(Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The U.S. ambassador to the European Union told an impeachment hearing Wednesday that he believed he was following the orders of President Donald Trump in seeking a “quid pro quo” from Ukraine, then later testified that Trump specifically told him in a phone call he wanted “No quid pro quo.”
From AFP:
Gordon Sondland — whose appearance before Congress is being watched especially closely as he was a Trump ally — said he believed the president was pressing Ukraine to investigate his potential 2020 rival Joe Biden.
“We followed the president’s orders,” Sondland said in his prepared testimony to an open hearing of the House Intelligence Committee.
He said that Trump forced US diplomats to work with his personal lawyer, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.
“We did not want to work with Mr. Giuliani. Simply put, we played the hand we were dealt,” he said.
Sondland said that Trump held off on offering a summit with Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as Giuliani demanded that Kiev publicly announce that it was investigating a gas company on which former vice president Biden’s son Hunter held a paid board position.
Giuliani also wanted Zelensky to investigate a widely discredited conspiracy theory in which Ukraine planted evidence on a server of Biden’s Democratic Party to show that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
“Mr. Giuliani’s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky,” Sondland said.
Sondland said he “never received a clear answer” on why the United States suspended security aid to Ukraine, which is battling Russian-backed separatists, but that he “came to believe” it was also tied to the investigations sought by Trump.
“I was adamantly opposed to any suspension of aid, as the Ukrainians needed those funds to fight against Russian aggression,” he said.
“In the absence of any credible explanation for the suspension of aid, I later came to believe that the resumption of security aid would not occur until there was a public statement from Ukraine committing to the investigations of the 2016 election and Burisma, as Mr. Giuliani had demanded,” he said.
Sondland later recounted a phone call with President Donald Trump in which the president said there was “no quid pro quo.”
“It was a very short, abrupt conversation. He was not in a good mood and he just said, I want nothing, I want nothing, I want no quid pro quo,” Sondland said. The ambassador said he then relayed that message to Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, “not to defend what the president was saying, not to opine on whether the president was being truthful or untruthful” but to express that he had done what he could to address Taylor’s concerns.”
WIBC host Tony Katz offered commentary in the immediate moments following Sondland’s testimony.
“This is horrific right now for Rudi Giuliani. This is what they’re going to use to move forward with impeachment.
…Sondland said quite clearly that there was a quid pro quo. Now I have no idea why Democrats, knowing they had this in their back pockets, decided to get away from quid pro quo and talk about bribery. But I don’t think there is anyone who disagrees with the fact that ‘If you want this, we need that’ happens all the time. That’s the same way sanctions are done and it’s the way all deals are done. I don’t think it’s anything new.
…Sondland’s own words, however, were that Trump told him in a phone call that he did not want anything from Ukraine and specifically that Trump said ‘no quid pro quo.’
So it’s hard to now say the President was asking for quid pro quo when you just stated that he was not. That doesn’t put Rudi Giuliani in a very good position, however.“
Click the link below to hear Tony’s full commentary.
