Gordon Sondland has been at the center of the impeachment hearings since they started last Wednesday, but he hasn’t actually been in the room to testify until this Wednesday. Now it’s time to hear from the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, who previously gave a closed-door deposition, only to issue an amendment—but subsequent testimony has suggested Sondland has a lot more amending to do.
Witness after witness has described Sondland’s part in pushing Donald Trump’s extortion of Ukraine forward, pressing Ukrainian officials for the “investigations” Trump wanted into his political opponents and coordinating that effort among others in the Trump administration. And where most of the witnesses so far were not in direct contact with Trump himself, Sondland was, including the July 26 phone call overheard by witnesses that Sondland didn’t mention earlier. That’s one of many things he’s going to need to explain.
Daily Kos will be following the proceedings all day.
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Wednesday, Nov 20, 2019 · 4:25:00 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Sondland has given everything that was expected this morning—everyone knew, and there was definitely a quid pro quo—but Sondland is still trying to be too cute by half in claiming, like Volker, that he didn’t understand the connection between Burisma and Biden. He’s also still trying to hold up the pretense that while he frequently talked to Trump and told everyone that military assistance was connected to announcements … but didn’t get that from Trump.
Wednesday, Nov 20, 2019 · 4:28:22 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Nunes, as might be expected, isn’t interested in actually asking Sondland about anything he’s testified to this morning. So … apparently whatever instructions Nunes got when he was out of the room didn’t give him anything worth asking.
Wednesday, Nov 20, 2019 · 4:39:45 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Does Castor realize that his own statements about how, by the time Sondland talked to Trump on Sep 9, that the knowledge of the hold was public, that Congress was already investigating, and that Trump was already getting calls from Senators … defeats anything he was trying to prove from that conversation? Probably not.