Holmes told lawmakers in a closed-door deposition last week and testified again Thursday that he and two other State Department staffers joined Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, for a July 26 lunch in the Ukrainian capital.

During that meal on a restaurant's outdoor terrace — at which Sondland selected a bottle of wine and the four “discussed topics such as marketing strategies for his hotel business” — Holmes testified that Sondland called Trump.

Although the call “was not on speakerphone,” Holmes said he “could hear the president’s voice through the earpiece” of Sondland’s 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,” Holmes said.

Holmes went on to testify that Sondland told Trump that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “loves your ass” and that Trump asked Sondland whether Zelensky is “gonna do the investigation?”

Sondland told Trump that Zelensky is “gonna do it,” Holmes recounted, and that Zelensky would do “anything you ask him to.”

After the call's conclusion, Holmes said he asked Sondland “if it was true that the president did not ‘give a sh-- about Ukraine,’” an assessment with which Holmes said Sondland agreed.

Holmes said Sondland told him Trump cared only about “‘big stuff’ that benefits the president,” including a Ukrainian investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden that Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, was pursuing.

A day before that conversation between Sondland and Trump, the president had pressured Zelensky to pursue probes into his political rivals during a phone call that lies at the heart of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

Sondland acknowledged in his headline-grabbing congressional testimony Wednesday that the call Holmes described took place and said he had “no reason to doubt” other witnesses’ accounts of the call.

The ambassador said he also had “no reason to doubt that this conversation included the subject of investigations” but claimed he did not recall “discussing Vice President Biden or his son on that call or after the call ended.”

Trump last week assailed Marie Yovanovitch, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, as she testified before House impeachment investigators, tweeting that the countries where the career foreign service officer was previously stationed “turned bad.”

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff of California and other Democratic lawmakers have charged that Trump’s message targeting Yovanovitch amounted to witness intimidation.

On Monday, the White House’s official Twitter account issued a post criticizing the judgment of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, another impeachment witness, during his testimony as part of the impeachment inquiry.