Ambassador Volker claimed that he "stopped pursuing" the statement from the Ukrainians around this time because of concerns raised by Mr. Yermak that Yuriy Lutsenko was still the Prosecutor General. Mr. Lutsenko was likely to be replaced by President Zelensky, and because Mr. Lutsenko was alleging the same false claims that President Trump and Mr. Giuliani were demanding of President Zelensky, Ukrainian officials "did not want to mention Burisma or 2016."830 Ambassador Volker testified that he "agreed" and advised Mr. Yermak that "making those specific refences was not a good idea" because making those statements might "look like it would play into our domestic politics."831
Mr. Yermak agreed and, according to Ambassador Volker, plans to put out a statement were "shelved."832 Ambassador Volker reasoned that the plan for a public statement did not materialize partly because of "the sense that Rudy was not going to be convinced that it meant anything, and, therefore, convey a positive message to the President if it didn't say Burisma and 2016."833 He added:
I agreed with the Ukrainians they shouldn't do it, and in fact told them just drop it, wait till you have your own prosecutor general in place. Let's work on substantive issues like this, security assistance and all. Let's just do that. So we dropped it.834
Ambassador Volker testified that, "From that point on, I didn't have any further conversations about this statement."835 Nevertheless, efforts to secure a presidential statement announcing the two investigations into the Bidens and the 2016 U.S. election interference continued well into September.
On August 19, Ambassador Sondland told Ambassador Volker that he "drove the 'larger issue' home" with Mr. Yermak: that this was bigger than just a White House meeting and was about "the relationship per se."836 Ambassador Volker told the Committees that he understood this referred to "the level of trust that the President has with President Zelensky. He has this general negative assumption about everything Ukraine, and that's the larger issue."837 That negative assumption would prove difficult to overcome as Ukrainian and U.S. officials sought to finally obtain a White House meeting and shake free from the White House hundreds of millions of dollars in Congressionally-approved security assistance for Ukraine.
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