President , correct . Its appropriate for the Justice Department and the Prosecutor General to cooperate and to exchange information, yes. But to the extent that the president has concerns and to the extent that the Attorney General is having u. S. Attorney durham look into it, isnt it entirely appropriate for the president to flag this for president zelensky and say that you should be in touch with our official channels . Mr. Castor, i dont know the precise appropriateness of these kind of relations. Now, were you involved, either of you involved with the preparation for the 7 25 call . I was not. I was not. And how do you account for that . I mean, you were the two of the key officials with responsibility for ukrainian policy. If the president of the United States is going to have a call with the leader of the ukraine, why wouldnt
you ordinarily be involved with preparation . Sir, we work for the Department Of State in an embassy overseas and in preparation for a president ial phone
or requesting a thoughtful and well-dal celebrated anticorruption program. i do not. and mr. kent and mr. taylor. the defenders made a big deal that the encouraged the u.k.ens to remove a corrupt prosecutor 2016 mr. shokin. in fact, senator rand paul on sunday said and i quote him they are impeaching the president, president trump for exactly the same thing that joe biden did. is that correct? is what the president what the president did in his phone call and what joe biden did in terms of mr. shokin, are those exactly the same things? and, if not, how are they different? i do not think they are the same things. what former vice president biden requested of former president of ukraine poroshenko was the removal of a corrupt prosecutor general viktor shokin who
trying to address corruption in ukraine. mr. kent, you ve worked on anticorruption and rule of law for much of your 27-year career; is that correct? i specialized in anticorruption and rule of law issues since 2012, correct. so like most of us up here, i don t have a good sense of what a real anticorruption effort that we must engage in all over the world all the time what that looks like. so let me ask you to just take a minute and just characterize for us what a real initiative, what a real program of anticorruption might look like. if we are doing a systemic holistic program, you need institutions with integrity. that starts with investigators. it goes to prosecutors. it goes to courts and eventually it goes to the corrections system. in countries like ukraine, we generally start with law enforcement and that s what we did in 2014-15 with the new patrol police. there also is oftentimes needed a specialized
anticorruption agency in ukraine that was called the national anticorruption bureau. there was a different body that reviewed asset declarations for unusual wealth called national anti corruption prevention council. and eventually we got to helping them establish a special anticorruption prosecutor and eventually a high court on anticorruption. and that was to try to create investigators, prosecutors and courts with integrity that couldn t be bought and would be focused on high level corruption. so what i m hearing there, mr. kent, is a very comprehensive effort. so, let me read to you president trump s own words to the ukrainian president in a july 25th phone call. and i quote: there is 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. mr. ken