Sondland and Volker transcripts released

The transcripts appear to bolster Democrats’ case that Trump, through his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, encouraged the off-the-books diplomacy.

  Politico

And let's not forget Sondland's testimony was updated after his recollection was "refreshed".

Two of the most striking passages in the transcripts come from Sondland. In one exchange, he describes how Giuliani's demands of Ukraine "kept getting more insidious as [the] timeline went on." In another, he expresses his view that the insistence that Ukraine investigate former vice president Joe Biden was "improper," and possibly illegal.

Volker casts himself as a somewhat naïve diplomat, caught in machinations he didn’t fully understand. He says, for instance, that he didn't initially connect the Burisma gas company to the Bidens, even though Giuliani and Trump apparently were. He also describes feeling compelled to connect Giuliani with Ukrainian officials, both because they wanted it and because Trump wanted it.

[...]

Sondland testified that Trump and Giuliani’s positions “kept getting more insidious,” evolving from a general interest in fighting corruption to an interest in Burisma and finally to an investigation of the Bidens. The EU envoy noted he was not a lawyer but said he “assumed” an effort to pressure Ukraine to do so, as pursued by Giuliani with Trump’s support, would be illegal.

But for some reason he didn't feel obligated to bring it to anyone's attention for accountability.

Sondland testified that Trump was not specific in what he wanted Sondland to work with Giuliani on in Ukraine, saying only that “Ukraine is a problem.” The president also repeatedly told Sondland, Volker and U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry during a May 23 meeting to “talk to Rudy, talk to Rudy” about Ukraine policy — despite Giuliani having no formal foreign policy role and, by then, publicly demanding that Ukraine investigate the Bidens.

[...]

Sondland testified that he called Trump on Sept. 9 after receiving a text from the acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor expressing alarm over the withholding of military aid, and asked what he wanted from the Ukrainians. This conversation has been of intense interest to investigators because after he hung up with Trump, Sondland wrote a lawyerly note to Taylor denying that the aid was linked to political favors and suggesting they not speak by text anymore.

Trump was in a “very bad mood” on the phone call, Sondland recalled. But all the president would say was that he wanted Zelensky “to do the right thing” and wasn’t asking for a quid pro quo. “I want him to do what he ran on,” Trump said, according to Sondland.

[...]

Sondland appeared to cover himself on key questions by claiming he didn’t recall certain discussions of the Bidens with Giuliani, conversations with Zelensky about issuing a public statement committing to the investigations, talks with acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney about scheduling a White House visit for Zelensky, or details about a July 10 meeting with Ukrainian officials that alarmed White House aides.

Sondland also testified that he could not recall whether he ever mentioned the word “Burisma” in his meetings and conversations with the Ukrainians [...] or whether he told Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), as has been reported, that U.S. military assistance aid was contingent upon Zelensky committing to the probes Trump demanded.

Sondland submitted new testimony last week, however, following rumblings among Democrats that he might have committed perjury. In that supplemental testimony, Sondland confirmed having a conversation with a top Zelensky aide in Warsaw on Sept. 1, in which he told the aide that U.S. military assistance funds would likely not be reinstated “until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks.”

Sondland acknowledged that Trump and Giuliani were making “demands” of Zelensky, including that he commit to investigating Burisma and the unsubstantiated theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. “If you mean that those conditions would have to be complied with prior to getting a meeting, that was my understanding.”

From here on out, Sondland sounds unbelievably shifty or naive, but definitely aware he's caught his dick in his zipper.

Sondland admitted in his transcript that he asked Perry, another key witness in the impeachment probe, to “refresh my memory about a couple of meetings” prior to his testimony. The meeting he said he spoke to Perry about was one that former NSC official Fiona Hill told Congress she was deeply alarmed by, in which Sondland linked support for Ukraine to political investigations.

Sondland testified that he didn’t remember anything improper happening in the meeting, so when details of Hill’s deposition leaked, he reached out to Perry to ask about it. Sondland said he consulted his lawyer before calling Perry, but that he didn’t think was “inappropriate” to do so.

It wasn’t the first time he and Perry spoke amid the impeachment inquiry, according to Sondland. They also connected before Hill’s testimony, but Sondland said he could not recall what they discussed.

And Perry has refused to testify. Nothing suspicious in any of this.

Sondland had previously said in an interview on Ukrainian TV that Trump had given him a “special assignment,” but told lawmakers that that was not really true—Pompeo encouraged him to keep working on Ukraine policy, he said, and he couldn’t recall whether he ever represented to other officials that Trump had specifically asked him to pursue it.

Despite encouraging him to work on Ukraine policy, however, the State Department “discouraged” Sondland from complying with a congressional subpoena to discuss that work, he testified. “They directed me not to appear, which is why I did not appear on the 8th. And once you issued the subpoena, again, they discouraged me from complying with the subpoena, but I decided to come in anyway,” Sondland said.

He's not a complete idiot.

As for Volker...

Volker testified that when he and others tried to convince Trump to meet with Ukraine’s new president, Trump hinted that he didn’t trust the government in Kyiv because he believed it had tried to undermine his election in 2016.

“They are all corrupt, they are all terrible people,” Volker described Trump as saying. “And they tried to take me down.”

President Zelensky...you'll want to hear this.

When Volker and other officials tried to persuade Trump that the new Ukrainian president was different, Trump remained skeptical. He also indicated that Giuliani had been telling him other things.

“I think he said, not as an instruction but just as a comment, talk to Rudy, you know,” Volker described Trump as saying, adding that he further said of Giuliani: “‘He knows all of these things, and they’ve got some bad people around [Zelensky].’ And that was the nature of it.”

[...]

“The negative narrative about Ukraine which Mr. Giuliani was furthering was the problem,” Volker said. “[I]n my view, it was impeding our ability to build the relationship the way we should be doing.”

[...]

The “Pentagon, military, civilian, State Department, National Security Council—they all thought this is really important to provide this [Congressionally budgeted monetary] assistance [to Ukraine]. And so, in that circumstance, for there to be a hold placed struck me as unusual,” Volker said. “I didn’t know the reason. No reason was ever given as to why that was. It came from [the Office of Management and Budget], so I immediately thought about budgetary issues, that, for whatever reason, there’s a hold placed."

[...]

“In my mind, those are three separate things,” Volker explained to lawmakers. “There is Bidens; there is Burisma as a company, which has a long history; and there is 2016 elections.

“And part of what I was doing was making sure and why I wanted to make sure I was in this conversation that we are not getting the Ukrainians into a position about talking about anything other than their own citizens, their own company, or whether their own citizens had done anything in 2016.”

And then there's Rudy.

As questions were swirling over Giuliani’s role in the Ukraine drama, the former New York City mayor went on TV, waved around text messages from Volker, and insisted everything he did in Ukraine was at the “direction” of the State Department.

Then, Giuliani pushed Volker to back that claim up in public.

“All I need for you is to tell the truth,” Giuliani texted Volker on Sept. 22, according to Volker’s testimony, adding later, “Really, this is not hard. Just fair to affirm truth.”

But Volker told lawmakers he was not about to satisfy Giuliani. Although it was true that he’d [hooked up] Ukrainian officials with Giuliani, Volker insisted Giuliani was taking things too far because it was incorrect to say that the State Department was directing Giuliani’s many actions in Ukraine.

“I wasn’t giving direction to him in any way,” Volker said.

And then there's Yovanovitch.

In late April 2019, after Marie Yovanovitch was suddenly recalled from her post as ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor texts Volker about the request that he head back to Kyiv as charge d’affaires for the U.S. Embassy there.

“You should!” Volker responds. But Taylor says Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent “described two snake pits, one in Kyiv and one in Washington.”

Volker tries to downplay Taylor’s concerns, asking “what’s new?” -- to which Taylor responds that what he’d heard from Kent sounded “very ugly.”

Very ugly.

Gordon Sondland testimony transcript

Kurt Volker testimony transcript

UPDATE: