and you mr nunez good morning ambassador how are you good morning mr castor welcome back you're here all day on the 17th late into the night thank you for your cooperation with the investigation. the president ever tell you personally about any preconditions for anything no ok so the president never told you about any preconditions for the aid to be released no the president never told you about any preconditions for a white house meeting personally no the you said you didn't have your records or your documents from the state department but if you did there wouldn't be any document or record that ties president trump personally to any of this correct or i don't want to speculate what would be in your documents or records i don't recall anything like ok now it happens ok. you testified that mr giuliani's requests for a prig a quid pro quo for the white house meeting. and you indicated that you believe that

was he was it even seeing president trump centrists cracked mr my contact with mr giuliani began as i said very late in the process after august 1st where when i was 1st introduced to him i by a text but from ambassador volker so we had already begun those discussions i believe with the ukrainians prior to august 1st so everything was being funneled through others including mr volcker ok but. you testified that mr giuliani was expressing the desires of the president correct that's our understanding again but how did you know that who told you well when the president says talk to my personal attorney and then mr giuliani as his personal attorney make certain requests or demands we assume it's coming from the president i don't i don't i'm not testifying that i heard the president tell mr giuliani to tell us so if that's your question i put your deposition you said the question was at the may 23rd meeting when the

president said go talk to go talk to rudy you responded he didn't even say go talk he said talk to rudy you subsequently said he was sort of like i don't want to talk about this so it wasn't an order or a direction to go talk with mr giuliani correct our conclusion and the conclusion of the 3 of us was that if we did not talk to rudy nothing would move forward on ukraine ok and then there was may 23rd and then you never had any personal communications with giuliani until august right that's correct and volcker was handling ambassador volcker was it was all primary after perry and others ok. ambassador volcker you testified he's a professional diplomat correct yes he is yeah and you said you had a great relationship with him i do yes he said he was a very smart guy yes ambassador evanovich said he's

a brilliant diplomat in fact it really. is pretty pretty smart you stated that he's one of those people i'd had my wallet too i would. and so did you here is testimony yesterday i did not ok because i wasn't busy getting ready for you he didn't have any he didn't have any evidence of any of these preconditions and he was the one most engaged of the ukrainians was any. yes ok i mean you testified and you know this was his full time job although he was doing it for free he was the special envoy and you testified you came in and out of. the events correct that's correct ok. your deposition we asked you about your communications with the president. and we asked you whether there were so many that it would be impossible to chronicle and you said no wasn't wasn't that many in we went down the path of building

a list of communications you remember with the president right correct and we talked about may 23rd in the oval office yes you mentioned on july 25th before you went to ukraine you you called the president but there was no material information on the 25th call correct not that i recall ok then the last friday mr holmes came and and i guess his testimony refresh your recollection yeah what refresh my recollection was when your when you. mention a separate then all of a sudden it came back to me and talking about the missed the president's lewinsky loving president and so forth well the whole thing started came back to me after and joined a separate can and then then the next time you know we tried to unpack this the next time you talk to the president was on the telephone was september 9th according your deposition right i may have see even spoken to him on september 6th

but again i just don't have all the records i wish i could get that and then i could answer your questions very easily ok but in september 9th at least your deposition you were extremely clear you called the president you said he was feeling cranky that day right you seem very cranky to me and you said in no uncertain terms and this is on the heels of heels of the bill taylor text right. and you want to tell us what did the president say to you on september 9th that you remember well words to the effect i decided to ask the president the question in an open ended fashion because there were so many different scenarios floating around as to what was going on with ukraine so rather than ask the president 9 different questions is it this is that this is that that i just said what do you want from ukraine i may have even used a 4 letter word and he said i want nothing i want no quid pro quo i just want selenski to do the right thing to do what he ran on ours or words to that effect

and that gave me the impetus to respond to him bassett or taylor with the text that i sent as i said to mr goldman it was not an artfully written text i should have been more specific put it in quotes something like that but basically i wanted mr taylor ambassador taylor to pick up the ball and take it from there i had gone as far as i could go and you believe the president correct you know what i'm not going to characterize whether i believed or didn't believe i was just trying to convey what he said on the phone again at that point time that the pause in the a day was paused for 55 days there was a news article in politico on august 28th talking about it so by that point john the president had been receiving calls from senators he had been getting pressure to lift the a direct that's what i understand yes i want to

turn back to your your opener on page 5 under. when you talk about in the absence of any credible explanation for this is benching of aid i later came to believe that the resumption of security aid would not occur until there was a public statement from ukraine committing to investigations correct correct and you acknowledge that. this is speculation right it was a presumption ok that you it was a guess in fact i think you even said this morning well i want to say that it goes back to mr goldman's pointer chairmanships 2 plus 2 equals 4 in my mind at that point ok but you didn't have any evidence of that correct other than the aid wasn't being released and we weren't getting anywhere with the ukrainians ok but did embassador volcker clue you in that that was the the issue i mean this is a pretty high. i mean this is a pretty serious conclusion you've reached without precise evidence well i sent

that e-mail to secretary pompei o to set up a potential meeting between president trump and president selenski in warsaw and when i referred to the logjam i referred to the logjam in a very inclusive way everything was jammed up at that point and secretary pompei o essentially. gave me the green light to brief president selenski about making those those announcements. ok we can and we can turn to that. and then that was your email dated what they give the page there with your e-mail the secretary pump a 0. on that august 11th. 16 . august 22nd.

ok so you're asking secretary bomb pair whether we should block time and what i mean is there any discussion of specific investigations is there any discussion of biden or barisan. or anything linking to aid in this in this e-mail that you sent to pump a oh no this on this was a proposed briefing that i was going to give president selenski. and i was going to call presidents a lansky and ask him to say what is in this email and i was asking essential the president pompei as permission to do that which he said yes but but but at that at that point in time we're talking about investigations into into the origins of the $26000.00 election we're not talking about anything to do with joe biden joe biden did not come up ok. stepping back a page to. your e-mail to the state department on august 11th. you

email secretary pompei o and you say curtain i negotiated a statement from zalewski to be delivered for our review in a day or 2 the question i have here is that i mean that statement never was issued and in fact ambassador volcker has testified that he didn't think it was a good idea and ultimately the ukrainians didn't think it was a good idea and so the statement never reached a finalized. state that's correct but you even if it had it it doesn't talk about biden's or barisan or anything insidious direct well the statement as as i recall would have mentioned the 2016 election slash d.n.c. server and barista ok it would not have mentioned the bidens and if you heard ambassador volcker how he talks about what might be an investigation into. now ok i

mean he has said that if there were ukrainians engaged in violations of ukrainian law then the prosecutor general to do it ministration auto investigate that did a massacre volcker ever really that's you know we just talked in generic terms about quote investigating the response ok but had nothing to do with the vice president biden i had never heard vice president biden come up until. very late in the game when i don't recall the exact date but when it all sort of came together maybe after the transcript of the july 25th call i don't know i don't know the exact date when i made the connection ok i want to guarantee a lot of people did not make the connection i want to turn to the letter from senator johnson he when he heard about some of these issues in the whole of the 80 if you want to he called the president he called the president on august 31st it's

page 6 of his letter. senator johnson. stayed to rewrites i asked him the president whether there was some kind of arrangement where ukraine would take some action and the whole would be lifted without hesitation president trump immediately denied such an arrangement existed and senator johnson quotes the president saying no and he be prefaced it with a different a different word. no way i would never do that who told you that i have senator johnson says i have accurately characterized the president's reaction is adamant vehement and angry senator johnson's telephone call with the president was in a public event it was capturing a genuine. you know moment with the president and he had at this point time on august 31st he was adamant vehement and angry that there was no connections to aid there were no preconditions i had my meeting with

senator johnson where again i had made the presumption that i had made to both mr your mac and the e-mail i had sent to secretary pompei oh and we were sort of ruminating about what was going on and senator johnson i believe said i'm going to call president trump you know and find out and then he obviously had that phone call i wasn't involved in that phone call ok. but you have no reason to disbelieve that wasn't the way it went down right now no reason to disbelieve senator johnson and now that you've had some time since your deposition and you submitted an addendum relating to the or saw and get together with mr mack. as you sit here today i mean are we missing a lot of your communications with the president i haven't had that many communications with the president and in fact a bunch of the call records that i have had access to just

a short period of time on the call indicates i never got through in other words i was put on hold for one or 2 minutes and the call never connected so i really can't give you an accurate count of how many conversations plus mr castro had a lot of conversations with the president about completely unrelated matters that have nothing to do with ukraine so but you don't think we're missing any material conversations that you have at the present i i don't recall any material conversations today as i'm sitting here or with rudy giuliani yeah my my memory about the conversations with rudy giuliani whether they were direct whether they were conference calls with them bastard volcker or secretary perry is really vague without seeing the trip you know the the call the call logs are there any other key fact witnesses that would help us. you know get to the get to the bottom of whether there is any any link to the aide in the maybe brian mccormack the chief of staff

or secretary perry who was involved in and out as well ok. now the the aide was ultimately lifted on september 11th correct i believe that's correct and senator johnson. in his letter on page 6 quotes the president on august 31st. ron i understand your position we're reviewing it now and you'll probably like my final decision. so even on august 31st and this is before any congressional investigation started the president was signaling to senator johnson that he was going to lift the a letdown but sounds like it's ok and. most of the other witnesses we talked to whether it's from the department of defense or o.m.b. or. you know have have told us that all along during this $55.00 day period they

genuinely believed the hold would be left lifted was that your feeling too at the time i didn't know because every time i asked about the hold i was never given a straight answer as to why it had been put in place to begin with and what do you know about the ukrainians knowledge of the hold oh that's very vague i don't know if the politico article triggered it i don't know if they were told by mr giuliani it would be pure. you know. guess work on my part speculation i don't know what i mean during your deposition you you testified that you did not believe the ukrainians believed the you were aware of the hold until the politico article yeah again i think i think i testified that i was not clear on the exact dates of when these things when the light went on. there were a lot of conversations going on with the ukrainians by a lot of people so i don't know who communicated what to them. we have testimony

from several witnesses that the president was concerned about foreign aid generally and so he was he had an appetite put holds on on aid because he was trying to be a good steward of u.s. taxpayer dollars do you. do you agree with that i'm aware that that's been his position on aid in other matters yes and are you in where that he was also interested in better understanding the contributions of our european allies that i'm definitely aware of and there was some back and forth between the state department officials trying to better understand that information for the president yes that's correct and how do you know that wasn't the reason for the hold i don't . but yet you you you speculate that there was. you know a link to the this announcement i presume it yes ok i want to turn

a little quickly to the july 10th meeting. the july 10th meeting in a master bolton's office involving a bassett or of ochre mr downey look to our mark has been the subject of some controversy ambassador volcker yesterday testified that it wasn't until the end of the meeting mr downey look he said was going through some some real detailed some real detailed information about some of the plans he had but it wasn't until the end of the meeting bassett or volcker recollects that you mentioned something general about investigations what do you remember from that meeting. well again i'm not going to dispute ambassador volcker's recollection if he is particularly if you had notes. i know that the desire to have the 2016 election d.n.c. server imbrie sma were already being discussed by then again i had no direct

contact with mr giuliani on on july 10th but through ambassador volcker and i've probably mentioned that this needs to happen in order to move the process forward that seemed to be. the conventional wisdom at the time. i don't recall any abrupt ending of the meeting or people storming out or anything like that that would have been very memorable if if someone had stormed out of a meeting based on something i said ok nobody used you at that point time of being involved with some sort of drug deal you know that dr hill ever relate to you her concerns about you being involved in a drug deal never ok so you were surprised when testimony emerged that she thought there was a drug deal going on i was shocked ok. and in fact after the meeting you went out and you took a picture right yeah we ambassador bolton or his assistant indicated that he was

out of time that he needed he had another meeting to attend and we all walked out of the white house everyone was smiling everyone was happy and we took a picture on the line on a nice sunny day. then they did you retire to the word room i think secretary perry asked to use the word room to continue the conversation and the real subject that was under debate and it wasn't a angry debate it was a debate is should the call from president trump to president selenski be made prior to the parliamentary elections in ukraine or after the the parliamentary elections and there was good reason for both. we felt embassador perry ambassador volker and i thought it would help president selenski to have president trump speak to him prior to the parliamentary elections because it would give president selenski more credibility and ultimately he would do better with his people in the

parliamentary elections others i believe pushed back and said no it's not appropriate to do it before it should be done after and ultimately it was done after there was no mention of vice president biden in the wardroom not that i remember no or any specific investigation just the generic investigation that's tough when again the did the vice president biden. nexus come to your attention very late again i don't exe i can't recall the exact date the light bulb went on it could have been as late as once the transcript was out but it was always be resubmitted me and i didn't know about the connection between respond by and to the best of your knowledge you never understood that anyone was asking ukrainians to investigate us persons correct ukrainians to investigate us person right now ok now

and just to sort of be clear that ultimately though the aid was lifted from september 11th. there was never any announcement by the ukrainians about any investigations they were going to do direct correct the ukrainians never to your knowledge started any of these investigations correct not to my knowledge. and. consequently these allegations that there was a quid pro quo that had to be enforced before the aid is released it never came to fruition right i don't believe so. want to just step back a little bit and just verify with you that the president had some genuinely deep

rooted concerns about corruption in ukraine correct that's what he expressed to us yes again you believe him right given his business dealings in the in the region when we had the conversation i did and when you 1st started discussing. the concerns the president had with corruption brazil wasn't the only company that was mentioned right it was a generic as i think i testified to chairman shift it was a generic corruption oligarchs just bad stuff ok going on in ukraine and and but other companies came up didn't day i don't know if they were mentioned specifically it might have been nafta gas because we were working on another issue with nafta gas so that might have been one of them. it one point in your deposition i believe you said yeah nafta gas comes up in every conversation

a fair probably. you had. i guess dr hill at one point attributed to you the terminology that the president has given you a large remit you familiar with her assertion of i didn't understand what she was talking about ok. but you you haven't we got into this a little bit in your deposition. you know you said that the president gave you a special assignment with with regard to ukraine correct well when the president appointed me to the u.s. as the u.s. ambassador of the european union ukraine was part of my portfolio what made my assignment. larger than just being part of my portfolio where the unique circumstances where there was no current sitting ambassador in ukraine and there was

a new president in ukraine and the discussions that we had the 3 amigos perry volker and i was that ukraine needed extraordinary as high level support as it could get from the united states during this period which we cleared with both ambassador bolton bolton and with chief of staff mulvaney to continue working on it so by extension yes if if the national security adviser and the chief of staff approve your remit it really is coming from the president when we asked you at the deposition you said i was spinning a little bit i was spinning about something else i think in the our in the interview in key of ok and you further testified so when i said the president gave me an assignment it wasn't really the president it was a secretary through the president. and that that's where i received my direction correct correct ok.

did ambassador taylor ever bring any concerns to your attention about the so-called the channel he dubbed the irregular. no in fact the opposite when he came to post i think i know i called him or he called me i think he spoke with secretary perry and ambassador volker separately and in the course of the 1st few weeks he was highly appreciative that a new ambassador coming to post like like himself was getting the kind of support he was getting from all 3 of us having a cabinet member a special envoy and a fellow ambassador all helping to raise the profile of ukraine he was highly appreciative and highly complimentary and you maintain the no been open line with him correct correct i think there are a number of text some of which i have and some of which i don't where he is reaching out constantly to me and to the others for advice and help ok we had i

think tried to count him up there's a 215 or something text messages between you. volker and him ambassador taylor. you know during the. early august timeframe does that does that make sense to you yeah i think case i think taylor started in late june or early july was when he 1st took post and i think we began communicating fairly shortly thereafter and he never communicated any concerns to you during this timeframe that he he had issues with what was going on what do you mean by what was going on is. request for some sort of investigation not in the early stages you know as his has as time went on his e-mails began to be a little more pointed and frantic and that's when we had very little little visibility as to what was going on either i think it had to do more with the aid and as to why the aid was suspended. and. so just

a few moments ago when reading the white house president. made some remarks particularly obviously about the testimony of ambassador sean then we'll get back to being a bastard a moment or so what the president had to say. the cameras rolling. i want to know if. that's what i want from you that's what i said i want nothing. i said it twice. so he goes. he asked me the question what do you want i keep hearing all these things what do you want he finally gets me i don't know him very well i have not spoken to him much this is not a man i know well seems like a nice guys though but i don't know him well he was with other candidates he actually supported. not me. but he is not a response now if you were take covered properly.