Im not aware of the meetings. Did you know that lawyers pressured the state department that they invoked Hunter Bidens name as a reason to intervene . Im not aware of any of the facts. Did you no he that joe biden called ukrainian president at least three times in february 2016 after the president and owner of burismas home was raided by the state Prosecutors Office . Im aware of the fact that President Biden or vice President Biden was very engaged on ukraine and had numerous engagements. Thats what im aware of. Ms. Williams and Lieutenant Colonel vindman, as you may or may not know, this committee spent three years conducting many many investigations starting with the russia collusion hoax, democratic hysteria over the lack of collusion and the Mueller Report and now this impeachment charade. One of most concerning things regarding all of these investigations is the amount of classified or otherwise Sensitive Information i read in the press that derive either from this committee or sources in the administration. To be clear, im not accusing either one of you of leaking information or given that you are the first witnesses who actually have some firsthand knowledge of the president s call by listening in on july 25th, its imperative to the american publics understanding of the events that we get a quick matters few matters out of the way first. Miss williams, let many he go you to first. For the purposes of the following questions, im only asking about the time period between july 25th through september 25th. Okay. Did you discuss the july 25th phone call between President Trump and president zelenskyy or any matters associated with the phone call with any members of the press . No. To be clear, you never discussed these matters with the new york times, washington post, owe littlic yoe, cnn or any other media outlet . No, i did not. Did you ask or encourage any individual to share the substance of the july 25th phone call or any Matter Associated with the call with any member of the press . I did not. Do you know of any individual who discussed the substance of the july 25th phone call or matters associated with the qual any member of the press . No, i do not. Colonel vindman, same questions for you. Did you discuss the july 25th phone call between President Trump and president zelenskyy or any Matter Associated with the phone call with any member of the press . I did not. To be clear, you did not discuss this with the new york times, washington post, poe litke yoe, cnn, or any other media outlet . I did not. Did you ask for or encourage any individual to share the substance of the july 25th phone call or any Matter Associated with the call of any member of the press . I did not. Do you know of any individual who discussed the substance of the july 25th phone call or any Matter Associated with the call with any member of the press . We have an nsc press shop and they field any of these types of questions. I do not engage with the press at all. Let me ask the question again. Do you know of any individual who discussed the substance of the july 25th phone call or any Matter Associated with the call with any member of the press . We have an nsc press shop whose job is to engage on these types of questions. Im not aware. It is possible and likely that press shop would have had would field these types of questions. The question im sorry. The question is, do you know any individual . Do you personally know any individual who discussed the substance of the july 25th phone call or any matter of associated with the call with any member of the press . Thank you, Ranking Member for clarifying. I do not. Miss williams, did you discuss july 25th phone call with anyone outside the white house on july 25th or july 26th and if so, with whom . No, i did not discuss the call with anyone outside or inside the white house. Miss williams, during your time on the nsc, have you ever accessed a colleagues work computer without their prior authorization or approval . I have not. And just to clarify, im in the office of the Vice President , no the nsc. I have not. Thank you. Lieutenant colonel vindman, did you discuss the july 25th phone call with anyone outside the white house on july 25th or the 26th and if so with whom . Yes. I did. My core function is to coordinate u. S. Government policy and i spoke to two individual with regards to providing a some sort of readout of the call. Two individual that were not in the white house . Not in the white house. Cleared u. S. Government officials with the appropriate need to know. And what agencies were these officials with . Department of state, department of state Deputy Assistant secretary george kent who is responsible for the portfolio, Eastern Europe including ukraine and the individual in the Intelligence Community. What, as you know, the Intelligence Community has 17 different agencies. What agency was this individual from . If i could interject here. We dont want to use the proceedings its our time. But we need to protect the whistleblower. Please stop. I want to make sure that there is no effort to out the whistleblower through these proceedings. If the witness has a good faith belief that this may reveal the identity of the whistleblower, that is not the purpose that were here for. I want to advise the witness accordingly. Mr. Vindman, you testified in your deposition that you did not know the whistleblower. Ranking member, Lieutenant Colonel vindman please. Lieutenant colonel vindman, you testified did you not know who the whistleblower is. I do not know who the whistleblower is. How it is possible for you to name the people and then out the whistleblower . Per the advice of my counsel, i have been adviced no the to answer specific questions about members of the Intelligence Community. This is are awe ware this is the Intelligence Committee that is conducting the impeachment hearing . Of course i am. Wouldnt it be appropriate for you to come to to testify to the Intelligence Community about somebody about the Intelligence Community . From the instructions from the chairman and my counsel, ive been advised not to provide any specifics on who i spoke to inside the Intelligence Community. What i can offer is that these were properly cleared individuals or was a properly cleared individual with a need to know. This is you can really plead the fifth. But youre here to answer questions and youre here under subpoena. So you can either answer the question or you can plead the fifth. Excuse me. On behalf of my client, were following the rule of the committee. The rule the chair with regard to this issue. And this does not call for an answer that is invoking the fifth or any thing like that. Were following the ruling of the chair. Counsellor, what ruling is that . I can interject. Counsel is correct. The whistleblower has statutory rite to anonymity. The proceedings will not be used to out the whistleblower. And i advise mid client accordingly. Hes going to follow the ruling of the chair. If theres an altertive or you want to work something out with the chair, thats up to you. Well, weve attempted to subpoena the whistleblower, to set for a deposition the chair has tabled that motion and has an unwilling to recognize the motions over the last few days of this impeachment process. With that ill go to mr. Castor. Thank you Ranking Member. The call transcript as published on september 25th is complete and accurate. Will both of you attest to that, miss williams . I didnt take a word for word accounting when i first saw the publicly released version it looked subinstant live correct to me. Colonel vindman . I certainly would describe it as substantively correct. I think in this your testimony you said very accurate. Correct. Okay. And you flagged a couple edits, colonel vindman, i think you had burisma on page four where president zelenskyy was talking about the company. Mentioned in the issue . Im sorry, can you say that question again . In your testimony you explained that you offered an edit that on page four of the transcript that was ultimately published, you thought president zelenskyy mentioned the word burisma. I had in my notes, that is what he said. That was on page four . Yes. And miss williams, you went back and checked your notes and you had president zelenskyy using the term burisma as well. Is that correct . Thats correct. But that came up on a different part of the transcript and what colonel vindman related, to correct . Yes, i believe so. Yours came up on page five. It would have been in substitution for the word case . Thats right. Thats where i have it in my notes. We had some discussion earlier today and your discussion about whether the president had a demand for president zelenskyy. And, you know, i suggested to you in the deposition that the president s words are in fact ambiguous. And he uses some phrases that certainly could be characterized as hedging on page 3 in the first paragraph, he talks about whatever can you do. He talks about thats possible. On page four, he mentions if you can speak to him, he talked about the attorney general Rudy Giuliani. And then at the end of first paragraph he says whatever can you do. The president also says, you know, if you can look into it. And i asked you during your deposition whether you saw or acknowledged the fact that certain people could read that to be ambiguous . I said correct. And i believe you said i think people want to hear what they have already preconceived. Is that what you testified . Id like to ask for a page cite. 256. 256. Thank you. Just a minute, please. Okay. We got the page. Okay. And then you went on to say, yeah, you agreed with me. You said, yeah, i guess you can interpret it different ways. Is that correct . Yes. Okay. Turning attention to the preparation of the transcripts, that followed the ordinary process, correct . I so i think they followed the appropriate process in terms of making sure that eventually it came around for clearances, for accuracy. But it was in a different system. Ill get to that in a second. That relates to the storage of it. You had some concerns, mr. Morrison articulated concerns about if the transcript was leaked out. And i think both you and mr. Morrison agreed it needed to be protected . Just correction. I dont think it was mr. Morris. It was mr. Eisenberg. Right . Mr. Morrison testified at his deposition. Okay. We dont have that in front of us. If you can give us that, well take a look. I think i can say for myself, there were concerns about leaks, seemed valid. And i wasnt particularly critical. I thought this was sensitive and i was not going to question the attorneys judgement on that. Even on the codeword server, you had access to it. Yes. So no point in time during the course of why you are official duties were you denied access to the information . Correct. Miss williams, you testified b you believe the transcript is complete and accurate other than the one issue you mentioned. Substantively accurate, yes. Now did you express any concerns to anyone in your office about what you heard on the call . My supervisor was listening on the call as well so because he had heard the same information, i did not feel the need to have a further c conversation with him. And you did not have a conversation with anyone else. I did not. So you didnt flag it for chief of staff or Vice President s counsel or anyone of that sort . My immediate supervisor was in the room with me. After the call, did you and general kellogg discuss the call . I did not. In the meeting in the run up to warsaw, President Trump was meeting with zelensky. You were involved with braefing materials. I was. Did you flag for the Vice President h parks the call that had concerned you . No, we did not. We dont normally include u previous calls in trip briefing books. If the concerns were so significant, how come nobody on the Vice President s staff at least alerted him to the issue that president zelensky might have been on edge on something that had been mentioned on the 7 25 call. Again, my supervisor had been b in the call with me and i am sure the Vice President had access to the transcript in the moment on that day. As we were preparing for the september meeting with president zelensky, the more immediate issue at hand was two days prior the news had broken about the hold on the Security Assistance so we were much more focused on the discussion that was likely to occur about the hold on Security Assistance for that meeting. And to your recollection, you were in the meeting with president zelensky and Vice President pence. I was. And burisma didnt come up or the bidens or any of these investigations . No, it did not. Colonel vindman, you testified that the president has well standing or long standing concerns about corruption in ukraine, correct . I dont, yoi dont recall, b there are broad concerns about corruptions. But you agree if the u. S. Is giving hundreds of millions of doll hars to a foreign nation with a corruption problem, thats something the u. S. Government officials and the president would want to be concerned about. Yes. If a foreign country has a problem with oligarchs taking u. S. Taxpayer dollars, thats something the president ought to be concern ed ab about in advane of dispensing the aid. Yes. I believe you did testify that corruption is indemic in ukraine . Correct. Are are you alwayou also awaf the president s skepticism of foreign aid generally . I am. And its something that hes made part of his priorities to make sure that u. S. Foreign aid is spent wisely . That is correct. And youre also aware the president has concerns about burden sharing among our allies. Yes. And with respect to ukraine, he was very interested and engaged in seeing if there was a possibility for our european allies to step up and contribute more . I think that would be in the context of military assistance. In terms of burden sharing, the European Union provides over 15 million. But you are aware of the president s concern of burden sharing, right . Yes, i am. Turning our attention to the company of burisma. The cofounder of burisma, its one of ukraines largest natural gas producers, correct . That is my understanding, yes. And its been b subject to numerous investigations over the years. Im not aware, i guess i couldnt point to specific investigations, but there is a what i would call a, a pattern of questionable dealings and questions about corruption. He had served as minister of e kole ji during president yamakovichs tenure . Yes. George kent testified about this that under the obama administration, the u. S. Government encouraged ukraine to investigate whether he used his government position to grant himself or burisma exploration licenses . Are you aware of that . I would defer to george kent. Hes a fount of knowledge on ukraine. Much deeper than p i have. If he, if he attested to that, then i take his word for it. And he testified that the u. S. Along with the United Kingdom was engaged in trying recoup u about 23 million in taxpayer dollars. Yes. Okay. Mr. Kent also testified the investigation was moving along then there was a bribe paid and the investigation went away. Did you hear him mention that . I heard him mention that. These are events that occurred before my time so frankly beyond what he said, i dont know much more. Fair enough. Right around the time it was made, the company sought to bolster their board. Are you aware they tapped some luminary for their Corporate Board . Yes. Include iing the president o poland, b i believe yes. And hunter biden. Yes, i came to learn that as well. Are you aware of any specific experience biden has in the Corporate Governance world . I dont know much about mr. Hunter biden. And we talked a little bit about your deposition about whether mr. Biden was qualified to serve on this board and i believe you ak a knowledged that he was not in fact qualified . As far as i can tell, he didnt seem to be, but like i said, i dont know his qualifications. Okay. Miss williams, i want to turn our attention to the inaugural trip. At one point, the Vice President and the Vice President s office was focusing on attending that, correct . Thats right and somewhat complicated because as i understand it, the white house didnt want the president and Vice President to be out of the country at the same time. Correct. During the time frame, the president was in japan. I believe he was in japan may 24th through the 28th then returned to europe for the d day ceremonies. June 2nd to 7th and i think you told us that there was a window you provided of four days at the end of may that if the Vice President was going to attend the inauguration, it had to be 29, 30th, 31th or 1th . Our embassy had been in discussions with president zelenskys team and as we had learned obviously the Ukrainian Parliament was not going to come back into session until midday so we wouldnt know what the date would be, but we understood that the initial thinking was that they were looking at dates at the end of may so honing in on that time frame, we were ware of President Trumps plan to travel on either end so thats why we advised the ukrainians that if pence were to participate, the