Diplomat testifies he heard Trump ask about 'investigation'

Source: The Hill | November 21, 2019 | Morgan Chalfant

A career diplomat on Thursday described overhearing a conversation between President Trump and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland during which the president followed up on an “investigation” related to former Vice President Joe Biden that he had raised on a call with Ukraine’s president a day earlier.

“I sat directly across from Ambassador Sondland,” David Holmes, a top U.S. embassy official based in Kyiv, said during his opening remarks at a public hearing of the House impeachment inquiry. “The president’s voice was loud and recognizable.”

Holmes told lawmakers that he heard Sondland tell Trump that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “loves your ass.”

“So, he’s gonna do the investigation?” Trump asked, according to Holmes’s account.

“Ambassador Sondland replied that ‘he’s gonna do it,’ adding that [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelensky will do ‘anything you ask him to,’” Holmes continued.

Holmes described his recollection of the July 26 conversation, which he overheard while at a lunch with Sondland at a restaurant in Kyiv, as “clear.” He added that his colleagues at the table also knew that Sondland was speaking with Trump.

“Even though I did not take notes of these statements, I have a clear recollection that these statements were made,” Holmes said.

Immediately after the phone call, Holmes said that Sondland told him that Trump did not “give a shit about Ukraine” and only cares about “‘big stuff’ that benefits the president. Holmes said Sondland specifically named the “Biden investigation” sought by Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.

Holmes later said he was aware of Giuliani’s efforts to press for an investigation of Biden and his son’s business dealings in Ukraine — which the president’s attorney had spoken about in the press — at the time he overheard Sondland’s phone call with Trump.

“This was a very distinctive experience. I’ve never seen anything like this in my foreign service career. Someone at a lunch in a restaurant making a call on a cellphone to the president of the United States,” Holmes testified when asked why his recollection of the event was so clear.

“Very colorful language was used. They were directly addressing something I had been wondering about, working on for weeks and even months, a topic that had led to the recall of my former boss, the former ambassador,” Holmes said.

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