WASHINGTON (CN) - New transcripts released Friday from impeachment investigators allege that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House Chief of Staff, signed off on making a White House visit for Ukraine's president conditional on the country opening investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden, his son and the 2016 presidential election.
The testimony was delivered last week behind closed doors by Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the top National Security Council expert on Ukraine.
The House committees conducting the impeachment probe released Vindman's testimony on Friday, hours after Mulvaney defied a subpoena to give testimony of his own.
Vindman testified that the Mulvaney information came from U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland.
The ambassador “just said that he had a conversation with Mr. Mulvaney, and this is what was required in order to get a meeting," Vindman testified.
Vindman listened into the infamous July 25 phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that launched the impeachment probe and he told lawmakers in closed-door testimony that he was "concerned by the call."
He reported the concerns about the call to National Security Council attorneys and said he was worried if Ukraine opened investigations into Biden and his son, it would be seen as political and could undercut "bipartisan support" for Ukraine.
The committees also released testimony from Fiona Hill, a former senior official for Russia and Europe on the National Security Council who testified before the committees on Oct. 14.
Much of Vindman's testimony focused on a July 10 meeting at the White House between top U.S. national security officials and their Ukrainian counterparts in which Sondland brought up the investigations being tied to a White House meeting for the Ukrainian president.
According to Vindman's testimony, the Ukrainian officials mentioned their desire to schedule a White House meeting, at which point Sondland "alluded to the investigations." Then-national security adviser John Bolten soon after stepped in and ended the meeting. In a debriefing later, Sondland said the intent to tie the White House meeting with the investigations came from a conversation with Mulvaney.
Vindman said he viewed the discussion of the investigations as inappropriate and potentially damaging if other countries thought they could advance their national security interests by conducting politically motivated investigations.
"I thought it was inappropriate to call a foreign power to investigate a U.S. citizen," Vindman said, according to the transcript. "In my mind, I had spent quite a bit of time in that part of the world. I understand how the justice system works. It's not a rule of law that governs."