correct? i don t recall. it could have been. i have it here if you d like. yeah. it s on is from president zelensky. it s on page 3. president zelensky says i will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with mr. juligiuliani just recently and are hoping very much that giuliani will be able to travel to ukraine and we will meet once he comes to ukraine. did that surprise you? i didn t have the transcript at the time. all i heard is giuliani was mentioned. mr. morrison said giuliani was mentioned in the call. the way zelensky states it here, it sounds like he is very much looki ing forward to speakg with america s mayor. that s what i found out when i read the transcript on the 25th of september or so. okay. now, mr. kent, corruption in
involved in lots of criminal activity, correct? i do not know that. over the years it s been involved in a number of questionable dealings, correct? i would say that it s the largest private gas producer in the country and its business reputation is mixed. so to the extent a new regime is coming in under president zelensky, it certainly would be fair for the new prosecutor, a genuine prosecutor to reexamine old crimes that hadn t sufficiently been brought to justice, right? i believe that the new prosecutor general made a statement to that and that they would be reviewing past cases. keep in mind this is a country where those that commit crimes generally never get held to account. so there s a lot to review. the bribe was paid in what year? to the best of my knowledge, the case against the former minister was shut down december of 2014. okay. right around that time, burisma
a specialized anti-corruption agency in ukraine that was called the national anti-corruption bureau. there was a different body that reviewed asset declarations from unusual wealth called national anti-corruption prevention council. eventually we got to helping them establish a special anti-corruption prosecutor and eventually a high court on anti-corruption. that was to try to create vr investigators, prosecutors and courts that couldn t be bought. i m hearing a very kple he e comprehensive effort. let me read you president s obama word own words. whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution. if you can look into it, it sounds horrible to me.
sa same way i do. and it s real clear, right? it s clear to me. thank you for your testimony today. one of the things i find startling about these proceedings is that faced with very serious allegations of presidential misconduct, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don t engage or defend that conduct. rather, they spin theories about black ledgers and steel dossiers and the startlie ining revelati that ukrainians might have been upset when a presidential candidate suggested that perhaps he would let the russians keep crimea. or of course we get the attacks, so epitomized by mr. nuancenes opening statement when he attacksen and the fbi. when a defense does emerge, it looks a little like this. ukraine is a corrupt country and the president was just acting in
when you hear those words, do you hear the president participating in a thoughtful and well calibrated anti-corruption program? i do not. and mr. kent and mr. taylor, the defenders of the president s behavior have made a big deal out of the fact that vice president biden encouraged the ukrainians to remove a corrupt former ukrainian prosecutor, 2016, mr. showkun. rand paul said, they re impeaching president trump for exactly the same thing that joe biden did. is that correct? is what the president did in his phone call and what joe biden did in terms of mr. showkun, were those exactly the same things and how are they different? i do not think they are the same things. what former vice president bind requested of the former president of ukraine poroshenko was the removal of a corrupt