Zelensky. In spring and summer 2019, however, the President extended an invitation to the White House to President Zelensky on three occasions—without any conditions.
On April 21, 2019, President Trump placed a brief congratulatory call to President-elect Zelensky.[1] President Trump said: "When you're settled in and ready, I'd like to invite you to the White House."[2]The presidents did not discuss any investigations, and President Trump placed no conditions on his invitation.
On May 23, President Trump met with Ambassador Volker, Ambassador Sondland, Secretary Perry, and Senator Johnson—the senior U.S. officials who had comprised the official U.S. delegation to President Zelensky's inauguration days before. The delegation sought to convey to President Trump a positive impression of President Zelensky.[3] According to Ambassador Volker:
President Trump demonstrated that he had a very deeply rooted negative view of Ukraine based on past corruption. And that's a reasonable position. Most people who would know anything about Ukraine would think that. That's why it was important that we wanted to brief him, because we were saying, it's different, this guy is different. But the President had a very deeply rooted negative view. We urged that he invite President Zelensky to meet with him at the White House. He was skeptical of that. We persisted. And he finally agreed, okay, I'll do it.[4]
Later in his transcribed interview, Ambassador Volker provided more context for the May 23 discussion:
What I heard from President Trump in the meeting in the oval office was blanket, like, "this—these are terrible people, this is a corrupt country," you know, "I don't believe it." I made the argument that President Zelensky is the real deal, he is going to try to fix things, and, you know, he just did not believe it. He waved it off. So there's a general issue there.
He did not mention investigations to me in that meeting, or call for investigations. I was not aware that he did so in the July 25th call later. His attitude towards Ukraine was just general and negative.[5]
Ambassador Sondland similarly testified that President Trump expressed negative views about Ukraine in this meeting and mentioned how "they tried to take me down" in 2016.[6]
22
