Prep for Gordon Sondland testimony

Sondland’s verbal and [subsequent corrective] written testimony contradict one another—and clash with other established facts—in several ways.

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Sondland originally stated that he did not participate in any attempt to pressure Ukraine by withholding security assistance. In the supplement, though, Sondland said he now remembers having told Andriy Yermak, an advisor to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, on September 1 that Ukraine would not receive the withheld security assistance without making “a public statement reopening the Burisma investigation”, as President Trump had asked Zelensky to do in the infamous July 25 phone call.

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Sondland’s original testimony still contains unamended statements that repeatedly misled Congress, omitted key events testified to by other officials, and appear to be false.

For example, Sondland claimed that after President Trump directed Sondland, special envoy Kurt Volker, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry to work on Ukraine policy with Rudy Giuliani on May 23, he did not perceive that the investigations Giuliani demanded were about Joe Biden.

  Bulwark

Volker said that, too, and it was obviously not believable. Volker half-assed redeemed himself in his public testimony, and said he SHOULD have perceived it, but his credibility is shot.

In his opening statement, Sondland said that he did not “recall” Giuliani discussing Biden or his son “with me”. He also said that none of the summaries he received of President Trump’s July 25 call with President Zelensky included any mention of Biden. And he said that he did not learn of Biden being part of what they were asking the Ukrainians to announce until Trump released the partial transcript of the July 25 call in late September.

This is significant because Sondland claimed that in his conversations with Giuliani in August, Giuliani insisted that the Ukrainians announce investigations of 2016 and Burisma, but that Sondland did not know Hunter Biden was a Burisma board member. [...] He portrayed himself as working reluctantly with Giuliani to assuage Trump’s concerns regarding Ukraine, and to secure a White House meeting for Zelensky, in furtherance of American interests in Ukraine.

He pretty well shot that excuse when he said Trump doesn't give a shit about Ukraine - only about what helps his own needs, something that was attested to by David Holmes, who is scheduled to testify the day after Sondland.

Holmes testified that while Sondland was in Kiev on July 26 for a meeting with Zelensky, Holmes overheard a phone call between Sondland and Trump wherein the president asked if Zelensky is “gonna do the investigation,” and Sondland replied that “he’s gonna do it.”

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Ambassador Sondland agreed that the President did not give a shit about Ukraine. I asked why not, and Ambassador Sondland stated, the President only cares about “big stuff.” I noted that there was “big stuff” going on in Ukraine, like a war with Russia. And Ambassador Sondland replied that he meant “big stuff” that benefits the President, like the “Biden investigation” that Mr. Giuliani was pushing. [Holmes testimony, p. 25]

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Sondland testified that he was not aware until late September that the investigation’s target was Joe Biden. His July 26 conversation with Holmes indicates that was false.

Even more damning, Sondland claimed in his October testimony that “all the communication flowed through Rudy Giuliani,” and that he could “only speculate” that Trump was instructing Giuliani. Holmes’s recollection of Sondland’s phone conversation shows that Sondland was directly involved in informing the president, and that Trump was actively asking whether Zelensky would open the investigations he sought. By July 26, the president had withheld a promised White House meeting for Zelensky, withheld security assistance for Ukraine, pressed Zelensky to open the investigations of Biden and 2016, and asked Sondland if Zelensky would indeed open the investigations.

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If it turns out that he was indeed pressing Ukraine to investigate Biden on July 10 [when he met with Ukrainian officials at the White House, something he denied in his original deposition testimony], then he was acting improperly, even by his own words: “Inviting a foreign government to undertake investigations for the purpose of influencing an upcoming U.S. election would be wrong.”

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Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman—an Army officer currently detailed to the National Security Council staff—told the committee that at the July 10 meeting, Sondland had indeed spoken about the importance of Ukraine delivering investigations of Biden and 2016 if they wished to have a White House meeting with the president. And Fiona Hill—who was, until August, also a National Security Council staffer—corroborated this account of the July 10 meeting.

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Vindman and Hill both say they told Sondland that his actions were inappropriate, which Sondland also testified did not occur. Assuming Vindman’s and Hill’s accounts are correct, that means that Sondland was pressing the Ukrainians to open investigations into the Bidens in exchange for a White House meeting as early as July 10, and that Zelensky was likely aware of the demand ahead of the July 25 phone call with Trump.

Sondland insisted in his deposition that he was unaware of any conditions placed on the delivery of security assistance and that he did not participate in any schemes to use the security assistance to pressure Ukraine, which he says would be [wrong].

He's right about that. And he did it.

Sondland’s supplemental written testimony partially cleaned up this conflict in the record. He says he now remembers that he did, in fact, participate in a scheme to pressure Ukraine using the security assistance. His memory having been jogged, Sondland now says that on September 1, he told Yermak that Ukraine would not receive the security assistance without announcing investigations.

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Sondland has conceded that he told the Ukrainians that they would not receive a White House meeting or security assistance without announcing investigations. However, even in his supplemental testimony, Sondland has still maintained that he did not receive any explanation for why the aid was withheld, so he “presumed” that the suspension of the aid “had become linked to the proposed anti-corruption statement”—that is, the Ukrainian announcement of investigations.

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Sondland is saying that he told Ukrainian officials that their country would not receive security assistance without announcing an investigation of the president’s political opponent and 2016 conspiracy theory, and that he did that based on absolutely no direction from the president. It is important for Trump that Sondland hold to that line.

We shall see sometime this morning in his public testimony whether or not he does.

By saying he “did not know . . . when, why, or by whom the aid was suspended,” and that he merely presumed that the reason was to pressure Ukraine to announce investigations, Sondland insulates Trump from the extortion message.

That's going to be hard to sell now that we have Holmes' testimony about that phone call.

According to Sondland, on September 1, he knew that the security assistance had been held up, but did not know why. So, instead of calling the president to clarify the reason, he instead just “presumed” the president held it up to pressure the Ukrainians to announce investigations. Then, supposedly based on nothing more than that presumption, he told Yermak that Ukraine would not receive the security assistance without an announcement. But after Taylor raised his concerns about the linkage more than a week later, Sondland then decided to call the president to ask why he withheld the aid.

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It gets worse. This call, and Sondland’s subsequent message to Taylor, look different in light of testimony from Taylor and the NSC official Morrison. Morrison says that Sondland told him on September 7 about a conversation in which the president said that there was “not a quid pro quo” and that Zelensky “should want to go to a microphone and announce personally” the investigations himself. Sondland told Taylor that, on the call, Trump insisted that Zelensky had to “clear things up and do it in public.”

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In other words, in a call just a couple of days before Taylor’s alarmed text message, Trump had laid out the demand for Sondland: After withholding a White House meeting in return for investigations, and now withholding security assistance, Trump insisted that Zelensky personally announce the investigations. Then, after Taylor’s text, Sondland called Trump a second time in two days, and sent a reply to Taylor clearly meant to make a record that Trump did not want a quid pro quo. Sondland did not need to clarify with Trump why he had withheld the assistance; he had spoken to him just a couple days earlier. But he did need to figure out how to address Taylor creating a record of the linkage of investigations to security assistance, and he called the president to discuss.

After speaking again with Trump, Sondland sent his message to Taylor claiming that the president had been “crystal clear” that there is no quid pro quo—omitting, of course, that Trump had laid out his quid pro quo terms in a call just days earlier. Like Sondland’s claim that all communication flowed through Giuliani, Sondland’s message to Taylor and his testimony about his calls with the president appear to be an attempt to hide that the president directed the extortion scheme personally.

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Sondland, Volker, and Perry worked with Giuliani in a scheme to pressure Ukraine to deliver investigations helpful to the president’s 2020 campaign, using the U.S. support desperately needed by Ukraine as leverage, and did so both with the president’s direction and explicit involvement. Sondland misled Congress about his involvement in the scheme, and about the president’s own knowledge and participation.

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