David Holmes, a career foreign service officer serving in Ukraine, told a congressional panel behind closed doors that he was present when Donald Trump spoke on the phone with U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland about Sondland’s efforts to make Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky announce an investigation to Hunter Biden. Holmes opening statement, obtained by CNN, discloses that there are as many as three other witnesses to the call.
Sondland, Holmes and a few others were at a restaurant in Kyiv when the ambassador made the call to Trump. Trump apparently spoke so loudly that Sondland held the phone away from his ear and Holmes, and presumably the others, heard the conversation. In the call, Sondland told Trump that President Zelensky “loves your ass.”
Trump responded “So, he’s gonna do the investigation?”
Sondland: “He’s gonna do it,” and added, according to Holmes testimony, President Zelensky will do “anything you ask him to.”
They discussed other things, then, and ended the call. Holmes said he then “took the opportunity to ask Ambassador Sondland for his candid impression of the Trump’s views on Ukraine. In particular, I asked Ambassador Sondland if it was true that the president did not give an ‘S’ about Ukraine.” Holmes testified that “Sondland agreed that the president did not give an ‘S’ about Ukraine. I asked, ‘Why not?’ And Ambassador Sondland stated that the president only cares about the ‘big stuff.’ I noted that there was big stuff going on in Ukraine, like a war with Russia.”
He continued that “Sondland replied that the ‘big stuff’ that benefits the president, like the Biden investigation that Mr. Giuliani was pushing.”
Sondland is scheduled to testify next Wednesday where he will have the opportunity to once again draw from his miraculously improved memory about what he discussed with Trump.