David Holmes, a state department official, said he had “never

seen anything like” the phone call he overheard between

Donald Trump and Gordon Sondland, the EU ambassador, in
which Trump personally raised the investigations he had
requested from Ukraine.

The call, which Holmes overheard
during a lunch with Sondland in Kyiv, was so distinctive that
no one needed to refresh his memory, according to testimony
released late on Monday in the impeachment inquiry.


“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Holmes told House
investigators, “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’ account of the conversation on 26 July is the first to
involve Trump personally calling about the investigations into
Democrats and Joe Biden that are central to the impeachment
inquiry.


The transcript was released on Monday, hours before the start
of a marathon week of public hearings featuring key
witnesses, including Sondland and several others who were on
the 25 July phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian
president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that led to the impeachment
inquiry.


Holmes, a political counselor at the US embassy in Ukraine, is
scheduled to testify publicly on Thursday.


Holmes, who joined Sondland and others during the lunch
meeting, told investigators Trump was talking so loudly he
could hear the president clearly on the ambassador’s phone.


The call was not on speaker phone, he said.


“I then heard President Trump ask, quote, ‘So he’s going to do
the investigation?’” Holmes testified.

 “Ambassador Sondland
replied that ‘he’s going to do it’, adding that President
Zelenskiy will, quote, ‘do anything you ask him to’.

”