The public appearance of U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland has been anticipated as one of the most consequential events of the House impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, and on Wednesday it lived up to expectations. Starting with his opening statement, Sondland confirmed that there was a quid pro quo, that Donald Trump’s personal attorney was shaping policy in Ukraine to the detriment of America’s national interests, and that everyone—from Trump to chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Vice President Mike Pence—was fully aware of the efforts to extort investigations into Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton out of Ukraine.
Campaign Action
Sondland testified that he knew the investigations were important to Trump, that he spoke with Trump as many as 20 times, and that he also spoke with Rudy Giuliani. He also testified that it wasn’t just everyone in the White House who was “in the loop” when it came to what was being demanded of Ukraine; the Ukrainians understood this as well.
In describing what Trump wanted before he would deal with the incoming Ukrainian government, Sondland made it clear that it wasn’t actual investigations that Trump required. What was wanted was the announcement of investigations. A public announcement—by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, on a platform visible to Americans—was the price Trump set for a phone call with Zelensky, for releasing the hold on U.S. military aid to Ukraine, and for a White House meeting, which still has not happened.
In his opening statement, Republican Devin Nunes warned Sondland that Democrats on the committee were “out to smear him,” but it was Republicans who repeatedly attacked Sondland throughout the day. They called him an unreliable witness and spent a large amount of time complaining that Sondland did not make a particular brief conversation with Trump part of his opening statement, going so far as to suggest that leaving those few sentences out of the statement meant that Sondland was biased against Trump.
But the conversation that Republicans returned to again and again through the day was one that happened after Trump was caught—after the Ukraine scheme had been outed by the whistleblower. After Trump’s hold on military assistance had become publicly known. After senators had begun calling the White House to ask what was going on. After Congress had opened a formal investigation. That conversation doesn’t exonerate Trump. It only speaks to his knowledge that the jig was up.
Throughout the day there were two walls that Sondland attempted to maintain. One was his claim that he personally didn’t make the connection between repeated calls to investigate Burisma and generating political dirt against Joe Biden. That’s despite the fact that at several times Sondland noted that he had learned about other aspects of the Ukraine story from the media, and despite the fact that Sondland was working directly with Rudy Giuliani, and despite the fact that Giuliani had been talking about the Burisma-Biden connection for months before Sondland became involved. That claim is by far the least believable position Sondland took on Wednesday.
The other distinction that Sondland attempted to maintain was a claim that Trump never directly told him that the release of military assistance to Ukraine was tied to getting the investigations into Biden and Clinton announced. Even though Sondland not only behaved as if the military assistance depended on the investigations and told others that this was the case—including expressing this to Ukrainian officials—throughout his testimony he maintained that he had only “presumed” that this connection existed after getting no other explanation for the hold.
After Sondland’s testimony, it’s clear that the central allegation—that Donald Trump misused the power of his office to gain a personal political favor at the expense of not just Ukraine, but the United States—has been demonstrated several times over. It’s been heard from the people who were on the ground in Ukraine. It’s been heard from the people who were listening to Trump’s call to Zelensky. It’s been heard from the people who were in charge of handling policy. Now it’s been heard from a man who was in direct, regular conversation with Trump and with everyone else in the White House.
It was a quid pro quo. It was extortion. It was bribery. Most of all, it was a high crime directly involving the abuse of office. It was, and is, impeachable.