concerning the allegations, i stressed that no one in the new team governing ukraine had anything to do with anything that may have happened in 2016. they were making television shows at the time. i also said that it is not credible to me that former vice president biden would have been influenced in any way by financial or personal motives in carrying out his duties as vice president. a different issue is whether some individual ukrainians may have attempted to influence the 2016 election or thought they would buy influence. that is at least plausible given ukraine s reputation for corruption. but the accusation that vice president biden acted inappropriately did not seem at all credible to me. after that meeting, i connected mayor giuliani and mr. yermak by text and later by phone. they met in person on august 2nd, 2019. in conversations with me following that meeting, which i
did not attend, mr. giuliani said that he had stressed the importance of ukraine conducting investigation
President s representative. i was accompanying ambassador bolton. understood. you were at the bilateral meeting with the vice president and president zelensky, correct? i was. and in that meeting sh were the ukrainians concerned about the hold on security clearance security clearance, military assistance rather? yes. what did they say? it was the first issue that president zelensky raised with vice president pence. they were very interested. they talked about it its importance to ukraine. it s importance to their relationship. and what was vice president pence s response? the vice president represented that it was a priority for him and that we were working to address that he characterized president trump s
Text. the other is identical to your previous one and then it just adds including these involving burisma and the 2016 elections, is that right. that is correct. and that is what mr. giuliani insisted on adding to the statement? that is what he said would be necessary for that to be credible. and the ukrainians ultimately did not issue this statement, is that right. that is correct. and president zelensky did not get the oval office meeting either, did he? not yet. now, i want to move forward to september. and early september when the security assistance begins to more overtly be used as leverage to pressure the ukrainians to conduct these investigations that president trump wanted. mr. morrison, you accompanied vice president pence to warsaw when he met with president zelensky, is that right? i was in warsaw when the vice president was designated as the
President zelensky had to make the statement and that he to want to do it. and by that point did you understand that the statement related to the biden and 2016 investigations? i think i did, yes. and that that was a essentially a condition for the security assistance to be released? i understood that is what ambassador sondland believed. after speaking with president trump? that is what he represented. now you testified that hearing this information gave you a sinking feeling. why was that? well, i believe if we re on september 7, the end of the fiscal year is september 30th and these are one-year dollars and the d.o.d. and department of state funds so we only had so much time and, in fact, because congress imposed a 15 day notification requirement on the state department funds, september 7th and september 30th that really means september 15th
Did not attend, mr. giuliani said that he had stressed the importance of ukraine conducting investigations into what happened in the past and mr. yermak stressed he told mr. giuliani it is the government s program to root out corruption and implement reforms and they would be conducting investigations as part of the process any way. mr. giuliani believes the ukrainian president needed to make a statement about fighting corruption and that he had discussed this with mr. yermak. i said i did not think this would be a problem since that is the government s position anyway. i followed up with mr. yermak and he said that they would indeed be prepared to make a statement. he said it would reference burisma and 2016 in a wider context of bilateral relations and rooting out corruption anyway. there was no mention of vice president biden. rather in referencing burisma in 2016 election interference it was clear to me that he, mr. yermak was talking about whether