If you feel like you’ve been living a bizarro, Groundhog Day existence for the last week, you’re not alone. Each day, another witness has testified before the House Intelligence Committee as part of the impeachment inquiry into the conduct of Donald Trump, and each day another witness, or two, has laid waste to the claim that the president did nothing wrong when it comes to Ukraine, and suggested that he did, in fact, commit an impeachable offense. Today that honor belongs to David Holmes, political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, who told lawmakers in no uncertain terms that he heard Trump loudly discussing the plot to extort Ukraine.

In his opening statement, Holmes told the committee that starting June 17, his focus, along with Ambassador Bill Taylor, was to coordinate a White House visit between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which they hoped to do by having the Ukrainians “deliver things we thought President Trump might care about, such as commercial deals benefitting the United States.” But, of course, Trump wasn’t interested in things that would benefit the country, only his own agenda. “Within a week or two,” Holmes said, “it became apparent that the energy sector reforms, commercial deals, and anti-corruption efforts on which we were making progress were not making a dent in terms of persuading the White House to schedule a meeting between the presidents.” On June 27, E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland told Taylor by phone, in a conversation that Taylor relayed to Holmes, that Zelensky needed to assure Trump he wasn’t standing in the way of the “investigations.” Holmes said he understood that said investigations referred to the Burisma-Biden probes that Rudy Giuliani had been pushing in the media since March. A day later, Taylor told Holmes that in a call with Zelensky, Sondland, then-special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, “it was made clear that some action on a Burisma-Biden investigation was a precondition for an Oval Office meeting.”

Several weeks later, Holmes told lawmakers, he was present for a National Security Council video conference call during which an Office of Management and Budget staff member “surprisingly announced the hold on Ukraine security assistance near the end of an almost two-hour meeting,” an order they said had come directly from the president. On July 25, the infamous phone call between Zelensky and Trump took place and, contrary to standard procedure, the Embassy received no readout of the call. Holmes testified he didn’t see the transcript until it was released on September 25 and, shocker of shockers, Trump raised none of the “interagency agreed-upon foreign policy priorities in Ukraine,” and instead focused on the Biden-Burisma investigation, along with the crackpot CrowdStrike theory that pointed to Ukraine, and not Russia, meddling in the 2016 election.

All of this, of course, was but a prelude to the conversation Holmes heard between Sondland and Trump, which took place on July 26. During a lunch with two other staffers, Sondland informed the group he was going to call the president to give him an update and while Trump was not on speakerphone, Holmes explained that he “could hear the president’s voice through the earpiece of the phone. The president’s voice was very loud and recognizable, and Ambassador Sondland held the phone away from his ear for a period of time, presumably because of the loud volume.” Which was rather unfortunate, given the context of the conversation! Sayeth Holmes:

I heard Ambassador Sondland greet the president and explain that he was calling from Kyiv. I heard President Trump then clarify that Ambassador Sondland was in Ukraine. Ambassador Sondland replied, yes, he was in Ukraine, and went on to state that President Zelenskyy “loves your ass.”

(Yes, the “loves your ass” quote has gotten a lot of play, but let’s not let it overshadow the fact that Trump seemingly doesn’t know Kyiv is in Ukraine. Moving on.)

I then heard President Trump ask, “So, he’s gonna do the investigation?” Ambassador Sondland replied that “he’s gonna do it,” adding that President Zelensky will do “anything you ask him to.” Even though I did not take notes of these statements, I have a clear recollection that these statements were made. I believe that my colleagues who were sitting at the table also knew that Ambassador Sondland was speaking with the president…. After the call ended, Ambassador Sondland remarked that the president was in a bad mood, as Ambassador Sondland stated was often the case early in the morning. I then took the opportunity to ask Ambassador Sondland for his candid impression of the president’s views on Ukraine. In particular, I asked Ambassador Sondland if it was true that the president did not “give a s--t about Ukraine.” Ambassador Sondland agreed that the president did not “give a s--t about Ukraine.” I asked why not, and Ambassador Sondland stated that the president only cares about “big stuff.” I noted that there was “big stuff” going on in Ukraine, like a war with Russia, and Ambassador Sondland replied that he meant “big stuff” that benefits the president, like the “Biden investigation” that Mr. Giuliani was pushing. The conversation then moved on to other topics.

Upon returning to the Embassy, I immediately told the Deputy Chief of Mission and others at the Embassy about the call with the president and my conversation with Ambassador Sondland.

With that out there, Holmes went in for the kill, telling the committee that on September 8, Taylor told him “now they’re insisting Zelensky commit to the investigation in an interview with CNN.” Holmes said he was shocked that the requirement was “so specific and concrete,” and that while he and his colleagues “had advised our Ukrainian counterparts to voice a commitment to following the rule of law and generally to investigating credible corruption allegations, this was a demand that President Zelensky personally commit to a specific investigation of President Trump’s political rival on a cable news channel.”

While Trump is obviously clinically delusional, some part of him clearly understood that Holmes’s testimony was extremely bad for him, though sadly the only defense he could come up with was: YOU CAN’T HEAR VOICES THROUGH THE PHONE! I’M NOT A LOUD TALKER! NO FURTHER QUESTIONS!

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