complaint? What are the whistleblower's political biases and connections to Democratic politicians? How does the whistleblower explain the inaccuracies in the complaint? What contact did the whistleblower have with the media, which appears to be ongoing? What are the sources of the whistleblower's information, who else did he talk to, and was the whistleblower prohibited by law from receiving or conveying any of that information? The media have joined the Democrats in dismissing the importance of cross-examining this crucial witness. Now that the whistleblower has successfully kick-started impeachment, he has disappeared from the story as if the Democrats put the whistleblower in their own witness protection program.

My second question: What was the full extent of Ukraine's election meddling against the Trump campaign? In these depositions and hearings, Republicans have cited numerous indications of Ukraine meddling in the 2016 elections to oppose the Trump campaign.

Many of these instances were reported, including the posting of many primary source documents by veteran investigative journalist John Solomon. Since the Democrats switched from Russia to Ukraine for their impeachment crusade, Solomon's reporting on Burisma, Hunter Biden, and Ukraine election meddling has become inconvenient for the Democratic narrative, and so the media is furiously smearing and libeling Solomon.

In fact, the publication, The Hill, told its staff yesterday it would conduct a review of Solomon's Ukraine reporting. Coincidentally, the decision comes just 3 days after a Democrat on this committee told a Hill writer that she would stop speaking to the Hill because it had run Solomon's stories. And she urged the writer to relay her concerns to Hill's management. So now that Solomon's reporting is a problem for the Democrats, it's a problem for the media as well.

I'd like to submit for the record John Solomon's October 31st story entitled "Debunking Some of the Ukraine Scandal Myths About Biden and Election Interference." I encourage viewers today to read this story and draw your own conclusions about the evidence Solomon has gathered.

I ask unanimous consent that we put this into the record, Mr. Chair.

The Chairman. Without objection.

Mr. Nunes. The concerted campaign by the media to discredit and disown some of their own colleagues is shocking, and we see it again in the sudden denunciations of New York Times Reporter Ken Vogel, as a conspiracy theorist, after he covered similar issues, including a 2017 Politico piece entitled "Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire."

My third question: Why did Burisma hire Hunter Biden? What did he do for them? And did his position affect any U.S. Government actions under the Obama administration? We have now heard testimony from the Democrats' own witnesses that diplomats were concerned about a conflict of interest involving Hunter Biden. That's because he had secured a well-paid position, despite having no qualifications, on the board of a corrupt Ukrainian company while his father was Vice President charged with overseeing Ukrainian issues.

After trying out several different accusations against President Trump, the Democrats have recently settled on bribery. According to widespread reports, they replaced their quid pro quo allegation because it wasn't polling well. But if the Democrats and the media are suddenly so deeply concerned about bribery, you would think they would take some interest in Burisma paying Hunter Biden $83,000 a month, and you'd think they would be interested in Joe Biden threatening to withhold U.S. loan guarantees unless the Ukrainians fired a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. That would be a textbook example of bribery.

The media, of course, are free to act as Democrat puppets and they're free to lurch from the Russia hoax to the Ukraine hoax at the direction of their puppet masters, but they cannot reasonably expect to do so without alienating half the country who voted for the President they're trying to expel.

Americans have learned to recognize fake news when they see it, and if the mainstream press won't give it to them straight, they'll go elsewhere to find it, which is exactly what the American people are doing.

With that, I yield back.

The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.

Today, we are joined by Lieutenant Colonel Vindman and Jennifer Williams. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman is an Active Duty military officer who joined the Army after college and served multiple tours overseas, serving in South Korea, Germany, and Iraq. He was deployed to Iraq at a time of heavy fighting, and was awarded a Purple Heart after being wounded by a roadside bomb. Since 2008, Colonel Vindman has served as a Foreign Area Officer specializing in Eurasia, serving both at home and in U.S. Embassies in Ukraine and Russia. He has served as a Political Military Affairs Officer for Russia for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He joined the Trump administration in July 2018, when he was asked to serve on the National Security Council.

Jennifer Williams began her career in government service in 2005, shortly after graduating from college, when she joined the Department of Homeland Security as a political appointee during the George W. Bush administration, and after working as a field representative on the 2004 Bush-Cheney Presidential campaign. She joined the Foreign Service the following year, completing tours in Jamaica, Beirut, and Lebanon.

Prior to joining the Office of the Vice President, she served at the U.S. Embassy in London as a Public Affairs Officer. In April 2019, Ms. Williams was detailed to the Office of the Vice President, Mike Pence, where she serves as a special adviser on his foreign policy team covering Europe and Russia issues. In that capacity, she keeps the Vice President aware of foreign policy issues in Europe and Russia, and prepares him for foreign policy engagements and meetings with foreign leaders.

Two final points before our witnesses are sworn. The first witness depositions as part of this inquiry were unclassified in nature, and all open hearings will also be held at the unclassified level. Any information that may touch on classified information will be addressed separately.

Second, Congress will not tolerate any reprisal, threat of reprisal, or attempt to retaliate against any U.S. Government official for testifying before Congress, including you or any of your colleagues.

If you would both please rise and raise your right hand, I will begin by swearing you in.

Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Ms. Williams. I do.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I do.

The Chairman. Let the record show the witnesses have answered in the affirmative. Thank you and you may be seated. The microphones are sensitive, so please speak directly into them. Without objection, your written statement will be made part of the record.

With that, Ms. Williams, you are now recognized for your opening statement, and when you are concluded, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, you are recognized immediately thereafter for your opening statement.

Ms. Williams.

Ms. Williams. Thank you, Chairman Schiff, Ranking Member Nunes, and other members of the committee, for the opportunity to provide this statement. I appear today pursuant to subpoena, and am prepared to answer your questions to the best of my abilities.

I have had the privilege of working as a Foreign Service Officer for nearly 14 years, working for three different Presidential administrations: two Republican and one Democratic. I joined the State Department in 2006, after serving in the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Michael Chertoff. It was with great pride and conviction that I swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution administered by a personal hero of mine, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

As a career officer, I am committed to serving the American people and advancing American interests abroad in support of the President's foreign policy objectives. I have been inspired and encouraged in that journey by the thousands of other dedicated public servants who I am proud to call colleagues across the Foreign Service, civil service, military, and Federal law enforcement agencies.

I have served overseas tours in Kingston, Jamaica, Beirut, Lebanon, and London, United Kingdom. I have worked to implement humanitarian assistance programs to serve millions of victims of the Syria conflict and served as an adviser on Middle East issues to the Deputy Secretary of State. And this spring, it was the greatest honor of my career to be asked to serve as a special adviser to the Vice President for Europe and Russia.

Over the past 8 months, I have been privileged to work with the dedicated and capable men and women of the Office of the Vice President to advance the administration's agenda. I have also worked closely with talented and committed colleagues at the National Security Council, State Department, Department of Defense, and other agencies to advance and promote U.S. foreign policy objectives. In this capacity, I have advised and prepared the Vice President for engagements related to Ukraine.

As you are aware, on November 7th, I appeared before the committee for a closed-door deposition pursuant to a subpoena. I would like to take this opportunity to briefly summarize my recollection of some of the events I expect the committee may ask me about.

On April 21st, Volodymyr Zelensky won the Ukrainian Presidential election. On April 23rd, the Vice President called to congratulate President-elect Zelensky. During the call, which I participated in, the Vice President accepted an invitation to attend President-elect Zelensky's upcoming inauguration, providing that the scheduling worked out. The Vice President had only a narrow window of availability at the end of May, and the Ukrainian Parliament would not meet to set a date for the inauguration until after May 14th. As a result, we did not expect to know whether the Vice President would be -- could attend until May 14th, at the earliest, and we made only preliminary trip preparations in early May.

On May 13th, an assistant to the Vice President's chief of staff called and informed me that President Trump had decided that the Vice President would not attend the inauguration in Ukraine. She did not provide any further explanation. I relayed that instruction to others involved in planning the potential trip. I also informed the NSC that the Vice President would not be attending, so that it could identify a head of delegation to represent the United States at President-elect Zelensky's inauguration.

On July 3rd, I learned that the Office of Management and Budget had placed a hold on a tranche of security assistance designated for Ukraine. According to the information I received, OMB was reviewing whether the funding was aligned with the administration's priorities.

I subsequently attended meetings of the policy coordination committee, where the hold on Ukrainian security assistance was discussed. During those meetings, representatives of the State and Defense Departments advocated that the hold should be lifted; and OMB representatives reported that the White House Chief of Staff had directed that the hold should remain in place. On September 11th, I learned that the hold on security assistance for Ukraine had been released. I have never learned what prompted that decision.

On July 25th, along with several of my colleagues, I listened to a call between President Trump and President Zelensky, the content of which has since been publicly reported. Prior to July 25th, I had participated in roughly a dozen other Presidential phone calls.

During my closed-door deposition, members of the committee asked about my personal views, and whether I had any concerns about the July 25th call. As I testified then, I found the July 25th phone call unusual because, in contrast to other Presidential calls I had observed, it involved discussion of what appeared to be a domestic political matter.

After the July 25th call, I provided an update in the Vice President's daily briefing book indicating that President Trump had a call that day with President Zelensky. A hard copy of the memorandum transcribing the call was also included in the book. I do not know whether the Vice President reviewed my update or the transcript. I did not discuss the July 25th call with the Vice President or any of my colleagues in the Office of the Vice President or the NSC.

On August 29th, I learned that the Vice President would be traveling to Poland to meet with President Zelensky on September 1st. At the September 1st meeting, which I attended, President Zelensky asked the Vice President about news articles reporting a hold on U.S. security assistance for Ukraine. The Vice President responded that Ukraine had the United States' unwavering support, and promised to relay their conversation to President Trump that night. During the September 1st meeting, neither the Vice President nor President Zelensky mentioned the specific investigations discussed during the July 25th phone call.

Thank you, again, for the opportunity to provide this statement. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

[The statement of Ms. Williams follows:]

******** COMMITTEE INSERT ********

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, thank you for the opportunity to address the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence with respect to activities relating to Ukraine and my role in the events under investigation.

I have dedicated my entire professional life to the United States of America. For more than two decades, it has been my honor to serve as an officer in the United States Army. As an infantry officer, I served multiple overseas tours, including South Korea and Germany, and I was deployed to Iraq for combat operations.

Since 2008, I have been a Foreign Area Officer specializing in European and Eurasian political military affairs. I served in the United States Embassies in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Moscow, Russia. In Washington, D.C., I was the political military affairs officer for Russia for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where I drafted the Armed Forces global campaign plan to counter Russian aggression and Russian malign influence.

In July 2018, I was asked to serve at the White House National Security Council. At the NSC, I'm the principal adviser to the National Security Advisor on Ukraine and other countries in my portfolio. And my role at the NSC is to develop, coordinate, and implement plans and policies to manage the full range of diplomatic, informational, military and economic national security issues for the countries in my portfolio.

My core function is to coordinate policy with departments and agencies. The committee has heard from many of my colleagues about the strategic importance of Ukraine as a bulwark against Russian aggression. It is important to know that our countries' policy of supporting Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, promoting Ukrainian prosperity, strengthening a free and democratic Ukraine as a counter to Russian aggression has been a consistent, bipartisan foreign policy objective and strategy across various administrations, both Democratic and Republican, and that President Zelensky's election in April 2019 created an unprecedented opportunity to realize our strategic objectives.

In the spring of 2019, I became aware of two disruptive actors, primarily Ukraine's then-prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko, and former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the President's personal attorney, promoting false narratives that undermined the United States' Ukraine policy. The NSC and its interagency partners, including the State Department, grew increasingly concerned about the impact that such information was having on our country's ability to achieve our national security objectives.

On April 21st, 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was elected President of Ukraine in a landslide victory on a unity, reform, and anticorruption platform. President Trump called President Zelensky on April 21st, 2019, to congratulate him on his victory. I was the staff officer who produced the call materials and was one of the staff officers who listened to the call. The call was positive and President Trump expressed his desire to work with President Zelensky and extended an invitation to visit the White House.

In May, I attended the inauguration of President Zelensky as part of the Presidential delegation led by Secretary Perry. Following the visit, the members of the delegation provided President Trump a debriefing, offering a positive assessment of President Zelensky and his team. After this debriefing, President Trump signed a congratulatory letter to President Zelensky and extended another invitation to visit the White House.

On July 10, 2019, Oleksandr Danylyuk, then Ukraine's National Security Advisor, visited Washington, D.C., for a meeting with National Security Advisor Bolton. Ambassador Volker and Sondland -- Ambassadors Volker and Sondland and Secretary Rick Perry also attended the meeting. I attended with Dr. Hill.

We fully anticipated the Ukrainians would raise the issue of a meeting between the Presidents. Ambassador Bolton cut the meeting short when Ambassador Sondland started to speak about the requirement that Ukraine deliver specific investigations in order to secure the meeting with President Trump. Following this meeting, there was a short debriefing, during which Ambassador Sondland emphasized the importance of Ukraine delivering the investigations into the 2016 elections, the Bidens, and Burisma. I stated to Ambassador Sondland that this was inappropriate, and had nothing to do with national security. Dr. Hill also asserted these comments were improper. Following the meeting, Dr. Hill and I agreed to report the incident to NSC's lead counsel, Mr. John Eisenberg.

On July 21st, 2019, President Zelensky won a parliamentary election in another landslide victory. The NSC proposed that President Trump call President Zelensky to congratulate him. On July 25th, 2019, the call occurred. I listened in on the call in the Situation Room with White House colleagues. I was concerned by the call. What I heard was inappropriate, and I reported my concerns to Mr. Eisenberg.

It is improper for the President of the United States to demand a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen and a political opponent. I was also clear that if Ukraine pursued an investigation -- it was also clear that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the 2016 elections, the Bidens and Burisma, it would be interpreted as a partisan play. This would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing bipartisan support, undermining U.S. national security, and advancing Russia's strategic objectives in the region.

I want to emphasize to the committee that when I reported my concerns on July 10th relating to Ambassador Sondland, and then July 25th relating to the President, I did so out of a sense of duty. I privately reported my concerns in official channels to the proper authority in the chain of command. My intent was to raise these concerns because they had significant national security implications for our country. I never thought that I would be sitting here testifying in front of this committee and the American public about my actions. When I reported my concerns, my only thought was to act properly and to carry out my duty.

Following each of my reports to Mr. Eisenberg, I immediately returned to work to advance the President's and our country's foreign policy objectives. I focused on what I have done throughout my military career, promoting America's national security interests.

I want to take a moment to recognize the courage of my colleagues who have appeared and are scheduled to appear before this committee. I want to state that the character attacks on these distinguished and honorable public servants is reprehensible. It is natural to disagree and engage in spirited debate, and this has been the custom of our country since the time of our Founding Fathers, but we are better than personal attacks.

The uniform I wear today is that of a United States Army -- is that of the United States Army. The members of our all-volunteer force are made up of a patchwork of people from all ethnicities, regions, socioeconomic backgrounds, who come together under a common oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. We do not serve any political party; we serve the Nation.

I am humbled to come before you today as one of many who serve in the most distinguished and able military in the world. The Army is the only profession I have ever known. As a young man, I decided I wanted to spend my life serving this Nation that gave my family refuge from authoritarian oppression. For the last 20 years, it has been an honor to represent and protect this great country.

Next month will mark 40 years since my family arrived in the United States as refugees. When my father was 47 years old, he left behind his entire life and the only home he had ever known to start over in the United States so his three sons could have better and safer lives. His courageous decision inspired a deep sense of gratitude in my brothers and myself, and instilled in us a sense of duty and service. All three of us have served, or are currently serving in the military. My little brother sits behind me here today. Our collective military service is a special part of our family's history, story in America.

I also recognize that my simple act of appearing here today, just like the courage of my colleagues who have also truthfully testified before this committee, would not be tolerated in many places around the world. In Russia, my act of expressing concern to the chain of command in an official and private channel would have severe personal and professional repercussions, and offering public testimony involving the President would surely cost me my life.

I am grateful to my father -- for my father's brave act of hope 40 years ago and for the privilege of being an American citizen and public servant, where I can live free, free of fear for mine and my family's safety.

Dad, I am sitting here today in the U.S. Capitol talking to our elected professionals. Talking to our elected professionals is proof that you made the right decision 40 years ago to leave the Soviet Union and come here to the United States of America in search of a better life for our family. Do not worry. I will be fine for telling the truth.

Thank you again for your consideration. I will be happy to answer your questions.

[The statement of Lieutenant Colonel Vindman follows:]

********COMMITTEE INSERT********

The Chairman. Thank you, Colonel. Thank you, Ms. Williams. Colonel, your brother and family are more than welcome here. We're grateful to have them with us.

We will proceed with the first round of questions, as detailed in the memo provided to committee members. There will be 45 minutes of questions conducted by the chairman or majority counsel, followed by 45 minutes for the ranking member or minority counsel. Under House Resolution 660, that time may not be delegated to other members. Following that, unless I specify an additional equal time for extended questioning, we will proceed under the 5-minute rule and every member will have a chance to ask questions.

I now recognize myself or majority counsel for the first 45 minutes.

Before we get into the substance of your testimony, Ms. Williams, I want to ask you about a phone call between Vice President Pence and President Zelensky of Ukraine on September 18th. Were you on that call?

Ms. Williams. I was.

The Chairman. And did you take notes of the call?

Ms. Williams. Yes, sir.

The Chairman. Is there something about that call that you think may be relevant to our investigation?

Mr. Shur. Mr. Chairman, as we previously discussed with the committee, the Office of the Vice President has taken the position that the September --

The Chairman. Sir, could you move the microphone a little closer to you.

Mr. Shur. As we previously discussed with both majority and minority staff of the committee, the Office of the Vice President has taken the position that the September 18 call is classified. As a result, with respect to the call, I'd refer the committee to the public record, which includes Ms. Williams' November 7th testimony, which has been publicly released, as well as the public readout of that call, which has previously been issued by the White House.

Beyond that, given the position of the Vice President's office on classification, I have advised Ms. Williams not to answer further questions about that call in an unclassified setting.

The Chairman. I thank the counsel.

Ms. Williams, I would only ask you in this setting whether you think there is something relevant to our inquiry in that call and whether, if so, you'll be willing to make a classified submission to the committee?

Ms. Williams. I would also refer to my testimony that I gave in the closed session, and I am very happy to appear for a classified setting discussion as well.

The Chairman. It may not be necessary for you to appear if you'll be willing to submit the information in writing to the committee.

Ms. Williams. I'll be happy to do so.

The Chairman. I thank you.

Colonel Vindman, if I could turn your attention to the April 21st call, that is the first call between President Trump and President Zelensky, did you prepare talking points for the President to use during that call?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, I did.

The Chairman. And did those talking points include rooting out corruption in Ukraine?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

The Chairman. That was something the President was supposed to raise in the conversation with President Zelensky?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Those were the recommended talking points that were cleared through the NSC staff for the President, yes.

The Chairman. Did you listen in on that call?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, I did.

The Chairman. The White House has now released the record of that call. Did President Trump ever mention corruption in the April 21st call?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. To the best of my recollection, he did not.

The Chairman. On the April 21st call, President Trump told President Zelensky that he would send a high-level U.S. delegation to the inauguration. Following that call, Ms. Williams, was it your understanding that the President wanted the Vice President to attend the inauguration in Kyiv?

Ms. Williams. Yes, that was my understanding.

The Chairman. And did the President subsequently tell the Vice President not to attend the inauguration?

Ms. Williams. I was informed by our chief of staff's office, by the Vice President's chief of staff office that the President had told the Vice President not to attend. I did not witness that conversation.

The Chairman. And am I correct that you learned this on May 13th? Is that right?

Ms. Williams. That is correct.

The Chairman. Am I also correct that the inauguration date had not been set by May 13th?

Ms. Williams. That is correct.

The Chairman. Do you know what accounted for the President's decision to instruct the Vice President not to attend?

Ms. Williams. I do not.

The Chairman. Colonel Vindman, you were a member of the U.S. delegation to the inauguration on May 20th. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, Chairman.

The Chairman. And during that trip, did you have an opportunity to offer any advice to President Zelensky?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, Chairman.

The Chairman. What was the advice that you gave him?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. During a bilateral meeting in which the whole delegation was meeting with President Zelensky and his team, I offered two pieces of advice: To be particularly cautious with regards to Ukraine -- to be particularly cautious with regards to Russia, and its desire to provoke Ukraine; and the second one was to stay out of U.S. domestic policy.

The Chairman. Do you mean politics?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Politics, correct.

The Chairman. And why did you feel it was necessary to advise President Zelensky to stay away from U.S. domestic politics?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Chairman, in the March and April timeframe, it became clear that there were -- there were actors in the U.S., public actors, nongovernmental actors that were promoting the idea of investigations and 2016 Ukrainian interference.

And it was consistent with U.S. policy to advise any country, all the countries in my portfolio, any country in the world, to not participate in U.S. domestic politics. So I was passing the same advice consistent with U.S. policy.

The Chairman. I know Mr. Goldman will have more questions about that when I turn to him. But let me turn, if I can, to the hold on security assistance which I think you both testified you learned about in early July.

Am I correct that neither of you were provided with a reason for why the President put a hold on security assistance to Ukraine?

Ms. Williams. My understanding was that OMB was reviewing the assistance to ensure it was in line with administration priorities, but it was not made more specific than that.

The Chairman. Colonel Vindman?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is consistent. The review was to ensure it remained consistent with administration policies.

The Chairman. Colonel Vindman, you attended a meeting in John Bolton's office on July 10th where Ambassador Sondland interjected to respond to a question by senior Ukrainian officials about a White House visit. What did he say at that time?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. To the best of my recollection, Ambassador Sondland said that in order to get a White House meeting, the Ukrainians would have to provide a deliverable, which is investigations, specific investigations.

The Chairman. And what was Ambassador Bolton's response or reaction to that comment?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. The -- we had not completed all of the agenda items and we still had time for the meeting, and Ambassador Bolton abruptly ended the meeting.

The Chairman. Did you report this incident to the National Security Council lawyers?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, I did.

The Chairman. Based on Ambassador Sondland's remark at the July 10th meeting, was it your clear understanding that the Ukrainians understood they had to commit to investigations President Trump wanted in order to get the White House meeting?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. It may not have been entirely clear at that moment. Certainly Ambassador Sondland was calling for these meetings, and he had -- he had stated that his -- he had this -- this was developed per a conversation with the chief of staff, Mr. Mick Mulvaney, but the connection to the President wasn't clear at that point.

The Chairman. But the import of what Ambassador Sondland said during that meeting was that there was agreement with Mick Mulvaney that Zelensky would get the meeting if they would undertake these investigations?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

The Chairman. About 2 weeks after that July 10th meeting, President Trump and President Zelensky had their second call, the now infamous July 25th call.

Colonel Vindman, what was your real-time reaction to hearing that call?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Chairman, without hesitation, I knew that I had to report this to the White House counsel. I had concerns, and it was my duty to report my concerns to the proper -- proper people in the chain of command.

The Chairman. And what was your concern?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Chairman, as I said in my statement, it was inappropriate. It was improper for the President to request -- to demand an investigation into a political opponent, especially a foreign power where there's, at best, dubious belief that this would be a completely impartial investigation, and that this would have significant implications if it became public knowledge, and it would be perceived as a partisan play. It would undermine our Ukraine policy, and it would undermine our national security.

The Chairman. Colonel, you've described this as a demand, this favor that the President asked. What is it about the relationship between the President of the United States and the President of Ukraine that leads you to conclude that when the President of the United States asks a favor like this, it's really a demand?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Chairman, the culture I come from, the military culture, when a senior asks you to do something, even if it's polite and pleasant, it's not -- it's not to be taken as a request, it's to be taken as an order.

In this case, the power disparity between the two leaders, my impression is that, in order to get the White House meeting, President Zelensky would have to deliver these investigations.

The Chairman. Ms. Williams, I think you've described your reaction in your deposition when you listened to the call as you found it unusual and inappropriate, but I was struck by something else you said in your deposition. You said that it shed some light on possible other motivations behind a security assistance hold. What did you mean by that?

Ms. Williams. Mr. Chairman, I was asked during the closed-door testimony how I felt about the call. And in reflecting on what I was thinking in that moment, it was the first time I had heard internally the President reference particular investigations that previously I had only heard about through Mr. Giuliani's press interviews and press reporting.

So in that moment, it was not clear whether there was a direct connection or linkage between the ongoing hold on security assistance and what the President may be asking President Zelensky to undertake in regard to investigations. So it was noteworthy in that regard. I did not have enough information to draw any firm conclusions.

The Chairman. But it raised a question in your mind as to whether the two were related?

Ms. Williams. It was the first I had heard of any requests of Ukraine which were that specific in nature. So it was noteworthy to me in that regard.

The Chairman. Both of you recall President Zelensky in that conversation raising the issue or mentioning Burisma, do you not?

Ms. Williams. That is correct.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

The Chairman. And yet the word "Burisma" appears nowhere in the call record that's been released to the public. Is that right?

Ms. Williams. That's right.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

The Chairman. Do you know why that's the case, why that was left out?

Ms. Williams. I do not. I was not involved in the production of that transcript.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I attribute that to the fact that this transcript that is being produced may have not caught the word "Burisma," and it was -- in the transcript that was released, it was released as the company, which is accurate. It's not a significant omission.

The Chairman. Colonel, you pointed out the fact that that word was used, did you not?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

The Chairman. And yet, it was not included in the record released to the public?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That's right. It's -- I'd say it's informed speculation that the folks that produce these transcripts do the best they can, and they just didn't catch the word. And that was my responsibility to then make sure that the transcript was as accurate as possible; and that's what I attempted to do by putting that word back in, because that was in my notes.

The Chairman. I think, Colonel, you testified in your deposition that you found it striking that Zelensky would bring up Burisma, that it indicated to you that he had been prepped for the call to expect this issue to come up. What led you to that conclusion?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. It seemed unlikely that he would be familiar with a single company in the context of a call that had -- that was on the broader bilateral relationship. And it seemed to me that he was either tracking this issue because it was in the press or he was otherwise prepped.

The Chairman. Mr. Goldman.

Mr. Goldman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning to both of you.

On July 25th, at approximately 9 a.m., you both were sitting in the Situation Room, probably not too much further away than you are right now, and you were preparing for a long-awaited phone call between President Trump and President Zelensky.

Now, Colonel Vindman, in advance of this phone call, did you prepare talking points, as you did for the April 21st call?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, I did.

Mr. Goldman. What were those talking points based upon?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. They were -- so this is not in the public record, and I can't comment too deeply, but what is -- the areas that we've consistently talked to, talked about in public was cooperation on supporting a reform agenda, anticorruption efforts, and helping President Zelensky implement his plans to end Russia's war against Ukraine.

Mr. Goldman. In other words, they're based on official U.S. policy?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Goldman. And is there a process to determine official U.S. policy?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes. That is -- my job is coordinate U.S. policy. So throughout the preceding year that I had been on staff, I had undertaken an effort to make sure we had a cohesive, coherent U.S. policy.

Mr. Goldman. And as you listened to the call, did you observe whether President Trump was following the talking points, based on the official U.S. policy?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Counsel, the President could choose to use the talking points or not. He's the President. But they were not consistent with what I provided, yes.

Mr. Goldman. Let's take a look at a couple of excerpts from this call. And right after President Zelensky thanked President Trump for the United States' support in the area of defense, President Trump asks President Zelensky for a favor, and then raises this theory of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.

He says in the highlighted portion: "I would like you to do us a favor though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it."

Now, Colonel Vindman, was this statement based on the official talking points that you had prepared?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. No.

Mr. Goldman. And was this statement related to the 2016 Ukraine interference in the 2016 election part of the official U.S. policy?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. No, it was not.

Mr. Goldman. Now, at the time of this July 25th call, Colonel Vindman, were you aware of a theory that Ukraine had intervened or interfered in the 2016 U.S. election?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I was.

Mr. Goldman. Are you aware of any credible evidence to support this theory?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I am not.

Mr. Goldman. Are you also aware that Vladimir Putin had promoted this theory of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I am well aware of that fact.

Mr. Goldman. And ultimately, which country did U.S. intelligence services determine to have interfered in the 2016 election?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. It is the consensus of the entire Intelligence Community that the Russians interfered in U.S. elections in 2016.

Mr. Goldman. Let's go to another excerpt from this call where President Trump asks President Zelensky to investigate his political opponent, Vice President Joe Biden. Here, President Trump says: "The other thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it. It sounds horrible to me," he said.

Again, Colonel Vindman, was this included in your talking points?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. It was not.

Mr. Goldman. Is such a request to investigate a political opponent consistent with official U.S. policy?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. It was not consistent with the policy, as I understood it.

Mr. Goldman. Now, are you aware of any credible allegations or evidence to support this notion that Vice President Biden did something wrong, or against U.S. policy with regard to Ukraine?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I am not.

Mr. Goldman. Ms. Williams, are you familiar with any credible evidence to support this theory against Vice President Biden?

Ms. Williams. No, I'm not.

Mr. Goldman. Now, Ms. Williams, prior to the July 25th call, approximately how many calls between the President of the United States and foreign leaders had you listened to?

Ms. Williams. I would say roughly a dozen.

Mr. Goldman. Had you ever heard a call like this?

Ms. Williams. As I testified before, I believe what I found unusual or different about this call was the President's reference to specific investigations that struck me as different than other calls I had listened to.

Mr. Goldman. You testified that you thought it was political in nature. Why did you think that?

Ms. Williams. I thought that the references to specific individuals and investigations, such as former Vice President Biden and his son, struck me as political in nature, given that the former Vice President is a political opponent of the President.

Mr. Goldman. And so you thought that it could potentially be designed to assist President Trump's reelection effort?

Ms. Williams. I can't speak to what the President's motivation was in referencing it, but I just noted that the reference to Biden sounded political to me.

Mr. Goldman. Colonel Vindman, you said in your deposition that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the political benefits of the President's demands. For those of us who are not rocket scientists, can you explain what you meant by that?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. So, my understanding is that it was -- the connection to investigating a political opponent was inappropriate and improper. I made that connection as soon as the President brought up the Biden investigation.

Mr. Goldman. Colonel Vindman, you testified that President Trump's request for a favor from President Zelensky would be considered as a demand to President Zelensky. After this call, did you ever hear from any Ukrainians, either in the United States or Ukraine, about any pressure that they felt to do these investigations that President Trump demanded?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Not that I can recall.

Mr. Goldman. Did you have any discussions with officials at the Embassy here, the Ukrainian Embassy here in Washington, D.C.?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, I did.

Mr. Goldman. Did you discuss at all the demand for investigations with them?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I did not.

Mr. Goldman. Did you discuss at all, at any point, their concerns about the hold on security assistance?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. To the best of my recollection, in the August timeframe, the Ukrainian Embassy started to become aware of the hold on security assistance, and they were asking if I had any comment on that or if I could substantiate that.

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[10:08 a.m.]

Mr. Goldman. And that was before it became public. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Mr. Goldman. And what did you respond?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I believe I said that -- I don't recall, frankly. I don't recall what I said, but I believe it may have been something along the lines of, "I'm not aware of it."

Mr. Goldman. You testified that one of your concerns about the request for investigations related to U.S. domestic politics was that Ukraine may lose bipartisan support. Why was that a concern of yours?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Ukraine is in a war with Russia, and the security assistance that we provide Ukraine is significant. Absent that security assistance and, maybe even more importantly, the signal of support for Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, that would likely encourage Russia to pursue -- to potentially escalate to pursue further aggression, undermining -- further undermining Ukrainian sovereignty, European security, and U.S. security.

Mr. Goldman. So, in other words, Ukraine is heavily dependent on United States' support, both diplomatically, financially, and also militarily?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Goldman. Colonel Vindman, what languages do you speak?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I speak Russian and Ukrainian and a little bit of English.

Mr. Goldman. Do you know what -- do you recall what language President Zelensky spoke on this July 25th phone call?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I know he made a valiant effort to speak English. He had been practicing up his English. But he also spoke Ukrainian.

Mr. Goldman. I want to look at the third excerpt from the July 25th call. And Chairman Schiff addressed this with you in his questioning. And you see in the highlighted portion, it says, "specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue."

Is that the portion of the call record that, Colonel Vindman, you thought President Zelensky actually said "Burisma"?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Goldman. And you testified earlier that his use of -- or his understanding that when President Trump mentioned the Bidens that that referred to the company Burisma, sounded to you like he was prepped or prepared for this call. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Goldman. I want to go to the next slide, if we could, which is actually a text message that neither of you is on, but this is from Ambassador Kurt Volker to Andriy Yermak.

And, Colonel Vindman, who's Andriy Yermak?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Andriy Yermak is a senior advisor within the Presidential administration, Ukrainian Presidential administration. He's a senior advisor to President Zelensky.

Mr. Goldman. Now, this text message is less than a half-hour before the call on July 25th. And since neither of you were on it, I'll read it.

It says, from Ambassador Volker: "Good lunch. Thanks. Heard from White House. Assuming President Z convinces Trump he will investigate, 'get to the bottom of what happened' in 2016, we will nail down date for a visit to Washington. Good luck. See you tomorrow. Kurt."

Now, is this the sort of thing that you're referring to when you say that it is sounded like President Zelensky was prepared for this call?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. This would be consistent, yes.

Mr. Goldman. Now, turning to the fourth excerpt from the July 25th call, where Ukraine's President Zelensky links the White House meeting to the investigations that President Trump requests, President Zelensky says, "I also wanted to thank you for your invitation to visit the United States, specifically Washington, D.C. On the other hand, I also wanted to ensure you that we will be very serious about the case and will work on the investigation."

Colonel Vindman, when President Zelensky says, "on the other hand," would you agree that he's acknowledging a linkage between the White House visit that he mentions in the first sentence and the investigations that he mentions in the second sentence?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. It could be taken that way. I'm not sure if I -- it seems like a reasonable conclusion.

Mr. Goldman. And if that is the case, that would be consistent with the text message that Ambassador Volker sent to Andriy Yermak right before the call. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Seemingly so.

Mr. Goldman. Now, you've testified in your deposition that a White House visit, an Oval Office visit, is very important to President Zelensky. Why is that?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. The show of support for President Zelensky, still a brand-new President, frankly, a new politician on the Ukrainian political scene, looking to establish his bona fides as a regional and maybe even a world leader, would want to have a meeting with the United States, the most powerful country in the world and Ukraine's most significant benefactor, in order to be able to implement his agenda.

Mr. Goldman. It would provide him with some additional legitimacy at home?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Mr. Goldman. So, just to summarize, in this July 25th call between the Presidents of the United States and Ukraine, President Trump demanded a favor of President Zelensky -- to conduct investigations that both of you acknowledge were for President Trump's political interest, not the national interest -- and in return for his promise of a much-desired White House meeting for President Zelensky.

Colonel Vindman, is that an accurate summary of the excerpts that we just looked at?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Mr. Goldman. Ms. Williams?

Ms. Williams. Yes.

Mr. Goldman. Colonel Vindman, you immediately reported this call to the NSC lawyers. Why did you do that?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. So, at this point, I'd already been tracking this, initially, what I would describe as alternative narrative, false narrative, and I was certainly aware of the fact that it was starting to reverberate, gain traction. The fact that it, in the July 10th call, ended up being pronounced by a public official, Ambassador Sondland, had me alerted to this. And I was -- subsequent to that report, I was invited to follow up with any other concerns to Mr. Eisenberg.

Mr. Goldman. And we're going to discuss that July 10th meeting in a moment. But when you say "alternative/false narratives," are you referring to the two investigations that President Trump referenced in the call?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Mr. Goldman. Now, at some point, did you also discuss how the written summary of the call record should be handled with the NSC lawyers?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. There was -- following the report, there was a discussion in the legal shop on the best way to manage the transcript, yes.

Mr. Goldman. What did you understand they concluded?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. My understanding is that this was viewed as a sensitive transcript and to avoid leaks and, if I recall the term properly, something along the lines of "preserve the integrity of the transcript." It should be segregated to a smaller group of folks.

Mr. Goldman. So "preserve the integrity of the transcript," what did that mean?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm not sure. I mean, it seemed like a legal term. I'm not an attorney. But it was -- I didn't take it as anything nefarious. I just understood that they wanted to keep it in a smaller group.

Mr. Goldman. If there was real interest in preserving the integrity of the transcript, don't you think they would've accepted your correction that Burisma should've been included?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Not necessarily. The way these edits occur, they go through, like everything else, an approval process. I made my contribution. It was cleared by Mr. Morrison. Then, when I returned it -- you know, sometimes that doesn't happen.

There are administrative errors. I think that, in this case, I didn't see -- when I first saw the transcript without the two substantive items that I had attempted to include, I didn't see that as nefarious. I just saw it as a: "Okay. No big deal. You know, these might be meaningful, but it's not that big a deal."

Mr. Goldman. You said two substantive issues. What was the other one?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. There was a reference in a section -- one second. On page 4, the top paragraph -- let me find the right spot. Okay. Yes. "You can look into it" -- ellipse -- "there are videos" is what I recall. Or there were recordings -- recordings.

Mr. Goldman. So, instead of an ellipses, it should have said, to what you heard, that there are recordings?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Goldman. Did you ultimately learn where the call record was put?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I understood that it was being segregated into a separate system, a separate secure system.

Mr. Goldman. Why would it be put on a separate secure system?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. This is not definitely not unprecedented, but, at times, if you want to limit access to a smaller groups of folks, you put it on the secure system to ensure that a smaller group of people with access to the secure system have it.

Mr. Goldman. But can't you also limit the number of people who can access it on the regular system?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. You can do that. But, to the best of my recollection, the decision was made, frankly, on the fly, after my -- after the fact I -- after I conveyed my concerns to Mr. Eisenberg, Mr. Ellis came in. He hadn't heard the entire conversation. And when it was mentioned that it was sensitive, it was kind of an on-the-fly decision to just segregate it into this other system.

Mr. Goldman. Mr. Eisenberg and Mr. Ellis are the NSC lawyers?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Goldman. But it was your understanding that it was not a mistake to put it on the highly classified system. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm not sure I understand.

Mr. Goldman. Was it intended to be put on the highly classified system by the lawyers, or was it a mistake that it was put there?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I think it was intended, but, again, it was intended to prevent leaks and to limit access.

Mr. Goldman. Now, you testified, both of you, about the April 21st call a little earlier.

And, Colonel Vindman, you indicated that you did include in your talking points the idea of Ukraine rooting out corruption but that President Trump did not mention corruption.

I want to go to the White House readout from the April 21st call. And I'm not going to read the whole thing, but do you see highlighted portion where it says, "root out corruption"?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Mr. Goldman. So, in the end, this readout was false? Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That's -- maybe that's a bit of a -- it's not entirely accurate, but I'm not sure if I would describe it as false. It was consistent with U.S. policy. And these items are used as messaging tools also. So a statement that goes out, in addition to, you know, reading out the meeting itself, is also a messaging platform to indicate what is important with regards to U.S. policy.

Mr. Goldman. So it is a part of U.S. official policy that Ukraine should root out corruption even if President Trump did not mention it in that April 21st phone call. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Certainly.

Mr. Goldman. And he also did not mention it in the July 25th phone call. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Goldman. So, even though it was included in his talking points for the April 21st call and presumably even though you can't talk about it for the July 21st call, it was not included in either. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. For the April 21st call --

Mr. Goldman. He did not mention it in either, rather.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Goldman. So, when the President says now that he held up security assistance because he was concerned about rooting out corruption in Ukraine, that concern was not expressed in the two phone conversations that he had with President Zelensky earlier this year. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Goldman. Now, Ms. Williams, you testified earlier that, after this April 21st call, President Trump asked Vice President Pence to attend President Zelensky's inauguration. Is that right?

Ms. Williams. That's correct.

Mr. Goldman. And that on May 13th you were just informed by the Chief of Staff's Office that Vice President Pence should not -- will not be going, per request of the President. Is that right?

Ms. Williams. That's what I was informed, yes.

Mr. Goldman. And you didn't know what had changed from April 21st to May 13th. Is that right?

Ms. Williams. No, not in terms of that decision.

Mr. Goldman. Well, Colonel Vindman, since you in particular are a little bit more, perhaps, than Ms. Williams, who has a broader portfolio, focuses on Ukraine, I want to ask you if you were aware of the following things that happened from April 21st to May 13th.

Were you aware that Ambassador Yovanovitch was abruptly recalled from Ukraine in that time?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Mr. Goldman. Were you aware that President Trump --

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm sorry. To correct it, so she was recalled prior -- let me see -- so the notification occurred toward the end of April, and she was finally recalled in the May timeframe, I think May 20th, if I recall correctly.

Mr. Goldman. Right. So she learned about it after April 21st, on April 24th. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Goldman. And were you aware that President Trump had a telephone call with President Putin during this time period in early May?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I was.

Mr. Goldman. And were you aware that Rudy Giuliani had planned a trip to go to Ukraine to pressure the Ukrainians to initiate the two investigations that President Trump mentioned on the July 25th call in this time period?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I was aware that he was traveling there and that he had been promoting the idea of these investigations.

Mr. Goldman. I want to move now to that July 10th meeting that you referenced, Colonel Vindman. What exactly did Ambassador Sondland say when the Ukrainian officials raised the idea of a White House meeting?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. As I recall, he referred to specific investigations that the Ukrainians would have to deliver in order to get these meetings.

Mr. Goldman. And what happened to --

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. The White House meeting.

Mr. Goldman. What happened to the broader meeting after he made that reference?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Ambassador Bolton very abruptly ended the meeting.

Mr. Goldman. Did you have any conversations with Ambassador Bolton about this meeting?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. No, I did not.

Mr. Goldman. Did you follow Ambassador Sondland and the others to the Ward Room for a meeting followup?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. There was a photo opportunity that we leveraged in order to demonstrate U.S. support, so the White House visit demonstrating U.S. support for Ukraine and the new national security advisory, who was a technocrat. And then, after that, we went down to a short post-meeting huddle or debrief.

Mr. Goldman. Were the investigations, the specific investigations that Ambassador Sondland referenced in the larger meeting, also discussed in the Ward Room meeting?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. They were.

Mr. Goldman. And what did Ambassador Sondland say?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Ambassador Sondland referred to investigations into the Bidens, Burisma, and 2016.

Mr. Goldman. How did you respond, if at all?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I said that this request to conduct these meetings was inappropriate -- these investigations was inappropriate and had nothing to do with national security policy.

Mr. Goldman. Was Ambassador Volker in this meeting as well?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I don't recall specifically. I believe he was there for at least a portion of the time. I don't recall if he was there for that -- the whole meeting.

Mr. Goldman. Was this statement made in front of the Ukrainian officials?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I believe there was some discussion prior to the Ukrainians leaving. When it was apparent there was some discord between the senior folks, Ambassador Sondland and other White House staff, myself, they were asked to step out. So I don't recall if they were there for the entire discussion.

Mr. Goldman. The senior White House staff you're referring to, does that include Fiona Hill, your immediate supervisor at the time?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Goldman. Now, you said you also reported this incident to the NSC lawyers. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Goldman. And what was their response?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. John Eisenberg said that he -- he took notes while I was talking, and he said that he would look into it.

Mr. Goldman. Why did you report this meeting and this conversation to the NSC lawyers?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Because it was inappropriate. And, following the meeting, I had a short conversation -- following the post-meeting meeting, in the Ward Room, I had a short conversation with Ambassador -- correction -- Dr. Hill, and we discussed the idea of needing to report this.

Mr. Goldman. So am I correct, Colonel Vindman, that at least no later than that July 10th meeting the Ukrainians had understood or at least heard that the Oval Office meeting that they so desperately wanted was conditioned on these specific investigations into Burisma and the 2016 election?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That was the first time I was aware of the Ukrainians being approached directly by a government official.

Mr. Goldman. And directly linking the White House meeting to the investigations?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Goldman. Ms. Williams, you testified in your opening statement that you attended the September 1st meeting between Vice President Pence and President Zelensky in Warsaw. Is that right?

Ms. Williams. That's correct.

Mr. Goldman. What was the first thing that President Zelensky asked Vice President Pence about at that meeting?

Ms. Williams. President Zelensky asked the Vice President about the status of security assistance for Ukraine, because he had seen the Politico article and other news reporting that the security assistance was being held.

Mr. Goldman. And you testified in your deposition that, in that conversation, President Zelensky emphasized that the military assistance, the security assistance, was not just important to assist Ukraine in fighting a war against Russia but that it was also symbolic in nature. What did you understand him to mean by that?

Ms. Williams. President Zelensky explained that, more than -- or just equally with the financial and fiscal value of the assistance, that it was the symbolic nature of that assistance that really was the show of U.S. support for Ukraine and for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. And I think he was stressing that to the Vice President to really underscore the need for the security assistance to be released.

Mr. Goldman. And that if the United States was holding the security assistance, is it also true, then, that Russia could see that as a sign of weakening U.S. support for Ukraine and take advantage of that?

Ms. Williams. I believe that's what President Zelensky was indicating, that any signal or sign that U.S. support was wavering would be construed by Russia as potentially an opportunity for them to strengthen their own hand in Ukraine.

Mr. Goldman. Did Vice President Pence provide a reason for the hold on security assistance to the Ukrainian President in that meeting?

Ms. Williams. The Vice President did not specifically discuss the reason behind the hold, but he did reassure President Zelensky of the strongest U.S. unwavering support for Ukraine. And they talked about the need for European countries to step up and provide more assistance to Ukraine as well.

Mr. Goldman. Did Vice President Pence report back to President Trump on that meeting, to your knowledge?

Ms. Williams. The Vice President conveyed to President Zelensky that he would follow up with President Trump that evening, and conveyed to President Trump what he had heard from President Zelensky with regard to his efforts to implement reforms in Ukraine. I am aware that the Vice President spoke to President Trump that evening, but I was not privy to the conversation.

Mr. Goldman. Are you also aware, however, that the security assistance hold was not lifted for another 10 days after this meeting?

Ms. Williams. That's correct.

Mr. Goldman. And am I correct that you didn't learn the reason why the hold was lifted?

Ms. Williams. That's correct.

Mr. Goldman. Colonel Vindman, you didn't learn a reason why the hold was lifted either. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Goldman. Colonel Vindman, are you aware that the committees launched an investigation into Ukraine matters on September 9th, 2 days before the hold was lifted?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I am aware, and I was aware.

Mr. Goldman. And, on September 10th, the Intelligence Committee requested the whistleblower complaint from the Department of National Intelligence. Are you aware of that?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I don't believe I aware of that.

Mr. Goldman. Were you aware that the White House was aware of this whistleblower complaint prior to that date?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. The first I heard of the whistleblower complaint is, I believe, when the news broke. I was only aware of the committees investigating the hold on security assistance.

Mr. Goldman. So is it accurate to say, Colonel Vindman, that whatever reason that was provided for the hold, including the administrative policies which -- well, which would support the hold, is that -- would support the security assistance. Is that right, to your understanding?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm sorry. I didn't understand that question.

Mr. Goldman. I was just asking, the administrative policies of President Trump supported the security assistance. Is that your understanding?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. So the interagency policy was to support security assistance for Ukraine.

Mr. Goldman. Thank you.

I yield back.

The Chairman. I now recognize Ranking Member Nunes or minority counsel for 45 minutes.

Mr. Nunes. Thank you.

Ms. Williams, welcome. I want to just establish a few basic facts about your knowledge of Ukraine, Burisma, and the role of the Bidens. You spend an extraordinary amount of your time on Ukraine, correct?

Ms. Williams. Ukraine is one of the countries in my portfolio. I would not say an extraordinary amount of time, but certainly the Vice President has engaged on Ukraine policy quite a bit in my 8 months.

Mr. Nunes. And it's in your portfolio.

Ms. Williams. That's correct.

Mr. Nunes. First off, were you aware, in September of 2015, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Jeffrey Pyatt publicly called for an investigation into Zlochevsky, the president of Burisma? Were you aware of these public statements?

Ms. Williams. No, not at the time.

Mr. Nunes. You are today, though.

Ms. Williams. I have since heard them, yes.

Mr. Nunes. Did you know of anti-Trump efforts by various Ukrainian officials as well as Alexandra Chalupa, a DNC consultant?

Ms. Williams. No, I was not aware.

Mr. Nunes. Did you know about the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kent's concerns about potential conflict of interest into Hunter Biden's sitting on the board of Burisma?

Ms. Williams. I did not work on Ukraine policy during that timeframe, so I've become aware of it through --

Mr. Nunes. In the last year or so.

Ms. Williams. I have become aware of it through Mr. Kent's testimony through this process.

Mr. Nunes. Did you know that financial records show a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma, routed more than $3 million to American accounts tied to Hunter Biden?

Ms. Williams. No, I was not aware.

Mr. Nunes. Until?

Ms. Williams. Until --

Mr. Nunes. You prepared for this hearing?

Ms. Williams. Until others have been testifying in more detail on those issues. That's correct.

Mr. Nunes. And you've been following it more closely.

Ms. Williams. Correct.

Mr. Nunes. Did you know that Burisma's American legal representatives met with Ukrainian officials just days after Vice President Biden forced the firing of the country's chief prosecutor?

Ms. Williams. Again, sir, I was not working on Ukraine policy during that time, and I was not --

Mr. Nunes. And I'm not -- none of these are trick questions. I'm just trying to get through them on the record.

Ms. Williams. I understand.

Mr. Nunes. Did you know that Burisma lawyers pressured the State Department in February 2016 after the raid, a month before the firing of Shokin, and that they invoked Hunter Biden's name as a reason to intervene?

Ms. Williams. I was not aware.

Mr. Nunes. Did you know that Joe Biden called Ukrainian President Poroshenko at least three times in February 2016 after the president and owner of Burisma's home was raided on February 2nd by the state prosecutor's office?

Ms. Williams. Not at the time. Again, I've become aware of that through this proceeding.

Mr. Nunes. Thank you, Ms. Williams.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, I'm going to ask you the same questions just to establish some basic facts about your knowledge about Ukraine, Burisma, and the role of the Bidens.

In September 2015, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Jeffrey Pyatt publicly called for an investigation into Zlochevsky, the president of Burisma. Were you aware of these public statements?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I wasn't aware of them at the time.

Mr. Nunes. When did you become aware of them?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. During the course of the testimony and depositions after this impeachment inquiry began.

Mr. Nunes. Did you know of anti-Trump efforts by various Ukrainian Government officials as well as Alexandra Chalupa, a DNC consultant?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm not aware of any of these interference efforts.

Mr. Nunes. Did you know about Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kent's concerns about potential conflicts of interest with Hunter Biden sitting on the board of Burisma?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. The only thing I'm aware of pertains to his deposition.

Mr. Nunes. Did you know that financial records show a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma, routed more than $3 million to the American accounts tied to Hunter Biden?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm not aware of this fact.

Mr. Nunes. Until recently.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I guess I didn't independently look into it. I'm just not aware of, you know, what kind of payments Mr. Biden may have received. This is not something I'm aware of.

Mr. Nunes. Did you know that Burisma's American legal representatives met with Ukrainian officials just days after Vice President Biden forced the firing of the country's chief prosecutor?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm not aware of these meetings.

Mr. Nunes. Did you know that Burisma lawyers pressured the State Department in February 2016 after the raid and a month before the firing of Shokin and that they invoked Hunter Biden's name as a reason to intervene?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm not aware of any of these facts.

Mr. Nunes. Did you know that Joe Biden called Ukrainian President Poroshenko at least three times in February 2016 after the president and owner of Burisma's home was raided on February 2nd by the state prosecutor's office?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm aware of the fact that President Biden -- or Vice President Biden was very engaged on Ukraine and had numerous engagements. That's what I'm aware of.

Mr. Nunes. Ms. Williams and Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, as you may or may not know, this committee has spent nearly 3 years conducting various investigations, starting with the Russia collusion hoax, FISA abuse, Democratic hysteria over the lack of collusion in the Mueller report, and now this impeachment charade.

One of the most concerning things regarding all of these investigations is the amount of classified or otherwise sensitive information I read in the press that derive either from this committee or sources in the administration.

To be clear, I'm not accusing either one of you leaking information. However, given that you are the first witnesses who actually have some firsthand knowledge of the President's call by listening in on July 25th, it's imperative to the American public's understanding of the events that we get a quick matters -- few matters out of the way first.

Ms. Williams, let me just go to you first. For the purposes of the following questions, I'm only asking about the time period between -- from July 25th through September 25th.

Ms. Williams. Okay.

Mr. Nunes. Did you discuss the July 25th phone call between President Trump and President Zelensky or any matters associated with the phone call with any members of the press?

Ms. Williams. No.

Mr. Nunes. To be clear, you never discussed these matters with The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, CNN, or any other media outlet?

Ms. Williams. No, I did not.

Mr. Nunes. Did you ask or encourage any individual to share the substance of the July 25th phone call or any matter associated with the call with any member of the press?

Ms. Williams. I did not.

Mr. Nunes. Do you know of any individual who discussed the substance of the July 25th phone call or matter associated with the call with any member of the press?

Ms. Williams. No, I do not.

Mr. Nunes. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, the same questions for you. Did you discuss the July 25th phone call between President Trump and President Zelensky or any matter associated with the phone call with any member of the press?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I did not.

Mr. Nunes. Just to be clear, you did not discuss this with The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, CNN, or any other media outlet?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I did not.

Mr. Nunes. Did you ask or encourage any individual to share the substance of the July 25th phone call or any matter associated with the call with any member of the press?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I did not.

Mr. Nunes. Do you know of any individual who discussed the substance of the July 25th phone call or any matter associated with the call with any member of the press?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. We have an NSC press shop, and they field any of these types of questions. I do not engage with the press at all.

Mr. Nunes. Let me ask the question again. Do you know of any individual who discussed the substance of the July 25th phone call or any matter associated with the call with any member of the press?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. We have an NSC press shop whose job is to engage on any of these types of questions. I am not aware, but it is possible and likely that the press shop would have had -- would field these types of questions.

Mr. Nunes. Right, but the question is --

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. After -- I'm sorry.

Mr. Nunes. The question is, do you know any individual -- do you personally know any individual who discussed the substance of the July 25th phone call or any matter associated with the call with any member of the press?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Thank you, Ranking Member, for clarifying. I do not.

Mr. Nunes. Thank you.

Ms. Williams, did you discuss the July 25th phone call with anyone outside the White House on July 25th or July 26th? And, if so, with whom?

Ms. Williams. No, I did not discuss the call with anyone outside or inside the White House.

Mr. Nunes. Ms. Williams, during your time on the NSC, have you ever accessed a colleague's work computer without their prior authorization or approval?

Ms. Williams. I have not. And just to clarify, I'm in the Office of the Vice President, so I'm not on the NSC.

Mr. Nunes. Right, but representing --

Ms. Williams. No, I have not.

Mr. Nunes. -- the Vice President.

Ms. Williams. No.

Mr. Nunes. Thank you for that clarification.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, did you discuss the July 25th phone call with anyone outside the White House on July 25th or the 26th? And, if so, with whom?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, I did. My core function is to coordinate U.S. Government policy, interagency policy, and I spoke to two individuals with regards to providing some sort of a readout of the call.

Mr. Nunes. Two individuals that were not in the White House?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Not in the White House. Cleared U.S. Government officials with the appropriate need to know.

Mr. Nunes. And what agencies were these officials with?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Department of State -- Department of State Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent, who is responsible for the portfolio, Eastern Europe, including Ukraine. And an individual from the Office of -- an individual in the Intelligence Community.

Mr. Nunes. As you know, the Intelligence Community has 17 different agencies. What agency was this individual from?

The Chairman. If I could interject here, we don't want to use these proceedings --

Mr. Nunes. It's our time, Chairman.

The Chairman. I know, but we need to protect the whistleblower. Please stop. I want to make sure that there's no effort to out the whistleblower through these proceeds.

If the witness has a good-faith belief that this may reveal the identity of the whistleblower, that is not the purpose that we are here for, and I want to advise the witness accordingly.

Mr. Nunes. Mr. Vindman, you testified in your deposition that you did not know the whistleblower.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Ranking Member, it's Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, please.

Mr. Nunes. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, you testified in the deposition that you did not know who the whistleblower was or is.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I do not who the whistleblower is. That is correct.

Mr. Nunes. So how is it possible for you to name these people and then out the whistleblower?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Per the advice of my counsel, I've been advised not to answer specific questions about members of the Intelligence Community.

Mr. Nunes. This is -- are you aware that this is the Intelligence Committee that's conducting an impeachment hearing?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Of course I am.

Mr. Nunes. Wouldn't the appropriate place for you to come to to testify would be the Intelligence Committee about someone within the Intelligence Community?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Ranking Member, per the advice of my counsel and the instructions from the chairman, I've been advised not to provide any specifics on who I have spoken to inside the Intelligence Community.

What I can offer is that these were properly cleared individuals -- or was a properly cleared individual with a need to know.

Mr. Nunes. Well, this is -- I mean, you could really -- you could plead the Fifth, but you're here to answer questions, and you're here under a subpoena. So you can either answer the question or you can plead the Fifth.

Mr. Volkov. Excuse me. On behalf of my client, we are following the rule of the committee, the rule of the chair, with regard to this issue. And this does not call for an answer that is invoking the Fifth or any theoretical issue like that. We're following the ruling of the chair.

Mr. Nunes. Counselor, what ruling is that?

The Chairman. If I could interject, counsel is correct. The whistleblower has the right -- statutory right to anonymity. These proceedings will not be used to out the whistleblower.

Mr. Volkov. And I've advised my client accordingly, and he's going to follow the ruling of the chair. If there's an alternative or you want to work something out with the chair, that's up to you, Mr. Nunes.

Mr. Nunes. Well, we've attempted to subpoena the whistleblower to sit for a deposition. The chair has tabled that motion and then has been unwilling to recognize those motions over the last few days of this impeachment inquisition process.

With that, I'll go to Mr. Castor.

Mr. Castor. Thank you, Ranking Member Nunes.

The call transcript as published on September 25th is complete and accurate. Will both of you attest to that?

Ms. Williams?

Ms. Williams. I didn't take a word-for-word --

Mr. Castor. Of course.

Ms. Williams. -- accounting. When I first saw the publicly released version, it looked substantively correct to me.

Mr. Castor. And Colonel Vindman?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I think -- I certainly would describe it as substantively correct or --

Mr. Castor. I think in your testimony, your deposition, you said "very accurate"?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

And you flagged a couple edits, Colonel Vindman. I think you had "Burisma" on page 4, where President Zelensky was talking about the company mentioned in the issue?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm sorry. Could you say that question --

Mr. Castor. I believe in your testimony you explained that you offered an edit that on page 4 of the transcript that was ultimately published you thought President Zelensky mentioned the word "Burisma"?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Oh, I had it in my notes. I know that's what he said. Yes.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

And, Ms. Williams -- and that was on page 4, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct. Correct.

Mr. Castor. And, Ms. Williams, I believe after your deposition you went back and checked your notes, and you had President Zelensky using the term "Burisma" as well. Is that correct?

Ms. Williams. That's correct.

Mr. Castor. But that came up on a different part of the transcript than what Colonel Vindman was relating to, correct?

Ms. Williams. Yes, I believe so.

Mr. Castor. Yours came up on page 5, and it would've been in substitution for the word "case"?

Ms. Williams. That's right. That's where I have it in my notes.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Colonel Vindman, we've had some discussion earlier today and also at your deposition about whether the President had a demand for President Zelensky. And, you know, I suggested to you in the deposition that the President's words are, in fact, ambiguous, and he uses some phrases that certainly could be characterized as hedging.

On page 3, in the first paragraph, he talks about "whatever you can do." He talks about "if that's possible." On page 4, he mentions "if you could speak to him," talking about the Attorney General or Rudy Giuliani. And then, at the end of the first paragraph on page 4, he says, "whatever you can do." The President also says, you know, "if you can look into it."

And I asked you during your deposition whether you saw or acknowledged the fact that certain people could read that to be ambiguous.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. And I said, correct, yes.

Mr. Castor. And I believe you said, "I think people want to hear what they have already preconceived." Is that what you testified?

Mr. Volkov. Actually, if I could ask for just a page cite?

Mr. Castor. 256.

Mr. Volkov. 256?

Mr. Castor. Yeah.

Mr. Volkov. And a line? Thank you. Just a minute, please.

Mr. Castor. And --

Mr. Volkov. Just a minute, please.

Okay. We got the page.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

And then you went on to say, "Yeah" -- you agreed with me. You said, "Yeah, I guess you could interpret it different ways." Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Turning attention to the preparation of the transcript, that followed the ordinary process, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. So I think it followed the appropriate process in terms of making sure that eventually it came around for clearances, for accuracy --

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. -- but it was in a different system, so --

Mr. Castor. Well, I'll get to that in a second. That relates to the storage of it. You had some concerns, Mr. Morrison articulated his concerns, about if the transcript was leaked out. And I think both you and Mr. Morrison agreed that it needed to be protected?

Mr. Volkov. Just a correction. I don't think it was Mr. Morrison. It was Mr. Eisenberg, right?

Mr. Castor. Mr. Morrison testified at his deposition --

Mr. Volkov. Okay. We don't have that in front of us. If you can give us that, we'll take a look.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I think in this -- but I could say for myself, I -- there were --

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. The concerns about leaks seemed valid, and I wasn't particularly critical. I thought this was sensitive, and I was not going to question --

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. -- the attorney's judgment on that.

Mr. Castor. Right. And even on the codeword server, you had access to it.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Mr. Castor. So at no point in time during the course of your official duties were you denied access to this information.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Castor. Is that correct?

Ms. Williams, I want to turn to you for a moment. And you testified that you believed the transcript is complete and accurate, other than the one issue you mentioned?

Ms. Williams. Substantively accurate, yes.

Mr. Castor. Now, did you express any concerns to anyone in your office about what you heard on the call?

Ms. Williams. My supervisor was listening on the call as well. So, because he had heard the same information, I did not feel a need to have a further conversation with him about it.

Mr. Castor. And you never had any concerns with anyone else in the Vice President's Office?

Ms. Williams. I did not discuss the call further with anyone in the Vice President's Office.

Mr. Castor. Okay. So you didn't flag it for the Chief of Staff or the Vice President's counsel or anyone of that sort?

Ms. Williams. Again, my immediate supervisor, Lieutenant General Kellogg, was in the room with me.

Mr. Castor. Right. And, after the call, did you and General Kellogg ever discuss the contents of the call?

Ms. Williams. We did not, no.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Now, in the run-up to the meeting in Warsaw -- the Vice President was meeting with President Zelensky September 1st in Warsaw -- you were involved with the preparation of the Vice President's briefing materials?

Ms. Williams. I was.

Mr. Castor. And did you flag for the Vice President, you know, parts of call that had concerned you?

Ms. Williams. No, we did not include the call transcript in the trip briefing book. We don't normally include previous calls in trip briefing books.

Mr. Castor. Okay. And so I'm just wondering, if the concerns were so significant, how come nobody on the Vice President's staff at least alerted him to the issue that President Zelensky might be on edge about something that had been mentioned on the 7/25 call?

Ms. Williams. Again, my supervisor had been in the call with me, and I ensured that the Vice President had access to the transcript in the moment on that day.

As we were preparing for the September meeting with the President Zelensky, the more immediate issue at hand was, 2 days prior, the news had broken about the hold on the security assistance. So we much more focused on the discussion that was likely to occur about the hold on security assistance for that meeting.

Mr. Castor. And, to your recollection -- you were in the meeting with President Zelensky and Vice President Pence?

Ms. Williams. I was.

Mr. Castor. And Burisma didn't come up or the Bidens or --

Ms. Williams. No.

Mr. Castor. -- any of these investigations?

Ms. Williams. No. They did not.

Mr. Castor. Colonel Vindman, you testified that the President has well-standing -- or longstanding concerns about corruption in Ukraine, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I don't recall, but there are concerns. There are broad concerns about corruption, yes.

Mr. Castor. But would you agree that if the U.S. is giving, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars to a foreign nation that has a corruption problem, that that's certainly something that the U.S. Government officials and the President would want to be concerned about?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Mr. Castor. And if a foreign country has a problem with oligarchs taking money, taking U.S. taxpayer dollars, that's something that the President ought to be concerned about in advance of dispensing the aid?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Mr. Castor. And I believe you did testify that corruption is endemic in Ukraine?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Castor. Are you also aware of the President's skepticism of foreign aid generally?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I am.

Mr. Castor. And it's something that he's made part of his priorities, to make sure that U.S. foreign aid is spent wisely?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Castor. And you're also aware the President has concerns about burden-sharing among our allies?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Mr. Castor. And, with respect to Ukraine, he was very interested and engaged in seeing if there was a possibility for our European allies to step up and contribute more?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes. I think that would be in the context of military assistance. In terms of burden-sharing, the European Union provides over $15 billion.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Or has provided since 2014.

Mr. Castor. Okay. But you are aware of the President's concern of burden-sharing, right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, I am.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Turning our attention specifically to the company of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, the co-founder of Burisma, is one of Ukraine's largest natural gas producers, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is my understanding, yes.

Mr. Castor. And it's been subject to numerous investigations over the years?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm not aware of -- I guess I couldn't point to specific investigations, but there is what I would call a pattern of questionable dealings and questions about corruption.

Mr. Castor. Zlochevsky had served as the Minister of Ecology during President Yanukovych's tenure?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I came to learn that that is correct, yes.

Mr. Castor. And are you aware -- and George Kent testified a little bit about this last week -- that, under the Obama administration, the U.S. Government encouraged Ukraine to investigate whether Zlochevsky used his government position to grant himself or Burisma exploration licenses? Are you aware of that?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I would defer to George Kent. He's a fount of knowledge on Ukraine, much deeper knowledge than I have. And --

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. -- if he attested to that, then I'd take his word for it.

Mr. Castor. Okay. And he testified that the U.S., along with the United Kingdom, was engaged in trying to recoup about 23 million in taxpayer dollars from Zlochevsky and the Burisma entity?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I understand he testified to that, yes.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

And Mr. Kent also testified that the investigation was moving along and then all of a sudden there was a bribe paid and the investigation went away. Did you hear him mention that?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I heard him mention that. These are events that occurred before my time, so, frankly, beyond what he said, I don't know much more.

Mr. Castor. Fair enough.

Right around the time the bribe was paid, the company sought to bolster their board. Are you aware that they tapped some luminaries for their corporate board?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Certainly I learned that at some point, yes.

Mr. Castor. Including the President of Poland, I believe?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Mr. Castor. And Hunter Biden?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, I came to learn that as well.

Mr. Castor. And are you aware of any specific experience Hunter Biden has in the Ukrainian corporate governance world?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I don't know much about Mr. Hunter Biden.

Mr. Castor. And we talked a little bit at your deposition about whether Mr. Biden was qualified to serve on this board, and, you know, I believe you acknowledged that apparently he was not, in fact, qualified?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. As far as I can tell, he didn't seem to be. But, like I said, I don't know his qualifications.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

And, Ms. Williams, I want to turn our attention to the inaugural trip. At one point, the Vice President and the Vice President's Office was focusing on attending that, correct?

Ms. Williams. That's right.

Mr. Castor. And it was somewhat complicated because, as I understand it, the White House doesn't want the President and the Vice President to be out of the country at the same time?

Ms. Williams. Yes, that's correct.

Mr. Castor. And during the timeframe, the President was in Japan. I believe he was in Japan May 24th to the 28th. And then he returned to Europe for the D-Day ceremonies June 2nd to 7th. And I think you told us that there was a window you provided of 4 days at the end of May, that if the Vice President was going to attend the inauguration, it had to be the 29th, 30th, 31st, or 1st?

Ms. Williams. Our Embassy in Kyiv had been in discussions with the Ukrainian -- with President Zelensky's team. And, as we had learned, obviously, the Ukrainian parliament wasn't going to come back into the session until mid-May, and so we wouldn't know formally what the date would be, but we understood that the initial thinking was that they were looking at dates at the end of May.

And so, homing in on that timeframe, we were aware of President Trump's plan to travel on either end. And so that's why we advised the Ukrainians that, if Vice President Pence were to be able to participate, the only really available days would be May 30th, May 31st, or June 1st.

Mr. Castor. Okay. And before the Vice President travels to a foreign nation, you have to send the Secret Service, do advance work, book hotels, and it's a relatively involved preparation experience, right?

Ms. Williams. That's correct.

Mr. Castor. And do you know if the Secret Service ever deployed, booked hotels, or anything of that sort?

Ms. Williams. My understanding is that our advance team was looking in those preparations, including hotel availability, and we were trying to determine when it would be appropriate to send out Secret Service and other advance personnel to lay groundwork for a trip. But because we weren't sure yet when the date would be, we hesitated to send those officials out.

Mr. Castor. Okay. But, ultimately, the Secret Service, as I understand it, did not deploy?

Ms. Williams. I don't believe they did, no.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

And President Zelensky's inauguration was May 20th, if I'm not mistaken?

Ms. Williams. Yes, that's correct.

Mr. Castor. And you had about 4 days' notice?

Ms. Williams. In the end, the Ukrainian parliament decided on May 16th to set the date for May 20th. That's correct.

Mr. Castor. Okay. So you would acknowledge that that made it quite difficult for the Vice President and the whole operation to mobilize and get over to Ukraine, correct?

Ms. Williams. It would have been, but we had already stopped the trip planning by that point.

Mr. Castor. And when the did that happen?

Ms. Williams. Stopping the trip planning?

Mr. Castor. Yeah.

Ms. Williams. On May 13th.

Mr. Castor. Okay. And how did you hear about that?

Ms. Williams. I was called by a colleague in the Vice President's Chief of Staff's Office and told to stop the trip planning.

Mr. Castor. Okay. And, as I understand it, it was the assistant to the Chief of Staff?

Ms. Williams. That's correct.

Mr. Castor. Okay. And so you didn't hear about it from General Kellogg or the Chief of Staff or --

Ms. Williams. Correct.

Mr. Castor. -- the President or the Vice President. You heard about it from Mr. Short's assistant?

Ms. Williams. That's right.

Mr. Castor. And did you have any knowledge of the reasoning for stopping the trip?

Ms. Williams. I asked my colleague why we should stop trip planning and why the Vice President would not be attending, and I was informed that the President had decided the Vice President would not attend the inauguration.

Mr. Castor. Okay. But do you know why the President decided --

Ms. Williams. No. She did not have that information.

Mr. Castor. Okay. And, ultimately, the Vice President went to Canada for a USMCA event --

Ms. Williams. That's right.

Mr. Castor. -- during this window of time, correct?

Ms. Williams. Correct.

Mr. Castor. So it's entirely conceivable that the President decided that he wanted the Vice President to go to Canada on behalf of USMCA instead of doing anything else, correct?

Ms. Williams. I'm really not in a position to speculate what the motivations were behind the President's decision.

Mr. Castor. Well, you know the Vice President's done quite a bit of USMCA events, correct?

Ms. Williams. Absolutely. Yes, sir.

Mr. Castor. Okay. And are you aware of whether anyone at the State Department inquired with your office about the Vice President's availability for the trip to Canada?

Ms. Williams. For the trip -- at what point?

Mr. Castor. Early May. Maybe May 8th?

Ms. Williams. I was not involved in the trip planning for Canada. One of my colleagues who covers Western Hemisphere was in charge --

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Ms. Williams. -- of that. So I'm not aware of specific --

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Ms. Williams. -- request about --

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Ms. Williams. -- the Vice President's availability. I was aware from my colleague who was planning that trip that we had competing trips, potentially, for the same window --

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Ms. Williams. -- but I was told that the Ukraine trip would take priority.

Mr. Castor. Okay. But, ultimately, you don't know.

Ms. Williams. I don't know about the Canada trip? Or --

Mr. Castor. You don't know the reason as to why the Vice President was sent to Canada for a USMCA event instead of going to the Ukraine.

Ms. Williams. I would say I don't know the reason behind why the President directed the Vice President not to go to Ukraine. I can't speak to the motivations about the Canada trip.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Colonel Vindman, I'd like to turn a little bit to the July 10th meeting in Ambassador Bolton's office and the subsequent post-meeting in the Ward Room.

Who all was in the July 10th meeting, to the best of your recollection?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Are we talking about the Ward Room, or are we talking about the actual meeting with Ambassador Bolton?

Mr. Castor. We'll start with the first meeting in the Ambassador's office.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. So, from the U.S. side, we had Ambassador Bolton, Dr. Hill. I believe there was another -- a special assistant to the President. Wells Griffith was in there.

Mr. Castor. Uh-huh.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. From our -- and myself.

From the Ukrainians --

Mr. Castor. Who from the Ukrainians? Oh, sorry.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yeah. For the Ukrainian side, we had Oleksandr Danylyuk; Andriy Yermak; and I think Oleksandr Danylyuk's advisor, Alexey Simeni (ph).

Mr. Castor. Okay. And you testified that you couldn't recall exactly why Ambassador Bolton stopped the meeting short and you only learned it subsequently in talking to Dr. Fiona Hill?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yeah, I noted that, you know, it ended abruptly, but I didn't, frankly, you know -- I didn't exactly know why.

Mr. Castor. And, in the Bolton meeting, you don't remember Ambassador Sondland using the word "Biden"?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He did not.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. To the best of my recollection, I don't think he did.

Mr. Castor. And then the group decamped to take a photo, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Castor. Okay. So the general feeling of the group was a positive one at that time, even though it may have ended abruptly.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I think Ambassador Bolton was exceptionally qualified, and he understood the strategic communications opportunity of having a photo. And we prompted him to see, before we completely adjourned, to see if he was willing to do a photo, and he did.

Mr. Castor. Okay. So you went out to West Executive Ave or wherever in the White House and you took a photo. I think you said you took it?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I certainly took a couple of them, yes.

Mr. Castor. Okay. And in the photo is Secretary Perry, Ambassador Bolton, Ambassador Volker, Mr. Danylyuk, and Mr. Yermak?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

And I apologize. When I was running through the U.S. side, of course Ambassador Bolton, Volker, and Sondland were there, and Secretary Perry was there.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Now, you testified that before the July 10th meeting you had developed concerns about the narrative, you know, involving Rudy Giuliani. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Castor. And had you heard, like, a firsthand account from anyone on the inside, or had you just been following news accounts?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. So I certainly was following news accounts. And that's from the Ukrainian side, Ukrainian press, and U.S. press.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. And my colleagues in the interagency also were concerned about this, as this had started in the March timeframe, kind of emanating from the John Solomon story all the way through. So there had been ongoing conversations. So several different sources, Counsel.

Mr. Castor. Okay. And so, when Ambassador Sondland mentioned the investigations, you sort of had a little bit of a clue of what the issue was?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Oh, definitely.

Mr. Castor. Okay. And then you took the photo, a very nice photo, and then you went to the Ward Room?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Castor. And do you remember -- I think you conceded to us that you had a hard time remembering exactly what was said in the Ward Room. Again, it's 4 months ago; it's hard to be precise about whether Sondland -- what specific words he used, whether he used "Burisma," "2016," "investigations." Is --

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yeah. So I believe it's in the deposition. The three elements -- Burisma, Bidens, and the 2016 elections -- were all mentioned.

Mr. Castor. In the Ward Room?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Castor. And I think -- you know, I think -- we can maybe go back to this, but I think on page 64 of your testimony you told us that you don't remember him using "2016" in the Ward Room?

Mr. Castor. I believe that I actually followed up and -- when you -- because this question was asked multiple times --

Mr. Castor. Uh-huh.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. -- I said all three elements were in there.

Mr. Castor. Okay. So, when we asked the question, it sort of refreshed your recollection?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, I guess that's the term now.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

There was some discussion of, you know, whether, when Mr. Morrison took over the portfolio for Dr. Hill, whether you were sidelined at all. Did you feel like you were?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. So I certainly was excluded or didn't participate in the trip to Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus --

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. -- at the end of August . And I wasn't -- initially, before it changed from a POTUS trip to a Vice President trip to Warsaw, I wasn't participating in that one. So I didn't miss that, no.

Mr. Castor. Okay. Did you express any concerns to Mr. Morrison about why you weren't included on those trips?

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[11:08 a.m.]

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. So Mr. Morrison -- I was on leave. I was supposed to be on leave from the 3rd of August through about the 16th or so of August. And he called me and asked me to return. There was, obviously, high-priority travel to the region, and he needed my assistance to help plan for it.

And, in asking me to return early from leave, which I take infrequently, I assumed that I'd be going on the trip. So when I was -- after returning from leave early, when I was told I wasn't going, I inquired about it, correct.

Mr. Castor. Okay. And what feedback did he give you?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He initially told me that the aircraft that was acquired, the MILAIR, was too small and there wasn't enough room.

Mr. Castor. Had you ever had any discussions with Mr. Morrison about concerns that he or Dr. Hill had with your judgment?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Did I ever have any conversations with Mr. Morrison about it?

Mr. Castor. Yes.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. No.

Mr. Castor. Okay. Did Mr. Morrison ever express concerns to you that he thought maybe you weren't following the chain of command in all instances?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He did not.

Mr. Castor. And did Dr. Hill or Mr. Morrison ever ask you questions about whether you were trying to access information outside of your lane?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. They did not.

Mr. Castor. And another, you know, aspect of the Ukraine portfolio that you were not a part of were some of the communications Mr. Morrison was having with Ambassador Taylor?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Castor. And did you ever express concern that he was leaving you off those calls?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Well, certainly it was concerning. He had just come onboard. He didn't have the -- you know, he wasn't steeped in all the items that we were working on, including the policy that we had developed over the preceding months. And I thought I could contribute to that, to his -- to the performance of his duties.

Mr. Castor. Okay. When you were -- you went to Ukraine for the inauguration?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Castor. At any point during that trip, did Mr. Danylyuk offer you a position of Defense Minister with the Ukrainian Government?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He did.

Mr. Castor. And how many times did he do that?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I believe it was three times.

Mr. Castor. And do you have any reason why he asked you to do that?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I don't know. But every single time, I dismissed it. Upon returning, I notified my chain of command and the appropriate counterintelligence folks about this, the offer.

Mr. Castor. I mean, Ukraine is a country that's experienced a war with Russia. Certainly, their Minister of Defense is a pretty key position --

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yeah.

Mr. Castor. -- for the Ukrainians. For President Zelensky, Mr. Danylyuk to bestow that honor on you, at least asking you, I mean, that was a big honor, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I think it would be a great honor. And, frankly, I'm aware of service members that have left service to help nurture the developing democracies in that part of the world. Certainly in the Baltics, former officers -- and, if I recall correctly, it was an Air Force officer that became Minister of Defense.

But I'm an American. I came here when I was a toddler. And I immediately dismissed these offers --

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. -- did not entertain them.

Mr. Castor. When he made this offer to you initially, did you leave the door open? Was there a reason that he had to come back and ask a second and third time, or was he just trying to convince you?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Counsel, you know what? The whole notion is rather comical, that I was being asked to consider whether I'd want to be the Minister of Defense. I did not leave the door open at all.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. But it is pretty funny for a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army, which really is not that senior, to be offered that illustrious a position.

Mr. Castor. When he made this offer to you, was he speaking in English or Ukrainian?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Oh, Mr. Danylyuk is an absolutely flawless English speaker. He was speaking in English.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. And just to be clear, there were two other staff officers, Embassy Kyiv staff officers, that were sitting next to me when this offer was made.

Mr. Castor. Okay. And who were they?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. So one of them you may have met. It was Mr. David Holmes. And the other one was -- I don't know. I mean, I guess I could -- it's another Foreign Service officer, Keith Bean.

Mr. Castor. Okay. Yeah, we met Mr. Holmes last Friday evening.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I understand. He's a delightful fellow.

Mr. Castor. And you said, when you returned to the United States, you papered it up, given your -- you know, with SCI clearance, whenever a foreign government makes an overture like that, you have to -- you paper it up and you tell your chain of command?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I did. But I also don't know if I fully entertained it as a legitimate offer. I was just making sure that I did the right thing in terms of reporting, yes.

Mr. Castor. Okay. And did any of your supervisors, Dr. Hill at the time or Dr. Kupperman or Ambassador Bolton, ever follow up with you about that? It's rather significant; you know, the Ukrainians offered you the post of Defense Minister. You know, did you tell anyone in your chain of command about it?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. After I spoke to -- and I believe our Deputy Senior Director, John Erath, was there. Once I mentioned it to both of them, I don't believe there was ever a followup discussion.

Mr. Castor. Okay. So it never came up with Dr. Kupperman or Dr. Hill?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Following that conversation I had with Dr. Hill --

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. -- I don't believe there was a subsequent conversation.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. And I don't recall ever having a conversation with Dr. Kupperman about it.

Mr. Castor. Okay. And did you brief Dr. -- or, sorry, Director Morrison when he came onboard?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. No. I completely forgot about it.

Mr. Castor. Okay. And subsequent to the May trip, did Mr. Danylyuk ever ask you to reconsider? Were there any other offers?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. No.

Mr. Castor. When he visited for the July 10th meeting with Ambassador Bolton, did it come up again?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. It never came up again.

Mr. Castor. Okay. And did you ever think that possibly if this information, you know, got out that it might create at least the perception of a conflict, that the Ukrainians thought so highly of you to offer you the Defense Ministry post, you know, on one hand, but on the other hand you're responsible for Ukrainian policy at the National Security Council?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. So, frankly, it'd be -- it's more important about what my American leadership, American chain of command thinks than any of the -- and this is -- these are honorable people. I'm not sure if he meant it as a joke or not. But it's much more important what my civilian White House National Security Council chain of command thinks more so than anybody else. And, frankly, if they were concerned about me being able to continue my duties --

Mr. Castor. Oh, of course.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. -- they would have brought that to my attention. Dr. Hill stayed on for several more months, and we continued to work to advance U.S. policy.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

And during the times relevant of the committees' investigation, did you have any communications with Mr. Yermak or Danylyuk outside of the July 10th meeting?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I recall a courtesy note from Mr. Yermak within days of his return to -- July -- in which he wanted to preserve an open channel of communication. And I said, you know, please feel free to contact me with any concerns.

Mr. Castor. And were you following this -- you know, there were, sort of, two tracks. Ambassador Taylor walked us through it during his testimony last Wednesday. There was a -- he called it a regular channel, and then he called it an irregular but not outlandish channel with Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Volker.

Were you tracking the Sondland and Volker channel during this time period?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yeah, so I'm trying to recall at which point I became aware of Ambassador -- certainly I was aware of the fact that they were working together -- Ambassador Sondland, Ambassador Volker, and Secretary Perry were working together to advance U.S. policy interests that were in support of what had been agreed to.

But I didn't really learn, like I said, until the July 10th -- actually, it may have been at a slightly earlier point. I recall a meeting in which Ambassador Bolton facilitated a meeting between Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Bolton in the June timeframe, and there may have been some discussion about this external channel. But --

Mr. Castor. Okay.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. -- I, frankly, didn't become aware of these particular U.S. Government officials being involved in this alternate track until July 10th.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

And I think we had some discussion that, you know, Mr. Giuliani was promoting a negative narrative about the Ukraine, and certain officials were trying to help the President understand that, with Zelensky, it was a new day and Ukraine's going to be different. Is that your understanding?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct. That is exactly what was being reported by the Intelligence Community, by the policy channels within the NSC, and the concerted voices of the various people that have actually met with him, including foreign officials.

Mr. Castor. And to the extent that you're aware of what Ambassador Sondland's goals were here and Ambassador Volker's goals were here, I mean, do you think they were just trying to do the best they could and try to advocate in the best interests of the United States?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is what I believed, and that is what I still believe, frankly.

Mr. Castor. And so, to the extent Mr. Giuliani may have had differing views, they were trying to help him understand that it was time to change those views?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I think they were trying to bring him into the tent and have him, kind of, support the direction that we had settled on.

Mr. Castor. And you never conferred with Mr. Giuliani?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. No.

Mr. Castor. You never had any meetings, phone calls, or anything of that sort?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I did not.

Mr. Castor. And did you have any --

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I only know him as New York's finest mayor.

Mr. Castor. America's mayor.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. America's mayor.

Mr. Castor. And did you have any discussions, communications during this relevant time period with the President?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I have never had any contact with the President of the United States.

Mr. Castor. Okay.

My time has expired, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.

We are going to now move to the 5-minute member rounds.

Are you good to go forward, or do you need a break?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I think we'll elect to take a short break.

The Chairman. Okay. Let's try to take a 5- or 10-minute break, and we will resume with the 5-minute rounds.

If I could ask the audience and members to please allow the witnesses to leave the room first.

[Recess.]

The Chairman. The committee will come back to order.

We'll now begin a period of 5-minute questions from the members. I recognize myself for 5 minutes.

I wanted to ask you both about some of the questions you were asked by my colleagues in the minority.

First, if I could ask you, Ms. Williams and Colonel Vindman, you were asked a series of questions by the ranking member at the outset, "Were you aware of the fact that," and then there was a recitation of information about Burisma, Zlochevsky, the Bidens. Is it fair to say you have no firsthand knowledge of any of the matters that were asked in those questions?

Ms. Williams. That's correct.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

The Chairman. Ms. Williams, you were also asked a series of questions about the Vice President's schedule and whether he could've made the inauguration or was the President traveling or the trip to Canada.

Let's be clear about something. The President -- you were instructed that the President had told the Vice President not to go before you even knew the date of the inauguration. Is that correct?

Ms. Williams. Yes, that's correct.

The Chairman. So, at the time that he was told not to go, there was no calculation about where he might be or where the President might be, because the date hadn't even been set yet. Is that right?

Ms. Williams. That's right. The date had not been set, so we were weighing a number of different scenarios of when the inauguration might fall.

The Chairman. Now, I think you said that originally the President had told him to go, and then you received the instruction that the President no longer wanted him to go.

Were you aware, in the interim between the President telling him to go and the President telling him not to go, that Rudy Giuliani had to abort a trip that he was going to make to Ukraine?

Ms. Williams. I had seen that in the press, yes.

The Chairman. And had you seen in the press that Rudy Giuliani blamed people around Zelensky for having to cancel the trip?

Ms. Williams. For having to cancel his trip?

The Chairman. Yes.

Ms. Williams. I'd read that in the press reporting, yes.

The Chairman. And did you read in the press reporting also that Giuliani wanted to go to Ukraine to, as he put it, not meddle in an election but meddle in investigations?

Ms. Williams. I did read that, yes.

The Chairman. And that occurred prior to the President canceling the Vice President's trip to the inauguration?

Ms. Williams. It did. I believe it was around May 10th or so.

The Chairman. Colonel Vindman, you were asked by the minority counsel about the President's words in the July 25th call and whether the President's words were ambiguous.

Was there any ambiguity about the President's use of the word "Biden"?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. There was not.

The Chairman. It was pretty clear that the President wanted Zelensky to commit to investigating the Bidens, was it not?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

The Chairman. That is one of the favors that you thought should be properly characterized as a demand?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

The Chairman. And there's no ambiguity about that?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. In my mind, there was not.

The Chairman. It's also true, is it not, that these two investigations that the President asked Zelensky for into 2016 and into the Bidens were precisely the two investigations that Rudy Giuliani was calling for publicly, were they not?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

The Chairman. So, when people suggest, well, maybe Rudy Giuliani was acting on his own and maybe he was a freelancer or whatever, the President referred to exactly the same two investigations Rudy Giuliani was out pushing on his behalf. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

The Chairman. Now, Ms. Williams, you were asked about the meeting the Vice President had with Zelensky in September in which Ukrainians brought up their concern about the hold on the security assistance. Is that right?

Ms. Williams. That's right.

The Chairman. And you were asked about whether, in that meeting between the Vice President and Zelensky, the Bidens or Burisma came up, and I think you said they did not, correct?

Ms. Williams. That's correct. They did not come up.

The Chairman. Now, that bilateral meeting was a large meeting that involved two or three dozen people, wasn't it?

Ms. Williams. It was.

The Chairman. So, in the context of this meeting with two or three dozen people, the Vice President didn't bring up those investigations, correct?

Ms. Williams. No, he did not bring up those investigations. He's never brought up those investigations.

The Chairman. Were you aware that immediately -- and I mean immediately -- after that meeting broke up, Ambassador Sondland has said that he went over to Mr. Yermak, one of the top advisors to Zelensky, and told Yermak that if they wanted the military aid they were going to have to do these investigations or words to that effect?

Ms. Williams. I was not aware at the time of any meetings, side meetings, that Ambassador Sondland had following the Vice President's meeting with President Zelensky. I've only learned that through Ambassador Sondland's testimony.

The Chairman. So, at the big public meeting, it didn't come up, and you can't speak to the private meeting that was held immediately thereafter.

Ms. Williams. Correct. The Vice President moved on with his schedule immediately after his meeting with President Zelensky.

The Chairman. Now, Colonel Vindman, I want to go back to that July 10th meeting or meetings, the one with Ambassador Bolton and then the one in the Ward Room that followed quickly on its heels.

Were you aware that Ambassador Bolton instructed your superior, Dr. Hill, to go talk to the lawyers after that meeting?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I learned shortly after she was finished talking to Ambassador Bolton and after we wrapped up with the Ward Room that she did have a meeting with him and that that's what was expressed.

The Chairman. Now, you thought you should go talk to the lawyers on your own, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is my recollection, yes.

The Chairman. But Bolton also thought that Dr. Hill should go talk to the lawyers because of his concern over this drug deal that Sondland and Mulvaney were cooking up. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is my understanding.

The Chairman. And, in fact, this drug deal, as Bolton called it, involved this conditioning of the White House meeting on these investigations that Sondland brought up. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is my understanding.

The Chairman. And, in fact, the same conditioning or the same issue of wanting these political investigations and tying it to the White House meeting, this came up in the July 25th call, did it not, when the President asked for these investigations?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

The Chairman. So the very same issue that Bolton said to Hill, "Go talk to the lawyers," the very same issue that prompted you to go talk to the lawyers, ends up coming up in that call with the President. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

The Chairman. And it was that conversation that, once again, led you back to the lawyers' office?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

The Chairman. I now yield to the ranking member.

Mr. Nunes. A parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman. You took 7 minutes, so I assume you're going to give us equal time?

The Chairman. Yes, Mr. Nunes.

Mr. Nunes. I thank the gentleman.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, before I turn to Mr. Jordan, I asked Ms. Williams about this, about if she had ever accessed without authorization a fellow employee's computer system. She answered "no" to the question.

Have you ever accessed anyone's computer system at the NSC without authorization?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Without their knowledge? No.

Mr. Nunes. Knowledge or authorization?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm sorry?

Mr. Nunes. Knowledge or authorization? You never accessed someone's computer without their knowledge or authorization?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Nunes. Mr. Jordan.

Mr. Jordan. I thank the ranking member.

Colonel, I want to thank you for your service and sacrifice to our great country.

This afternoon, your former boss, Mr. Morrison, is going to be sitting right where you're sitting and he's going to testify. And I want to give you a chance -- I think we're bringing you a copy. I want to give you a chance to respond to some of the things Mr. Morrison said in his deposition.

Page 82 of the transcript from Mr. Morrison, Mr. Morrison said this: "I had concerns about Lieutenant Colonel Vindman's judgment. Among the discussions I had with Dr. Hill in the transition was our team, its strengths, its weaknesses, and Fiona and others had raised concerns about Alex's judgment."

When Mr. Morrison was asked by Mr. Castor, "Did anyone ever bring concerns to you that they believed Colonel Vindman may have leaked something?", Mr. Morrison replied, "Yes."

So your boss had concerns about your judgment. Your former boss, Dr. Hill, had concerns about your judgment. Your colleagues had concerns about your judgment. And your colleagues felt that there were times when you leaked information.

Any idea why they have those impressions, Colonel Vindman?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, Representative Jordan. I guess I'll start by reading Dr. Hill's own words, as she attested to in my last evaluation that was dated middle of July, right before she left.

"Alex is a top 1 percent military officer and the best Army officer I have worked with in my 15 years of government service. He is brilliant, unflappable, and exercises excellent judgment."

Mr. Jordan. So --

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. "He was" -- I'm sorry.

Mr. Jordan. Okay. I'm sorry.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. -- "exemplary during numerous visits" -- so forth and so on, but I think you get the idea.

Mr. Morrison -- yeah, the date of that was -- let's see. I'm sorry. July 13th.

So, Mr. Jordan, I would say that I can't say what Mr. Morrison -- why Mr. Morrison questioned my judgment. We had only recently started working together. He wasn't there very long, and we were just trying to figure out our relationship. Maybe it was a different culture, military culture versus --

Mr. Jordan. And, Colonel, you never leaked information?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I never did, never would. That is preposterous, that I would do that.

Mr. Jordan. Okay. Colonel, it's interesting. We deposed a lot of people in the bunker in the basement of the Capitol over the last several weeks, but, of all those depositions, only three of the individuals we deposed were actually on the now-somewhat-famous July 25th phone call between President Trump and President Zelensky. There was you; there was the individual sitting beside you, Ms. Williams; and then there, of course, was your boss, Mr. Morrison, who I just read from his deposition.

When we asked Ms. Williams who she spoke to after the call about the call, she was willing to answer our questions, and Chairman Schiff allowed her to answer our questions.

When we asked Mr. Morrison who he spoke to after the call about the call, he was willing to answer our question, and Mr. Schiff allowed -- Chairman Schiff allowed him to answer our question.

But when we asked you, you first told us three individuals at the NSC, your brother and the two lawyers. And then you said there was a group of other people you communicated with, but you would only give us one individual in that group, Secretary Kent. And the chairman would only allow you to give us that name. When we asked you who else you communicated with, you would not tell us.

So I want to know, first, how many other people are in that group of people you communicated with outside the four individuals I just named?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. So, Mr. Jordan, on a call readout, certainly after the first call, there were probably half a dozen or more people I read out. Those are people with the proper clearance and the need to know.

In this case, because of the sensitivity of the call and Mr. Eisenberg told me not to speak to anybody else, I only read out, outside of the NSC, two individuals.

Mr. Jordan. Two individuals.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. DAS Kent and one other person.

Mr. Jordan. And you're not willing to tell us who that other individual is?

Mr. Swalwell. Mr. Chairman, point of order.

Mr. Volkov. Mr. Chairman --

Mr. Swalwell. Mr. Chairman, point of order.

The Chairman. The gentleman will suspend. Counsel?

Mr. Volkov. Mr. Chairman, I would ask you to enforce the rule with regard to the disclosure with regard to the intelligence --

The Chairman. Thank you, Counsel.

You know, as I indicated before, this committee will not be used to out the whistleblower. That same necessity of protecting the whistleblower --

Mr. Jordan. Mr. Chairman, can you please stop the time so I don't lose the time?

The Chairman. -- will persist.

You are recognized again, Mr. Jordan.

Mr. Jordan. Mr. Chairman, I don't see how this is outing the whistleblower. The witness has testified in his deposition that he doesn't know who the whistleblower is. You have said -- even though no one believes you -- you have said you don't know who the whistleblower is.

So how is this outing the whistleblower, to find out who this individual is?

The Chairman. Mr. Jordan, this is your time for questioning. You can use it any way you like, but your question should be addressed to the witness, and your question should not be addressed to trying to out the whistleblower.

Mr. Jordan. Well, okay. Okay.

Colonel Vindman, there's another thing Mr. Morrison told us in his deposition. He said he was not concerned about the call itself. He said there was nothing illegal or improper on the call. But he was concerned about the call leaking, the contents of the call leaking.

Mr. Volkov. Excuse me --

Mr. Jordan. He said this. He was concerned how it would play out in Washington's polarized environment, how the contents would be used in Washington's political process.

Mr. Volkov. Excuse me --

Mr. Jordan. Mr. Morrison was right.

Mr. Volkov. Excuse me, Mr. Jordan. Could I get a page?

Mr. Jordan. Mr. Morrison was right. The call leaks. The whistleblower goes to Chairman Schiff's staff. Then he runs off to the lawyer, the same lawyer who said in January of 2017 the coup has started against President Trump.

The one thing the Democrats didn't -- the one thing they didn't count on -- one thing they didn't count on was the President releasing the call transcript and letting us all see what he said. They didn't count on that.

The transcript shows no linkage. The two individuals on the call have both said no pressure, no pushing, no linkage of the security assistance dollars to an investigation.

Ms. Williams, after the call on the 25th, we know that Colonel Vindman talked to several people. After the call on the 25th, how many people did you talk to about the call?

Ms. Williams. I did not speak to anybody about the call.

Mr. Jordan. You didn't speak to anybody.

Ms. Williams. No.

Mr. Jordan. I yield back.

The Chairman. Mr. Himes.

Mr. Himes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter the lieutenant colonel's performance review into the record.

The Chairman. May I inquire of Colonel Vindman whether you would like us to do that? If you would, we're happy to. If you would prefer it not be in the record, I'd leave that to you.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I guess with redactions. It has PII in it that should be protected. And maybe the only elements that are relevant are the actual narrative, Chairman.

The Chairman. Did you read the relevant portions?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I mean, that was the short version. There were some other paragraphs in there, but --

Mr. Himes. Mr. Chairman, I'll withdraw my request.

The Chairman. Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Himes. Thank you both for your testimony.

Ms. Williams, you joined the Foreign Service in 2006, correct?

Ms. Williams. Correct.

Mr. Himes. Prior to becoming a nonpartisan career official, you worked as a field representative for the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004, and then you held a political appointment in the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Chertoff. Is that correct?

Ms. Williams. That's correct, sir.

Mr. Himes. And, now, as a Foreign Service officer, you have served three Presidents, two Republicans and one Democrat, in a variety of roles, correct?

Ms. Williams. Yes, sir.

Mr. Himes. And in your current position, you're detailed from State to advise the Vice President on foreign policy towards Europe and Russia, correct?

Ms. Williams. That's right.

Mr. Himes. Ms. Williams, on Sunday, the President personally targeted you in a tweet. This is after he targeted Ambassador Yovanovitch during her hearing testimony. I'd like to show and read you the tweet.

It reads, "Tell Jennifer Williams, whoever that is, to read BOTH transcripts of the presidential calls, & see the just released statement from Ukraine. Then she should meet with the other Never Trumpers, who I don't know & mostly never even heard of, & work out a better presidential attack!"

Ms. Williams, are you engaged in a Presidential attack?

Ms. Williams. No, sir.

Mr. Himes. Ms. Williams, are you a Never Trumper?

Ms. Williams. I'm not sure I know an official definition of a Never Trumper, but --

Mr. Himes. Would you describe yourself that way?

Ms. Williams. I would not, no.

Mr. Himes. Did that make -- did that tweet make an impression on you when you read it?

Ms. Williams. It certainly surprised me. I was not expecting to be called out by name.

Mr. Himes. It surprised me too. And it looks an awful lot like witness intimidation and tampering and an effect -- an effort to try to get you to perhaps shape your testimony today.

Lieutenant Colonel, you previously testified that you've dedicated your entire professional life to the United States of America. Colonel, above your left breast, you are wearing a device which is a Springfield musket on a blue field. What is that device?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. It's a Combat Infantryman's Badge.

Mr. Himes. How do you get the Combat Infantryman's Badge?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. You have to be serving in a brigade and below a tactical unit -- that means a fighting unit, frontline unit -- in combat.

Mr. Himes. Under fire.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Himes. You're also wearing a Purple Heart. Can you tell us in 20 or 30 seconds why you're wearing a Purple Heart?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. In 2014, in the ramp-up to probably the largest urban operations -- urban operation in decades, outside of Fallujah, we were conducting a reconnaissance patrol in conjunction with the Marines, and my vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device that penetrated the armor.

Mr. Himes. Were you injured?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I was.

Mr. Himes. The day after you appeared for your deposition, Lieutenant Colonel, President Trump called you a Never Trumper. Colonel Vindman, would you call yourself a Never Trumper?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Representative, I'd call myself "never partisan."

Mr. Himes. Thank you.

Colonel Vindman, in your military career, you've served under four Presidents, two Democrats and two Republicans. Have you ever wavered from the oath you took to support and defend the Constitution?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Never.

Mr. Himes. Do you have any political motivations for your appearance here today?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. None.

Mr. Himes. Colonel Vindman, multiple right-wing conspiracy theorists, including Rudy Giuliani, have accused you of harboring loyalty towards Ukraine. They make these accusations based only on the fact that your family, like many American families, immigrated to the United States. They've accused you of espionage and dual loyalties.

We've seen that in this room this morning. The three minutes that were spent asking you about the offer made to make you the Minister of Defense, that may have come cloaked in a Brooks Brother suit and in parliamentary language, but that was designed exclusively to give the right-wing media an opening to question your loyalties. And I want people to understand what that was all about.

It's the kind of attack -- it's the kind of thing you say when you're defending the indefensible. It's what you say when it's not enough to attack the media, the way the ranking member gave over his opening statement, or to attack the Democrats, but it's what you stoop to when the indefensibility of your case requires that you attack a man who is wearing a Springfield rifle on a field of blue above a Purple Heart.

I, sir, thank you for your service and yield back the balance of my time.

The Chairman. Mr. Conaway.

Mr. Conaway. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I yield my 5 minutes to Mr. Ratcliffe.

Mr. Ratcliffe. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

In a press conference last Thursday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that President Trump committed the impeachable offense of bribery, evidenced in his July 25th call transcript with President Zelensky.

In concert with that, multiple Democratic members of this committee gave TV and radio interviews over this past week discussing how the President's conduct supported his impeachment for committing bribery, all of which struck me as very odd, because for the longest time this was all about quid pro quo, according to the whistleblower complaint.

But after witness after witness began saying there was no quid pro quo or even that quid pro quo was not even possible, we saw a shift from the Democrats. They briefly started to refer to the President's conduct on the July 25th call as extortion, and now it shifted again last week to bribery.

Ms. Williams, you used the word "unusual" to describe the President's call on July 25th.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, you used the word "inappropriate" and "improper."

Now, I've word-searched each of your transcripts, and the word "bribery" or "bribe" doesn't appear anywhere in that.

Ms. Williams, you've never used the word "bribery" or "bribe" to explain President Trump's conduct, correct?

Ms. Williams. No, sir.

Mr. Ratcliffe. Colonel Vindman, you haven't either?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Ratcliffe. The problem is, in an impeachment inquiry that the Speaker of the House says is all about bribery, where bribery is the impeachable offense, no witness has used the word "bribery" to describe President Trump's conduct. None of them.

These aren't all of the deposition transcripts; these are just the 10 that have been released. Six weeks of witness interviews in this impeachment inquiry, hundreds of hours of testimony, thousands of questions asked, thousands of answers given. The number of times that witnesses have been asked any question about whether or not President Trump's conduct constituted bribery, before Ambassador Yovanovitch was asked by my colleague Congressman Stewart last Thursday, is zero.

The number of times witnesses have used the word "bribery" or "bribe" to describe President Trump's conduct in the last 6 weeks of this inquiry is zero. In fact, in these 3,500 pages of sworn deposition testimony in just these 10 transcripts released thus far, the word "bribery" appears in these 3,500 pages exactly 1 time. And, ironically, it appears not in a description of President Trump's alleged conduct; it appears in a description of Vice President Biden's alleged conduct.

This is important, because as early as next week my Democratic colleagues are going to say, we need to vote on the evidence from this impeachment inquiry on the impeachment of the President for bribery, and they're going to send a report to the Judiciary Committee, and because there's more Democrats than Republicans, it's going to likely pass. And when that happens, the American people need to be clear that when the Democrats -- what they are describing as bribery, not a single witness is describing as bribery.

We've heard many times in the course of this proceeding that the facts of the President are not in dispute. But the American people are asking, if the facts are the same, why do the crimes that the President is being accused of keep changing? Why do we go from quid pro quo to extortion, now to bribery?

Chairman Nunes told you the answer. The answer is: polling. The Washington Times asked Americans, what would be the most damning accusation? And it didn't come back "quid pro quo," it didn't come back "extortion," it came back "bribery," so this case is all about bribery.

Look, it's bad enough that the Democrats have forbidden White House lawyers from participating in this proceeding. It's hard enough to defend yourself without your lawyers present. But what's even worse is trying to defend yourself against an accusation that keeps changing in the middle of the proceeding.

If Democrats accuse the President of a high crime or impeachable offense, he at least ought to know which one it is. And when Speaker Pelosi says this is all about bribery, she's promised us evidence of bribery that would be compelling and overwhelming, and, instead, it's invisible.

I yield back.

The Chairman. Ms. Sewell.

Ms. Sewell. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to join everyone in thanking both of our witnesses for your service.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, as part of your policy portfolio in the White House, you maintain a relationship with Ukrainian officials, do you not?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Ms. Sewell. You explained earlier in your testimony that your job within the White House was to coordinate United States and Ukraine policy. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. It is to coordinate United States policy vis-à-vis Ukraine, correct.

Ms. Sewell. You testified in the spring of this year that these officials, these Ukrainian officials, began asking you, quote, "advice on how to respond to Mr. Giuliani's advances," end quote. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Ms. Sewell. What do you understand they meant by "Mr. Giuliani's advances"?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I understood that to mean both his public commentary, so publicly calling for investigations into 2016, Burisma, and Hunter Biden, as well as his direct overtures to the Government of Ukraine, directly and through proxies. That's what I understood.

Ms. Sewell. And, as you understand it, under whose authority do you think Mr. Giuliani was acting under?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Congresswoman, I don't know.

Ms. Sewell. Did the Ukrainian officials you spoke to understand that Mr. Giuliani was telling them to investigate Vice President Biden's son and debunk the 2016 conspiracy theories?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm sorry. Can you say that again, ma'am?

Ms. Sewell. Do you think that the Ukrainians officials that you spoke to understood the underlying meaning of Mr. Giuliani's advances to be both investigating the Bidens as well as debunking the 2016 conspiracy theories?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, I think -- to be clear, I think you're referring to debunking that it was Russian interference --

Ms. Sewell. Exactly. Now, was this --

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. -- and somehow implicating themselves, that it was Ukrainian interference. I'm not sure.

Ms. Sewell. Exactly.

Now, was this official U.S. foreign policy, to push for investigation into the Bidens?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. It was not part of any process that I participated in.

Ms. Sewell. Now, Ms. Williams, do you agree that pressing these two investigations was inconsistent with official U.S. Ukraine policy?

Ms. Williams. Obviously, anticorruption reforms is a big part of our policy --

Ms. Sewell. I --

Ms. Williams. I understand. I was not in a position to determine whether these particular investigations were appropriate.

Ms. Sewell. That's fair.

Colonel, is it true that President Trump directed the Ukrainian President on the call on July 25th to work with Mr. Giuliani on these investigations?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Ms. Sewell. In fact, Mr. Giuliani has made no secret of the fact that he is acting on behalf of President Trump. As Mr. Giuliani told The New York Times -- and I'm going to put this on the screen -- he told them, quote, "My only client is the President of the United States. He's the one I have the obligation to report to and to tell him what happens."

He added that the investigations would be, quote, "very, very helpful to my client and may turn out to be helpful to my government," end quote.

Colonel, is it fair to say that the Ukrainian officials that you are on a daily basis -- well, you are in contact with, given your portfolio, were concerned about Mr. Giuliani's advances?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, they were.

Ms. Sewell. In your assessment, did they understand the political nature of the requests being asked of them?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I believe they did.

Ms. Sewell. Did they understand that it was affecting U.S. domestic policy?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm not sure what they, frankly, understood about U.S. --

Ms. Sewell. And you --

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I think they understood the implications, yes.

Ms. Sewell. Now, you testified earlier that you warned the Ukrainians not to get involved in U.S. domestic policy. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I counseled them, yes.

Ms. Sewell. Counseled them. In fact, you testified that you felt like it was important, that you were espousing not just what you thought but tradition and policy of the United States to say that.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. It is what I knew for a fact to be U.S. policy.

Ms. Sewell. Now, why do you think it's important for foreign governments not to get involved in political affairs of a nation like the United States?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Congresswoman, the first thought that comes to mind is Russian interference in 2016, the impact that had on internal politics and the consequences it had for Russia itself.

Ms. Sewell. Exactly.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. This administration enforced sanctions, heavy sanctions, against Russia for their interference. And that would not be in U.S. policy to --

Ms. Sewell. And so, Colonel -- I'm running out of time.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I understand, ma'am.

Ms. Sewell. Is it normal for a private citizen, a non-U.S. Government official, to get involved in foreign policy and foreign affairs, like Mr. Giuliani?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I don't know if I have the experience to say that, but it certainly wasn't helpful, and it didn't help advance U.S. national security interests.

Ms. Sewell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

The Chairman. Mr. Turner.

Mr. Turner. Ms. Williams, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, I want to thank you also for your service. Your knowledge and expertise is incredibly important as we look to formulating policy with both our allies and to try to counter those who are not our allies.

I think we're all very concerned about our European policy and how it can thwart Russian aggression.

Ms. Williams, you are responsible -- as you said, as part of your portfolio you advise the Vice President about Ukraine, correct?

Ms. Williams. Correct.

Mr. Turner. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, you said that you are the principal -- in your opening, you say you are the principal advisor to the President on Ukraine and you coordinate U.S. Ukraine policy, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Congressman, in this statement I issued this morning, I probably eased that back. I took that off my job description that I have on my eval. But I certainly spent much more time advising the Ambassador than I did the President.

Mr. Turner. But your statement, as you submitted it and read it today, says, "At the NSC, I am the principal advisor to the National Security Advisor and the President on Ukraine," correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is not what I read into the transcript. That might have been what I had in there yesterday when I was drafting it, but I chose to ease back on that language, even though it was in my evaluation, just because I didn't want to overstate my role.

Mr. Turner. But you wrote what I just read.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. But, Congressman, what I'm saying is, what I read into the record this morning didn't say that.

Mr. Turner. Okay. Noted.

Because you know Ukraine, you know that we work through our allies and our multilateral relations, and you know that the Ukraine is an aspiring member of the EU and NATO.

Right, Ms. Williams?

Ms. Williams. Yes, that's correct.

Mr. Turner. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, correct.

Mr. Turner. And you know, probably, that the EU and NATO both have offices in the Ukraine and that we try to advance our policy with the EU and NATO. And you would agree that our Ambassador Kay Bailey Hutchison and Ambassador Sondland would be responsible for advancing our policy interests with Ukraine at the EU and at NATO.

Right, Ms. Williams?

Ms. Williams. I would say that, certainly, in terms of the specific relationship between NATO and Ukraine, that would fall to Ambassador Hutchison, and between the EU and Ukraine to Ambassador Sondland. But, obviously, we have an Ambassador in Ukraine as well.

Mr. Turner. Right.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, you would agree?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I agree with Ms. Williams.

Mr. Turner. Great.

Now, Lieutenant Colonel, you said in your written statement that Mayor Rudolph Giuliani promoted false information that undermined the United States Ukraine policy. Have you ever met Giuliani?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Just to be, again, accurate, I said "false narrative," just because that's what I said in the record this morning.

Mr. Turner. Okay.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. But I have not met him.

Mr. Turner. And so you've never had a conversation with him about Ukraine or been in a meeting with him where he has spoken to others about Ukraine?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. No. Just what I saw him -- you know, his comments on TV and --

Mr. Turner. So news reports.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. -- news. Yes.

Mr. Turner. And, similarly, you've never met the President of the United States, right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Turner. So you've never advised the President of the United States on Ukraine.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I advised him indirectly. I made all his preparations for the calls and --

Mr. Turner. But you've never spoken to the President and told him advice on Ukraine.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Turner. So, in your written statement, you said, "In May, I attended the inauguration of President Zelensky as part of the Presidential delegation led by Secretary Perry. Following the visit, the members of the delegation provided President Trump a debriefing."

Well, that's not really accurate, right? Because the members didn't, because you were a member, but you weren't in that meeting, were you?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Turner. Okay. So we'll just have a note there that that meeting occurred without you.

Now, you do know that this impeachment inquiry is about the President of the United States, don't you, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I do, Representative.

Mr. Turner. Excellent.

Now, you've said that you're responsible for coordinating U.S. Ukrainian policy.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Turner. Does the Secretary of State Pompeo report to you?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He does not.

Mr. Turner. Ambassador Volker?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He does not. We coordinate.

Mr. Turner. Ambassador of Ukraine, EU, NATO, Assistant Secretary for Europe, anyone at DOD report to you with respect to your responsibilities of coordinating U.S. policy with Ukraine?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Congressman, at my level, I convene what's called a Sub-Policy Coordinating Committee. That's Deputy Assistant Secretary. I coordinate with -- I chair those meetings. And --

Mr. Turner. Does anybody need your approval, in your role on Ukraine policy, to formulate Ukraine policy? Do they seek your approval?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. According to the NSPM-4, the policy signed by the President --

Mr. Turner. So he gets to do it.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. -- policy should be coordinated by the NSC.

Mr. Turner. He gets to do it.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct. We help advise him.

Mr. Turner. Ms. Williams, do you have any information that any person who has testified as part of this impeachment inquiry, either in secret or in public, has either perjured themselves or lied to this committee?

Ms. Williams. I have not read the other testimonies, and I --

Mr. Turner. So you do not -- do you have any evidence, though, that they have perjured themselves or lied?

Ms. Williams. No, because I have not read them.

Mr. Turner. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, do you have any evidence that anyone who has testified before this committee in the impeachment inquiry has perjured themselves or lied to this committee?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Not that I'm aware of.

Mr. Turner. Thank you.

I yield back.

The Chairman. Mr. Carson.

Mr. Carson. Thank you, Chairman Schiff.

I yield to the chairman.

The Chairman. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I wanted to just make one point clear for folks that are watching the hearing today. Bribery does involve a quid pro quo. Bribery involves the conditioning of an official act for something of value. An official act may be a White House meeting. An official act may be $400 million in military aid. And something of value to a President might include investigations of their political rival.

The reason we don't ask witnesses that are fact witnesses to make the judgment about whether a crime of bribery has been committed or whether, more significantly, what the Founders had in mind when they itemized bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors is, you're fact witnesses. It will be our job to decide whether the impeachable act of bribery has occurred. That's why we don't ask you those questions. For one thing, you're also not aware of all the other facts that have been educed during the investigation.

With that, I yield back to Mr. Carson.

Mr. Carson. Thank you, Chairman.

Thank you both for your service.

Colonel Vindman, you were in a July 10th White House meeting in Ambassador Bolton's office. Isn't that right, sir?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm sorry. Could you say that again?

Mr. Carson. You were in a July 10th White House meeting with Ambassador Bolton?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Carson. In that meeting, the Ukrainians asked about when they would get their Oval Office meeting, and Ambassador Sondland replied that they need to, quote, "speak about Ukraine delivering specific investigations in order to secure a meeting with the President," end quote.

Is that correct, sir?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Carson. Colonel Vindman, did you later learn why Ambassador Bolton cut the meeting short?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I did.

Mr. Carson. After Ambassador Bolton ended that meeting, sir, some of the group then attended a follow-on meeting in a different room in the White House called the Ward Room. Is that correct, sir?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Carson. And Ambassador Sondland was there with the senior Ukrainian officials. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Carson. Did NSC lawyers tell you to come directly to them, sir, if you had any other concerns after July 10th?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. They said that -- I believe the words were something to the effect of, "If you have any other concerns, feel free to come back."

Mr. Carson. In this follow-on meeting, sir, Ambassador Sondland left, in your words, "no ambiguity" about what specific investigations he was requesting. Ambassador Sondland made clear that he was requesting an investigation of Vice President Joe Biden's son.

Isn't that correct, sir?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Carson. And he stated that he was asking these requests in coordination with Chief of Staff -- White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, correct, sir?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is what I heard him say.

Mr. Carson. Colonel, in your career, had you ever before witnessed an American official request that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen who was related to the President's political opponent?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I have not.

Mr. Carson. And, Colonel, you immediately raised concerns about this, correct, sir?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Carson. What exactly happened?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. After I reported it to the -- I'm sorry. Could you say that again? I apologize.

Mr. Carson. You raised concerns about this, correct, sir?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Carson. What happened?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. To Ambassador Sondland, if I understood you correctly, I stated that it was inappropriate and had nothing to do with national security policy.

Mr. Carson. Did you also raise concern that day with White House lawyers?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I did.

Mr. Carson. What did you tell them?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I reported the same thing that -- I reported the content of the conversation with Ambassador Sondland. At that point, I wasn't aware that Dr. Hill had had a conversation with Ambassador Bolton, so I just relayed what I had -- what I experienced to the attorney, lead legal counsel.

Mr. Carson. As we are now aware, sir, Ambassador Bolton expressed his concerns and instructed Dr. Fiona Hill, your supervisor, to also meet with the same White House lawyers to tell them what happened.

Colonel Vindman, I agree that there is no question that Ambassador Sondland was proposing a transaction to Ukrainian officials, trading White House meetings for specific investigations, with the full awareness of the President's Chief of Staff, White House attorneys, and his National Security Advisor. In my view, sir, that is appalling.

Thank you both for your service.

I yield back to the chairman.

The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.

I would just point out, as well, that when the matter does move to the Judiciary Committee -- and no decision has been made about the ultimate resolution -- the White House, through its counsel, will have the opportunity to make a submission to the Judiciary Committee.

I now turn to Dr. Wenstrup.

Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, thank you very much for being here.

As an Army colonel who served a year in Iraq, I appreciate your service and the sacrifice that you made during that time, and I know the environment, and I understand and appreciate the importance of chain of command. In your deposition, you emphasize the importance of chain of command.

You were a direct report to Dr. Fiona Hill and then Mr. Tim Morrison, and they were your seniors, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Dr. Wenstrup. When you had concerns about the 7/25 call between the two Presidents, you didn't go to Mr. Morrison about that, did you?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I immediately went to John Eisenberg, the lead legal counsel.

Dr. Wenstrup. So that doesn't seem like chain of command.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That's not --

Dr. Wenstrup. So, in the deposition with Mr. Morrison --

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm sorry. You said --

Dr. Wenstrup. -- page 58 to 60 --

Mr. Volkov. Could he answer the question, please?

The Chairman. Excuse me. Please allow Colonel Vindman to answer.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. So I reported it to John Eisenberg. I attempted to report it to Mr. Morrison. I --

Dr. Wenstrup. Okay. Thank you.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He didn't avail himself. And, at that point, I was told not to speak to anybody else by --

Dr. Wenstrup. Well, he did avail himself, and I'll get into that.

The Chairman. Please allow the witness to finish.

Colonel, are you finished with your answer?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes. Thank you.

Dr. Wenstrup. In the Morrison deposition, on page 58 to 60, the question was: Do you know if anyone else on the call went to Eisenberg to express concerns? And the answer was: I learned, based on today's proceedings, based on open-source reporting, which I have no firsthand knowledge, that other personnel did raise concerns.

Question: Who?

Based on open source, without firsthand knowledge, Alex Vindman on my -- Alex Vindman on my staff.

The question then: And he reports to you, correct?

Answer: He does. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman's direct report was Mr. Morrison, and it didn't happen.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, in your deposition, page 96, the question was: Okay. After the call on 7/25, did you have any discussions with Mr. Morrison about your concerns?

Answer: After the call, I -- well, per the -- per the exercise in the chain of command and expressing -- I immediately went to the senior NSC legal counsel and shared those concerns.

That would be Mr. Eisenberg, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm sorry. My lawyer was talking. Could you say that again, please, Doctor?

Dr. Wenstrup. You went to Mr. Eisenberg. You've already said that, so we can go on.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Dr. Wenstrup. And you were not a JAG officer, you're not a lawyer. And on page 153 of your testimony, deposition, in reference to that meeting with Mr. Eisenberg, you said, "I was not making a legal judgment. All I was doing is sharing my concerns with my chain of command." Yet we've established that your direct report is to Mr. Morrison.

So let's establish your role and your title. In your deposition, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, page 200, 201, in a colloquy with Mr. Stewart, you said: I would say, first of all, I'm the director for Ukraine. I'm responsible for Ukraine. I'm the most knowledgeable. And I'm -- for the National Security Council and the White House.

Are you the only one of the entire universe of our government or otherwise that can advise the President on Ukraine? Couldn't someone like Ms. Williams also advise on Ukraine? It's in her portfolio.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That's not typically what would happen. It would be -- frankly, it would be Ambassador Bolton's --

Dr. Wenstrup. So other people can advise on Ukraine besides you.

Going on in your testimony, you said: I understand all the nuances, the context, and so forth surrounding these issues. I, on my judgment, went -- I expressed concerns within the chain of command, which I think, to me, as a military officer, is completely appropriate, and I exercised that chain of command.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, in your deposition, page 259, you said: I forwarded my concerns through the chain of command, and the seniors then decide the action to take.

Mr. Morrison's your senior. He didn't know about it. How can he decide an action to take? But that's what you said.

In Mr. Morrison's deposition, page 60, the question is: At what point did you learn that Lieutenant Colonel Vindman went to Eisenberg? About the 25th phone call? He said, yes. In the course of reviewing for this proceeding, reviewing the open record.

So the next question: So Eisenberg never came to you and relayed to you the conversation? He said: No. He said, Ellis never did either? Not to the best of my recollection.

So Mr. Morrison was skipped in your chain of command about your other concerns.

So Mr. Morrison said he's the final clearing authority. He said he saw your edits. Do you remember if all of the edits were incorporated? And he said, "Yes, I accepted all of them." That's on page 61, 62. So he believes all your edits were accepted.

Let me ask you, in your edits, did you insist that the word "demand" be put into the transcription between the conversation of the two Presidents?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I did not.

Dr. Wenstrup. But you did say that in your opening statement today.

Thank you, and I yield back.

The Chairman. Ms. Speier.

Ms. Speier. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And thank you both for your testimony and your service.

Colonel Vindman, wasn't it the case that Mr. Eisenberg, the attorney, had said to you after the July 5th meeting that you should come to him if you have any other concerns?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. After the July 10th meeting, yes, ma'am, that is correct.

Ms. Speier. And it is not going outside the chain of command to speak to a lawyer within the institution. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. No. He is the senior between the two, certainly.

Ms. Speier. All right.

Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have been complaining about other witnesses having only secondhand information, but, in both your cases, you have firsthand information, because you were on the July 25th phone call. Is that correct?

Ms. Williams. That's correct.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Ms. Speier. Now, Colonel, you in your comments today said, "I want to state that the vile character attacks on these distinguished and honorable public servants is reprehensible." Would you like to expand on that at all?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Ma'am, I think they stand on their own. I don't think it's necessary to expand on them.

Ms. Speier. So, in both your situations, since you have given depositions, since those depositions have been made public, have you seen your experience in your respective jobs change or have you been treated any differently?

Ms. Williams. I have not, no.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Since the report on the July 25th, as I stated, I did notice I was being excluded from several meetings that would have been appropriate for my position.

Ms. Speier. So, in some respects, then, there have been reprisals.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm not sure if I could make that judgment. I could say that it was out of the course of normal affairs to not have me participate in some of these events.

Ms. Speier. Thank you.

In preparation for the July 25th phone call, it's standard for the National Security Council to provide talking points. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Ms. Speier. Because the words of the President carry incredible weight. Is that not correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Ms. Speier. So it's important to ensure that everyone has carefully considered the implications of what the President might say to a foreign leader.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Ms. Speier. Colonel Vindman, you are the National Security Council's director for Ukraine. Did you participate in preparing the talking points for the President's call?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I did. I prepared them.

Ms. Speier. So you prepared them. They were then reviewed and edited by multiple senior officers at the NSC and the White House. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Ms. Speier. Did the talking points for the President contain any discussion of investigations into the 2016 election, the Bidens, or Burisma?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. They did not.

Ms. Speier. Are you aware of any written product from the National Security Council suggesting that investigations into the 2016 election, the Bidens, or Burisma are part of the official policy of the United States?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. No, I am not.

Ms. Speier. Some of President Trump's allies have suggested that the President requested these investigations for official policy reasons as part of some plan to root out corruption in Ukraine.

In your experience, did the official policies of the United States include asking Ukraine to specifically open investigations into the Bidens and interference by Ukraine in the 2016 election?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Nothing that we prepared or had discussed up until that point included any of these elements.

Ms. Speier. Would it ever be U.S. policy, in your experience, to ask a foreign leader to open a political investigation?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. There are proper procedures in which to do that. Certainly, the President is well within his right to do that. It is not something the NSC, certainly a director at the NSC, would do. As a matter of fact, we are prohibited from being involved in any transaction between the Department of Justice and a foreign power to ensure that there is no perception of manipulation from the White House. So it is not something that we'd participate in.

Ms. Speier. Ms. Williams, in your experience, did the official policies of the United States include asking Ukraine to open investigations into the Bidens?

Ms. Williams. I had not seen any reference to those particular cases in our policy formulation process.

Ms. Speier. All right.

Let me just say to you, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, that, in listening to your opening statement, I had chills up and down my spine. And I think most Americans recognize what an extraordinary hero you are to our country. And I would say to your father he did well.

I yield back.

RPTR FORADORI

EDTR ROSEN

[12:24 a.m.]

The Chairman. Mr. Stewart. Thank you.

Mr. Stewart. Ms. Williams and Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, I thank both of you for being here today. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, I see you're wearing your dress uniform. Knowing that's not the uniform of the day, you normally wear a suit to the White House, I think it's a great reminder of your military service.

I, too, come from a military family. These are my father's Air Force wings. He was a pilot in World War II. Five of his sons served in the military. So as one military family to another, thank you and your brothers for your service. You're an example here.

Very quickly, I'm curious, when Ranking Member Nunes referred to you as Mr. Vindman, you quickly corrected and wanted to be called Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Do you always insist on civilians calling you by your rank?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Mr. Stewart -- Representative Stewart, I'm in uniform wearing my military rank. I just thought it was appropriate to stick with that. I'm sorry, Mr. Stewart --

Mr. Stewart. I'm sure he meant no disrespect.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I don't believe he did. But the attacks that I've had in the press, in Twitter, have kind of eliminated the fact that -- either marginalized me as a military officer or--

Mr. Stewart. Listen, I'm just telling you that the ranking member meant no disrespect to you.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I believe that.

Mr. Stewart. I'd like to go back to your previous testimony earlier today. Much has been talked about, as we have discussed, between President Trump and President Zelensky and the word "favor," and this being interpreted as a basis for impeachment. And your interpretation of the word favor, and I'll paraphrase, feel free to correct me. You said, In the military culture, which you and I are both familiar with, when a superior officer asks for a favor of a subordinate, they will interpret that as a demand.

Is that a fair synopsis of what you had previously stated?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Representative, when a superior makes a request, that's an order.

Mr. Stewart. Okay. In short, then, you think your interpretation of a favor is a demand based on your military experience and the military culture?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I think that is correct.

Mr. Stewart. I think that is correct. Is President Trump a member of the military?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He is not.

Mr. Stewart. Has he ever served in the military?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Not that I'm aware of.

Mr. Stewart. Is President Zelensky a member of the military?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I don't believe so. I don't know.

Mr. Stewart. He's not. Would it be fair, then, to take a person who has never served in the military, and to take your reevaluation of their words, based on your military experience, and your military culture, and to attach that culture and that meaning of those words to someone who has never served?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Representative, I made that judgment. I stick by that judgment.

Mr. Stewart. Okay. Well, I got to tell you, I think it's nonsense. Look, I was in the military, I could distinguish between a favor, and an order, and a demand, and so could my subordinates. And I think President Zelensky did as well. He never initiated an investigation. In fact, he's been very clear, he said: I never felt any pressure at all. So you interpreted the word "favor," but the two people who were speaking to each other did not interpret that as a demand, it was your interpretation. Is that fair?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. The context of this call, consistent with a July 10th meeting, with the reporting that was going on, including the President's personal attorney, made it clear that this was not simply a request.

Mr. Stewart. Well, that's not true at all. It's not clear at all. You say it makes it clear. It's not clear at all. And the two individuals who were talking to each other didn't interpret it that way. I'd like to go on to discuss your reaction to the phone call, and again, your previous testimony. And for brevity, and for clarity, I'm going to refer to your previous testimony. Page 155. Your attorney is welcome to follow along.

Quoting you, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman: I did not know whether this was a crime or anything of that nature. I thought it was wrong. And I'd like to key on the word wrong here, because we're going to come back to that. In my mind, did I consider this factor that could have been other implications? Yes, but it wasn't the basis of, I don't know, lodging a criminal complaint or anything like that. Then you got on to talk about policy concerns and moral and ethical judgments. So your concerns regarding this phone call were not legal, they were based on moral, ethical, and policy differences.

Let me ask you then. And what you thought were wrong, to use your word, you said this was wrong. Not illegal, but wrong. There are, as I've stated previous, sitting here a couple days ago, there are dozens of corrupt nations in the world, hundreds of corrupt government officials. Exactly one time did a Vice President go to a nation and demand the specific firing of one individual and give a 6-hour time limit and withhold or threaten to withhold $1 billion in aid if not -- it was the one individual who was investigating a company that was paying his son. So I'll ask you, was that also wrong?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is not what I understand. I, frankly, don't have any firsthand knowledge of that.

Mr. Stewart. You've not seen the video?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I've seen the video.

Mr. Stewart. That's all I've described was the video. Everything I said to you was in the video. Was that wrong as well?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Congressman, this is something I actually participated in, and I witnessed.

Mr. Stewart. I think you can still make a judgment.

The Chairman. The time of the gentleman has expired. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, if you'd like to answer the question, you're more than welcome to.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I frankly don't know that much more about that particular incident. I saw the snippet of the video, but I don't know if I can make a judgment off of that.

The Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Quigley.

Mr. Quigley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Colonel, it's one thing to ask somebody a favor like, Hey, go pick up my dry cleaning. And it's another when the Commander in Chief of the most powerful Army in the world asks an ally who's in a vulnerable position to do him a favor, is it not?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Ms. Williams. July 3rd.

Mr. Quigley. And were you aware of any additional, or did you attend any additional meetings in which that military assistance being withheld was discussed?

Ms. Williams. I did. I attended meetings on July 23rd and July 26th, where the security assistance hold was discussed. I believe it may have also been discussed on July 31st.

Mr. Quigley. And at that point, did anyone provide a specific reason for the hold?

Ms. Williams. In those meetings the OMB representative reported that the assistance was being held at the direction of the White House chief of staff.

Mr. Quigley. And did they give reasons beyond that it was being withheld by the White House chief of staff?

Ms. Williams. Not specifically. The reason given was that there was an ongoing review whether the funding was still in line with administration priorities.

Mr. Quigley. Did anyone in any of those meetings, or in any other subsequent discussion you had discuss the legality of withholding that aid?

Ms. Williams. There were discussions, I believe, in the July 31st meeting, and possibly prior as well, in terms of -- Defense and State Department officials were looking into how they would handle a situation in which earmarked funding from Congress that was designated for Ukraine would be resolved if the funding continued to be held as we approached the end of the fiscal year.

Mr. Quigley. And from what you witnessed, did anybody in the National Security community support withholding the assistance?

Ms. Williams. No.

Mr. Quigley. Colonel, again, just for the record, when did you learn that the security assistance was being withheld?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. On or about July 3rd.

Mr. Quigley. And what exactly had you learned from the State Department, I believe, that prompted you to draft the notice on July 3rd?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. So on or about July 3rd, I became aware of inquiries into security assistance funding in general. There are two typical pots, State Department and DOD. And I believe it was around that date that OMB put a hold on congressional notification.

Mr. Quigley. Had you had any earlier indications that this might be the case?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Prior to that, there were some general inquiries on how the funds were being spent, things of that nature, nothing specific. No hold, certainly.

Mr. Quigley. Were you aware of anyone in the National Security community who supported withholding the aid?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. No.

Mr. Quigley. No one from the National Security?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. None.

Mr. Quigley. No one from the State Department?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Goldman. No one from the Department of Defense?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Quigley. Did anyone to your understanding raise the legality of withholding this assistance?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. It was raised on several occasions.

Mr. Quigley. And who raised those concerns?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Following the July 18th sub-PCC, which is, again, what I coordinate, or convene at my level, there was a July 23rd PCC that would have been conducted by Mr. Morrison. There were questions raised as to the legality of the hold. Over the subsequent week, the issue was analyzed, and during July 26th deputies -- so the deputies from all the departments and agencies, there was an opinion rendered that it was -- it was legal to put the hold.

Mr. Quigley. It was -- excuse me?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. There was an opinion, a legal opinion rendered, that it was okay, that the hold was legal.

Mr. Quigley. From a purely legal point of view?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Quigley. Very good. I yield back to the chairman.

The Chairman. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Ms. Stefanik.

Ms. Stefanik. Ms. Williams, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, thank you for being here, and thank you both for your service. As millions of Americans are watching, throughout the hysteria and frenzied media coverage, two key facts have not changed that are critical to these impeachment proceedings. One, Ukraine, in fact, received the aid; and, two, there was no investigation into the Bidens. My question to both of you today will focus on the following: Systemic corruption in Ukraine; two, highlighting for the public that by law, aid to Ukraine requires anti-corruption efforts; and, three, who in our government has the decisionmaking authority when it comes to foreign policy and national security matters?

So on corruption in Ukraine, as Ambassador Yovanovitch testified, one of the key reasons why President Zelensky was overwhelmingly elected by the Ukrainian people was that they were finally standing up to rampant corruption in their country. Would you both agree with the Ambassador's assessment?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Ms. Williams. Yes.

Ms. Stefanik. And, Ms. Williams, corruption was such a critical issue from your perspective, that when you prepared the Vice President for his congratulatory call with President Zelensky, you testified that the points you wanted to communicate on the call were the following: Quote: Looked forward to seeing President Zelensky really implement the agenda on which he had run related to anti-corruption reforms. That's correct?

Ms. Williams. That is. Yes.

Ms. Stefanik. And, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, would you agree that this focus on anti-corruption is a critical aspect of our policy towards the Ukraine?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I would.

Ms. Stefanik. And, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, you are aware that in 2014, during the Obama administration, the first anti-corruption investigation partnered between the U.S., the U.K., and Ukraine, was into the owner of the company, Burisma.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm aware of it now.

Ms. Stefanik. And, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, you testified that you were aware that Burisma had questionable business dealings, that's part of its track record?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Ms. Stefanik. You also testified that, regarding Burisma, money laundering, tax evasion, comports with your understanding of how business is done in Ukraine. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm not aware of specific incidents, but my understanding is that it would not be out of the realm of the possible for Burisma.

Ms. Stefanik. Well, that's page 207 from your testimony, but I'll move on. You are aware that Hunter Biden did sit on the board of Burisma at this time?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I am.

Ms. Stefanik. Well, I know that my constituents in New York 21 have many concerns about the fact that Hunter Biden, the son of the Vice President, sat on the board of a corrupt company like Burisma. The Obama administration State Department was also concerned, but yet, Adam Schiff refuses to allow this committee to call Hunter Biden despite our requests. Every witness who has testified and has been asked this has answered yes. Do you agree that Hunter Biden, on the board of Burisma, has the potential for the appearance of a conflict of interest?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Certainly the potential, yes.

Ms. Stefanik. And Ms. Williams?

Ms. Williams. Yes.

Ms. Stefanik. Now, shifting to the legal requirements that our aid to Ukraine is conditioned on anti-corruption. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, you testified that you understood that Congress had passed, under the Ukrainian Security Assistance Initiative, a legal obligation to certify that corruption is being addressed?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Ms. Stefanik. And you also testified that it is required by the National Defense Authorization Act.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Ms. Stefanik. So for the public listening, we are not just talking about President Trump focusing on anti-corruption in Ukraine, but it is so critical, so important, that hard-earned taxpayer dollars, when given to foreign nations that, by law, overwhelmingly bipartisan support requires anti-corruption in Ukraine in order to get U.S. taxpayer funded aid.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, you spoke extensively about the importance of defensive lethal aid to Ukraine, especially Javelins. This was in your deposition.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Ms. Stefanik. And you testified that the Javelin, in particular, because of its effectiveness in terms of influencing the Russian decision calculus for aggression, it is one of the most important tools we have when it comes to providing defensive lethal aid?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. The system itself and the signaling of U.S. support, yes.

Ms. Stefanik. And it is a fact that that aid was provided under President Trump and not President Obama?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Ms. Stefanik. And my last question, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, I know you serve at the NSC and the White House, I served in the West Wing of the White House for President Bush on the Domestic Policy Council, and in the chief of staff's office, so I'm very familiar with the policy process. I also know that as a staff member, the person who sets the policy of the United States is the President, not the staff. And you testified that the President sets the policy, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Ms. Stefanik. And I respect your deep expertise, your tremendous service to our country. We can never repay those that have worn the military uniform and served our Nation, but I was struck when you testified in your deposition. I would say, first of all, I'm the director for Ukraine. I'm responsible for Ukraine. I'm the most knowledgeable. I am the authority for Ukraine for the National Security Council and the White House. I just want to clarification, you report to Tim Morrison, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. In my advisory --

Ms. Stefanik. Your direct report is Tim Morrison?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, in my advisory -- just to clarify. In my -- only in my advisory capacity, I advise up through the chain of command, that's what I do.

Ms. Stefanik. And the chain of command is Tim Morrison to Ambassador John Bolton, the National Security Advisor, to the President of the United States?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Ms. Stefanik. And do you agree that the President sets the policy as Commander in Chief, as you testified previously?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Absolutely.

Ms. Stefanik. Thank you. My time has expired.

The Chairman. Mr. Swalwell.

Mr. Swalwell. Thank you both. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, I think the follow-up question that my colleague from New York did not ask you, but is relevant for everyone at home: Isn't it true that the Department of Defense had certified that the anti-corruption requirements of Ukraine had been met when the hold was put on by the President?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Swalwell. Now, Mr. Jordan suggested that the President did something none of us expected by releasing that call transcript. You listened to the call. Is that right, Lieutenant Colonel?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is.

Mr. Swalwell. Ms. Williams, you also listened to the call. Is that right?

Ms. Williams. Yes.

Mr. Swalwell. Fair to say, Ms. Williams, a lot of other people at the White House listened to the call or read the transcript?

Ms. Williams. I can't characterize how many. I believe there were four or five or six of us in the listening room at the time.

Mr. Swalwell. And the transcript was distributed to others. Is that right?

Ms. Williams. I wasn't part of that process, but that's my understanding.

Mr. Swalwell. So the President is asking for us and his defenders to give him a gold star because a number of people listened to the call or saw the call transcript, and then he released it. The difference, of course, between this and, say, his one-on-one meeting in Helsinki with Vladimir Putin, was there it was a one-on-one meeting, and he took the notes from the interpreter so none of us could see it. The point being, the President had no choice but to release a call that everyone had seen.

Now, you have been asked to also characterize what exactly legally all of this means. And Mr. Ratcliffe pointed out that no one had used the term "bribery" in our depositions. And, Ms. Williams, you're not a lawyer, are you?

Ms. Williams. I'm not, no.

Mr. Swalwell. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, are you a lawyer?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. The lawyer is back there.

Mr. Swalwell. The lawyer is your brother?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Right.

Mr. Swalwell. Born 20 seconds after you. Is that what you said?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Nine minutes.

Mr. Swalwell. Nine minutes after you. You're the older brother?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yeah. A lifetime of wisdom there.

Mr. Swalwell. I want to give you a hypothetical here. Suppose you have a shooting victim, and the police respond after the victim is doing a little bit better, and they ask the victim, well, tell us what happened. And the victim says, Well, someone came up to my car, shot into the car, hit me in the shoulder, hit me in the back, hit me in the neck. Miraculously, I survived, but I can identify who the person is that pulled the trigger. And the police say, Okay, you were shot. You know who it is. But, shucks, you didn't tell us that this was an attempted murder, so we're going to have to let the person go.

Is that how it works in our justice system? That unless victims or witnesses identify the legal theories of a case, we just let people off the hook? Is that how it works, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm not an attorney, but it doesn't seem so.

Mr. Swalwell. I don't think your brother would think so either. Ms. Williams, Vice President Pence was described to our committee by Mr. Morrison as a, quote, voracious reader of his intelligence read book. And after the April 21 call with President Zelensky, you put a transcript of that call in the Vice President's read book. Is that right?

Ms. Williams. That's correct.

Mr. Swalwell. And then the Vice President called President Zelensky 2 days later. Is that right?

Ms. Williams. That's correct.

Mr. Swalwell. And you told us in the deposition that he stuck pretty faithfully to what President Trump had said in the April 21 call. Is that right?

Ms. Williams. I believe his remarks were consistent, but he also spoke on other issues as well, including anti-corruption.

Mr. Swalwell. And you would describe the Vice President as somebody who would make follow-up calls to world leaders after the President had done so. Is that right?

Ms. Williams. He has on occasion, it's not a normal practice, it depends on the situation.

Mr. Swalwell. And in that case, he stuck to President Trump's talking points?

Ms. Williams. I would say that I provided talking points for the April 23rd call for the Vice President, which included discussion of President Zelensky's inauguration, which President Trump had also discussed with President Zelensky. But I would say the Vice President discussed other issues with President Zelensky as well.

Mr. Swalwell. And as was stated earlier, the President sets the foreign policy for the United States. Is that right?

Ms. Williams. Absolutely.

Mr. Swalwell. And you told us after the July 25 call between President Trump and President Zelensky, that you put the call transcript in Vice President's intelligence briefing book. Is that right?

Ms. Williams. I ensured it was there. My colleagues prepare the book, but yes.

Mr. Swalwell. So let's flash forward to September 1. Vice President Pence meets with President Zelensky. Is that right?

Ms. Williams. That's correct.

Mr. Swalwell. You're there?

Ms. Williams. Yes.

Mr. Swalwell. And President Zelensky, with Vice President Pence, they talk about a lot of things, but you will agree that Vice President Pence did not bring up the Bidens. Is that correct?

Ms. Williams. That's correct. He did not.

Mr. Swalwell. He did not bring up investigations?

Ms. Williams. No.

Mr. Swalwell. Is one reasonable explanation that, although Vice President Pence will do a lot of things for President Trump, that he was not willing to bring up investigations on Bidens because he thought it was wrong?

Ms. Williams. I'm not in a position to speculate. We had not discussed those particular investigations in any of the preparatory sessions with the Vice President.

Mr. Swalwell. But you didn't bring it up with the Ukrainians after the July 25 call, right?

Ms. Williams. He did not in that meeting, no.

Mr. Swalwell. And you did not either?

Ms. Williams. No.

Mr. Swalwell. And, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, did you ever ask the Ukrainians to do what President Trump was asking them to do after the July 25 phone call?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I didn't render any opinion on what was asked in the 25.

Mr. Swalwell. Thank you. Yield back.

The Chairman. Mr. Hurd.

Mr. Hurd. Ms. Williams, I want to join my colleagues in thanking you for your service. We share a personal hero in Dr. Rice, great minds think alike. Did you participate in or overhear any conversations about how potential information collected from the Ukrainians on the Bidens would be used for political gain?

Ms. Williams. No, I did not participate or overhear any conversations along those lines.

Mr. Hurd. Thank you. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, I think all of us would agree that your father made the right move to come here, and we're glad that he did. You've talked about how part of your responsibilities is developing talking points for your principals. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Hurd. The President, and I'm assuming you also do that for your direct supervisor currently right now, Mr. Morrison. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Mr. Morrison has left the position some time ago, at least 3 weeks ago.

Mr. Hurd. But you prepare talking points for your supervisors. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Typically, frankly, at that level they don't really take talking points, especially if they have expertise. The talking points are more intended for the National Security Advisor, although Ambassador Bolton didn't really require them because of his deep expertise.

Mr. Hurd. Sure.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. The next level up, the President -- Mr. Hurd. But, traditionally, I'm just trying to establish his position is somebody that makes talking points for a number of people. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Hurd. Do they always use them?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. No.

Mr. Hurd. Is President Trump known to stick to a script?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I don't believe so.

Mr. Hurd. So is it odd that he didn't use your talking points?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. No, it is not.

Mr. Hurd. In your deposition, if your lawyer wants to follow on, it's page 306. You were asked about events during the temporary holds on U.S. assistance to Ukraine, this is that 55-day period or so. And you testified that the U.S. administration did not receive any new assurances from Ukraine about anti-corruption efforts, and the facts on the ground did not change before the hold was lifted. Is that accurate in recounting your testimony?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is accurate.

Mr. Hurd. When was President Zelensky sworn in?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He was sworn in on May 20th, 2019.

Mr. Hurd. And then, he had a new parliament, too, elected after he was. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He did.

Mr. Hurd. And when was that parliament seated?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That was, I'm sorry, July 21st, 2019.

Mr. Hurd. That was when they won. They weren't properly seated until August?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That's right. They won and weren't seated until August.

Mr. Hurd. Your boss's boss, Ambassador Bolton, traveled to Ukraine in late August, August 27, 28. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Hurd. Did he take you with him?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He didn't.

Mr. Hurd. We know from other witnesses that when Ambassador Bolton was there, he met with President Zelensky and his staff, and they talked about how they were visually exhausted, because one of the things that President Zelensky did during that time period was change the Ukrainian Constitution to remove absolute immunity from Rada deputies, right, someone of their parliamentarians, because that had been the source of raw corruption for a number of years. Is that accurate?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is accurate.

Mr. Hurd. Were you aware of this important change to Ukrainian law?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Of course.

Mr. Hurd. And you don't believe that's a significant anti-corruption effort?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. No, it is significant.

Mr. Hurd. It's pretty significant, correct? Also, Ambassador Taylor testified that President Zelensky, with this new parliament, opened Ukraine's high anti-corruption court, right? This had been an initiative that many folks in our State Department had been pushing to happen, and that was established in that timeframe. Were you aware of this?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Mr. Hurd. Do you think this is a significant anti-corruption?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I do.

Mr. Hurd. When you talked about -- how many times have you met President Zelensky?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I think it was just the one time from the Presidential delegation, multiple engagements, but just the one trip.

Mr. Hurd. And that's a one-on-one meeting?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That was in a larger bilateral format, then there were a couple of smaller venues. They were all in -- there was never a one-on-one, but there were a couple of, again, touch points. So the bilateral meeting, handshake meet and greet, he had a short --

Mr. Hurd. So there were a lot of people in the room?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yeah. Yes.

Mr. Hurd. When you met with them?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, Congressman.

Mr. Hurd. But you still advised the Ukrainian President to watch out for the Russians?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Mr. Hurd. And everybody else in the room, I'm assuming the national security advisor was there, I believe, in this case, you had other members of the administration. Was that -- were your points preapproved? Did they know you were going to bring up those points?

Mr. Hurd. We had did have a huddle beforehand, and it's possible that I flagged them, but I don't recall specifically. It's possible that I didn't.

Mr. Hurd. And you counseled the Ukrainian President to stay out of U.S. politics?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Hurd. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the time I do not have.

The Chairman. The gentleman yields back. Mr. Castro.

Mr. Castro. Thank you, Chairman. Ms. Williams, thank you for your service to the country. Colonel Vindman, thank you for your service, and it's great to talk to a fellow identical twin. I hope that your brother is nicer to you than mine is to me. He doesn't make you grow a beard.

You both listened in real time to the July 25th call. In particular, you would have heard President Trump ask the President of Ukraine, quote: "I'd like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine. They say CrowdStrike," end quote. The server, they say Ukraine has it. This is a debunked conspiracy theory that has no basis in fact.

President Trump's own former Homeland Security Advisor, Thomas B. Bossert, called the President's assertion that Ukraine intervened in the 2016 elections, quote, "not only a conspiracy theory," but, quote, "completely debunked," unquote. Colonel Vindman, are you aware of any evidence to support the theory that the Ukrainian government interfered in the 2016 election?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Congressman, I am not. And, furthermore, I would say that this is a Russian narrative that President Putin has promoted.

Mr. Castro. And are you aware of any part of the U.S. Government, its foreign policy or intelligence apparatus that supports that theory?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. No, I'm not aware.

Mr. Castro. You are aware that other parts of the U.S. Government, our Intelligence Community, for example, have said definitively that it was the Russians who interfered in the 2016 elections?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Castro. It seems incredibly odd, though, unfortunately, but not inconsistent to me that President Trump would be giving credence to a conspiracy about Ukraine that helps Russia really in at least two ways: First, it ignores and frankly undermines the assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, and seeks to weaken a state dependent on the United States' support to fight Russian aggression. It also, for the United States, hurts our national security and emboldens Russia.

And I want to look at what President Trump was doing on his call, instead of pushing back against Russian hostility. He was pressuring Ukraine to do his political work. President Trump stated on that July 25th call, quote, "There's a lot of talk about Biden's son that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that. So whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it, it sounds horrible to me."

Colonel Vindman, when you hear those words, do you hear the President requesting a thoughtful and well-calibrated anti-corruption program consistent with U.S. policy?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I do not.

Mr. Castro. In fact, it sounds like President Trump was encouraging the Ukrainian President to engage in precisely the same type of behavior for President Trump's own political benefit that we discourage foreign leaders from undertaking in their own countries, and discouraging other countries from undertaking politically motivated investigation is, in fact, a major part of official U.S. anti-corruption policy. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Castro. And are you, in fact, aware of any evidence that Vice President Biden improperly interfered in investigation of his family members?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I am not.

Mr. Castro. These false narratives, it should be said, are damaging our country. They poison our politics and distract from the truth. And pressing another country to engage in corruption is antithetical to who we are as a Nation. You also mentioned that this request, you felt this request was wrong. And you've also said that corruption in Ukraine is endemic to Ukraine, just as it is in other places around the world.

What is the -- can you speak to -- what is the danger of a President of the United States, whether it's Donald Trump or any future President, asking another nation, where there's rampant corruption, to investigate a political rival or just any other American citizen? What would be the danger to that American?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Congressman, the Ukrainian judiciary is imperfect at the moment. And the reliance on U.S. support could conceivably cause them to tip the scales of justice in favor of finding a U.S. citizen guilty if they thought they needed to do that in their --

Mr. Castro. So they could trump up charges, if they wanted to, in a corrupt system like that?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. They could. Ukraine is making progress, certainly, more broadly in Russia, that is likely to happen where the state will be involved in judicial outcomes and drive them.

Mr. Castro. Thank you. I yield back, Chairman.

The Chairman. Mr. Ratcliffe.

Mr. Ratcliffe. Thank you, Chairman. Ms. Williams, you testified that what you noted as being unusual about the call that took place on July 25th was that the President raised what appeared to be a domestic political issue, correct?

Ms. Williams. Correct.

Mr. Ratcliffe. But raising an issue, even one that you thought was unusual is different than making a demand. Would you agree?

Ms. Williams. Yes.

Mr. Ratcliffe. And as I read your deposition, it didn't sound like, from your testimony, that you heard what took place on that call as a demand for investigations. Is that fair?

Ms. Williams. I don't believe I'm in a position to characterize it further than the President did in terms of asking for a favor.

Mr. Ratcliffe. You didn't hear a demand?

Mr. Ratcliffe. Again, I would just refer back to the transcript itself.

Mr. Ratcliffe. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, you have testified and explained to us why, in your mind, it was a demand, and you've given us reasons: disparity of power between the two Presidents. And because you did feel that way, you also felt that you had a duty to report what you thought was improper. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That's correct.

Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. So two different people, two impartial observers, one felt the need to report the call because there was a demand that was improper, and one that didn't report it to anyone. You didn't report it to anyone, right, Ms. Williams?

Ms. Williams. I ensured that the information was available to my superiors.

Mr. Ratcliffe. So while all this might seem as clear as mud, I think your honest and candid assessments of what you heard on the call tells us what we need to know. We have two independent folks, non-partisans, and I'm not hearing a consensus between the two of you about what exactly you both heard on the call that you heard at the exact same time. And if you can't reach an agreement with regard to what happened on the call, how can any of us?

An impeachment inquiry is supposed to be clear. It's supposed to be obvious. It's supposed to be overwhelming and compelling. And if two people on the call disagree honestly about whether or not there was a demand and whether or not anything should be reported on a call, that is not a clear and compelling basis to undo 63 million votes and remove a President from office.

I yield by remaining time to Mr. Jordan.

Mr. Jordan. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Colonel Vindman, why didn't you go -- after the call, why didn't you go to Mr. Morrison?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I went immediately -- per the instructions from the July 10th incident, I went immediately to Mr. Eisenberg. After that -- once I made my -- expressed my concerns, it was an extremely busy week. We had a PCC just finish, we had the call, and then we had a deputies' meeting, which consumed all of my time. I was working extremely long days. I attempted to try to communicate -- I managed to speak to two folks in the interagency. I attempted to try to talk to Mr. Morrison. That didn't happen before I received instructions from John Eisenberg to not talk to anybody else any further.

Mr. Jordan. So the lawyer -- you not only didn't go to your boss, you said you tried, but you didn't go to your boss. You went straight to the lawyer and the lawyer told you not to go to your boss?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. No, he didn't tell me until -- what ended up unfolding is, I had the conversation with the attorney, I did my coordination, my core function, which is coordination. I spoke to the appropriate people within the interagency. And then circling back around, Mr. Eisenberg came back to me and told me not to talk to anyone else.

Mr. Jordan. I'm going to read from the transcript here. Why didn't you go to your direct report, Mr. Morrison? Your response was -- this is page 102 -- because Mr. Eisenberg had told me to take my concerns to him. Then I asked you: Did Mr. Eisenberg tell you not to report, to go around Mr. Morrison? And you said: Actually, he did say that I shouldn't talk to any other people. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, but there's a whole -- there's a period of time in there between when I spoke to him and when he circled back around. It wasn't that long a period of time, but it was enough time for me to --

Mr. Jordan. Enough time to go talk to someone who you won't tell us who it is, right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I've been instructed not to, Representative Jordan.

Mr. Jordan. Here's what I'm getting -- the lawyer told you, don't talk to any other people. And you interpret that as not talking to your boss, but you talked to your brother, you talked the lawyers, you talked to Secretary Kent, and you talked to the one guy Adam Schiff won't tell you -- won't let you tell us who he is. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Representative Jordan, I did my job.

Mr. Jordan. I'm not saying you didn't. All I'm saying is, your instructions from the lawyer was you shouldn't talk to anybody, and you interpret that as, don't talk to my boss, but I'm going to go talk to someone that we can't even ask you who that individual is.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is incorrect.

Mr. Jordan. Well, I just read what you said.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is incorrect.

Mr. Jordan. You didn't talk to any other people.

The Chairman. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I'm sorry, Chairman, but that sequence is not the way it played out.

Mr. Jordan. I'm reading from the transcript, Colonel Vindman.

The Chairman. Mr. Jordan, please let Colonel Vindman --

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. The sequence played out where immediately afterwards, I expressed my concerns. I did my coordination function. Mr. Eisenberg circled back around and told me not to talk to anybody else. In that period of time, I did not --

Mr. Jordan. So that's when it happened. That's when you talked to someone?

The Chairman. Mr. Heck.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That's right.

Mr. Heck. Colonel Vindman, let's go back to that pair of meetings on July 10th in Ambassador Bolton's office and down in the Ward Room where you witnessed Ambassador Sondland inform the Ukrainian officials that as a prerequisite to a White House meeting between the two Presidents, quote, "The Ukrainians would have to deliver an investigation into the Bidens," end quote. You said that Ambassador Sondland was quote, "calling for an investigation that didn't exist into the Bidens and Burisma." Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Heck. It's that same afternoon you went to Mr. Eisenberg, the counsel, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That meeting occurred in the afternoon and within -- I'm sure it was within a couple hours I spoke to Mr. Eisenberg.

Mr. Heck. How did he react?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He was cool, calm, and collected. He took notes and he said he would look into it.

Mr. Heck. And did he not also tell you to feel free to come back if you had additional concerns?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He did, Congressman.

Mr. Heck. Ambassador Sondland had told you that his request to the Ukrainians had been coordinated with the Chief of Staff, Acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney. Did you report that to Mr. Eisenberg?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I did.

Mr. Heck. And what was his reaction?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He took notes, and he said he was going to -- he'll follow up or look into it. I don't recall exactly what he said.

Mr. Heck. Colonel, you also testified that on the July 25th call now between the two Presidents. Quote: There was no doubt, end quote, that President Trump asked for investigations into the 2016 election and Vice President Biden's son in return for a White House meeting. Within an hour of that call you reported that to Mr. Eisenberg, did you not?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I did.

Mr. Heck. Went back to him just to see if he suggested it would be appropriate?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He is an assistant to the President, it was less a suggestion and more of an instruction.

Mr. Heck. Did you tell the lawyers that the President Trump asked President Zelensky to speak to Mr. Giuliani?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Mr. Heck. And the lawyers, it was at this point, told you not to talk to anyone else?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is not correct with regards to timing. They didn't follow back -- they didn't circle back around. What ended up happening is, in my coordination role, I spoke to State, I spoke to a member of the Intelligence Community, and the general counsel from one of the intelligence bodies notified Mr. Eisenberg that there was -- that there was information on the call, on the July 25th call. At that point, Mr. Eisenberg told me I shouldn't talk to anybody else about it.

Mr. Heck. Colonel, I want to go back to 2014 in Iraq when you were blown up. I presume that given the point in your military career and what else was going on in the world, that upon recovery, there was the very real prospect or possibility that you might, once again, find yourself in harm's way. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, Congressman, it happened in 2004, but yes.

Mr. Heck. Four, excuse me. Thank you. Did you consider leaving the military service at that point?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. No. Frankly, Congressman, I suffered light wounds. I was fortunate compared to my counterparts in the same vehicle, and I returned to duty, I think it may have been that same day.

Mr. Heck. But you could have been subjected to additional harm, you chose to continue service in uniform?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I continued to serve in combat for the remaining 10 or 11 months of the tour.

Mr. Heck. You know, Colonel, I have to say, I find it a rich but incredibly painful irony that within a week of the President, contrary to all advice of the senior military officials, he pardons those who were convicted of war crimes, which was widely decried in the military community. Within the week of him doing that, is engaged in an effort and allies on his behalf, including some here today, to demean your record of service, and the sacrifice and the contribution you have made.

Indeed, sir, less than 20 minutes ago, the White House officially quoted out, out of context, the comments referred to earlier by Mr. Morrison in your judgment. I can only conclude, sir, that what we thought was just the President as the subject of our deliberations in this inquiry, isn't sufficient to capture what's happening here. Indeed, what subject of this inquiry, and what is at peril is our Constitution and the very values upon which it is based.

I want to say, thank you for your service, but, you know, thank you doesn't cut it. Please know, however, that it comes from the bottom of my heart, and I know on the bottoms of the heart of countless other Americans, thank you for your service, sir.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Thank you.

Mr. Heck. I yield back.

The Chairman. Mr. Jordan.

Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sunday, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives called the President of the United States an imposter. The Speaker of the House called the President an imposter. The guy 63 million people voted for. The guy who won an electoral college landslide, the Speaker calls an imposter. That's what happened to our country, to this Congress. The Speaker's statement says it all.

The Democrats have never accepted the will of the American people. The Democrats don't trust the American people. The American people who wanted to send someone to this town who was willing to shake it up a bit, they don't trust that. And they have tried to do everything they can to undo what the American people decided on November 8th, 2016. They have been out to get the President since the day he was elected.

The whistleblower's lawyer, the whistleblower's legal team, said this: January 30th, 2017, the President had been in office about a week. Coup has started. First of many steps. Next sentence, impeachment will follow ultimately. I guess we are in the final step, started 3-1/2 years ago. Congressman Tlaib started this Congress, the first day of Congress said: Impeachment the President. Representative Green said: If we don't impeach him, the President is going to win reelection. We got to do it.

Most importantly, most importantly, five Democrat members of this committee voted to move forward with impeachment before the phone call ever happened. The truth is, the attacks actually started before -- before the inauguration, even before the election. The ranking member talked about this in his opening statement

July 2016, FBI opens an investigation, the so-called Trump-Russia coordination, collusion, which was never there. Opened an investigation, spied on two American citizens associated with the Presidential campaign. My guess is that's probably never happened in American history, but they did it.

And for 10 months, Jim Comey's FBI investigated the President. Guess what, after 10 months, they had nothing. And you know why we know that, because when we deposed Mr. Comey last Congress, he told us they didn't have a thing. No matter, Special Counsel Mueller gets appointed, and they do a 2-year, $40 million, 19-lawyer unbelievable investigation, and guess what, they come back and they got nothing. But the Democrats don't care. So now we get this.

A bunch of depositions in the bunker in the basement of the Capitol. Witnesses who are not allowed to answer questions about who they talked to about the phone call. We get this. All based on some anonymous whistleblower. No firsthand knowledge. Bias against the President. These facts have never changed. We learned these right away. Who worked with Vice President Biden, who wrote a memo the day after somebody talked to him about the call, but waited 18 days to file a complaint. Eighteen days to file a complaint. What did he do in those 18 days? We all know. Ran off and talked with Chairman Schiff's staff.

And then, hired the legal team that I just talked about, that I just talked about, one of the steps in the whole impeachment coup, as his legal team has said.

This is scary what these guys are putting our country through. It is sad. It is scary. It is wrong. And the good news is, the American people see through it all, they know the facts are on the President's side. As Representative Stefanik said, four facts will never change. We got the transcript, which they never thought the President would release. Shows no coordination. No conditionality. No linkage. We got the two guys on the call. President Trump and President Zelensky who have said, nothing wrong, no pressure, no pushing here. We got the fact that the Ukrainians didn't even know aid was held up at the time of the call, and most importantly, we have yet to have one witness tell us that any evidence from anyone that President Zelensky did anything on investigations to get the aid released. Those facts will never change. The facts are on the President's side, the process is certainly not.

It has been the most unfair process we have ever seen, and the American people understand. Those 63 million Americans, they understand it. And, frankly, I think a lot of others do as well. They see this for what it is, and they know this is wrong, especially wrong just 11 months before the next election.

I yield back.

The Chairman. Mr. Welch.

Mr. Welch. Thank you. What this hearing is about, I think, was best stated by Colonel Vindman's opening statement. The question before us is this: Is it improper for the President of the United States to demand a foreign government investigate a United States citizen and political opponent? Very well stated. I just listened to Mr. Jordan, as you did as well, and I heard his criticisms of the process. Nothing really happened. A lot of people are out to get the President. I didn't hear an answer to the question as to whether it's proper for the President of the United States to demand a foreign government to investigate a U.S. citizen and political opponent. And, to date, I haven't heard one of my Republican colleagues address that question.

Colonel Vindman and Ms. Williams, thank you. I want to ask some questions that go through the background. What's come out during this process is that we had two Ukraine policies, one was bipartisan and longstanding, and that was to assist Ukraine, which had freed itself from the domination of Russia, to fight corruption, and to resist Russian aggression. Is that a fair statement, Colonel Vindman?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I think that's a fair characterization, Congressman.

Mr. Welch. And to give folks a reminder of the extent of corruption. By the way, a legacy of Putin's Russia, is it your understanding that when their prior president, Mr. Yanukovych, fled to Russia into the arms of Mr. Putin, he took with him $30 to $40 billion of that impoverished country?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. There are different estimates, but it's on that scale, yes.

Mr. Welch. Vast scale for a poor country. And is it your understanding that powerless but motivated Ukrainians rose up in protest to this incredible graft and theft and abuse by their President?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Welch. And that was in the Maidan, it was called the Maidan Revolution, the Revolution of Dignity, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Welch. And young people went into that square in downtown Kyiv and demonstrated for months, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct. And 100 died.

Mr. Welch. One hundred six young people died and older people died, correct? That was in -- between February 18, 2014, and February 22. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Welch. One hundred six died, including people who were shot by snipers, kids. And Yanukovych had put snipers on the rooftops of buildings to shoot into that square and kill, murder, slaughter, those young people. Is that your understanding?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Welch. In our bipartisan support -- and by the way, I want to say to my Republican colleagues, a lot of leadership to have this bipartisan support came from your side, thank you. But our whole commitment was to get rid of corruption and to stop that Russian aggression. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That amounts to some of the key pillars.

Mr. Welch. That's right. And the Giuliani, Sondland, it appears Trump policy, was not about that, it was about investigations into a political opponent, correct? I'll take that question back. We know it. And, you know, I'll say this to President Trump, you want to investigate Joe Biden, you want to investigate Hunter Biden, go at it. Do it. Do it hard. Do it dirty. Do it the way you do do it. Just don't do it by asking a foreign leader to help you in your campaign. That is your job, it's not his.

My goal in these hearings is two things: One is to get an answer to Colonel Vindman's question; and the second coming out of this is for us, as a Congress, to return to the Ukraine policy that Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy both support, it's not investigations. It's the restoration of democracy in Ukraine, and the resistance of Russian aggression. I yield back.

The Chairman. Mr. Maloney.

Mr. Maloney. Thank you both for being here. You know, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, this may be one of your first congressional hearings like this, so you may not --

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Hopefully, the last.

Mr. Maloney. I can't blame you for feeling that way, sir, particularly when I've been sitting here listening to my Republican colleagues. You know, one of the advantages of being down here at the kids' table is that you get to hear the folks above you ask their questions, and I've been listening closely to my Republican colleagues. And I've heard them say just about everything, except to contradict any of the substantive testimony you've both given. You may have noticed, there's been a lot of complaints, and there's been a lot of insinuations, and there's been a lot of suggestions maybe that your service is somehow not to be trusted.

You know, you were treated to questions about your locality because of some half-baked job offer, I guess, the Ukrainian's made you, which you, of course, dutifully reported. I guess, Mr. Castor is implying maybe you got some dual loyalty, which is of course, an old smear we've heard many times in our history. They try to demean you as though maybe you've overstated your importance of your job, but of course, you were the guy on the National Security Council responsible for directing Ukrainian policy.

We've heard them air out some allegations with no basis in proof, but they just want to get them out there and hope maybe some of those strands of spaghetti will stick on the wall if they keep throwing them.

We even had a member of this committee question, this is my favorite, question why you would wear your dress uniform today, even though that dress uniform includes a badge, a breast plate that has a combat infantry badge on it and a Purple Heart Medal Ribbon. It seems like if anybody gets to wear the uniform, it's somebody who's got a breast plate with those commendations on it.

So let's do it again. Let's do the substance. Can we do that? Because we've had a lot of dust kicked up. Ms. Williams, you heard the call with your own ears, right?

Ms. Williams. Yes, sir.

Mr. Maloney. Not secondhand, not hearsay. You heard the President speak. You heard his voice on the call?

Ms. Williams. Correct.

Mr. Maloney. And your conclusion was what he said about investigating the Bidens was your words, unusual and inappropriate, I believe. Am I right?

Ms. Williams. That was my testimony.

Mr. Maloney. And, Mr. Vindman, you were treated to a July 10th meeting in the White House where you heard Ambassador Sondland raise investigations, conditioning a White House meeting on that, investigations that you thought were unduly political. I believe that's how you described them. And you went to the NSC counsel and you reported it, right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Maloney. And then later you two were on the White House call, am I right? You heard it with your own ears?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Maloney. Not secondhand, not from somebody else, not hearsay, right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Maloney. You heard the President's voice on the call.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I did.

Mr. Maloney. And you heard him raise that subject again that Ambassador Sondland had raised before about investigating the Bidens, right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I did.

Mr. Maloney. And I want to ask you, when you heard him say that, what was the first thought that went through your mind?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Frankly, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was probably an element of shock that maybe in certain regards, my worst fear of how our Ukraine policy could play out was playing out. And how this was likely to have significant implications for U.S. national security.

Mr. Maloney. And you went immediately and reported it, didn't you?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I did.

Mr. Maloney. Why?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Because that was my duty.

Mr. Maloney. Do you still have your opening statement handy?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I do.

Mr. Maloney. Would you read the last paragraph for me again, not the very last one, the second to the last one. Would you read that one again for me because I think the American public needs to hear it again.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Dad -- starting --

Mr. Maloney. That's the one.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I think my dad would appreciate this one, too. Dad, my sitting here today in the U.S. Capitol talking to our elected officials is proof that you made to right decision 40 years ago to leave the Soviet Union and come here to the United States of America in search of a better life for our family. Do not worry, I'll be fine for telling the truth.

Mr. Maloney. You realized when you came forward, out of sense of duty, that you were putting yourself in direct opposition to the most powerful person in the world? Do you realize that, sir?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I knew I was assuming a lot of risk.

Mr. Maloney. And I'm struck by that word -- that phrase, do not worry, you addressed to your dad. Was your dad a warrior?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He did serve. It was a different military, though.

Mr. Maloney. And he would have worried if you were putting yourself up against the President of the United States. Is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He deeply worried about it because in his context there was -- there was the ultimate risk.

Mr. Maloney. And why do you have confidence that you can do that and tell your dad not to worry?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Congressman, because this is America. This is the country that I've served and defended. That all of my brothers have served. And here right matters.

Mr. Maloney. Thank you, sir. Yield back.

[Applause].

RPTR BRYANT

EDTR HOFSTAD

[1:24 p.m.]

The Chairman. Mrs. Demings.

Mrs. Demings. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, Ms. Williams, let me thank you for your service to our Nation. It truly matters.

Ms. Williams. Thank you.

Mrs. Demings. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, I had the honor of speaking to a group of veterans this past weekend. And what I said to them was that no words -- no words are really adequate or sufficient to fully express our gratitude for their service to our Nation.

So, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, today I say to you, there are no words that are sufficient to fully express our gratitude to you for what you have done for our Nation and, amazingly, what you are still willing to do for our Nation.

It is vitally important that the American people understand how President Trump's unethical demand that Ukraine deliver politically motivated investigations in exchange for military assistance created a security risk for our -- the United States of America -- national security.

The President was not just playing a political game by withholding military aid and meetings with Ukraine. Threatening the hundreds of millions of dollars of military assistance that Congress had appropriated has real-life consequences for Ukraine and for the USA.

In your deposition, Colonel Vindman, you testified, and I quote, "A strong and independent Ukraine is critical to our security interests."

Could you please explain why a strong and independent Ukraine is so critical and why it is so vital to U.S. interests?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. We sometimes refer to Ukraine as a frontline state. It's on the front line of Europe. They have actually described to me, the Ukrainians, that it is a -- they consider themselves as a barrier between Russian aggression and Europe. And what I've heard them describe is the need for U.S. support in order to serve this role, in order to protect European and Western security.

Mrs. Demings. Lieutenant Colonel, this is not just a theoretical conflict between Ukraine and Russia. You've already said this morning that Russia is actively fighting to expand into Ukraine, that Ukraine is in a hot war with Russia right now. Is that correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. It's stable, but it's still a hot war.

Mrs. Demings. And isn't it true, Lieutenant Colonel, that even if the security assistance was eventually delivered to Ukraine, the fact that it was delayed, just that fact, could signal to Russia that the bond between Ukraine and the U.S. was weakening?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That was the concern of myself and my colleagues.

Mrs. Demings. And was the risk of even the appearance that the U.S.-Ukraine bond is shaky is that it could embolden Russia to act with more aggression? Would you say that's correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I believe that was my testimony.

Mrs. Demings. Just last month, during an interview, President Putin joked about interfering in our political elections. I can only guess that's what we have become to Russia and its President.

I think he felt emboldened by the President's reckless actions, both attempts to hold critical military aid from Ukraine and President Trump's effort to blame Ukraine, not Russia, for election interference.

Ms. Williams and Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, I can only say that every American, regardless of our politics, should be critically concerned about that.

And let me just say this. Yes, we do trust the American people. But you know what? The American people trust us, as Members of Congress, to support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And we intend to do just that.

Thank you again for your service.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

The Chairman. Mr. Krishnamoorthi.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Good afternoon, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman and Ms. Williams. Thank you for your service.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, I am concerned that your loyalty has been questioned not just because you are bringing forward evidence of wrongdoing against the President of the United States but because you're an immigrant.

Recently, FOX News host Brian Kilmeade said: He, meaning you, were born in the Soviet Union, emigrated with his family young. "He tends to feel sympatico with the Ukraine." I find this statement reprehensible because it appears that your immigrant heritage is being used against you.

Lieutenant Colonel, I came to this country when I was 3 months old. Your family fled the Soviet Union and moved to America when you were just 3-1/2 years old, right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And I understand that your father worked multiple jobs while also learning English, right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Your father stressed the importance of embracing what it means to be an American, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. All your childhood memories relate to being an American, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. You and your family faced difficult times during your childhood, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. I can relate. That's my story too. But your father went on to become an engineer, right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He reestablished himself in his former profession in the United States.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. I can relate. I got a B.S. in engineering. Of course, some people claim I practice the B.S. part now.

You father never gave up working hard to build his very own American Dream, did he?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He did not.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Well, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, your father achieved the American Dream, and so did you and your family. From one immigrant American to another immigrant American, I want to say to you that you and your family represent the very best of America.

I assume that you are as proud to be an American as I am, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes, sir.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Sir, I want to turn your attention to Yuriy Lutsenko. You called him a disruptive actor in your opening statement, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Mr. Lutsenko, the former Prosecutor General in Ukraine, has made various claims about various Americans, right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. You are unaware of any factual basis for his accusations against Ambassador Yovanovitch, right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. He also was a source for an article by John Solomon in The Hill, right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That is correct.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And you said that key elements of that article as well as his accusations are false, right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Lutsenko is not a credible source, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Sir, the other side claims that there was absolutely no pressure on this July 25th phone call. I think that's what we heard earlier, right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I believe so.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And you have termed what President Trump asked in terms of investigations on that phone call as a demand, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Correct.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And you've pointed out the large power disparity between President Trump on the one hand and President Zelensky on the other, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Yes.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. There was pressure on that phone call, right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. The Ukrainians needed the meeting. The Ukrainians, subsequently, when they found out about it, needed the security assistance.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. So pressure was brought to bear on them, correct?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I believe so.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Sir, Colonel Vindman, last week, we heard a decorated military veteran, namely Ambassador Bill Taylor, come before us. You interacted regularly with Ambassador Taylor, and you know him to be a man of integrity. And he's a patriotic American. Isn't that right?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He's a superb individual.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. I asked Ambassador Taylor a series of questions based on his experience as an infantry commander. I asked him, quote, "Is an officer allowed to hold up action, placing his troops at risk, until someone provides them a personal benefit?" Ambassador Taylor responded, "No, sir."

Colonel Vindman, do you agree with Ambassador Taylor?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I do.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. I then asked Ambassador Taylor, quote, "Is that because they would be betraying their responsibility to the Nation?" Ambassador Taylor responded, "Yes, sir."

Colonel Vindman, do you agree with Ambassador Taylor?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I do.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. I then asked Ambassador Taylor, quote, "Could that type of conduct trigger a court martial?" Ambassador Taylor said, "Yes, sir."

Do you agree with Ambassador Taylor, Colonel Vindman?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I do.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you for your service.

The Chairman. That concludes the member questioning.

Representative Nunes, you are recognized for any concluding remarks.

Mr. Nunes. Well, act one of today's circus is over. For those of you who have been watching it at home, the Democrats are no closer to impeachment than where they were 3 years ago. In the process, they've -- the Department of Justice, FBI, State Department, elements within the IC, the IC IG have all suffered long-term damage.

The Democrats can continue to put -- to poison the American people with this nonsense. We sat here all morning without any evidence for impeachment, which would be a very serious crime. High crime and misdemeanors, as it says in the Constitution. No such thing. Policy disagreements.

And the Democrats' failure to acknowledge their involvement in the 2016 election, I would say it's astonishing, but that would be putting too little emphasis on their actions.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.

I want to thank our witnesses today, Ms. Williams, Colonel Vindman, both of you, for your service to the country, for your testimony here today.

And I just want to address, briefly, some of the evidence you presented as well as others thus far in the impeachment inquiry.

First of all, I want to join my colleagues in thanking you, Colonel Vindman, for your military service.

And I should tell you that, notwithstanding all of the questions you got on why didn't you go talk to your supervisor, why didn't you go talk to Mr. Morrison, why did you go to the National Security lawyer, as if there's something wrong with going to the National Security lawyer, are you aware that we asked Mr. Morrison whether he went to the National Security lawyer right after the call and that he did.

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. I am.

The Chairman. And are you aware also that we asked him, well, if you had this problem with Colonel Vindman not going to you instead of the lawyer, naturally, you must have gone to your supervisor? And do you know what his answer was? He didn't go to his supervisor either. He went directly to the National Security Council lawyer.

So I hope my colleagues will give him the same hard time for not following his chain of command that he complained about with you, apparently.

The President may attack you and has. Others on right-wing TV might attack you, and they have. But I thought you should know -- and maybe you know already -- that this is what the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had to say about you, Colonel Vindman: "He is a professional, competent, patriotic, and loyal officer. He has made an extraordinary contribution to the security of our Nation in both peacetime and combat." I'm sure your dad is proud to hear that.

My colleagues have tried to make the argument here today -- and we have heard it before -- that the President was just interested in fighting corruption. That's our goal, fighting corruption in Ukraine, this terribly corrupt country.

The problem, of course, with that is there's no evidence of the President trying to fight corruption. The evidence all points in the other direction. The evidence points in the direction of the President inviting Ukraine to engage in the corrupt act of investigating a U.S. political opponent.

Ambassador Yovanovitch was known as a strong fighter of corruption, so what does the President do? He recalls her from her post. Ambassador Yovanovitch, in fact, was at a meeting celebrating other anticorruption fighters, including a woman who had acid thrown in her face, on the day she was told to get on the next plane back to

Washington.

You prepared talking points for the President's first conversation with Zelensky. He's supposed to talk about rooting out corruption. If this President had such a deep interest in rooting out corruption in Ukraine, surely he would have brought it up in the call. But, of course, we now know that he did not.

We then see Rudy Giuliani not fighting corruption but asking for an investigation of the Bidens. And my colleagues say, well, maybe he was acting on his own; even though he says he's acting as the President's lawyer, maybe he was really acting on his own. But the two investigations that Rudy Giuliani wanted come up in the meeting you participate in on July 10th at the White House.

When Ambassador Sondland brings up the Bidens and Burisma and 2016, he tells the Ukrainians, if you want that meeting at the White House, you've got to do these investigations. Now, they would say Ambassador Sondland was acting on his own, but that doesn't quite work either because we have the call record from July 25th, which the President was forced to release, in which the President doesn't bring up corruption.

He doesn't say, "How are those anticorruption courts going?", or, "Great work in the Rada." Of course not. What does the President say? I want you to investigate the Bidens and this debunked conspiracy theory pushed by Vladimir Putin that also helps me in my reelection. So much for fighting corruption.

The message to Ukraine, the real message to Ukraine, our U.S. policy message is: Don't engage in political investigations. The message from the President, however, was the exact opposite: Do engage in political investigations, and do it for my reelection.

And it's also made clear, if they want the White House meeting and, ultimately, if they want 400 million in U.S. aid, this is what they have to do.

The only lament I hear from my colleagues is, it wasn't successful. They got caught. They didn't get the political investigations and they still had to release the money. Now, they still haven't gotten the White House meeting, but they had to release the money. Because a whistleblower blew the whistle -- whistleblower the President wants to punish -- and because Congress announced it was doing investigations, and very soon thereafter the President was forced to lift the hold on the aid.

They argue, well, this makes it okay, that it was a failed effort to bribe Ukraine, a failed effort to extort Ukraine. That doesn't make it better. It's no less odious because it was discovered and it was stopped.

And we have courageous people like yourself who come forward, who report things, who do what they should do, who have a sense, as you put it, Colonel, of duty -- of duty -- not to the person of the President, but to the Presidency and to the country. And we thank you for that.

At the end of the day, I think this all comes back to something we heard from another career Foreign Service officer just last Friday in a conversation he overheard with the President in a restaurant in Ukraine, in which the President, not Rudy Giuliani, not anyone else, the President of the United States wanted to know, are they gonna do the investigations? This was the day after that July 25th call. Are they gonna do the investigations? And he's assured by Ambassador Sondland, they're gonna do it.

And what does Sondland relate to this Foreign Service officer after he hangs up that call? The President doesn't give a -- expletive -- about Ukraine. He only cares about the big things that help his personal interests.

That's all you need to know.

And it isn't just about Ukraine, of course. Ukraine is fighting our fight against the Russians, against their expansionism. That's our fight too. That's our fight too. At least we thought so on a bipartisan basis. That's our fight too. That's why we support Ukraine with the military aid that we have. Well, the President may not care about it, but we do. We care about our defense, we care about the defense of our allies, and we darn well care about our Constitution.

We are adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 1:30 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

Opening Statement Before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Opening Statement Before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

George P. Kent
Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs U.S. Department of State

November 13, 2019

Good morning. My name is George Kent, and I am Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. I have served proudly as a non-partisan career Foreign Service officer for more than 27 years, under five Presidents, three Republicans and two Democrats. As I mentioned in my opening comments last month in the closed-door deposition, I represent the third generation of my family to have chosen a career in public service and sworn the oath all U.S. public servants do, in defense of our Constitution.

Indeed, there has been a George Kent sworn to defend the Constitution continuously for nearly 60 years, ever since my father reported to Annapolis for his plebe summer. After graduating first in his Naval Academy class in 1965, the year best known for his Heisman-winning classmate Roger Staubach, my father served a full 30 years, including as Captain of a nuclear ballistic missile submarine.

Five great uncles served honorably in the Navy and in the Army in World War II. In particular, Tom Taggart was stationed in the Philippines at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor; he survived the brutal Bataan Death March and three more years in a Japanese Prisoner of War camp, unbroken. He returned to service as an Air Force Judge Advocate, upholding the rule of law until his death in 1965.

Today I appear before you once again, under subpoena, as a fact witness ready to answer all of your questions about the events and developments examined in this inquiry to the best of my ability and recollection subject to limits placed on me by the law and this process.

I begin with some opening comments on the key principles at the heart of what brings me before you today. To wit: principled public service in pursuit of our enduring national interests, and the place of Ukraine in our national and security interests.

For the past five years, we have focused our united efforts across the Atlantic to support Ukraine in its fight for the cause of freedom, and the rebirth of a country free from Russian dominion and the warped legacy of Soviet institutions and post-Soviet behavior.

As I stated in my closed-door deposition last month, you don’t step into the public arena of international diplomacy in active pursuit of principled U.S. interests without expecting vigorous pushback, including personal attacks. Such attacks came from Russians, their proxies, and corrupt Ukrainians. This tells me that our efforts were hitting their mark.

It was unexpected, and most unfortunate, to watch some Americans -- including those who allied themselves with corrupt Ukrainians in pursuit of private agendas -- launch attacks on dedicated public servants advancing U.S. interests in Ukraine. In my opinion, those attacks undermined U.S. and Ukrainian national interests and damaged our critical bilateral relationship.

The United States has clear national interests at stake in Ukraine. Ukraine’s success is very much in our national interest, in the way we have defined our national interests broadly in Europe for the past 75 years. U.S. leadership furthered far-sighted policies like the Marshall Plan and the creation of a rules-based international order. Protected by the collective security provided by NATO, Western Europe recovered and thrived after the carnage of World War II, notwithstanding the shadow of the Iron Curtain. Europe’s security and prosperity contributed to our security and prosperity.

Support of Ukraine’s success also fits squarely into our strategy for central and Eastern Europe since the fall of the Wall 30 years ago this past week. A Europe truly whole, free, and at peace -- our strategic aim for the entirety of my foreign service career -- is not possible without a Ukraine whole, free, and at peace, including Crimea and Donbas, territories currently occupied by Russia.

Looking forward, the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy makes clear the global strategic challenge now before us: great power competition with rivals such as Russia and China, and the need to compete for positive influence, without taking countries for granted.

In that sense, Ukraine has been on the front lines, not just of Russia’s conventional war in eastern Ukraine since 2014 and its broader campaign of malign influence, but of the greater geopolitical challenges now facing the United States.

Ukraine’s popular Revolution of Dignity in 2014 forced a corrupt pro-Russian leadership to flee to Moscow. After that, Russia invaded Ukraine, occupying seven percent of its territory, roughly equivalent to the size of Texas for the United States. At that time, Ukraine’s state institutions were on the verge of collapse.

Ukrainian civil society answered the challenge. They formed volunteer battalions of citizens, including technology professionals and medics. They crowd-sourced funding for their own weapons, body armor, and supplies. They were the 21st century Ukrainian equivalent of our own Minutemen in 1776, buying time for the regular army to reconstitute.

Since then, more than 13,000 Ukrainians have died on Ukrainian soil defending their territorial integrity and sovereignty from Russian aggression. American support in Ukraine’s own de facto war of independence has been critical in this regard.

By analogy, the American colonies may not have prevailed against British imperial might without help from transatlantic friends after 1776. In an echo of Lafayette’s organized assistance to General George Washington’s army and Admiral John Paul Jones’ navy, Congress has generously appropriated over $1.5 billion over the past five years in desperately needed train and equip security assistance to Ukraine. These funds increase Ukraine’s strength and ability to fight Russian aggression. Ultimately, Ukraine is on a path to become a full security partner of the United States within NATO.

Similar to von Steuben training colonials at Valley Forge, U.S. and NATO allied trainers develop the skills of Ukrainian units at Yavoriv near the Polish border, and elsewhere. They help rewrite military education for Ukraine’s next generation, as von Steuben did for America’s first. In supporting Ukraine’s brave resistance to Russian aggression, we have a front row seat to the Russian way of war in the 21st century, gaining priceless insights that contribute to our own security.

In 2019, Ukraine’s citizens passed the political torch to a new generation, one that came of age not in the final years of the Soviet Union, but in an independent Ukraine. Presidential and parliamentary elections this year swept out much of Ukraine’s previous governing elite and seated a 41-year-old President Zelenskyy, a cabinet with an average age of 39, and a parliament with an average age of 41.

At the heart of that change mandate five years after Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity is a thirst for justice, because there cannot be dignity without justice. Without a reformed judicial sector that delivers justice with integrity for all, Ukrainian society will be unsettled. Foreign investors will not bring the investment needed to ensure Ukraine’s long-term prosperity.

This is why the principled promotion of the rule of law and institutional integrity has been so necessary to our strategy for a successful Ukraine. It is also true for other former captive nations still recovering from the ashes of Soviet misrule. It is why acting inconsistently with the core principle of rule-of-law comes with great peril.

I am grateful to all of the members of Congress and staffers who have traveled to Ukraine over the past five years and appropriated billions of dollars in assistance in support of our primary policy goals. Those funds increase Ukraine’s ability to fight Russian aggression in the defense, energy, cyber, and information spheres. They also empower state institutions and civil society to undertake systemic reforms and tackle corruption.

I believe all of us can be proud of our efforts in Ukraine over the past five years, even though much remains to be done. And by all of us I mean those in the legislative and executive branches, both parties, the interagency community working out of our embassy in Kyiv, with Ukrainians in government, the military, and civil society, and our transatlantic allies and partners. We cannot allow our resolve to waiver, since too much is at stake, not just for Ukraine and the future of European security, but for the national interests of the United States broadly defined.

My prior deposition covered a lot of ground over some ten hours. Here are the main themes from my testimony:

- I outlined my experience with longstanding U.S. interests in supporting anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine. This work gave me a front-seat to problematic activities by successive prosecutors general in Ukraine.

- For many of the issues that this Committee is investigating, my knowledge and understanding is sometimes first hand, and sometimes comes from others involved in some specific conversations and meetings. This is no different than how any one learns and carries out his or her job responsibilities. I have been and remain willing to share my factual observations with the Committee, and will make it clear when those are based on personal knowledge, or information gained from others.

- U.S. efforts to counter corruption in Ukraine focus on building institutional capacity so that the Ukrainian government has the ability to go after corruption and effectively investigate, prosecute, and judge alleged criminal activities using appropriate institutional mechanisms -- that is -- to create and follow the rule of law. That means if there is any criminal nexus for activity in the United States, then U.S. law enforcement should pursue that case. If we think there has been some criminal act overseas that violates U.S. law, we have the institutional mechanisms to address that. It could be through the Justice Department and FBI agents assigned oversees, or through treaty mechanisms, such as the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty. As a general principle, I do not believe the United States should ask other countries to engage in selective, politically associated investigations or prosecutions against opponents of those in power, because such selective actions undermine the rule of law regardless of the country.

- The pervasive and long standing problem of corruption in Ukraine included exposure to a situation involving the energy company Burisma. The primary concern of the U.S. government since 2014 was Burisma’s owner -- Mykola Zlochevsky -- whose frozen assets abroad we had attempted to recover on Ukraine’s behalf. In early 2015, I raised questions with the deputy Prosecutor General about why the investigation of Mr. Zlochevsky had been terminated, based on our belief that prosecutors had accepted bribes to close the case.

- Later, I became aware that Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma. Soon after that, in a briefing call with the national security staff in the Office of the Vice President, in February 2015, I raised my concern that Hunter Biden’s status as board member could create the perception of a conflict of interest. Let me be clear; however, I did not witness any efforts by any U.S. official to shield Burisma from scrutiny. In fact, I and other U.S. officials consistently advocated reinstituting a scuttled investigation of Zlochevsky, Burisma’s founder, as well as holding the corrupt prosecutors who closed the case to account.

- Over the course of 2018-2019, I became increasingly aware of an effort by Rudy Giuliani and others, including his associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, to run a campaign to smear Ambassador Yovanovitch and other officials at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv.

- The chief agitators on the Ukrainian side of this effort were some of those same corrupt former prosecutors I had encountered, particularly Victor Shokin and Yuriy Lutsenko. They were now peddling false information in order to exact revenge against those who had exposed their misconduct, including U.S. diplomats, Ukrainian anti-corruption officials, and reform-minded civil society groups in Ukraine.

- During the late spring and summer of 2019, I became alarmed as these efforts bore fruit. They led to the ouster of Ambassador Yovanovitch and hampered U.S. efforts to establish rapport with the new Zelenskyy administration in Ukraine.

- In mid-August, it became clear to me that Giuliani’s efforts to gin up politically- motivated investigations were now infecting U.S. engagement with Ukraine, leveraging President Zelenskyy’s desire for a White House meeting.

- There are and always have been conditionality placed on our sovereign loan guarantees for Ukraine. Conditions include anti-corruption reforms, as well as meeting larger stability goals and social safety nets. The International Monetary Fund does the same thing. Congress and the executive branch work together to put conditionality on some security assistance in the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.

Regarding my testimony, I will do my best to answer your questions today, questions that will involve issues, conversations, and documents that span a number of years. I may be limited by three considerations:

- First, the State Department has collected materials in response to the September 27 subpoena that may contain facts relevant to my testimony. I have no such documents or materials with me today. I will thus do my best to answer as accurately, completely, and truthfully as I can, to the best of my recollection.

- Second, as this Committee knows from my deposition testimony, throughout this process there have been concerns that questions may be asked about classified information. We have asked the State Department for guidance about any classification concerns related to the public release of my deposition, and the State Department has declined to provide any. So if I am asked a question today that I believe may implicate classified information, I will respectfully decline to answer in this public forum.

- Third, there may also be questions focusing on the identity of people in the Intelligence Community. These questions were redacted from my deposition’s transcript. If such a question arises today, I am going to follow my counsel’s advice and decline to answer.

I would like to conclude my opening remarks with an observation about some of my fellow public servants who have come under personal attack -- Ambassador Yovanovitch, LTC Vindman, and Dr. Hill -- at least one of whom is going to appear before this body in the coming days. Masha, Alex, and Fiona were born abroad before their families or they themselves personally chose to immigrate to the United States. They all made the professional choice to serve the United States as public officials, helping shape our national security policy, towards Russia in particular. And we and our national security are the better for it.

In this sense, they are the 21st century heirs of two giants of 20th century U.S. national security policy who were born abroad: my former professor Zbigniew Brzezinski; and his fellow immigrant Henry Kissinger. Like the Brzezinskis and Kissingers, the Yovanovitches and Vindmans fled Nazi and communist oppression to contribute to a stronger, more secure America.

That honorable transatlantic tradition goes back to the very founding of our republic: our 18th century independence would not have been secured without the choice of European officers -- the French-born Lafayette and Rochambeau, the German-born von Steuben, and the Poles Pulaski and Kosciuszko -- to come to the New World and fight for our cause of freedom, and the birth of a new country free from imperial dominion. It is my privilege to sit next to Ambassador Taylor today, and it is my honor to serve with all of these patriotic Americans.

Thank you.

Ukraine Clearinghouse Memorandum Telephone Conversation April-2019

Office of the Press Secretary

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 15, 2019

First Conversation Had Between President Trump and President Zelensky of Ukraine

UNCLASSIFIED//FOUO

LIMITED ACCESS

001397

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

EYES ONLY

DO NOT COPY

MEMORANDUM OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATION

SUBJECT:

(U//FOUO) Telephone Conversation with President-elect Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine

PARTICIPANTS:

President-elect Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine

Interpreter: Provided by the Department of State
Notetakers: The White House Situation Room

DATE, TIME
AND PLACE:

April 21, 2019, 4:29 - 4:45 p.m. EDT
Air Force One

(U) The President: I’d like to congratulate you on a job well done, and congratulations on a fantastic election.

(U) President-elect Zelenskyy: Good to hear from you. Thank you so very much. It’s very nice to hear from you, and I appreciate the congratulations.

(U) The President: That was an incredible election.

(U) President-elect Zelenskyy: Again, thank you so very much. As you can see, we tried very hard to do our best. We had you as a great example.

(U) The President: I think you will do a great job. I have many friends in Ukraine who know you and like you. I have many friends from Ukraine and they think - frankly - expected you to win. And it’s really an amazing thing that you’ve done.

CAUTION: A Memorandum of a Telephone Conversation (TELCON) is not a verbatim transcript of a discussion. The text in this document records the notes and recollections of Situation Room Duty Officers and NSC policy staff assigned to listen and memorialize the conversation in written form as the conversation takes place. A number of factors can affect the accuracy of the record, including poor telecommunications connections and variations in accent and/or interpretation. The word "inaudible" is used to indicate portions of a conversation that the notetaker was unable to hear.

An interpreter facilitated this conversation. Differences in interpretation may result m subtle differences in the exact meaning of phrases.

UNCLASSIFIED//FOUO

UNCLASSIFIED//F0U0

2

I guess, in a way, I did something similar. We’re making tremendous progress in the U.S. [United States] - we have the most tremendous economy ever. I just wanted to congratulate you. I have no doubt you will be a fantastic president.

(U) President-elect Zelenskyy: First of all, thank you so very much, again, for the congratulations. We in Ukraine are an independent country, and independent Ukraine – we’re going to do everything for the people. You are, as I said, a great example. We are hoping we can expand on our job as you did. You will always, also, be a great example for many. You are a great example for our new managers. I'd also like to invite you, if it's possible, to the inauguration. I know how busy you are, but if it's possible for you to come to the inauguration ceremony, that would be a great, great thing for you to do to be with us on that day.

(U) The President: Well, that’s very nice. I’ll look into that, and well - give us the date and, at a very minimum, we’ll have a great representative. Or more than one from the United States will be with you on that great day. So, we will have somebody, at a minimum, at a very, very high level, and they will be with you. Really, an incredible day for an incredible achievement.

(U) President-elect Zelenskyy: Again, thank you, and we’re looking forward to your visit or to the visit of a high-level delegation. But there's no word that can describe our wonderful country. How nice, warm, and friendly our people are, how tasty and delicious our food is, and how wonderful Ukraine is. Words cannot describe our country, so it would be best for you to see it yourself. So, if you can come, that would be great. So, again, I invite you to come.

(U) The President: Well, I agree with you about your country, and I look forward to it. When I owned Miss Universe, they always had great people. Ukraine was always very well represented. When you're settled in and ready, I'd like to invite you to the White House. We'll have a lot of things to talk about, but we’re with you all the way.

(U) President-elect Zelenskyy: Well, thank you for the invitation. We accept the invitation and look forward to the visit. Thank you again. The whole team and I are looking forward to that visit. Thank you, again, for the congratulations. And I think that it will still be great if you could come and be with us on this very important day of our inauguration. The results are incredible - they’re very impressive for us. So, it will be absolutely fantastic if you could come and be with us on that day.

UNCLASSIFIED//FOUO

UNCLASSIFIED//FOUO

3

(U) The President: Very good. We'll let you know very soon, and we will see you, very soon, regardless. Congratulations - and, please, say hello to the Ukrainian people and your family. Let them know that I send my best regards from our country.

(U) President-elect Zelenskyy: Well, thank you, again. You have a safe flight and see you soon.

(U) The President: Take care of yourself and give a great speech today. You take care of yourself, and I’ll see you soon.

(U) President-elect Zelenskyy: Thank you very much. It is difficult for me, but I will practice English and we’ll meet in English. Thank you very much.

(U) The President: [Laughter] All that's beautiful to hear! That's really good. I could not do that in your language. I’m very impressed. Thank you very much.

(U) President-elect Zelenskyy: Thank you very much. I’ll see you very soon.

(U) The President: Great day. Good luck.

(U) President-elect Zelenskyy: Goodbye.

-- End of Conversation --

Ukraine Clearinghouse 10-03-19. Chairmen Letter on State Dept Texts

Congress of the United States
Washington, DC 20515

October 3, 2019

Members of the Intelligence, Oversight and Reform, and Foreign Affairs Committees Washington, DC. 20515

Dear Colleagues:

We are writing to convey our grave concerns with the unprecedented actions of President Donald Trump and his Administration with respect to the House of Representatives” impeachment inquiry.

The President and his aides are engaging in a campaign of misinformation and misdirection in an attempt to normalize the act of soliciting foreign powers to interfere in our elections.

We have all now seen the summary of the call in which President Trump repeatedly urged the Ukrainian President to launch an investigation into former Vice President Joe Bideni immediately after the Ukrainian President mentioned critical U.S. military assistance to counter Russian aggression.

The President claims he did nothing wrong. Even more astonishing, he is now openly and publicly asking another foreign power—China—to launch its own sham investigation against the Bidens to further his own political aims.

Over the past week, new reports have revealed that other Trump Administration officials also may have been involved in the illicit effort to get Ukrainian help for the President’s campaign.

For example, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has now admitted that he was on the call when President Trump explicitly pressed the Ukrainian President to investigate the Bidens— but failed to report this to the FBI or other law enforcement authorities. You will recall, FBI Director Christopher Wray urged individuals to report efforts to seek or receive help from a foreign power that may intervene in a U.S. presidential election.

This obligation is not diminished when the instigator of that foreign intervention is the President of the United States; it is all the more crucial to the security of our elections. Instead, when asked by the media about his own knowledge or participation in the call, Secretary Pompeo dissembled.

Likewise, we are investigating reports that Vice President Mike Pence may have been made aware of the contents of the call, and his absence from the Ukrainian President’s inauguration may have been related to efforts to put additional pressure on Ukraine to deliver on the President’s demands.

This week, current and former State Department officials have begun cooperating With the impeachment inquiry by producing documents and scheduling interviews and depositions. Based on the first production of materials, it has become immediately apparent why Secretary Pompeo tried to block these officials from providing information.

The Committees have now obtained text messages from Ambassador Kurt Volker, the former Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, communicating with other officials, including William B. “Bill” Taylor, the Charge d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, Gordon Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, Andrey Yermak, Aide to Ukrainian President Zelensky, the President’s agent Rudy Giuliani, and others.

These text messages reflect serious concerns raised by a State Department official about the detrimental effects of withholding critical military assistance from Ukraine, and the importance of setting up a meeting between President Trump and the Ukrainian President without further delay. He also directly expressed concerns that this critical military assistance and the meeting between the two presidents were being withheld in order to place additional pressure on Ukraine to deliver 011 the President’s demand for Ukraine to launch politically motivated investigations.

Earlier today, selected portions of these texts were leaked to the press out of context. In order to help correct the public record, we are now providing an attachment with more complete excerpts from the exchanges. The additional excerpts we are providing are still only a subset of the full body of the materials, which we hope to make public after a review for personally identifiable information.

Our investigation will continue in the coming days. But we hope every Member of the House will join us in condemning in the strongest terms the President’s now open defiance of our core values as American citizens to guard against foreign interference in our democratic process.

Sincerely,

A signature: Elijah E. Cummings.
Eloit L. Engel
Chairman
House Committee on Foreign Affairs

A signature: Adam Schiff.
Adam B. Schiff
Chairman
House of Permanent Select Committee
On Intelligence

A signature: Elijah E. Cummings.
Elijah E. Cummings
Chairman
House Committee on Oversight and Reform

ATTACHMENT

- Connecting Rudy Giuliani with Ukraine President Zelensky’s Advisor: On July 19, Ambassador Volker texted President Trump’s agent, Rudy Giuliani, to thank him for breakfast and to introduce him to Andrey Yermak, a top advisor to President Zelensky:

[7/19/19, 4:48 PM] Kurt Volker: Mr Mayor - really enjoyed breakfast this morning. As discussed, connecting you here with Andrey Yermak, who is very close to President Zelensky. I suggest we schedule a call together on Monday - maybe 10am or 11am Washington time? Kurt

- Sondland Briefs Zelensky Ahead of Call with President Trump: On July 19, 2019, Ambassador Volker, Ambassador Sondland, and Mr. Taylor had the following exchange about the specific goal for the upcoming telephone call between President Trump and the Ukrainian President:

[7/19/19, 4:49:42 PM] Kurt Volker: Can we three do a call tomorrow⸺say noon WASHINGTON?

[7/19/19, 6:50:29 PM] Gordon Sondland: Looks like Potus call tomorrow. I spike [sic] directly to Zelensky and gave him a full briefing. He’s got it.

[7/19/19, 6:52:57 PM] Gordon Sondland: Sure!

[7/19/19, 7:01:22 PM] Kurt Volker: Good. Had breakfast with Rudy this morning⸺teeing up call w Yermak Monday. Must have helped. Most impt is for Zelensky to say that he will help investigation⸺and address any specific personnel issues⸺if there are any

- Concerns about Ukraine Becoming an “Instrument” in U.S. Politics: On July 21, 2019, Ambassador Taylor flagged President Zelensky’s desire for Ukraine not to be used by the Trump Administration for its own domestic political purposes:

[7/21/19, 1:45:54 AM] Bill Taylor: Gordon, one thing Kurt and I talked about yesterday was Sasha Danyliuk’s point that President Zelenskyy is sensitive about Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington domestic, reelection politics.

[7/21/19, 4:45:44 AM] Gordon Sondland: Absolutely, but we need to get the conversation started and the relationship built, irrespective of the pretext. I am worried about the alternative.

- Giuliani Advocates for Trump-Zelensky Call: Mr. Yermak and Mr. Giuliani agreed to speak on the morning of July 22. Later that evening, Ambassador Volker informed Ambassadors Sondland and Taylor that Giuliani was now “advocating” for a phone call between President Trump and President Zelensky:

[7/22/19 4:27:55 PM] Kurt Volker: Orchestrated a great phone call w Rudy and Yermak. They are going to get together when Rudy goes to Madrid in a couple of weeks.

[7/22/19 4:28:08 PM] Kurt Volker: In the meantime Rudy is now advocating for phone call.

[7/22/19 4:28:26 PM] Kurt Volker: I have call into Fiona’s replacement and will call Bolton if needed.

[7/22/19 4:28:48 PM Kurt Volker: But I can tell Bolton and you can tell Mick that Rudy agrees on a call if that helps.

[7/22/19 4:30:10 PM] Gordon Sondland: I talked to Tim Morrison Fiona’s replacement. He is pushing but feel free as well.

- Volker Advises Yermak Ahead of Trump-Zelensky Call: On the morning of July 25, 2019-ahead of the planned call between President Trump and President Zelensky⸺Ambassador Volker advised Andrey Yermak:

[7/25/19, 8:36:45 AM] Kurt Volker: Good lunch-thanks. Heard from White House⸺assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate / “get to the bottom of what happened” in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington, Good luck! See you tomorrow-kurt

- Yermak’s Informal Readout of the Trump-Zelensky Call: Following President Trump’s July 25 call, Ambassador Volker received the following readout from Ukrainian Presidential Advisor Yermak and confirmed his intent to meet Giuliani in Madrid:

[7/25/19, 10:15:06 AM] Andrey Yermak: Phone call went well. President Trump proposed to choose any convenient dates. President Zelenskiy chose 20,21,22 September for the White House Visit. Thank you again for your help! Please remind Mr. Mayor to share the Madrid’s dates

[7/25/19, 10:16:42 AM] Kurt Volker: Great⸺thanks and will do!

- State Department Officials Discuss a White House Visit and Ukraine Statement: On August 9, 2019, Ambassador Volker had the following exchange with Ambassador Sondland about arranging a White House meeting after the Ukrainian President makes a public statement:

[8/9/19, 5: 35:53 PM] Gordon Sondland: Morrison ready to get dates as soon as Yermak confirms.

[8/9/19, 5: 46:21 PM] Kurt Volker: Excellent!! How did you sway him? :)

[8/9/19, 5: 47:34 PM] Gordon Sondland: Not sure i did, I think potus really wants the deliverable

[8/9/19, 5: 48:00 PM] Kurt Volker: But does he know that?

[8/9/19, 5: 48:09 PM] Gordon Sondland: Yep

[8/9/19, 5: 48:37 PM] Gordon Sondland: Clearly lots of convos going on

[8/9/19, 5:48:38 PM] Kurt Volker: Ok⸺then that’s good it’s coming from two separate sources

[8/9/19, 5: 51:18 PM] Gordon Sondland: To avoid misundestandings, might be helpful to ask Audrey for a draft statememt (embargoed) so that we can see exactly what they propose to cover. Even though Ze does a live presser they can still summarize in a brief statement. Thoughts?

[8/9/19, 5: 51:42 PM] Kurt Volker: Agree!

- State Department Officials Seek Giuliani’s Guidance on Ukraine Statement: On August 9, 2019, after Mr. Giuliani met with President Zelensky’s aide Andrey Yermak, Ambassador Volker asked to speak with Mr. Giuliani about the Ukranian statement:

[8/9/19, 11:27 AM] Kurt Volker: Hi Mr Mayor! Had a good chat with Yermak last night. He was pleased with your phone call. Mentioned Z making a statement. Can we all get on the phone to make sure I advise Z correctly as to what he should be saying? Want to make sure we get this done right. Thanks!

Gordon Sondland: Good idea Kurt. I am on Pacific time.

Rudy Giuliani: Yes can you call now going to Fundraiser at 12:30

- Ukrainian Aide Seeks White House Date First: On August 10, 2019, President Zelensky’s aide, Andrey Yermak, pressed Ambassador Volker for a date for the White House visit before committing to a statement announcing an investigation explicitly referencing the 2016 election and Burisma;

[8/10/19, 4:56:15 PM] Andrey Yermak: Hi Kurt, Please let me know when you can talk. I think it’s possible to make this declaration and mention all these things. Which we discussed yesterday. But it will be logic to do after we receive a confirmation of date. We inform about date of visit and about our expectations and our guarantees for future visit. Let discuss it

[8/10/19, 5:01:32 PM] Kurt Volker: Ok! It’s late for you⸺why don’t we talk in my morning, your afternoon tomorrow? Say 10am/5pm?

[8/10/19, 5:02:18 PM] Kurt Volker: I agree with your approach. Let’s iron out statement and use that to get date and then PreZ can go forward with it?

[8/10/19, 5:26:17 PM] Andrey Yermak: Ok

[8/10/19, 5:38:43 PM] Kurt Volker: Great. Gordon is available to join as well

[8/10/19, 5:41:45 PM] Andrey Yermak: Excellent

[8/10/19, 5:42:10 PM] Andrey Yermak: Once we have a date, will call for a press briefing, announcing upcoming visit and outlining vision for the reboot of US-UKRAINE relationship, including among other things Burisma and election meddling in investigations

[8/10/19, 5:42:30 PM] Kurt Volker: Sounds great!

- Discussion of Ukrainian Statement to Include References to 2016 Election and Burisma: Following the August 9, 2019, outreach to Rudy Giuliani, Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Sondland on August 13, 2019, had following exchange regarding the proposed Ukrainian statement:

[8/13/19,10:26:44 AM] Kurt Volker: Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians. I want to declare that this is unacceptable. We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, including those involving Burisma and the 2016 U.S. elections, which in turn will prevent the recurrence of this problem in the future.

[8/13/19, 10:27:20 AM] Gordon Sondland: Perfect. Lets send to Andrey after our call

- Confirming Desire to Reference 2016 Election and Burisma: On August 17, 2019, Ambassadors Volker and Sondland had the following exchange in which they discussed their message to Ukraine:

[8/17/19, 3:06:19 PM] Gordon Sondland: Do we still want Ze to give us an unequivocal draft with 2016 and Boresma?

[8/17/19,4:34:21 PM] Kurt Volker: That’s the clear message so far ...

[8/17/19, 4:34:39 PM] Kurt Volker: I’m hoping we can put something out there that causes him to respond with that

[8/17/19, 4:41:09 PM] Gordon Sondland: Unless you think otherwise I will return Andreys call tomorrow and suggest they send us a clean draft.

- Ukrainian Official Shares Press Report of U.S. Withholding Military Assistance: On August 28, President Zelensky’s aide, Andrey Yermak, texted Ambassador Volker a news story entitled, “Trump Holds Up Ukraine Military Aid Meant to Confront Russia”:

[8/29/19, 2:28:19 AM] Andrey Yermak: Need to talk with you

[8/29/19, 3:06:14 AM] Andrey Yermak:

https://www.politico.eom/story/2019/08/28/trump-ukraine-military-aid-russia- 1689531

[8/29/19, 6:55:04 AM] Kurt Volker: Hi Andrey - absolutely. When is good for you?

- President Trump Cancels Trip to Meet President Zelensky: On August 30, Ambassador Taylor informed Ambassador Volker that President Trump had canceled his planned visit to Warsaw, Poland, where he was to meet with President Zelensky. Ambassadors Volker and Sondland discussed an alternative plan for Vice President Pence to meet with President Zelensky on September 1:

[8/30/19, 12:14:57 AM] Bill Taylor: Trip canceled

[8/30/19, 12:16:02 AM] Kurt Volker: Hope VPOTUS keeps the bilat - and tees up WH visit...

[8/30/19, 12:16:18 AM] Kurt Volker: And hope Gordon and Perry still going...

[8/30/19, 5:31:14 AM] Gordon Sondland: I am going. Pompeo is speaking to Potus today to see if he can go.

On September 1, Ambassador Taylor sought clarification of the requirements for a White House visit:

[9/1/19, 12:08:57 PM] Bill Taylor: Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?

[9/1/19, 12:42:29 PM] Gordon Sondland: Call me

- State Department Officials on Security Assistance and the Ukraine “Interview”: On September 8, Ambassador Taylor, Ambassador Sondland, and Ambassador Volker had the following exchange:

[9/8/19, 11:20:32 AM] Gordon Sondland: Guys multiple convos with Ze, Potus. Lets talk

[9/8/19, 11:21:41 AM] Bill Taylor: Now is fine with me

[9/8/19, 11:26:13 AM] Kurt Volker: Try again⸺could not hear

[9/8/19, 11:40:11 AM] Bill Taylor: Gordon and I just spoke. I can brief you if you and Gordon don’t connect

[9/8/19,12:37:28 PM] Bill Taylor: The nightmare is they give the interview and don’t get the security assistance. The Russians love it. (And I quit.)

- State Department Officials on Withholding Security Assistance: On September 9, 2019, Ambassador Taylor and Ambassador Sondland had the following exchange regarding the withholding of military assistance to Ukraine:

[9/9/19, 12:31:06 AM] Bill Taylor: The message to the Ukrainians (and Russians) we send with the decision on security assistance is key. With the hold, we have already shaken their faith in us. Thus my nightmare scenario.

[9/9/19, 12:34:44 AM] Bill Taylor: Counting on you to be right about this interview, Gordon.

[9/9/19, 12:37:16 AM] Gordon Sondland: Bill, I never said I was “right”. I said we are where we are and believe we have identified the best pathway forward.

Lets hope it works.

[9/9/19, 12:47:11 AM] Bill Taylor: As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.

[9/9/19, 5:19:35 AM] Gordon Sondland: Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind. The President is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised during his campaign I suggest we stop the back and forth by text If you still have concerns I recommend you give Lisa Kenna or S a call to discuss them directly. Thanks.

iMessage

7/19/19, 4:48 PM

Mr Mayor — really enjoyed breakfast this morning. As discussed, connecting you here with Andrey Yermak, who is very close to President Zelensky. I suggest we schedule a call together on Monday — maybe 10am or 11am Washington time? Kurt

[7/19/19, 4:49:42 PM] Kurt Volker: Can we three do a call tomorrow - say noon WASHINGTON?

[7/19/19, 6:50:29 PM] Gordon Sondland: Looks lie Potus call tomorrow, I spike directly to Zelensky and gave him a full briefing, He’s got it,

[7/19/19, 6:52:57 PM] Gordon Sondland: Sure!

[7/19/19: 7:01:22 PM] Kurt Volker: Good. Had breakfast with Rudy this morning - teeing up call w Yermak Monday, Must have helped, Most impt is for Zelensky to say that he will help investigation - and address any specific personnel issues - if there are any

[7/21/19, 1:45:54 AM] Bill Taylor: Gordon, one thing Kurt and I talked about yesterday was Sasha Danyliuk’s point that President Zelenskyy is sensitive about Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington domestic, reelection politics.

[7/21/19, 4:45:44 AM] Gordon Sondland: Absolutely, but we need to get the conversation started and the relationship built, irrespective of the pretext. I am worried about the alternative.

[7/22/19 4:27:55 PM] Kurt Volker: Orchestrated a great phone call w Rudy and Yermak. They are going to get together when Rudy goes to Madrid in a couple of weeks.

[7/22/19 4:28:08 PM] Kurt Volker: In the meantime, Rudy is now advocating for phone call

[7/22/19 4:28:26 PM] Kurt Volker: I have call into Fiona’s replacement and will call Bolton if needed.

[7/22/19, 4:28:48 PM] Kurt Volker: But I can tell Bolton and you can tell Mick that Rudy agrees on a call if that helps [7/22/19, 4:30:10 PM] Gordon Sondland: I talked to Tim Morrison. (Fiona’s replacement). He is pushing but feel free as well.

[7/25/19, 8:36:45 AM] Kurt Volker: Good Lunch – thanks. Heard from White House – assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate /”get to the bottom of what happened” in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington. Good luck! See you tomorrow - kurt

[7/25/19, 10:15:06 AM] Andrey Yermak: Phone call went well. President Trump Proposed to choose any convenient dates. President Zelenskiy chose 20.21,22 September for White House visit. Thank you again for your help! Please remind Mr. Mayor to share the Madrid’s dates

[7/25/19, 10:16:42 AM] Kurt Volker: Great - thanks and will do!

[8/9/19, 5:35:53 PM] Gordon Sondland: Morrison ready to get dates as soon as Yermak confirms.

[8/9/19, 5:46:21 PM] Kurt Volker: Excellent!! How did you sway him? :)

[8/9/19, 5:47:34 PM] Gordon Sondland: Not sure i did. I think potus really wants the deliverable [8/9/19, 5:48:00 PM] Kurt Volker: But does he know that?

[8/9/19, 5:48:09 PM] Gordon Sondland: Yep

[8/9/19, 5:48:37 PM] Gordon Sondland: Clearly lots of convos going on

[8/9/19, 5:48:38 PM] Kurt Volker: Ok - then that’s good it’s coming from two separate sources

[8/9/19, 5:51:18 PM] Gordon Sondland: To avoid misundestandings, might be helpful to ask Andrey fora draft statememt (embargoed) so that we can see exactly what they propose to cover Even though Ze does a live presser they can still summarize in a brief statement. Thoughts?

[8/9/19, 5:51:42 PM] Kurt Volker: Agree! 3/9/19, 1127 AM

Hi Mr Mayor! Had a good chat with Yermak last night. He was pleased with your phone call. Mentioned Z making a statement. Can we all get on the phone to make sure I advise Z correctly as to what he should be saying? Want to make sure we get this done right. Thanks!

Good idea Kurt. I am on Pacific time.

Yes can you call now going to Fundraiser at 12:30

[8/10/19, 4:56:15 PM] Andrey Yermak: Hi Kurt. Please let me know when you can talk. I think it’s possible to make this declaration and mention all these things. Which we discussed yesterday. But it will be logic to do after we receive a confirmation of date. We inform about date of visit and about our expectations and our guarantees for future visit. Let discuss it

[8/10/19, 5:01:32 PM] Kurt Volker: Ok! It’s late for you - why don’t we talk in my morning, your afternoon tomorrow? Say 10am/5pm?

[8/10/19, 5:02:18 PM] Kurt Volker: I agree with your approach. Let’s iron out statement and use that to get date and then PreZ can go forward with it?

[8/10/19, 5:26:17 PM] Andrey Yermak: Ok

[8/10/19, 5:38:43 PM] Kurt Volker: Great. Gordon is available to join as well

[8/10/19, 5:41:45 PH] Andrey Yermak: Excellent

[8/10/19, 5:42:10 PH] Andrey Yermak: Once we have a date, will call for a press briefing, announcing upcoming visit and outlining vision for the reboot of US-UKRAINE relationship, including among other things Burisma and election meddling in investigations

[8/10/19, 5:42:30 PM] Kurt Volker: Sounds great!

[8/13/19, 10:26:44 AM] Kurt Volker: Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States, especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians. I want to declare that this is unacceptable. We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, including those involving Burisma and the 2016 U.S, elections, which in turn will prevent the recurrence of this problem in the future.

[8/13/19, 10:27:20 AM] Gordon Sondland: Perfect Lets send to Andrey after our call

[8/17/19, 3:06:19 PM] Gordon Sondland: Do we still want Ze to give us an unequivocal draft with 2016 and Boresma?

[8/17/19, 4:34:21 PM] Kurt Volker: That’s the dear message so far ...

[8/17/19, 4:34:39 PM] Kurt Volker: I’m hoping we can put something out there that causes him to respond with that

[8/17/19, 4:41:09 PM] Gordon Sondland: Unless you think otherwise I will return Andreys call tomorrow and suggest they send us a clean draft.

Ukraine Clearinghouse 2019.11.05 Volker Additional Texts Excerpts

ATTACHMENT

Additional Text Messages Produced by Kurt Volker

In late April 2019, after Marie Yovanovitch was abruptly recalled from her post as the Ambassador to Ukraine, Ambassador Taylor relayed his conversation with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent about becoming Charge d’Affaires:

[4/29/19, 5:14:18 PM] Bill Taylor: George has asked me to go to Kyiv for a while.

[4/29/19, 5:16:52 PM] Kurt Volker: Ah.... good!!!

[4/29/19, 5:16:56 PM] Kurt Volker: You should!

[4/29/19, 5:17:39 PM] Bill Taylor: George described two snake pits, one in Kyiv and one in Washington.

[4/29/19, 5:19:15 PM] Kurt Volker: :) so what’s new?

[4/29/19, 5:23:05 PM] Bill Taylor: Yes, but he described much more than I knew. Very ugly

Nearly one month later, Ambassador Taylor continued to struggle with the decision to go to Ukraine and voiced concern about the “Guliani-Biden issue”:

[5/26/19, 2:14:39 PM] Bill Taylor: I am still struggling with the decision whether to go. Can anyone hope to succeed with the Guliani-Biden issue swirling for the next 18 months? Can S offer any reassurance on this issue?

[5/26/19, 6:25:42 PM] Bill Taylor: You mentioned that several people have asked you to go out as CDA. I think that is the answer. It wouldn’t be that long. No one knows the issues better. People will ask why isn’t Kurt going out—we already have a special envoy.

[5/26/19, 11:23:10 PM] Kurt Volker: Let’s see how it looks on Tuesday ... I don’t know if there is much to do about the Giuliani thing, but I do think the key thing is to do what we can right now since the future of the country is in play right now

On May 28, 2019, Ambassador Taylor expressed concern about a “non-normal world” in which White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney is involved with an invitation to the Ukrainian President for a White House visit, but not the National Security Council:

[5/28/19, 5:49:28 PM] Bill Taylor: Do we know for sure that there is a letter inviting Ze to visit? Fiona doesn’t think so

[5/28/19, 5:59:25 PM] Kurt Volker: I heard it from Mulvaney—so I think so

[5/28/19, 6:00:39 PM] Bill Taylor: Wouldn't it have to go through Fiona?

[5/28/19, 6:01:04 PM] Kurt Volker: I don’t know how things work over there. In a normal world, of course. But ...

[5/28/19, 6:03:31 PM] Bill Taylor: Do I want to enter this non-normal world?

[5/28/19, 6:09:01 PM] Kurt Volker: Despite everything, I feel like we have moved the ball substantially forward over the last 2 years. I think it is worth it to continue to keep pushing…

On July 7, 2019, three days before a meeting at the White House between a Ukrainian delegation and National Security Advisor John Bolton, Ambassadors Kurt Volker and Gordon Sondland discussed calling White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney:

[7/7/19, 2:34:01 PM] Kurt Volker: Gordon—maybe we can talk e Mulvaney on Monday by phone? Kurt

[7/7/19, 5:08:56 PM] Gordon Sondland: Yes, lets do that

On the morning of July 10, 2019, Ambassador Volker met with President Zelensky’s top advisor, Andrey Yermak, at the Trump Hotel before the White House meeting:

[7/8/19, 10:03:42 AM] Andrey Yermak: I will stay in Trump International Hotel

[7/8/19, 1:05:49 PM] Kurt Volker: Are you coming straight from Kyiv? That will be 10pm before you are downtown. I could do coffee Wednesday morning around 9:00am / 9:15am at trump hotel..

[7/8/19, 2:05:11 PM] Andrey Yermak: Yes. Perfect, Wednesday, 9.15 am at Trump hotel

[7/8/19, 5:14:05 PM] Kurt Volker: Great—see you there

[7/10/19, 9:08:20 AM] Kurt Volker: Hi Andrey—got here early and ordered a coffee. No rush—see you in a bit. Kurt

[7/10/19, 9:10:19 AM] Andrey Yermak: Hi Kurt. I’m 5 min

Just before he met Mr. Yermak for breakfast on July 10, 2019, Ambassador Volker highlighted an “opportunity” for Mr. Giuliani “to get you what you need,” and Mr. Giuliani responded that he had “some suggestions”:

[7/10/19, 8:01 AM]

Kurt Volker: Mr Mayor—could we meet for coffee or lunch in the next week or so? I’d like to update you on my conversations about Ukraine. I think we have an opportunity to get you what you need. Best—Kurt V

Rudy Giuliani: Yes I am so n way to Albania. I’ll text some suggestions a little later

Kurt Volker: Great—thank you!

On the same afternoon as the meeting between John Bolton and the Ukrainian delegation, on July 10, 2019, Mr. Yermak sent a text message to Ambassador Volker noting that Mr. Giuliani was “the key for many things”:

[7/10/19, 4:06:30 PM] Andrey Yermak: Thank you for meeting and your clear and very logical position. Will be great meet with you before my departure and discuss. I feel that the key for many things is Rudi and I ready to talk with him at any time. Please, let me know when you can meet. Andrey

On the evening of July 10, 2019, Ambassador Volker provided an update on meetings at the White House with the Ukrainian delegation, saying it was “not good”:

[7/10/19, 2:26:06 PM] Bill Taylor: Eager to hear if your meeting with Danyliuk and Bolton resulted in a decision on a call.

[7/10/19, 10:26:13 PM] Bill Taylor: How did the meeting go?

[7/10/19, 10:29:44 PM] Kurt Volker: Not good—lets talk—kv

On July 22, 2019, Ambassador Volker and Mr. Yermak discussed a potential call between President Trump and President Zelensky and the importance of speaking with Mr. Giuliani first:

[7/22/19, 8:35:35 AM] Andrey Yermak: One question. I have information about phone call from President Trump to President Zelenskiy at 6 pm Kyiv time today. Can you confirm it?

[7/22/19, 8:36:07 AM] Kurt Volker: I will check—maybe yes [7/22/19, 8:38:07 AM] Andrey Yermak: Its very good that our conversation with Mr. Mayor will be before it

[7/22/19, 8:47:51 AM] Kurt Volker: Yes—and I checked—call will not be today but White House will call Danylyuk to re-schedule it

[7/22/19, 10:44:16 AM] Kurt Volker: I think that was very useful—hope it all keeps moving. Suggest you send a text to follow up and get Madrid dates—best - Kurt

[7/22/19 11:24:54 AM] Andrey Yermak: Missed voice call

[7/22/19 11:25:25 AM] Andrey Yermak: When you will be in Kiev?

[7/22/19 11:26:23 AM] Andrey Yermak: And thank you for conversation and your help!

On August 7, 2019, Ambassador Volker exchanged the following text with Mr. Giuliani after he met with Mr. Yermak in Spain on August 2, 2019:

[8/7/19, 12:52 PM] Kurt Volker: Hi Rudy—hope you made it back safely. Let’s meet if you are coming to DC. And would be good if you convey results of your meeting in Madrid to the boss so we can get a firm date for a visit. Best—Kurt

On August 11, 2019, Ambassador Volker contacted Mr. Giuliani about a “statement” from President Zelensky:

[8/11/19, 10:28 AM] Kurt Volker: Hi Rudy—we have heard bCk from Andrey again— they are writing the statement now and will send to us. Can you talk for 5 min before noon today?

Rudy Giuliani: Yes just call

On August 12, 2019, Mr. Yermak sent a draft statement to Ambassador Volker announcing an “investigation,” without mentioning Burisma or the 2016 elections:

[8/12/19 8:31:25 PM] Andrey Yermak: Отдельного внимания заслуживает проблема вмешательства в политические процессы Соединенных Штатов, в том числе при возможном участии некоторых украинских политиков. Хочу заявить о недопустимости подобной практики/ Мынамерены обеспечить и довести до конца прозрачное и непредвзятое расследование всех имеющихсяфактов и эпизодов, что в свою очередь предотвратит повторение данной проблемы в будущем.

Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States, especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians. I want to declare that this is unacceptable. We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, which in turn will prevent the recurrence of this problem in the future.

On August 13, 2019, Ambassadors Volker and Sondland proposed to Mr. Yermak that the statement also include “2 key items”—“Burisma and the 2016 U.S. elections”:

[8/13/19, 10:19:20 AM] Andrey Yermak: Hi Kurt

[8/13/19, 10:19:50 AM] Gordon Sondland: I can talk now

[8/13/19, 10:20:54 AM] Andrey Yermak: I’m in Israel

[8/13/19, 10:21:20 AM] Gordon Sondland: Important. Do you have 5 mins

[8/13/19, 10:21:21 AM] Andrey Yermak: I can speak in 10-15 min

[8/13/19, 10:22:55 AM] Gordon Sondland: Ok I will have our operator dial us in at 4:35 Brussels time

[8/13/19, 10:23:14 AM] Kurt Volker: Can we do this one on what’s App?

[8/13/19, 10:23:31 AM] Gordon Sondland: Ok, fine. Can you initiate?

[8/13/19, 10:23:41 AM] Kurt Volker: Yes—will do

[8/13/19, 10:24:17 AM] Andrey Yermak: Ok

[8/13/19, 12:11:15 PM] Kurt Volker: Hi Andrey—good talking—following is text with insert at the end for the 2 key items. We will work on official request

[8/13/19, 12:11:19 PM] Kurt Volker: Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States, especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians. I want to declare that this is unacceptable. We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, including those involving Burisma and the 2016 U.S. elections, which in turn will prevent the recurrence of this problem in the future.

Ukraine Clearinghouse Whistleblower Memo 07.26.19

26 July 2019

The following is a record of a conversation I had this afternoon with a White House official about the telephone call yesterday morning between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The official who listened to the entirety of the phone call was visibly shaken by what had transpired and seemed keen to inform a trusted colleague within the U.S. national security apparatus about the call. After my call with this official I [redacted] returned to my office, and wrote up my best recollection of what I had heard.

The official described the call as "crazy," "frightening" and "completely lacking in substance related to national security." The official asserted that the President used the call to persuade Ukrainian authorities to investigate his political rivals, chiefly former Vice President Biden and his son, Hunter. The official stated that there was already a conversation underway with White House lawyers about how to handle the discussion because, in the official's view, the President had clearly committed a criminal act by urging a foreign power to investigate a U.S. person for the purposes of advancing his own reelection bid in 2020.

The phone call lasted approximately half an hour. The two leaders spoke through interpreters. My conversation with the official only lasted a few minutes, and as a result, I only received highlights:

- The President asserted that "it all started in Ukraine," referring to the allegations of foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the subsequent investigation into the Trump campaign's contact with Russian individuals

- The President asked Zelenskyy to locate the "Crowdstrike server" and turn it over to the United States, claiming that Crowdstrike is "a Ukrainian company," (Note: This appears to be a reference to the DNC server from which Russian hackers stole data and emails that were subsequently leaked in mid-2016; the DNC hired cyber security firm Crowdstrike to do the forensic analysis, which informed the FBI's investigation. It is not clear what the president was referring to when he claimed Crowdstrike is a Ukrainian company; one of its cofounders was born in Moscow.)

- The President told Zelenskyy that he would be sending his personal lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to Ukraine soon and requested that Zelenskyy meet with him. Zelenskyy reluctantly agreed that, if Giuliani traveled to Ukraine, he would see him.

- The President raised the case of Burisma Holdings, Hunter Biden's role in the company, and former Vice President Biden's role in setting Ukraine policy. The President urged Zelenskyy to [end page 1] investigate the Bidens and stated that Giuliani would discuss this topic further with Zelenskyy during his trip to Kyiv.

- The President urged Zelenskyy not to fire Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, who the President claimed was doing a good job. (Note: Lutsenko has spearheaded various politicized investigations, including on Burisma Holdings and alleged "Ukrainian interference" in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Lutsenko is widely reviled in Ukraine, and Zelenskyy has pledged to fire him but has been unable to secure approval from the legislature.)

- The President stated that he wanted Attorney General William Barr to speak with Zelenskyy as soon as possible. (Note: It was not clear whether this conversation was to be in reference to Crowdstrike or the investigations of the Bidens.)

- The President reiterated his concern that Zelenskyy was surrounded by people who were enemies of the President, including "bad oligarchs."

The President did not raise security assistance. According to the official, Zelenskyy demurred in response to most of the President's requests.

I did not review a transcript or written notes, but the official informed me that they exist.

- The standard White House practice for Presidential-level phone calls with world leaders is for the White House Situation Room to produce a word-for-word electronic transcript that memorializes the call. The transcript is typically then circulated to key White House officials to be transformed into a formal memorandum that is distributed as an eyes-only document, to the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and Director of the CIA.

- In this case, the official told me that such a transcript had indeed been produced and was being treated very sensitively, in hard copy only. Moreover, several additional senior White House officials listened to the entire phone call in an adjacent room in the Situation Room suite and they presumably took written notes on the call.

- The official did not know whether the President was aware that other people were listening and that the call was being transcribed. The official also was not certain whether anyone else was in the Oval Office with the President during the call.

- On the Ukrainian side, it is unclear who listened to the call or whether a record was produced.

Ukraine Clearinghouse ICIG Statement on Processing of Whistleblower Complaints

A seal: Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community

Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence
Community’s Statement on Processing of Whistleblower
Complaints

(September 30, 2019) The Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG) processes complaints or information with respect to alleged urgent concerns in accordance with the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA) and the ICIG’s authorizing statute. With respect to the whistleblower complaint received by the ICIG on August 12, 2019, the ICIG processed and reviewed the complaint in accordance with the law.

The law required that the Complainant be “[a]n employee of an element of the intelligence community, an employee assigned or detailed to an element of the intelligence community, or an employee of a contractor to the intelligence community.” 50 U.S.C. § 3033(k)(5)(A). The ICIG confirmed the Complainant was such an employee, detailee, or contractor.

The law also required that the Complainant provide a complaint or information with respect to an “urgent concern,” which is defined, in relevant part, as: “A serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of the law or Executive order, or deficiency relating to the funding, administration, or operation of an intelligence activity within the responsibility and authority of the Director of National Intelligence involving classified information, but does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters.” Id. § 3033(k)(5)(G)(i). The Inspector General of the Intelligence Community determined that the Complainant alleged information with respect to such an alleged urgent concern.

In addition, the law required the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community within 14 calendar days to determine whether information with respect to the urgent concern “appeared credible.” Id. § 3033(k)(5)(B). The Inspector General of the Intelligence Community determined, after conducting a preliminary review, that there were reasonable grounds to believe the urgent concern appeared credible.

At the time the Complainant filed the Disclosure of Urgent Concern form with the ICIG on August 12, 2019, the ICIG followed its routine practice and provided the Complainant information, including “Background Information on ICWPA Process,” which included the following language:

In order to find an urgent concern “credible,” the IC IG must be in possession of reliable, first-hand information. The IC IG cannot transmit information via the ICWPA based on an employee’s second-hand knowledge of wrongdoing. This includes information received from another person, such as when a fellow employee informs you that he/she witnessed some type of wrongdoing. (Anyone with first-hand knowledge

A seal: Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community

of the allegations may file a disclosure in writing directly with the IC IG.) Similarly, speculation about the existence of wrongdoing does not provide sufficient basis to meet the statutory requirements of the ICWPA. If you think wrongdoing took place, but can provide nothing more than secondhand or unsubstantiated assertions, IC IG will not be able to process the complaint or information for submission as an ICWPA.

The Disclosure of Urgent Concern form the Complainant submitted on August 12, 2019 is the same form the ICIG has had in place since May 24, 2018, which went into effect before Inspector General Atkinson entered on duty as the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community on May 29, 2018, following his swearing in as the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community on May 17, 2018. Although the form requests information about whether the Complainant possesses first-hand knowledge about the matter about which he or she is lodging the complaint, there is no such requirement set forth in the statute. In fact, by law the Complainant - or any individual in the Intelligence Community who wants to report information with respect to an urgent concern to the congressional intelligence committees - need not possess first-hand information in order to file a complaint or information with respect to an urgent concern. The ICIG cannot add conditions to the filing of an urgent concern that do not exist in law. Since Inspector General Atkinson entered on duty as the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, the ICIG has not rejected the filing of an alleged urgent concern due to a whistleblower’s lack of first-hand knowledge of the allegations.

The Complainant on the form he or she submitted on August 12, 2019 in fact checked two relevant boxes: The first box stated that, “I have personal and/or direct knowledge of events or records involved”; and the second box stated that, “Other employees have told me about events or records involved.”

As part of his determination that the urgent concern appeared credible, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community determined that the Complainant had official and authorized access to the information and sources referenced in the Complainant’s Letter and Classified Appendix, including direct knowledge of certain alleged conduct, and that the Complainant has subject matter expertise related to much of the material information provided in the Complainant’s Letter and Classified Appendix. In short, the ICIG did not find that the Complainant could “provide nothing more than second-hand or unsubstantiated assertions,” which would have made it much harder, and significantly less likely, for the Inspector General to determine in a 14-calendar day review period that the complaint “appeared credible,” as required by statute. Therefore, although the Complainant’s Letter acknowledged that the Complainant was not a direct witness to the President’s July 25, 2019, telephone call with the Ukrainian President, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community determined that other information obtained during the ICIG’s preliminary review supported the Complainant’s allegations. The Complainant

A seal: Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community

followed the law in filing the urgent concern complaint, and the ICIG followed the law in transmitting the information to the Acting Director of National Intelligence on August 26, 2019.

In 2018, the ICIG formed a new Center for Protected Disclosures, which has as one of its primary functions to process complaints from whistleblowers under the ICWPA. In early 2019, the ICIG hired a new Hotline Program Manager as part of the Center for Protected Disclosures to oversee the ICIG’s Hotline. In June 2019, the newly hired Director for the Center for Protected Disclosures entered on duty. Thus, the Center for Protected Disclosures has been reviewing the forms provided to whistleblowers who wish to report information with respect to an urgent concern to the congressional intelligence committees. In the process of reviewing and clarifying those forms, and in response to recent press inquiries regarding the instant whistleblower complaint, the ICIG understood that certain language in those forms and, more specifically, the informational materials accompanying the forms, could be read - incorrectly - as suggesting that whistleblowers must possess first-hand information in order to file an urgent concern complaint with the congressional intelligence committees.

The ICIG’s Center for Protected Disclosures has developed three new forms entitled, “Report of Fraud, Waste, and Abuse UNCLASSIFIED Intake Form”; “Disclosure of Urgent Concern Form-UNCLASSIFIED”; and “External Review Panel (ERP) Request Form - UNCLASSIFIED.” These three new forms are now available on the ICIG’s open website and are in the process of being added to the ICIG’s classified system. The ICIG will continue to update and clarify its forms and its websites to ensure its guidance to whistleblowers is clear and strictly complies with statutory requirements. Consistent with the law, the new forms do not require whistleblowers to possess first-hand information in order to file a complaint or information with respect to an urgent concern

In summary, regarding the instant matter, the whistleblower submitted the appropriate Disclosure of Urgent Concern form that was in effect as of August 12, 2019, and had been used by the ICIG since May 24, 2018. The whistleblower stated on the form that he or she possessed both first-hand and other information. The ICIG reviewed the information provided as well as other information gathered and determined that the complaint was both urgent and that it appeared credible. From the moment the ICIG received the whistleblower’s filing, the ICIG has worked to effectuate Congress’s intent, and the whistleblower’s intent, within the rule of law. The ICIG will continue in those efforts on behalf of all whistleblowers in the Intelligence Community.

The Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 established the Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The ICIG’s mission is to provide independent and objective oversight of the programs and activities within the responsibility and authority of the Director of National Intelligence, to initiate and conduct independent audits, inspections, investigations, and reviews, and to lead and coordinate the efforts of the Intelligence Community Inspectors General Forum. The ICIG’s goal is to have a positive and enduring impact throughout the Intelligence

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Community, to lead and coordinate the efforts of an integrated Intelligence Community Inspectors General Forum, and to enhance the ability of the United States Intelligence Community to meet national security needs while respecting our nation’s laws and reflecting its values. The Forum consists of the twelve statutory and administrative Inspectors General having oversight responsibility for an element of the Intelligence Community. The Chair of the Forum is the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.

For more information about the ICIG, please contact IC IG PAO@dni.gov or visit the ICIG’s websites:

Secure: https://go.ic.gov/ICIG | Unclassified: https://www.dni.gov/icig

For career opportunities with the ICIG, please visit:

Secure: https://go.ic.gov/ICIGiob | Unclassified: https://www.dni.gov/careers

To report allegations of waste, fraud, or abuse, please contact the ICIG:

Secure: ICIG Hotline 933-2800 | Unclassified: ICIG Hotline 855-731-3260

Secure Email: ICIGHOTLINE@dni.ic.gov | Unclassified Email: ICIGHOTLINE@dni.gov

Letter From President Trump Final

A seal:
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON

December 17, 2019

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Madam Speaker:

I write to express my strongest and most powerful protest against the partisan impeachment crusade being pursued by the Democrats in the House of Representatives. This impeachment represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power by Democrat Lawmakers, unequaled in nearly two and a half centuries of American legislative history.

The Articles of Impeachment introduced by the House Judiciary Committee are not recognizable under any standard of Constitutional theory, interpretation, or jurisprudence. They include no crimes, no misdemeanors, and no offenses whatsoever. You have cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!

By proceeding with your invalid impeachment, you are violating your oaths of office, you are breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and you are declaring open war on American Democracy. You dare to invoke the Founding Fathers in pursuit of this election-nullification scheme—yet your spiteful actions display unfettered contempt for America’s founding and your egregious conduct threatens to destroy that which our Founders pledged their very lives to build. Even worse than offending the Founding Fathers, you are offending Americans of faith by continually saying “I pray for the President,” when you know this statement is not true, unless it is meant in a negative sense. It is a terrible thing you are doing, but you will have to live with it, not I!

Your first claim, “Abuse of Power,” is a completely disingenuous, meritless, and baseless invention of your imagination. You know that I had a totally innocent conversation with the President of Ukraine. I then had a second conversation that has been misquoted, mischaracterized, and fraudulently misrepresented. Fortunately, there was a transcript of the conversation taken, and you know from the transcript (which was immediately made available) that the paragraph in question was perfect. I said to President Zelensky: “I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.” I said do us a favor, not me, and our country, not a campaign. I then mentioned the Attorney General of the United States. Every time I talk with a foreign leader, I put America’s interests first, just as I did with President Zelensky. You are turning a policy disagreement between two branches of government into an impeachable offense—it is no more legitimate than the Executive Branch charging members of Congress with crimes for the lawful exercise of legislative power.

You know full well that Vice President Biden used his office and $1 billion dollars of U.S. aid money to coerce Ukraine into firing the prosecutor who was digging into the company paying his son millions of dollars. You know this because Biden bragged about it on video. Biden openly stated: “I said, ‘I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars’... I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’

Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.” Even Joe Biden admitted just days ago in an interview with NPR that it “looked bad.” Now you are trying to impeach me by falsely accusing me of doing what Joe Biden has admitted he actually did.

President Zelensky has repeatedly declared that I did nothing wrong, and that there was No Pressure. He further emphasized that it was a “good phone call,” that “I don’t feel pressure,” and explicitly stressed that “nobody pushed me.” The Ukrainian Foreign Minister stated very clearly: “I have never seen a direct link between investigations and security assistance.” He also said there was “No Pressure.” Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a supporter of Ukraine who met privately with President Zelensky, has said: “At no time during this meeting...was there any mention by Zelensky or any Ukrainian that they were feeling pressure to do anything in return for the military aid.” Many meetings have been held between representatives of Ukraine and our country. Never once did Ukraine complain about pressure being applied—not once!

Ambassador Sondland testified that I told him: “No quid pro quo. I want nothing. I want nothing. I want President Zelensky to do the right thing, do what he ran on.”

The second claim, so-called “Obstruction of Congress,” is preposterous and dangerous. House Democrats are trying to impeach the duly elected President of the United States for asserting Constitutionally based privileges that have been asserted on a bipartisan basis by administrations of both political parties throughout our Nation’s history. Under that standard, every American president would have been impeached many times over. As liberal law professor Jonathan Turley warned when addressing Congressional Democrats: “I can’t emphasize this enough...if you impeach a president, if you make a high crime and misdemeanor out of going to the courts, it is an abuse of power. It’s your abuse of power. You’re doing precisely what you’re criticizing the President for doing.”

Everyone, you included, knows what is really happening. Your chosen candidate lost the election in 2016, in an Electoral College landslide (306-227), and you and your party have never recovered from this defeat. You have developed a full-fledged case of what many in the media call Trump Derangement Syndrome and sadly, you will never get over it! You are unwilling and unable to accept the verdict issued at the ballot box during the great Election of 2016. So you have spent three straight years attempting to overturn the will of the American people and nullify their votes. You view democracy as your enemy!

Speaker Pelosi, you admitted just last week at a public forum that your party’s impeachment effort has been going on for “two and a half years,” long before you ever heard about a phone call with Ukraine. Nineteen minutes after I took the oath of office, the Washington Post published a story headlined, “The Campaign to Impeach President Trump Has Begun.” Less than three months after my inauguration, Representative Maxine Waters stated, “I’m going to fight every day until he’s impeached.” House Democrats introduced the first impeachment resolution against me within months of my inauguration, for what will be regarded as one of our country’s best decisions, the firing of James Comey (see Inspector General Reports)—who the world now knows is one of the dirtiest cops our Nation has ever seen. A ranting and raving Congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib, declared just hours after she was sworn into office, “We’re gonna go in there and we’re gonna impeach the motherf****r.” Representative Al Green said in May, “I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach this president, he will get re-elected.” Again, you and your allies said, and did, all of these things long before you ever heard of President Zelensky or anything related to Ukraine. As you know very well, this impeachment drive has nothing to do with Ukraine, or the totally appropriate conversation I had with its new president. It only has to do with your attempt to undo the election of 2016 and steal the election of 2020!

Congressman Adam Schiff cheated and lied all the way up to the present day, even going so far as to fraudulently make up, out of thin air, my conversation with President Zelensky of Ukraine and read this fantasy language to Congress as though it were said by me. His shameless lies and deceptions, dating all the way back to the Russia Hoax, is one of the main reasons we are here today.

You and your party are desperate to distract from America’s extraordinary economy, incredible jobs boom, record stock market, soaring confidence, and flourishing citizens. Your party simply cannot compete with our record: 7 million new jobs; the lowest-ever unemployment for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans; a rebuilt military; a completely reformed VA with Choice and Accountability for our great veterans; more than 170 new federal judges and two Supreme Court Justices; historic tax and regulation cuts; the elimination of the individual mandate; the first decline in prescription drug prices in half a century; the first new branch of the United States Military since 1947, the Space Force; strong protection of the Second Amendment; criminal justice reform; a defeated ISIS caliphate and the killing of the world’s number one terrorist leader, al-Baghdadi; the replacement of the disastrous NAFTA trade deal with the wonderful USMCA (Mexico and Canada); a breakthrough Phase One trade deal with China; massive new trade deals with Japan and South Korea; withdrawal from the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal; cancellation of the unfair and costly Paris Climate Accord; becoming the world’s top energy producer; recognition of Israel’s capital, opening the American Embassy in Jerusalem, and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; a colossal reduction in illegal border crossings, the ending of Catch-and-Release, and the building of the Southern Border Wall—and that is just the beginning, there is so much more. You cannot defend your extreme policies—open borders, mass migration, high crime, crippling taxes, socialized healthcare, destruction of American energy, late-term taxpayer-funded abortion, elimination of the Second Amendment, radical far-left theories of law and justice, and constant partisan obstruction of both common sense and common good.

There is nothing I would rather do than stop referring to your party as the Do-Nothing Democrats. Unfortunately, I don’t know that you will ever give me a chance to do so.

After three years of unfair and unwarranted investigations, 45 million dollars spent, 18 angry Democrat prosecutors, the entire force of the FBI, headed by leadership now proven to be totally incompetent and corrupt, you have found NOTHING! Few people in high position could have endured or passed this test. You do not know, nor do you care, the great damage and hurt you have inflicted upon wonderful and loving members of my family. You conducted a fake investigation upon the democratically elected President of the United States, and you are doing it yet again.

There are not many people who could have taken the punishment inflicted during this period of time, and yet done so much for the success of America and its citizens. But instead of putting our country first, you have decided to disgrace our country still further. You completely failed with the Mueller report because there was nothing to find, so you decided to take the next hoax that came along, the phone call with Ukraine—even though it was a perfect call. And by the way, when I speak to foreign countries, there are many people, with permission, listening to the call on both sides of the conversation.

You are the ones interfering in America’s elections. You are the ones subverting America’s Democracy. You are the ones Obstructing Justice. You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our Republic for your own selfish personal, political, and partisan gain.

Before the Impeachment Hoax, it was the Russian Witch Hunt. Against all evidence, and regardless of the truth, you and your deputies claimed that my campaign colluded with the Russians—a grave, malicious, and slanderous lie, a falsehood like no other. You forced our Nation through turmoil and torment over a wholly fabricated story, illegally purchased from a foreign spy by Hillary Clinton and the DNC in order to assault our democracy. Yet, when the monstrous lie was debunked and this Democrat conspiracy dissolved into dust, you did not apologize. You did not recant. You did not ask to be forgiven. You showed no remorse, no capacity for self-reflection. Instead, you pursued your next libelous and vicious crusade—you engineered an attempt to frame and defame an innocent person. All of this was motivated by personal political calculation. Your Speakership and your party are held hostage by your most deranged and radical representatives of the far left. Each one of your members lives in fear of a socialist primary challenger—this is what is driving impeachment. Look at Congressman Nadler’s challenger. Look at yourself and others. Do not take our country down with your party.

If you truly cared about freedom and liberty for our Nation, then you would be devoting your vast investigative resources to exposing the full truth concerning the FBI’s horrifying abuses of power before, during, and after the 2016 election—including the use of spies against my campaign, the submission of false evidence to a FISA court, and the concealment of exculpatory evidence in order to frame the innocent. The FBI has great and honorable people, but the leadership was inept and corrupt. I would think that you would personally be appalled by these revelations, because in your press conference the day you announced impeachment, you tied the impeachment effort directly to the completely discredited Russia Hoax, declaring twice that “all roads lead to Putin,” when you know that is an abject lie. I have been far tougher on Russia than President Obama ever even thought to be.

Any member of Congress who votes in support of impeachment—against every shred of truth, fact, evidence, and legal principle—is showing how deeply they revile the voters and how truly they detest America’s Constitutional order. Our Founders feared the tribalization of partisan politics, and you are bringing their worst fears to life.

Worse still, I have been deprived of basic Constitutional Due Process from the beginning of this impeachment scam right up until the present. I have been denied the most fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution, including the right to present evidence, to have my own counsel present, to confront accusers, and to call and cross-examine witnesses, like the so-called whistleblower who started this entire hoax with a false report of the phone call that bears no relationship to the actual phone call that was made. Once I presented the transcribed call, which surprised and shocked the fraudsters (they never thought that such evidence would be presented), the so-called whistleblower, and the second whistleblower, disappeared because they got caught, their report was a fraud, and they were no longer going to be made available to us. In other words, once the phone call was made public, your whole plot blew up, but that didn’t stop you from continuing.

More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials.

You and others on your committees have long said impeachment must be bipartisan—it is not. You said it was very divisive—it certainly is, even far more than you ever thought possible—and it will only get worse!

This is nothing more than an illegal, partisan attempted coup that will, based on recent sentiment, badly fail at the voting booth. You are not just after me, as President, you are after the entire Republican Party. But because of this colossal injustice, our party is more united than it has ever been before. History will judge you harshly as you proceed with this impeachment charade.

Your legacy will be that of turning the House of Representatives from a revered legislative body into a Star Chamber of partisan persecution.

Perhaps most insulting of all is your false display of solemnity. You apparently have so little respect for the American People that you expect them to believe that you are approaching this impeachment somberly, reservedly, and reluctantly. No intelligent person believes what you are saying. Since the moment I won the election, the Democrat Party has been possessed by Impeachment Fever. There is no reticence. This is not a somber affair. You are making a mockery of impeachment and you are scarcely concealing your hatred of me, of the Republican Party, and tens of millions of patriotic Americans. The voters are wise, and they are seeing straight through this empty, hollow, and dangerous game you are playing.

I have no doubt the American people will hold you and the Democrats fully responsible in the upcoming 2020 election. They will not soon forgive your perversion of justice and abuse of power.

There is far too much that needs to be done to improve the lives of our citizens. It is time for you and the highly partisan Democrats in Congress to immediately cease this impeachment fantasy and get back to work for the American People. While I have no expectation that you will do so, I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.

One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it, and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another President again.

Sincerely yours,

A signature: Donald J. Trump.

Donald J. Trump
President of the United States of America

cc:

United States Senate
United States House of Representatives

Articles of Impeachment

A signature:
(Original Signature of Member)

116TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION

H. RES.

____________

Impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

______________________________________

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Mr. NADLER submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on ______________________________________

______________________________________

RESOLUTION

Impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors

Resolved, That Donald J. Trump, President of the United State, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate:

Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and of the people of the United States of America, against Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against him for high crimes and misdemeanors.

ARTICLE I ABUSE OF POWER

The Constitution provides that the House of Representative â€œshall have the sole Power of Impeachmentâ€ and that the President â€œshall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanorsâ€. In his conduct of the office of President of the United Statesâ€”and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executedâ€”Donald J. Trump has abused the powers of the Presidency, in that:

Using the powers of his high office, President Trump solicited the interference of a foreign government Ukraine, in the 2020 United States Presidential election. He did so through a scheme or course of conduction that included soliciting the Government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations that would benefit his reelection, harm the election prospects of a political opponent, and influence the 2020 United States Presidential election to his advantage. President Trump also sought to pressure the Government of Ukraine to take these steps by conditioning official United States Government acts of significant value to Ukraine on tis public announcement of the investigation. President Trump engaged in this scheme or course of conduct for corrupt purposes in pursuit of personal political benefit. In so doing, President Trump used the powers of the Presidency in a manner that compromised the national security of the United States and undermined the integrity of the United States democratic process. He thus ignored and injured the interests of the Nation.

President Trump engaged in this scheme or course of conduct through the following means:

(1) President Trumpâ€”acting both directly and through his agents within and outside the United States Governmentâ€”corruptly solicited the Government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations intoâ€”

(A) a political opponent, former Vice President Joseph R .Biden , Jr.; and

(B ) a discredited theory promoted by Russia alleging that Ukraineâ€”rather than Russiaâ€”interfered in the United States Presidential election.

(2) With the same corrupt motives, President Trumpâ€”acting both directly and through his agents within and outside the United States Governmentâ€”conditioned two official acts on the public announcements that he had requestedâ€”

(A) the release of $ 391 million of United States taxpayer funds that Congress had appropriated on a bipartisan basis for the purpose of providing vital military and security assistance to Ukraine to oppose Russian aggression and which President Trump had ordered suspended; and

(B) a head of state meeting at the White House, which the President of Ukraine sought to demonstrate continued United States support for the Government of Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.

(3) Faced with the public revelation of his actions, President Trump ultimately released the military and security assistance to the Government of Ukraine, but has persisted in openly and corruptly urging and soliciting Ukraine to undertake investigations for his personal political benefit.

These actions were consistent with President Trump's previous invitations of foreign interference in United States elections.

In all of this President Trump abused the powers of the Presidency by ignoring and injuring national security and other vital national interests to obtain an improper personal political benefit. He has also betrayed the Nation by abusing his high office to enlist a foreign power in corrupting democratic elections.

Wherefore President Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. President Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United State.

ARTICLE II: OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS

The Constitution provides that the House of Representatives â€œshall have the sole Power of Impeachmentâ€ and that the President â€œshall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanorsâ€. In his conduct of the office of President of the United States and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executedâ€”Donald J. Trump has directed the unprecedented, categorical, and indiscriminate defiance of subpoenas issued by the House of Representatives pursuant to its â€œsole Power of Impeachmentâ€. President Trump has abused the powers of the Presidency in a manner offensive to, and subversive of, the Constitution, in that:

The House of Representatives has engaged in an impeachment inquiry focused on President Trump's corrupt solicitation of the Government of Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 United States Presidential election. As part of this impeachment inquiry, the Committees undertaking the investigation served subpoenas seeking documents and testimony deemed vital to the inquiry from various Executive Branch agencies and offices, and current and former officials.

In response, without lawful cause or excuse, President Trump directed Executive Branch agencies, offices, and officials not to comply with those subpoenas. President Trump thus interposed the powers of the Presidency against the lawful subpoenas of the House of Representatives, and assumed to himself functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of the â€œsole Power of Impeachmentâ€ vested by the Constitution in the House of Representatives.

President Trump abused the powers of his high office through the following means:

(1) Directing the White House to defy a lawful subpoena by withholding the production of documents sought therein by the Committees.

(2) Directing other Executive Branch agencies and offices to defy lawful subpoenas and withhold the production of documents and records from the Committees in response to which the Department of State, Office of Management and Budget, Department of Energy, and Department of Defense refused to produce a single document or record.

(3) Directing current and former Executive Branch officials not to cooperate with the Committees in response to which nine Administration officials defied subpoenas for testimony namely John Michael â€œMickâ€ Mulvaney, Robert B. Blair, John A. Eisenberg , Michael Ellis, Preston Wells Griffith, Russell T. Vought Michael Duffey, Brian McCormack, and T .Ulrich Brechbuhl.

These actions were consistent with President Trump s previous efforts to undermine United States Government investigations into foreign interference in United States elections.

Through these actions, President Trump sought to arrogate to himself the right to determine the propriety, scope, and nature of an impeachment inquiry into his own conduct, as well as the unilateral prerogative to deny any and all information to the House of Representatives in the exercise of its â€œsole Power of Impeachmentâ€. In the history of the Republic, no President has ever ordered the complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry or sought to obstruct and impede so comprehensively the ability of the House of Representatives to investigate â€œhigh Crimes and Misdemeanorsâ€. This abuse of office served to cover up the President's own repeated misconduct and to seize and control the power of impeachmentâ€”and thus to nullify a vital constitutional safeguard vested solely in the House of Representatives.

In all of this, President Trump has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore, President Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. President Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.