Rats abandoning ship: Gordon Sondland testifies

In his opening statement to Congress on Thursday, Gordon Sondland, a wealthy hotelier and Trump donor, sought to distance himself from the president, saying he had been “disappointed” Trump had chosen to conduct an important strategic relationship through his lawyer.

  The Guardian

Sondland himself shouldn't have been involved in Ukrainian deals!

But Sondland insisted he only realised later that the aim of the investigations Trump was demanding was to target the Democratic party and a potential rival for the presidency in 2020, Joe Biden.

As though the fact that he was being brought in on it weren't a trigger that something wasn't kosher.

He claimed, for example, he was not aware at the time of his negotiations with Ukraine that Burisma, an energy company Giuliani specifically named, had employed Hunter Biden, the former vice-president’s son.

I'm going to call bullshit on that.

The White House denounced the impeachment hearings as a “witch-hunt” on Thursday, but it admitted that military aid to Ukraine was suspended in part because Trump wanted to investigate a far-right conspiracy theory that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) internet server had been located in Ukraine to shield it from scrutiny, and that Russia had been framed for interfering in the 2016 election.

And there's nothing wrong with that, right?

The administration is no longer denying there was a political trade-off in relations with Kyiv, after multiple officials have testified that there was.

[...]

Asked if the administration had offered Ukraine a “quid pro quo”, the White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, replied: “We do that all the time with foreign policy … I have news for everybody. Get over it. There is going to be political influence in foreign policy. Elections have consequences.”

Wow.

Let me say that again.

Wow.

Fuck your democracy, people. Get over it. There's a new sheriff in town.

Mulvaney and Rudy both glibly admit to Trump crimes on TV.  Amazing.

[Sondlands] statement reflects a defection from Trump’s ranks and a further sign that the president’s efforts to gag public servants have failed.

[...]

The ambassador to the EU testified that Trump personally directed the drive to make the investigation a condition for a phone call from Trump to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and a White House visit for the new Ukrainian president.

[...]

"Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker and I were disappointed by our 23 May 2019 White House debriefing,” Sondland said. “We strongly believed that a call and White House meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelenskiy was important and that these should be scheduled promptly and without any preconditions.

“We were also disappointed by the president’s direction that we involve Mr Giuliani,” Sondland added. “Our view was that the men and women of the state department, not the president’s personal lawyer, should take responsibility for all aspects of US foreign policy towards Ukraine.

“However, based on the president’s direction, we were faced with a choice,” Sondland argued. The choice was between abandoning their efforts to strengthen US-Ukrainian ties, “or we could do as President Trump directed”.

We all know the real issue was they could do as Trump directed or look for another job.

“I did not understand, until much later, that Mr Giuliani’s agenda might have also included an effort to prompt the Ukrainians to investigate Vice-President Biden or his son or to involve Ukrainians, directly or indirectly, in the president’s 2020 re-election campaign.”

Innocent, I tell you. Innocent!

When the diplomats talked to Giuliani, the lawyer said “the two anticorruption investigatory topics of importance for the president” were the allegation about the DNC server’s location and Burisma’s activities.

Sondland added: “[M]y understanding was that the president directed Mr Giuliani’s participation, that Mr Giuliani was expressing the concerns of the president.”

And afterward, did Sondland sound an alarm? Rhetorical.

He also claimed he was not aware at the time that $400m in US military aid had been withheld from Ukraine to add to the pressure on Zelenskiy.

Sondland stated that such actions would be wrong but insisted he did not participate in them.

Obviously, he did, whether he knew it or not (and I'd be willing to bet he did).



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:



Well maybe they should have been.

UPDATE:



UPDATE:



Yeah, asshole.  The money was delivered when that whistleblower complained.

UPDATE:

“Mr. Giuliani emphasized that the president wanted a public statement from President [Volodymyr] Zelensky committing Ukraine to look into anti-corruption issues,” Sondland said.

“Mr. Giuliani specifically mentioned the 2016 election (including the DNC server) and Burisma as two anti-corruption investigatory topics of importance for the president,” he added.

[...]

He also said military assistance to Ukraine “should not have been delayed for any reason” — a rebuke of the president’s decision to put a hold on those funds earlier this year — but added that Trump repeatedly told him there was “no quid pro quo” involving the aid or an investigation of Trump’s political rivals.

[...]

“He used the words ‘I don’t recall’ quite a bit during testimony, which I believed, considering the timeline, he should have recalled,” Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), a member of the Judiciary and Intelligence panels, told reporters. “I’m not sure he gave us all of the information he could have. I hope he did. But we’ll find out.”

[...]

“I understand that all my actions involving Ukraine had the blessing of Secretary Pompeo as my work was consistent with longstanding U.S. foreign policy objectives,” he said, “Indeed, very recently, Secretary Pompeo sent me a congratulatory note that I was doing great work, and he encouraged me to keep banging away.”

[...]

While Sondland was testifying behind closed doors, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney acknowledged for the first time that Trump decided to freeze critical military aid to Ukraine unless the country investigated the “server” theory. It was a stunning public admission — one that Trump and his allies have denied for weeks, and one that Democrats have been trying to substantiate through a series of closed-door interviews. Mulvaney, however, later walked back the remark.

  Politico

There's enough blame to go around, and it's going.