Trump Impeachment Hearings: What Democrats And Republicans Can Seize On In Sondland’s Testimony

The US ambassador to the EU has delivered bombshell testimony that deals serious blows to Trump’s defense of his role on Ukraine.

There are a lot of gaps in what US ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland actually can remember: He is clear he is not a note-taker.

He doesn’t dispute many of the testimonies so far, including David Holmes, who overheard his July 26 phone call with Trump. But he doesn’t remember as clearly as other witnesses we have seen. Republicans might seize on this memory lapse in their questions.

Meanwhile, Democrats are seizing on why withholding documents is so problematic.

Sondland testified that he didn’t take notes, and he has struggled to get documents that would help jog his memory from the State Department. This helps Democrats push the narrative that the withholding of documents is a series impediment for their investigation.

Quid Pro Quo Was Pushed By Giuliani And Ordered By Trump

Gordon Sondland told congressional investigators Wednesday that there was an explicit “quid pro quo” tying a White House visit to President Donald Trump’s push for an investigation into his political rival Joe Biden, and that Sondland and other officials pressured Ukraine on Trump’s orders.

Appearing at a hearing in the Trump impeachment inquiry, Sondland, a Trump supporter and the president’s chosen ambassador to the European Union, shared text messages and other communications that he said show coordination of the scheme with top officials at the White House and State Department, including Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“Everyone was in the loop,” Sondland said.

His explosive testimony is the first to directly tie Trump to the Ukraine pressure campaign, and it undercuts one of Republicans’ main defenses: their contention that Sondland and Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, were driving the push for investigations in Ukraine without Trump’s explicit approval.

“Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the United States, and we knew that these investigations were important to the president,” Sondland, speaking in a calm, even tone, told the House Intelligence Committee in his 19-page opening statement.

And Sondland said he and others pushed Ukraine to announce investigations of Biden and a discredited conspiracy theory about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election “because the president directed us to do so.”

“Was there a quid pro quo?” Sondland said, regarding Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s desire for a White House meeting and Trump’s push for investigations. “The answer is yes.”

Sondland said he later “came to believe” that security aid that was vital to Ukraine also depended on the country’s leaders announcing the investigations Giuliani “had demanded.”

Sondland and others “worked with Mr. Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine matters at the express direction of the president of the United States,” Sondland said. “We did not want to work with Mr. Giuliani. Simply put, we played the hand we were dealt. We all understood that if we refused to work with Mr. Giuliani, we would lose an important opportunity to cement relations between the United States and Ukraine. So we followed the president’s orders.”