any ukrainians had act the inappropriately. at this time, i was focused on our goal of getting president zelensky and president trump to meet with each other. and i believed that their doing so would overcome the chronically negative view president trump had toward ukraine. i was seeking to solve the problem i saw when we met with president trump in the oval office on may 23rd. as a professional diplomat, ip was comfortable exploring whether there was a statement ukraine could make about its own intentions to investigate possible corruption that would be helpful and in convincing mr. giuliani to convey to president trump a new positive assessment of the leadership in ukraine. on august 16th mr. yermak shared a draft with me which i thought looked perfectly reasonable. it did not mention burisma or 2016 elections but was generic. ambassador sondland and i had a further conversation with mr. giuliani who said that in his view in order to be convincing that this government represented
ukraine chairman alex den illuck and the meeting was over when sondland made a comment about investigations. i think all of us thought it was inappropriate. the conversation did not continue and the meeting concluded. later on in the room i may have been engaged in a side conversation or already left the complex because i do not recall further discussion regarding investigations of burisma. third, i did not understand that others believed that any investigation of the ukrainian company burisma which had a history of accusations of corruption was tant amount to investigating biden. it has long been u.s. policy under multiple administrations to urge ukraine to fight internal corruption. i was quite comfortable with ukraine making its own statement about its own policy of investigating and fighting corruption at home. at the one in-person meeting i
would or should have raised these objections? yeah. that others did not see the distinction between these things as i saw it. as i said, there is a history of corruption in ukraine. there is a history with the company of burisma in a has been investigated. that is well-known. there is a separate allegation about the vice president acting inappropriately. his son was a board member of this company. but those things, i saw, as completely distinct. and what i was trying to do in working with the ukrainians was to thread a needle so see whether things they could do that are appropriate and reasonable as part of ukraine s own policy of fighting corruption that help clarify for our president that they are committed to that very that very effort. if there is a way to thread that needle, i thought it was worth the effort to try to solve that problem. as it turns out, i now
had with mayor giuliani on july 19th, mayor giuliani raised and i rejected the conspiracy theory that jd biden would have been influenced as vice president by money paid to his son. as i previously testified, i ve known vice president biden for 24 years and he is an honorable man and i hold him in the highest regard. at no time was i aware of or knowingly took part in an effort to urge ukraine to investigate former vice president biden and from the extensive documentation vice president biden was not a topic of discussion. i was not on july 25th phone call between president trump and president zelensky and not made aware of any arisen until the transcript was released on september 19th, 2019. i understood there was a distinction between burisma and biden and i didn t know that president trump or others had raised vice president biden with ukrainians or conflated the
involved in this parallel process? as i recall, it was definitely ambassador sondland and i believe mr. giuliani. and after she informed you of this company burisma, what, if anything, did you do to determine what that was? after that particular handoff meeting, i proceeded to look it up on the internet. i googled it. did you find it had some association with hunter biden? yes. now ambassador volker you did not listen to this call but you testified you were surprised and troubled when you read the call record after it was released on september 25th and also said that after reading the call record it was clear to you that the biden, burisma and 2016 election investigations that president trump discussed on the call were designed to serve the president s political interests, not the national interest. what did you mean when you said