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Among those officials was John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s third national security adviser. Just days earlier, he had warned Fiona Hill, one of his top deputies: “Giuliani is a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.”

Public Investigations

Mr. Sondland, a blustery hotelier who had parlayed a $1 million donation to Mr. Trump’s inaugural into his ambassadorship, assumed the role as principal go-between with the Ukrainians. He did not like taking instructions from Mr. Giuliani, he testified, but Mr. Giuliani made it clear he spoke for the president.

What Mr. Trump wanted, Mr. Giuliani told him, was a public declaration that Ukraine was investigating two matters: Burisma, the firm that had hired Hunter Biden, and whether Ukraine had meddled in the 2016 election.

Mr. Bolton and State Department officials were largely cut out of discussions about how to achieve that. . But that changed on July 10.

More than a half dozen American and Ukrainian officials gathered that day in Mr. Bolton’s West Wing office, including Mr. Sondland, Mr. Volker, Mr. Bolton, Ms. Hill and Alexander S. Vindman, Mr. Bolton’s chief Ukraine specialist. The Ukrainians included Andriy Yermak, a top aide to Mr. Zelensky, and Alexander Danyliuk, Mr. Bolton’s counterpart in Kiev.

All went well until the Ukrainians raised one of Mr. Zelensky’s most important issues: An invitation to the White House that Mr. Trump had promised in a letter after Mr. Zelensky was elected.

Mr. Sondland blurted out that Mick Mulvaney, the president’s acting chief of staff, had guaranteed the invitation as long as Ukraine announced the investigations. By then, Ms. Hill testified, she and others recognized “investigations” as code for Burisma, the Bidens and the 2016 election.