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Impeachment witness: Ukraine ‘gradually came to understand that they were being asked to do something’

A State Department staffer told House lawmakers last week that he believed officials in Ukraine “gradually came to understand that they were being asked to do something” in order for a hold on security assistance from the U.S. to be lifted, according to a transcript released by House Democrats on Monday evening.

David Holmes, a career State Department official now based in Kyiv who is slated to testify publicly later this week, also told lawmakers that he had “never seen anything like” the phone call he overheard between President Trump and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland in July. 

“This was an extremely distinctive experience in my Foreign Service career. I’ve never seen anything like this, someone calling the President from a mobile phone at a restaurant, and then having a conversation of this level of candor, colorful language. There’s just so much about the call that was so remarkable that I remember it vividly,” Holmes told investigators, according to the transcript.

View the com plate November 18 article by Morgan Chalfant, Brett Samuels and Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

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