It seems evident that Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland is still walking a fine line in what he is choosing to "remember" about his own role in the months-long campaign to force the Ukrainian government to announce investigations of the Democratic National Committee, its servers, and the family of potential election challenger Joe Biden. Specifically, his memory lapses are centered around any mention of the name "Biden," even as numerous other witnesses acknowledge that the sole interest Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump had in an investigation of Ukrainian energy company Burisma was in whether Biden's son Hunter could be accused of wrongdoing.
But it's also become apparent from testimony that White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, still serving as head the Office of Management of Budget from his White House perch, was the official who enforced Trump's pressure campaign against Ukraine.
There is no plausible way Mulvaney did not know his act was intended as extortion for the personal benefit of Donald Trump. In testimony today, Dr. Fiona Hill testified that Sondland told her, directly, that his arrangement to exchange a much-sought meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky was an arrangement with Mick Mulvaney himself.
Describing the meeting between herself, John Bolton, other American officials, and Ukrainian officials that Bolton would quickly end after Sondland telling the Ukrainians that Trump's desired investigations were the prerequisite for their desired meeting, Dr. Hill testified that Bolton had been attempting to "parry" Ukrainian inquiries about such a meeting, since scheduling such meetings is not among his abilities or duties:
Hill: And as Ambassador Bolton was trying to move that part of the discussion away, he was going to try to deflect it onto another wrap-up topic, Ambassador Sondland leaned in, basically to say 'Well, we have an agreement that there will be a meeting, if specific investigations are put underway.' And that's when I saw Ambassador Bolton stiffen. [....]
Q: And did Ambassador Sondland say who his agreement on this White House meeting was with?
Hill: In that particular juncture I don't believe so. Later, which I'm sure you'll want to talk about, he did say more specifically.
Q: And what did he say later?
Hill: He said he had an agreement with chief of staff Mulvaney that in return for investigations this meeting would get scheduled.
Q: And was he specific at that point, later, about the investigations he was referring to?
Hill: He said the investigations into Burisma.
That confirms yet again that chief of staff Mick Mulvaney worked directly on Trump's behalf to refuse a government act—a presidential meeting with the leader of an at-war Ukraine—until Ukraine agreed to assist Trump in an inquiry into Biden. Sondland's claim that he was unaware of the Burisma-Biden connection is implausible; today's other impeachment witness asserted that Sondland himself confirmed Trump was only interested in the "Bidens." It is even more implausible that the man working most directly with Trump in ordering the government to enforce Trump's conditions was unaware of why he wanted them.
Mulvaney withheld government assistance to Ukraine in order to secure Ukrainian cooperation in implicating, through a public "investigation," a Trump political opponent. Trump making the request is a crime; Mulvaney using his office to put pressure on Ukraine to comply with that request is a separate, equally severe crime.