Dr. Fiona Hill, former Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs at the National Security Council, testified that the conspiracy theories about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election touted by President Trump are a “fictional narrative that is being perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services.” She noted that President Trump’s former Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert and former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster repeatedly advised the President that the so-called “CrowdStrike” conspiracy theory that President Trump raised in the July 25 call is completely “debunked,” and that allegations Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. election are false.
Nonetheless, on July 26, 2019, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland met with senior Ukrainian officials in Kyiv and then informed President Trump that President Zelensky “was gonna do the investigation” into former Vice President Biden and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Ambassador Sondland added that President Zelensky would “do anything” President Trump asked of him. After the call, Ambassador Sondland told David Holmes, Counselor for Political Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, that President Trump “did not give a shit about Ukraine” and that he only cared about the “big stuff” that benefits his personal interests, like the “Biden investigation.”
President Trump’s Call with President Zelensky on July 25, 2019
On July 25, 2019, President Zelensky finally had a long-awaited phone call with Ukraine’s most important international partner: The President of the United States.
It had been over three months since the two leaders first spoke. Despite a warm but largely non-substantive call on April 21, President Trump had since declined President Zelensky’s invitation to attend his inauguration and directed Vice President Mike Pence not to attend either.569 Ukrainian efforts to set a date for a promised Oval Office meeting with President Trump were stalled. As Mr. Holmes explained, following the April 21 call:
President Zelensky’s team immediately began pressing to set a date for that visit. President Zelensky and senior members of his team made clear that they wanted President Zelensky’s first overseas trip to be to Washington, to send a strong signal of American support, and requested a call with President Trump as soon as possible.570
Before scheduling the July 25 call or a White House visit, President Trump met on June 28 with Russian President Vladimir Putin—whose armed forces were engaged in a war of attrition against U.S.-backed Ukrainian forces—on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.571 During their meeting, President Trump and President Putin shared a joke about Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.572
On July 25, President Trump joined the call with President Zelensky from the Executive Residence at the White House, away from a small group of senior national security aides who would normally join him in the Oval Office for a conversation with a foreign head of state. President Trump and President Zelensky began to speak at 9:03 a.m. Washington time—4:03 p.m. in Kyiv. According to Tim Morrison, the newly-installed Senior Director for Europe and Russia on the NSC, President Zelensky spoke in Ukrainian and occasionally in “chopped English.”573 Translators interpreted the call on both sides.574 American aides listening to the call from the White House Situation Room hoped that what was said over the next 30 minutes would provide President Zelensky with the strong U.S. endorsement he needed in order to successfully negotiate an end to the five-year-old war with Russia that had killed over 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers and to advance President Zelensky’s ambitious anti-corruption initiatives in Ukraine.575
The Trump Administration’s subject-matter experts, NSC Director for Ukraine Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and Mr. Morrison, were both on the call.576 They had prepared talking points for President Trump and were taking detailed notes of what both leaders said, so that they could promptly implement any agreed-upon actions.577 They were joined by Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, National Security Advisor to the Vice President, and Jennifer Williams, Special Advisor to the Vice President for Europe and Russia. Assistant to the President Robert Blair, a senior aide to Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, was also present, along with an NSC press officer.578 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo listened from a different location, as did Dr. Charles M. Kupperman, the Deputy National Security Advisor.579
Notably, Secretary Pompeo did not reveal that he listened to the July 25 call when asked directly about it on This Week on September 22.580 Neither Secretary Pompeo nor the State Department corrected the record until September 30, when “a senior State Department official” disclosed the Secretary of State’s participation in the July 25 call.581
The two presidents first exchanged pleasantries. President Trump congratulated the Ukrainian leader on his party’s parliamentary victory. In a nod to their shared experience as political outsiders, President Zelensky called President Trump “a great teacher” who informed his own efforts to involve “many many new people” in Ukraine’s politics and “drain the swamp here in our country.”582
The discussion turned to U.S. support for Ukraine. President Trump contrasted U.S. assistance to that of America’s closest European allies, stating: “We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. Much more than the European countries are doing and they should be helping you more than they are.” The call then took a more ominous turn. President Trump stated that with respect to U.S. support for Ukraine, “I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.”583
President Zelensky, whose government receives billions of dollars in financial support from the European Union and its member states, responded that European nations were “not working as much as they should work for Ukraine,” including in the area of enforcing sanctions against Russia.584 He noted that “the United States is a much bigger partner than the European Union” and stated that he was “very grateful” because “the United States is doing quite a lot for Ukraine.”585
President Zelensky then raised the issue of U.S. military assistance for Ukraine with President Trump: “I also would like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense”—an area where U.S. support is vital.586 President Zelensky continued: “We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.”587 The Javelin anti-tank missiles, first transferred to Ukraine by the United States in 2018, were widely viewed by U.S. officials as a deterrent against further Russian encroachment into Ukrainian territory.588
Immediately after the Ukrainian leader raised the issue of U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, President Trump replied: “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.”589
Request to Investigate 2016 Election
President Trump then explained the “favor” he wanted President Zelensky to do. He first requested that Ukraine investigate a discredited conspiracy theory aimed at undercutting the U.S. Intelligence Community’s unanimous conclusion that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.590 Specifically, President Trump stated:
I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike…I guess you have one of your wealthy people…The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.591
President Trump was referencing the widely debunked conspiracy theory that the Ukrainian government—a
nd not Russia—was behind the hack of Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers in 2016, and that the American cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike moved the DNC’s servers to Ukraine to prevent U.S. law enforcement from examining them. This theory is often referred to in shorthand as “CrowdStrike” and has been promoted by the Russian government.592
For example, during a press conference in February 2017, just weeks after the U.S. Intelligence Community unanimously assessed in a public report that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election to benefit the candidacy of Donald J. Trump, President Putin falsely asserted that “the Ukrainian government adopted a unilateral position in favour of one candidate. More than that, certain oligarchs, certainly with the approval of the political leadership, funded this candidate, or female candidate, to be more precise.”593 President Trump’s reference in his July 25 telephone call to “one of your wealthy people” tracked closely with President Putin’s accusations that “certain oligarchs” in Ukraine meddled in the 2016 U.S. election to support Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Dr. Hill, an expert on Russia and President Putin, testified that the claim that “Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps, somehow for some reason, Ukraine did” is “a fictional narrative that is being perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.” Dr. Hill reaffirmed that the U.S. Intelligence Community’s January 2017 conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election is “beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.”594
Tom Bossert, President Trump’s former Homeland Security Advisor, stated publicly that the CrowdStrike theory is “not only a conspiracy theory, it is completely debunked.”595 Dr. Hill testified that White House officials—including Mr. Bossert and former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster—“spent a lot of time” refuting the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory to President Trump. Dr. Hill explained that Mr. Bossert and others “who were working on cybersecurity laid out to the President the facts about the interference.” She affirmed that President Trump was advised that “the alternative theory that Ukraine had interfered in the election was false.”596
President Zelensky did not directly address President Trump’s reference to CrowdStrike during the July 25 call, but he tried to assure President Trump that “it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier.”597 President Zelensky committed to proceed with an investigation, telling President Trump that he had “nobody but friends” in the new Ukrainian presidential administration, possibly attempting to rebut Rudy Giuliani’s earlier claims that President Zelensky was surrounded by “enemies” of President Trump. President Zelensky then specifically noted that one of his assistants “spoke with Mr. Giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that Mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we will meet once he comes to Ukraine.”598
Significantly, President Zelensky referenced Mr. Giuliani even before President Trump had mentioned him, demonstrating the Ukrainian leader’s understanding that Mr. Giuliani represented President Trump’s interests in Ukraine. The Ukrainian leader then reassured President Trump, “I also plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation” into the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory. He said, “I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly. That I can assure you.”599 President Trump replied, “Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great.”600
Request to Investigate Bidens
President Trump then returned to his requested “favor,” asking President Zelensky about the “[t]he other thing”: that Ukraine investigate President Trump’s U.S. political rival, former Vice President Biden, for allegedly ending an investigation into the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings. Vice President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, served as a member of Burisma’s board of directors. President Trump told President Zelensky:
The other thing, There’s 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.601
President Trump later continued, “I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it. I’m sure you will figure it out.”602
In public remarks on October 3, 2019, a reporter asked President Trump, “what exactly did you hope Zelensky would do about the Bidens after your phone call? Exactly.” President Trump responded: “Well, I would think that, if they were honest about it, they’d start a major investigation into the Bidens. It’s a very simple answer.”603
When President Trump asserted to President Zelensky during the July 25 call that former Vice President “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution,” President Trump was apparently referring to Vice President Biden’s involvement in the removal of the corrupt former Ukrainian prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin.
Multiple witnesses—including Dr. Hill, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, Mr. Holmes, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent—testified that they were not aware of any credible evidence to support the claim that former Vice President Biden acted inappropriately when he advocated for the removal of Mr. Shokin.604 To the contrary, those witnesses confirmed that it was the official policy of the United States, the European Union, and major international financial institutions, to demand Mr. Shokin’s dismissal. As Mr. Kent testified, there was “a broad-based consensus” that Mr. Shokin was “a typical Ukraine prosecutor who lived a lifestyle far in excess of his government salary, who never prosecuted anybody known for having committed a crime” and who “covered up crimes that were known to have been committed.”605 Mr. Kent further explained:
What former Vice President Biden requested of former President of Ukraine Poroshenko was the removal of a corrupt prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, who had undermined a program of assistance that we had spent, again, U.S. taxpayer money to try to build an independent investigator unit to go after corrupt prosecutors.606
As Ambassador Yovanovitch testified, the removal of a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor general, who was not prosecuting enough corruption, increased the chance that alleged corruption in companies in Ukraine could be investigated.607
Mr. Shokin was a known associate of Mr. Giuliani. As described in Chapter 1, Mr. Giuliani had been communicating with Mr. Shokin since at least 2018.608 Mr. Giuliani also lobbied the White House on behalf of Mr. Shokin to intervene earlier in 2019 when the State Department rejected a visa application for Mr. Shokin to visit the United States based upon Mr. Shokin’s notorious corrupt conduct.609 Ambassador Kurt Volker, U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, testified that he explicitly warned Mr. Giuliani—to no avail—against pursuing “the conspiracy theory that Vice President Biden would have been influenced in his duties as Vice President by money paid to his son.”610 Ambassador Volker affirmed that former Vice President Biden is “an honorable man, and I hold him in the highest regard.”611
Attacks Against Ambassador Yovanovitch
During the July 25 call, President Trump also attacked Ambassador Yovanovitch, whom he had ousted as the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine three months earlier after a concerted smear campaign perpetuated by Mr. Giuliani. As described in Chapter 1, Mr. Giuliani viewed Ambassador Yovanovitch—a decorated diplomat who had championed Ukrainian anti-corruption officials and activists—as an impediment to his activities in Ukraine.612 President Trump told President Zelensky: “The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that.” He later added: “Well, she’s going to go through some things.”613
Praise of Corrupt Former Ukrainian Prosecutor
After disparaging Ambassador Yovanovitch, who had an extensive record of combatting corruption, President Trump praised an unnamed former Ukrainian prosecutor general—referring to Yuriy Lutsenko—who was widely considered to be corrupt and had promoted false allegations against Ambassador Yovanovitch.616 President Trump told President Zelensky: “Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved.”617 He later added, “I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly and he was a very fair prosecutor so good luck with everything.”618
At the time of the July 25 call, Mr. Lutsenko—who was collaborating with Mr. Giuliani to smear Ambassador Yovanovitch and the Bidens—was still the Ukrainian prosecutor general. Mr. Holmes testified that Mr. Lutsenko “was not a good partner. He had failed to deliver on the promised reforms that he had committed to when he took office, and he was using his office to insulate and protect political allies while presumably enriching himself.”619 By July 2019, Mr. Holmes assessed that Mr. Lutsenko was “trying to angle to keep his job” under the new Zelensky Administration and that part of his strategy was “appealing to Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump by pushing out these false theories about the Bidens and the 2016 election.”620
The Impeachment Report Page 17