“During that phone call, Amb. Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election,” Taylor said Tuesday in his statement, using an alternative spelling of Zelensky’s name.
Biden, who was vice president to Barack Obama, is running for president in 2020, and until recently was leading in the Democratic primary. Biden’s son Hunter was a board member of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma until earlier this year.
“Ambassador Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelenskyy was dependent on a public announcement of investigations,” Taylor said. “In fact, Ambassador Sondland said, ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance.”
“He said that President Trump wanted President Zelenskyy ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations,” Taylor continued.
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By mid-July it was becoming clear to me that the meeting President Zelenskyy wanted was conditioned on the investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections,” Taylor said in his opening statement. “It was also clear that this condition was driven by the irregular policy channel I had come to understand was guided by Mr. Giuliani.”
