efforts in the past at prosecuting the previous government. i think mr. lutsenko in my estimation and i said this to mayor giuliani when i met with him, was interested in preserving his own position. he wanted to avoid being fired by a new government in order to prevent prosecution of himself, possible prosecution of himself, possibly also this is something that president poroshenko would have welcomed because he probably would have avoided any efforts to prosecute president poroshenko as well so making allegations like this and making sureer that reaching u.s. media, think mr. lutsenko was trying to make himself be an important and influential player in the united states. ambassador, let me ask you about the allegations against joe biden because that has been a continuing refrain from some of my colleagues as well. why was it you found the allegations against joe biden related to his son or burisma not to be believed? simply because i ve known
investigation of possible ukrainian corruption with investigation of the former vice president. in retrospect, for the ukrainians, it would clearly have been confusing. in hindsight i now understand that others saw the idea of investigating possible corruption involving the ukrainian company burisma as equivalent to investigating former vice president biden, i saw them as very different. the former being appropriated unremarkable and the latter being unacceptable. in retrospect, i should have seen that connection differently and had i done so i would have raised my own objections. fourth, much has been made of the term three amigos in reference to secretary perry and ambassador sondland and myself. i have never used that term and cringe when i hear it because that will refer to senator mccain and lieberman and fluts wore the surge in iraq. i was never aware of any designation putting the three of
burisma but you were trying to separate the two of them in your mind, is that right? well i believe they were separate. that and this references the conversation i had with mr. giuliani as well where i think the allegations against vice president biden are self-serving and not credible. separate question is whether it is appropriate for ukraine to investigate possible corruption of ukrainians that may have tried to corrupt things or or buy influence and to me they are very different things and as i said i think the former is unacceptable and the latter is understood. but you understood the relationship between hunter biden and burisma. i knew he was a board member of the company. that is why it was so important to maintain a distinction. let s focus on the july 25th call for a moment. and mr. morrison, july 25th was day number what for you as the senior director overseeing
they met in person on august 2, 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 investigations into what happened in the past and mr. yermoc stressed, he said it is their position to conduct investigations as part of this process anyway. mr. giuliani said he believed ukrainian president needed to make a statement about fighting corruption and that he had discussed this with mr. yermoc, i said i didn t think this would abe problem since that is the government s position anyway. i followed up and he said they would be prepared to make a statement. there was no mention of vice president biden. rather, in referencing burisma in the 2016 election