military hold at the time of the trump/zelensky call there can be no quid pro quo based on military aid and to your knowledge nobody in the ukrainian government was aware of the hold. your answer was, that is correct. is that still your testimony? mr. ratcliffe, at some point in september i m talking about on july 25th. ah. july 25th. sorry. yes, that s correct. that s correct. he did not know this. as it turns out president zelensky agreed with you. on october 10th, president zelensky held a press marathon with over 300 reporters where he said repeatedly and consistently over hours and hours that he was not aware of a military hold during the july 25th call. in fact, in his official press release from the ukrainian government available on his website that i ll be introducing into the record he said, our phone conversation bears no relations to arms. they blocked the provision of
july? exactly. i would not say so, no, sir. yeah, i don t think president trump was trying to end corruption in ukraine. i think he was trying to aim corruption in ukraine at vice president biden and at the 2020 election. i-year-old back the balance of my my time. i yield my time. gentlemen, thank you both for being here. it s obvious from your testimony today you both care a great deal about u.s./ukraine relations. it s also very clear you re optimistic about president zelensky. ambassador taylor, you related one of his first acts in office was remove immunity fri deputies long a source of corruption. you have a number of personal dealings. has he given any reason to question his honesty or integrity. no, sir nrchl. in your prior deposition i asked and i ll read it directly, if nobody in the ukrainian government is aware of a
military assistance prior to our telephone conversation, but the issue has not been discussed during our conversation, i mean i didn t even know. so now in addition to confirming because he had no knowledge of it, there was no quid pro quo involving military aid during that call, president zelensky went on to confirm a number of things. that there was no pressure, there were no conditions, no threats, on military aid, there were no conditions or pressure to investigate barisma or the 2016 election, there was no blackmail, no corruption of any kind during the july 25th call. again, from his official press release. therefore, there was no blackmail, because it was not the subject of our conversation with the president of the united states. there were no conditions on the investigation either because of arms or the situation around barisma company. he told reuters there was no
2010-201 2010-201 2010-2012. hunter pa eer biden joined buri 2014. you ve read the transcript of the call, haven t you? i have but i haven t read it for about a month. any discussion between president trump and president zelensky about this oligarch who had been self-dealing? to my knowledge, no. is there a discussion of awarding contracts to oneself in the time frame? to the best of my knowledge, no. the president brings up this crowd strike, the server and the bide bide bidens, am i right? i see this here, right. there was no mention of looking into oligarchs. the president s comments were
after the white house learns of the whistleblower complaint and the congressional investigation, the aid is released even after those events. you were still worried that zelensky was going to feel it necessary to go on cnn and announce these investigations, were you not? yes, i thought that would be a bad idea and so when there was some indication that there might still be a plan for the cnn interview in new york, which was upcoming at the united nations general assembly meeting, i was worried. i wanted to be sure that didn t happen so i addressed it with zelensky s staff. i think you said earlier that danyluk, the national security advisor for zelensky, was concerned that zelensky didn t want to be used as some tool in american politics, is that correct? that is correct. so zelensky didn t want to go on tv and announce political investigations that he thought would mire him in u.s. politics,