Trump 2.0 - Quid pro quo

 

Both despicable and shameful. 

Yes, he can be impeached more than once

Hopefully, he won't have to be. He'll be gone.

In 2016, Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked then-Vice-President Joe Biden to lean on federal prosecutors who were investigating a Turkish bank for financial crimes and to hand over a dissident cleric living in the United States. The requests seemed to be on Biden’s mind when he publicly addressed reporters and piously explained that, in the United States, the justice system doesn’t work like that. “I suspect it’s hard for people to understand that as powerful as my country is, as powerful as Barack Obama is as president, he has no authority under our Constitution to extradite anyone,” Biden explained to reporters. “Only a federal court can do that."

  NY Magazine Intelligencer

I think you can see where this could be going.

Well, the justice system works like that now.

The New York Times has a comprehensive report on Erdogan’s successful efforts to recruit top Trump administration officials into his corrupt scheme.

Scandals tend to be complicated, especially scandals involving banks. But this one is extremely simple. The basic elements:

1) The Justice Department was prosecuting financial crimes by a Turkish bank.

2) Turkey’s president asked President Trump to quash the investigation.

3) Trump has personally received more than $1 million in payments from business in Turkey while serving as president. 4) Two attorneys general loyal to Trump, Matthew Whitaker and William Barr, both pressured federal prosecutors to go easy on the Turkish bank.

[...]

“In mid-June 2019, when [Geoffrey] Berman met with Mr. Barr in Washington, the attorney general pushed Mr. Berman to agree to allow the Justice Department to drop charges against the defendants and terminate investigations of other suspected conspirators,” the Times reports. When Barr subsequently fired Berman, who resisted his pressure, Justice Department officials cited his stubbornness on the Turkey case “as a key reason for his removal.”

[...]

The misconduct found by the Times is actually much worse than the hypothetical behavior Biden said would lead to impeachment for two reasons. First, it undermines Trump’s own foreign policy.

I think that's a misreading of Trump's foreign policy. His foreign policy is to get whatever he can personally out of foreign connections.

The crimes for which the bank, Halkbank, was being investigated relate to violating American sanctions on Iran. After the Obama administration relaxed sanctions on Iran as part of a nuclear deal, the Trump administration ramped up those sanctions and used them as the lynchpin of its strategy in the region.

[...]

And second, Trump’s own financial interest is a factor Biden did not imagine in 2016. When Trump was asked about Turkey in 2015, he conceded that he had a conflict of interest. “I have a little conflict of interest because I have a major, major building in Istanbul,” Trump told Breitbart. “It’s called Trump Towers — two towers, instead of one. … And I’ve gotten to know Turkey very well. They’re amazing people. They’re incredible people. They have a strong leader.”

Now that's his foreign policy.

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

What in the world

A federal health agency halted a public-service coronavirus advertising campaign funded by $250 million in taxpayer money after it offered a special vaccine deal to an unusual set of essential workers: Santa Claus performers.

As part of the plan, a top Trump administration official wanted the Santa performers to promote the benefits of a Covid-19 vaccination and, in exchange, offered them early vaccine access ahead of the general public, according to audio recordings. Those who perform as Mrs. Claus and elves also would have been included.

[...]

The deal was the brainchild of the official, Michael Caputo, an HHS assistant secretary, who took a 60-day medical leave last month. The rest of the campaign now is under an HHS review.

  WSJ

Caputo needs to extend that medical leave.

In a 12-minute phone call in late August, Mr. Caputo told Mr. Erwin of the Santa group that vaccines would likely be approved by mid-November and distributed to front-line workers before Thanksgiving.

“If you and your colleagues are not essential workers, I don’t know what is,” Mr. Caputo said on the call, which was recorded by Mr. Erwin and provided to the Journal. “I cannot wait to tell the president,” Mr. Caputo said at another point about the plan. “He’s going to love this.”

[...]

Ric Erwin, chairman of the Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas, called the news “extremely disappointing,” adding: “This was our greatest hope for Christmas 2020, and now it looks like it won’t happen.”

[...]

The coronavirus ad effort—titled “Covid 19 Public Health and Reopening America Public Service Announcements and Advertising Campaign”—was intended to “defeat despair, inspire hope and achieve national recovery,” according to a work statement reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. It was to include television, radio, online and podcast announcements, starting immediately.

The public-relations blitz began to fizzle after some celebrities, including actor Dennis Quaid, shied away from participating, a former White House official said, amid concerns that the campaign would be viewed as political rather than aiding public health.

In a video posted on Instagram last month, Mr. Quaid said he had interviewed Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for the planned public-service announcement. “I am feeling some outrage and a lot of disappointment” about the unpaid PSA, Mr. Quaid said, which was mistakenly viewed by some as an endorsement of President Trump. He added: “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

[...]

Mr. Azar has “ordered a strategic review of this public health education campaign that will be led by top public health and communications experts to determine whether the campaign serves important public health purposes,” HHS officials said in a statement.

[...]

The idea had buy-in from top White House advisers. In a coronavirus task force meeting during the summer, senior Trump adviser Jared Kushner discussed how officials would get influencers to do public-service announcements encouraging people to wear masks and social distance, according to the former White House official, who was in attendance.

Maybe get the president to encourage them? Just a thought.

“We are concerned that the Trump Administration appears to be misusing taxpayer dollars to fund a political propaganda campaign—disguised as a public health effort—just weeks before a presidential election,” wrote Reps. James E. Clyburn (D., S.C.), of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, Carolyn B. Maloney (D., N.Y.), of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D., Ill.), of the Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy.

[...]

Without a vaccine, the Santa group’s Mr. Erwin said, he plans to cancel all but one socially distant Christmas booking this year. Mr. Erwin—whose Facebook page includes posts critical of President Trump and his handling of the pandemic—said his members are discussing ways to do their work with virtual visits, plexiglass and photo opportunities with a Santa trapped in a Covid-safe snow globe.

[...]

He said nearly 100 Santas had volunteered for the HHS assignment, adding that agency officials had said they would finalize the plan to use the Santas in mid-September.

“They may have been fibbing a little bit to Santa,” Mr. Erwin said.

Coal in their stockings on Christmas. Christmas quid pro quo.

Ric Erwin

Ohio's GOP

[Ohio state representative Larry] Householder was arrested last week in connection with a $60 million racketeering conspiracy involving a 2019 nuclear power plant bailout bill that he helped pass, allegedly in exchange for payments. On Thursday, a federal grand jury indicted Householder with conspiracy to commit racketeering, a charge punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

[...]

The Republican-controlled House did not vote on whether to expel Householder from the legislature, WOSU reports, and he is running unopposed for reelection in the fall.

  NPR

Federal agents arrested Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four others Tuesday as part of a $60 million racketeering and bribery investigation that prosecutors described as one of the largest public corruption cases in Ohio history.

[...]

The criminal complaint accused Householder of creating an enterprise, Generation Now Ohio, to collect large sums of money for him and others involved in the conspiracy and to advocate for the bailout of the nuclear plants. Some of the money also was spent on Householder's political campaign, as well as on the campaigns of allies, the complaint said.

[...]

"Unlike campaign or PAC contributions, they were not regulated, not reported, not subject to public scrutiny – and the enterprise freely spent the bribe payments to further the enterprise’s political interests and to enrich themselves.”

[...]

All the charges are tied to what federal prosecutors said was a criminal enterprise dedicated to securing a bailout for two nuclear power plants in northern Ohio owned by FirstEnergy Solutions of Akron. The bailout is expected to cost the state's utility ratepayers $1 billion.

A criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday described the effort as "Householder's Enterprise" and stated that he and his associates secretly used money from an energy company to expand their political power, enrich themselves and conceal their criminal conspiracy.

[...]

Also charged Tuesday were four lobbyists and Republican operatives:

Matthew Borges, former Ohio Republican Party chair and consultant; Neil Clark, founder of Grant Street Consultants and once called by USA Today “one of the best connected lobbyists in Columbus"; Juan Cespedes, co-founder of The Oxley Group in Columbus; Jeffrey Longstreth, adviser to Householder; Generation Now Ohio, a nonprofit that federal prosecutors link to Longstreth and Householder, also faces racketeering charges.

DeVillers said the arrests Tuesday will not end the investigation and that agents will continue to interview potential witnesses and execute search warrants in the coming days and weeks. "We're not done with this case," he said. "There are a lot of federal agents knocking on a lot of doors."

  Cincinatti.com

And, I presume, a lot of people hustling for legal representation.

The Generation Now named in the complaint is unrelated to the Cincinnati-based workforce development nonprofit of the same name.

How stinky is that? Giving your criminal enterprise a name that will taint a legitimate nonprofit.

DeVillers said Generation Now was set up as a social welfare entity, which allowed it to avoid disclosing its donors. But he said "not a dime of the money" that flowed to the group went to social programs.

Despicable.

Chris Hoffman, special agent in charge of the FBI's Cincinnati office, which led the [two-year-long] investigation, said the charges Tuesday represent "a shameful betrayal of the public trust."

[...]

The 82-page criminal complaint alleges Generation Now received about $60 million in exchange for Householder and other’s help in the passage of House Bill 6 and the blocking of a ballot initiative to overturn the legislation.

[...]

Householder also came under FBI scrutiny during his first term as Ohio's House speaker from 2001 to 2004. The FBI launched an investigation in 2004 into allegations that Householder and his aides took kickbacks from vendors and traded legislation for campaign contributions. The investigation ended in 2006 with no charges filed.

[...]

His rough-and-tumble approach to politics was reflected often in the criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday. In a conversation recorded by the FBI in January 2018, Householder discussed how he would use Generation Now money to help political allies.

According to an excerpt of the conversation in the complaint, when he was reminded that some in the House supported another candidate for the Speaker's job, Householder replied, "Yeah, we can f*** them over later."

[...]

Householder is one of the biggest names in Ohio politics and has been a major player for years in the state's Republican Party. He's known as an aggressive fundraiser who doesn't shy away from hardball tactics on the campaign trail or in the statehouse.

And now he's known as a racketeer. Soon he'll be known as a felon.

Throwback Thursday

This may be my favorite Randy Rainbow vid:

Impeach the motherfucker

Trying to avoid the obvious fact he's courting Florida votes...

He's admitting he's doling out pandemic aid according to which governors show they "appreciate" him most.

Quid pro quo.  He got away with it before. Why not keep using it?

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

Despot Donnie

And this is what he was impeached for.  Impeach him again.

He was just impeached for a quid pro quo withholding aid from Ukraine for a political favor, and people suggested his getting away with it might lead to him doing it to a governor of one of our own states.  That didn't take long, did it?

Finally, however, they've gotten him to enforce the Defense Production Act.

But does he even know the details?

When he DOES know who he's talking about, he just admits he's doing it because he has a grudge against General Motors.

Also...I guess he forgot.

And...

Totally incompetent.

With Trump, EVERYTHING is an opportunity to send campaign mailers.



Amen.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:  From the impeachment hearings in December...

UPDATE:

It will only get worse

Walter acts like it's a surprise.

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

Quid pro quo at work

More info from the Parnas documents.

New materials released by House Democrats appear to show Ukraine’s top prosecutor offering an associate of President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, damaging information related to former vice president Joe Biden if the Trump administration recalled the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

[...]

The cache of materials released by House investigators late Tuesday exposed a number of previously unknown details about efforts by Giuliani and his associates to obtain material in Ukraine that would undermine Trump’s Democratic opponents.

[...]

Among the revelations in the documents released Tuesday: a message from Giuliani to Parnas saying he had involved a person he called “no 1” — possibly Trump himself — in an effort to lift a U.S. visa ban on a former Ukrainian prosecutor who was planning to come to the United States to make claims about Biden.

[...]

The materials show that Parnas, a Russian-speaker who helped coordinate Giuliani’s outreach to Ukrainian sources, was directly communicating with an array of top Ukrainian officials. Among them was Yuri Lutsenko, at the time Ukraine’s top prosecutor and a close political ally of then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who was running for reelection.

Lutsenko wanted to get rid of Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador, in part because she had been critical of his office and supported a quasi-independent anti-corruption bureau he despised.

The messages, written in Russian, show Lutsenko urging Parnas to force out Yovanovitch in exchange for cooperation regarding Biden. At one point, Lutsenko suggests he won’t make any helpful public statements unless “madam” is removed.

“It’s just that if you don’t make a decision about Madam — you are calling into question all my declarations. Including about B,” Lutsenko wrote to Parnas in a March 22 message on WhatsApp.

It’s unclear if ‘B’ is a reference to Biden or Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company on whose board Hunter Biden served from 2014 to 2019.

Four days later, Lutsenko told Parnas that work on the case against the owner of the gas company is proceeding successfully and evidence of the money transfers of “B” had been obtained.

“And here you can’t even remove one fool :(” Lutsenko laments, again appearing to push for Yovanovitch’s ouster.

“She’s not a simple fool[,] trust me,” Parnas responded. “But she’s not getting away.”

[...]

The following month, Yovanovitch was removed from her post at Giuliani’s urging. Lutsenko later said publicly that he found no evidence of wrongdoing under Ukrainian law by Hunter or Joe Biden.

  WaPo

Ooooh. Burned 'em. I guess we found the fools.*

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

UPDATE:

Didn't want to rile His Nibs?

* Contradictory?

They're all in the loop

Republicans are going to start claiming the impeachment is so Nancy Pelosi can be president.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put her "own selfish political desires" above the needs of Americans by talking about impeachment on Thursday and she does it "over and over again," White House Press Secretary Hogan Gidley said Friday.

"She could have talked about USMCA (the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement) and passing it for farmers and ranchers and autoworkers," Gidley said on Fox News' "Overtime Outnumbered." "She could've talked about fixing our infrastructure that is so badly in need of repair. We are lowering prescription drug costs (but) she didn't."

  Newsmax

White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley told Fox News Thursday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's invitation for President Trump to offer "exculpatory" evidence in the impeachment inquiry involving U.S. policy toward Ukraine is proof her party wants to upend the justice system.

Gidley told "The Story" that Pelosi's comments effectively mean Trump is responsible for proving he is not guilty -- an assertion that runs counter to the American mantra of "innocent until proven guilty."

"This is a weird moment in politics," Gidley said. "Because, the speaker of the House -- an elected Democrat -- as they continue to push communism and socialism on the American people, whether it be with health care or taking away your paycheck and giving it to other people, they literally want to upturn and then get rid of the justice system."

  Fox

That's a start.

A national security aide to Vice President Mike Pence submitted additional classified evidence to House impeachment investigators about a phone call between Pence and Ukraine's president, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff revealed Friday.

[...]

In a letter to Pence, Schiff (D-Calif.) asked the vice president to declassify supplemental testimony from the aide, Jennifer Williams, about Pence’s Sept. 18 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, arguing that there is no “legitimate basis” to keep it secret.

“The Office of the Vice President’s decision to classify ‘certain portions’ of the Sept. 18 call … cannot be justified on national security or any other legitimate grounds we can discern,” Schiff wrote to Pence, requesting a response by Dec. 11.

[...]

The letter indicates Williams submitted the supplemental filing on Nov. 26, a week after she testified publicly.

[...]

Pence [...] has refused to turn over a slew of documents that investigators requested in October.

[...]

Schiff has indicated that his panel intends to file “supplemental reports” if investigators obtain new information they believe to be relevant to the impeachment probe.

[...]

A House Intelligence Committee official said that while Williams already discussed the phone call in her closed-door deposition and subsequent public testimony, “declassification of this supplemental testimony will allow the Congress to see further corroborative evidence as it considers articles of impeachment, and provide the public further understanding of the events in question.”

[...]

During her Nov. 7 deposition, Williams testified that on the Sept. 18 call, Pence was simply following up to a Sept. 1 meeting with Zelensky and in advance of a meeting between Trump and Zelensky at the United Nations in New York scheduled for the following week. She described it as a "very positive call" and said there was no mention of any of the investigations that Trump had been asking Zelensky to pursue.

I'm surprised they aren't already saying Pelosi is going after Pence now.

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

Rudy's getting good at this

On Thursday, Giuliani — apparently posting from somewhere in Kiev, where he’s currently traveling as part of his ongoing international effort to dig up dirt on the Bidens — posted tweets explicitly acknowledging a link between ongoing US assistance to Ukraine and investigations into the Biden family.

“The conversation about corruption in Ukraine was based on compelling evidence of criminal conduct by then VP Biden, in 2016, that has not been resolved and until it is will be a major obstacle ... to the US assisting Ukraine with its anti-corruption reforms,” Giuliani claimed, despite the fact that no such evidence has emerged.

In short, Giuliani tweeted the quid pro quo.

[...]

Of course, the notion that arguably the most personally corrupt president in American history ever had good-faith concerns about corruption abroad was hard to believe from the get-go — some might say as hard to believe as Attorney General William Barr’s claim that he couldn’t find an available room in the Washington, DC, area for his $30,000 holiday party anywhere other than the Trump International Hotel just blocks from the White House.

  Vox

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

Quid pro quo fodder for impeachment

Cramer blocks a bill at Trump's behest and then a Cramer donor gets a huge contract that the government had already denied?  I'm sure it was a "perfect" deal.

The chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security on Wednesday called for an investigation into a $400 million border wall contract awarded this week to North Dakota-based Fisher Sand and Gravel, a company President Trump personally urged military officials to hire.

In a letter to the Defense Department Office of Inspector General, Rep. BennieThompson (D-Miss.) said there are reasons to be suspicious of the decision to bestow such a large contract on the company. Thompson cited Trump’s repeated promotion of Fisher to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and a recent visit by the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to a span of privately financed barrier the firm built outside El Paso.

[...]

Fisher was not among the companies the Army Corps initially selected as qualified bidders on nearly $10 billion in contracts for border barrier construction. But CEO Tommy Fisher made repeat appearances on Fox News and elsewhere to promote his company, claiming his crews could build the structure faster and for less money.

  

If you want something from the government, get yourself on Fox News.

Fisher, a GOP donor, also enlisted Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) to personally lobby the president. Cramer accused the Army Corps of treating Fisher unfairly, and at one point he stalled the confirmation of a White House budget office nominee to force military officials to provide copies of other construction firms’ contract bids.

Last month, Fisher was included for the first time in the pool of qualified eligible bidders, and the $400 million is the company’s only major border wall contract to date.

[...]

Fisher also has worked with an activist group led by former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and other prominent right-wing Trump supporters who are building new border barriers on private land with millions of dollars in online donations.

[...]

The group, We Build the Wall, completed a span of new barrier outside El Paso during the summer, hiring Fisher to perform the work. Chad F. Wolf, the acting homeland security secretary, visited the privately built barrier last month, and the area’s top Border Patrol official praised the structure as a “game changer.”

We Build the Wall is planning to build a new 3.5-mile span of fencing along the banks of the Rio Grande in southern Texas, on land it says Tommy Fisher purchased.

A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order Tuesday to halt Fisher’s bulldozers, siding with the National Butterfly Center, a neighboring wildlife sanctuary whose director says the project will inflict irreparable harm on the local ecosystem.

Maybe that's the wall Trump keeps saying is going up.

By the way....

The other thing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said

Trump and his allies keep saying Zelensky says he wasn't pressured by Trump to announce an investigation into the Bidens.  We all know that's what he has to say, and here's something else he said to prove it:

Speaking to reporters from TIME and three of Europe’s leading publications, the President explained that, despite getting caught up in the impeachment inquiry now unfolding in Washington, D.C., Ukraine still needs the support of the United States.

Otherwise his country does not stand much of a chance, Zelensky said, in its effort to get back the territory Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014, starting with the Crimean Peninsula. Nor can Ukraine rely on steady financial support from abroad if President Donald Trump and his allies continue to signal to the world that Ukraine is corrupt, Zelensky said.

[...]

"Look, I never talked to the President from the position of a quid pro quo[", Zelensky said]. That’s not my thing. … I don’t want us to look like beggars. But you have to understand. We’re at war. If you’re our strategic partner, then you can’t go blocking anything for us. I think that’s just about fairness. It’s not about a quid pro quo. It just goes without saying.

[...]

"The United States of America is a signal, for the world, for everyone. When America says, for instance, that Ukraine is a corrupt country, that is the hardest of signals. It might seem like an easy thing to say, that combination of words: Ukraine is a corrupt country. Just to say it and that’s it. But it doesn’t end there. Everyone hears that signal. Investments, banks, stakeholders, companies, American, European, companies that have international capital in Ukraine, it’s a signal to them that says, ‘Be careful, don’t invest.’ Or, ‘Get out of there.’ This is a hard signal. For me it’s very important for the United States, with all they can do for us, for them really to understand that we are a different country, that we are different people. It’s not that those things don’t exist. They do. All branches of government were corrupted over many years, and we are working to clean that up. But that signal from them is very important.

  Time

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

Another lie - imagine that

At the heart of the impeachment inquiry, members of Congress may have been mistakenly led to believe that there were two phone calls between President Donald Trump and Ambassador Gordon Sondland in early September—with the second call having the possibility of helping the President’s case. That’s not what happened. There was only one call, and it was highly incriminating.

The call occurred on September 7th. In this call, Trump did say there was “no quid pro quo” with Ukraine, but he then went on to outline his preconditions for releasing the security assistance and granting a White House visit. The call was so alarming that when John Bolton learned of it, he ordered his’ deputy Tim Morrison to immediately report it to the National Security Council lawyers.

Sondland has testified there was a call on September 9th in which Trump said there was “no quid pro quo,” but that he wanted President Zelenskyy “to do” the right thing.

[...]

As this article was in the publication process at Just Security, the Washington Post published a report raising doubts about the existence of [that] call. The analysis that follows is consistent with the Post’s report and, among other points, shows why Sondland’s “no quid pro quo” call is in fact the same as the September 7th call that Morrison reported to NSC lawyers on September 7th.

[...]

In the face of [...] damning and conclusive evidence, the White House and House Republicans have been forced to retreat to their current defense: that President Trump himself has not been proven to have done anything wrong, because there was no witness who testified to having personally heard the President announce that he was seeking a quid pro quo from Ukraine, in exchange for release of the security assistance.

[...]

Multiple witnesses also testified that EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland had told them that, in his conversations with the president, Trump had described his requirement for Zelenskyy to publicly announce the investigations into Biden and 2016. However, to the extent that no witness testified to having personally heard Trump request a quid pro quo in regards to the security assistance, there are two reasons for this.

The first is that, with a single exception, every individual who interacted directly with President Trump refused to comply with House subpoenas for their testimony.

The second is that the single exception who did testify, Ambassador Sondland, did not testify accurately when he said that President Trump had never asked him for a quid pro quo from Ukraine. In fact, President Trump had personally informed Sondland of his specific demands for a quid pro quo from Ukraine – and the White House National Security Council is sitting on documents that confirm it.

[...]

Sondland has, at times, been ambiguous as to when exactly this phone call took place, and has vacillated between the dates of September 6-9. But in the version of events that Sondland most frequently describes in his testimony, he says that he made the “no quid pro quo” call on September 9th. Sondland has testified it was a brief conversation, in which he asked President Trump a single question:

I asked him one open-ended question: What do you want from Ukraine? And as I recall, he was in a very bad mood. It was a very quick conversation. He said: I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. I want Zelenskyy to do the right thing. (Sondland Depo. at 106)

It is this testimony from Sondland that the White House and House Republicans have clung to, in support of their claim that the impeachment inquiry has failed to show misconduct by the President. ’’

  Just Security

Just to recap: Ambassador Bill Taylor told Sondland that the withheld aid to Ukraine was beyond problematic, and the story is that Sondland then contacted Trump who said there was no "quid pro quo", which he reported back to Taylor.  Apparently, Mr. Sondland was lying again.

President Trump has taken to regularly invoking Sondland’s testimony at rallies and at press events, asserting that Sondland’s description of the “no quid pro” call exonerates him.

[...]

Overall, it must be noted, Sondland’s testimony was incredibly damning for Trump. However, it was not quite as damning as it should have been. Because in reality, as shown from the testimony of other witnesses, the “no quid pro quo” call did not take place on September 9th. What’s more, the call was not prompted by any text from Bill Taylor. And lastly, Sondland’s testimony about the “no quid pro quo” call omitted the most important part: the part where President Trump informed Sondland that the security assistance would be at a “stalemate” until President Zelenskyy stood in front of a microphone and personally announced that he was opening an investigation into Trump’s political rivals.

The “no quid pro quo” call did not take place on September 9th, as Sondland claimed at one point in his testimony; instead, it took place on September 7th. This is shown from the testimony of Tim Morrison, Senior Director for European Affairs for the National Security Council, and Charge D’Affaires Bill Taylor, both of whom were briefed on the call by Sondland shortly after it occurred.

This detail is critically important, not because the precise date of the call is significant in and of itself, but because of what it shows about the true content of that call – the substance of the conversation that Morrison and Taylor described in their testimony, and that Sondland omitted from his.

So even after the "three tries" at getting Sondland's "forthcoming" testimony, he was still lying. Don't tell Representative Maloney.

(Still my favorite clip.)

Though Ambassador Sondland testified that, to the best of his recollection, the “no quid pro quo” call occurred on September 9th, Sondland was also quick to point out that as a result of his inability to review certain State Department records, his “memory admittedly has not been perfect.” (Sondland Testimony of Nov. 20, 2019) Still, Sondland said he had a distinct reason for remembering the date of this particular call: it was prompted by what Sondland described as a “fairly shocking” and “alarming” text message he received from Charge Taylor, in a group chat that included Ambassador Kurt Volker. It was in response to this text, Sondland said, that Sondland made the call to President Trump:

So rather than ask the President nine different questions – is it this, is it this, is that – I just said what do you want from Ukraine? I may have even used a four letter word. And he said I want nothing, I want no quid pro quo, I just want Zelensky to do the right thing, to do what he ran on or – or words to that effect. (Sondland Testimony of Nov. 20, 2019)

Because Ambassador Volker’s text exchanges were one of the few documentary records produced in response to the HSPCI’s subpoenas, we have a copy of the text exchange Sondland referred to. Per Volker’s records, Taylor’s text was sent at 12:47am on September 9th.

[...]

After speaking to President Trump, Sondland testified, he texted a response to Taylor at 5:19am,[1] which Sondland described as a “paraphrase” of what Trump had just told him: “The President has been crystal clear: no quid pro quos of any kind.”

With these text records to support his account, Ambassador Sondland testimony’ that this this call took place on September 9th went largely unchallenged during the hearings before the HPSCI. But despite the text recordings – which would seemingly corroborate Sondland’s memory and provide him precise evidence about when the call occurred – Sondland’s testimony has had a curious uncertainty too. For instance, in Sondland’s amendment to his closed-door testimony, he avoided identifying the precise date for the call altogether, instead giving a range of possible dates – from September 6th to September 9th – and then noting that his lack of access to his phone records prevented him from identifying the date with more certainty.

[...]

And, in his public testimony before HPSCI, when asked to confirm that this call had indeed taken place on September 9th, Sondland repeatedly invoked his lack of access to the records to explain his inability to say with certainty if the call occurred on September 6th or September 9th.

[...]

CASTOR: Okay. And then in your September 9th communication with The President during your deposition that was a striking moment when you walked us through your telephone call with President Trump on September 9th.

SONDLAND: By the way I still cannot find a record of that call because the State Department or The White House cannot locate it. But I’m pretty sure I had the call on that day.

Sondland’s testimony about the White House’s inability to locate records of this call is also curious. On the one hand, the failure to preserve such critical records might appear to be something like obstruction, if not the outright destruction of evidence. On the other hand, the White House informing Sondland that it “cannot locate” a record of the September 9th call makes perfect sense – if in fact no call occurred at all between Sondland and Trump on September 9th.

[...]

After Fiona Hill resigned in mid-July as the NSC’s Senior Director for European Affairs, Tim Morrison took over her role, and for the next three months, he received updates on Ukraine-related matters from Ambassador Sondland. In his closed-door testimony, Morrison described how, on September 7th, he received a call from Sondland, who wanted to update him on a call he had just had with President Trump:

In the phone call, he told me that he had just gotten off the phone — the September 7th phone call — he told me he had just gotten off the phone with the President. I remember this because he actually made the comment that it was easier for him to get a hold of the President than to get a hold of me, which led me to respond, “Well, the President doesn’t work for Ambassador Bolton; I do,” to which Ambassador Sondland responded, “Does Ambassador Bolton know that?” But that’s why I have a vivid recollection of this. And he wanted to tell me what he had discussed with the President. … He told me [ ] that there was no quid pro quo, but President Zelenskyy must announce the opening of the investigations and he should want to do it. (Morrison Depo. at 190) (emphasis added)

[...]

In Morrison’s public testimony, he once again placed the “no quid pro quo” call on September 7th.

[...]

In this call, Sondland told Morrison of Trump’s demand that President Zelenskyy personally announce the Burisma/2016 investigations, and upon hearing this, Morrison said, he had a “sinking feeling.” (Morrison Depo. at 145) Morrison was concerned President Trump’s “requirements” could not be met in time for the hold on the military assistance to be lifted.

[...]

In other words, on September 7th, when Sondland was briefing Morrison about Trump’s demands for Zelenskyy to announce the investigations, there were only eight days left before the security assistance evaporated all together. Ukraine only had eight days left to provide Trump with something that would satisfy his demands.

And Morrison had another reason for knowing the precise date this call occurred – because as soon as the call was over, he went to the NSC lawyers to report it.

[...]

In addition to Sondland giving incorrect testimony about the date of the “no quid pro quo” call, Sondland was also incorrect about what had prompted the call in the first place. His September 9th text exchange with Bill Taylor could not have been what caused him to call President Trump, because that call had happened at least two days before the text. Instead, Sondland had called Trump in order to confirm whether a proposed modification to the quid pro quo arrangement would be acceptable to Trump.

[...]

Whether due to a faulty memory, or due to intentional deceit, Sondland’s testimony about the “no quid pro quo” call omitted the most critical part of the conversation: President Trump’s rejection of the compromise offer for the Prosecutor General to announce the investigations, and his demand that Zelenskyy himself do it. The “no quid pro quo” call was, in reality, a “here is the specific quid pro quo I want” call. And, by erroneously placing the call on September 9th, Sondland helped obscure these omissions from his testimony, by divorcing the call from its actual context in the ongoing negotiations with Ukraine over what form of quid pro quo would be acceptable. More importantly, it also gave the appearance that the call Sondland was describing was somehow different from the call that was described by two other witnesses – both of whom testified that the call included an explicit demand by Trump for a quid pro quo.

When Sondland briefed Morrison and Taylor on the “no quid pro quo” call on September 7th and 8th, he included details that caused both Morrison and Taylor to be alarmed, as was John Bolton when he was informed of it.

[...]

Still, as much as these omissions from Sondland’s testimony may have benefited President Trump, ’the differences between Sondland’s testimony and the testimony of the other witnesses are cosmetic. In substance, Sondland does not dispute the accuracy of the testimony given by the other witnesses.

[...]

Sondland does remember a phone call in which someone told him about the quid pro quo that Trump was demanding – Sondland just ’can’t remember if it was President Trump that he had this conversation with. (Though whether the conversation was with Giuliani or President Trump makes little difference, since Sondland testified that he understood Giuliani was conveying the President’s conditions.)

But Morrison and Taylor both confirmed, in their testimonies, that it was President Trump. And Sondland has agreed that he has no reason to doubt the version of events described by Morrison and Taylor.

[...]

Finally, it’s worth noting that Sondland’s phone call with President Trump is not the only presidential phone call that Sondland now has difficulty remembering. When Sondland and Taylor spoke on September 8th, it wasn’t just Sondland’s call with President Trump that Sondland needed to tell Taylor about – Sondland also needed to update him on his calls with President Zelenskyy.

In fact, according to Sondland’s text message to Taylor, there had been “multiple convos” with Trump and Zelenskyy that he needed to brief Taylor on.

Does Mr. Sondland need to make a fourth correction in his tesimony? If so, he better do it in writing, because he'll not want to answer to Representative Maloney again.

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

Sondland hearing finally ends

Laura Cooper and David Hale were scheduled to begin testimony an hour and a half ago, but Sondland's testimony has just ended.

I have to say that I look forward to the endings of all these hearings because of the final line-up of questioners.  Since the Dems have more members on the committee than Republicans do, the final five interrogators are all Democrats in a row with no interruption:  Denny Heck, Peter Welch, Sean Patrick Maloney, Val Demings and Raja Krishnamoorthi.  (*Correction below.)

Denny Heck always soothes and oils the witness with sincere, heartfelt appeals to everyone''s better angels, followed by an always intelligent and respectful set from elder statesman Welch, setting them up for the one-two punch of Maloney and Demings, both with a deceptive and deadly demeanor if they're not buying what the witness is selling.

Sondland took a real beating from those two today after Heck and Welch relaxed him, outright blindsided by Maloney, and Demings never let him up from it.

Honorable mention to Jackie Speier:

And to Mike Quigley for finally pointing out that the name or testimony of the whistleblower is competely unimportant to the proceedings:  "If we were investigating arson [Republicans] would indict the guy who pulled the fire alarm."

*Correction:

I misremembered. That asshole Gym Jordan comes after Denny Heck in the line of questioning.

Tomorrow:  Fiona Hill and David Holmes

UPDATE:

Gordon Sondland's opening statement

The mystery of how Sondland will testify is now solved. If Sondland goes under the bus, he's not going willingly.

He wouldn't finger Trump for saying directly to him that the aid to Ukraine was contingent upon announcing investigations into Biden/Burisma/2016 elections.  He placed blame directly on Rudy Giuliani (the bus heading for Rudy is getting closer and larger) and the State Department for Sondland's earlier deposition lies and  lack of recollection, because they will not permit him to access any notes or documents that might help him place things in chronology or job his memory.  He also said the White House will not allow him to see a readout of the phone call between him and Trump on that 7/26 phone call Holmes reported.  There's a reason they won't release documents.

One of the first statements in Sondland's opening statement was, "We did not want to work with Rudy Giuliani."  While he denied that Trump ever said anything to him about the investigations, he said that Rudy's requests were definitely a quid pro quo and that Rudy was expressing the desires of the president.

Sondland also dragged Mike Pompeo into the path of that bus.  He says they kept Pompeo (and a litany of other people, including Rick Perry and Mick Mulvaney) informed of everything.  "They knew what we were doing and why....Everyone was in the loop."  He said Pompeo often wanted emails from Sondland sent through Pompeo's executive secretary Lisa Kenna.  Not a particularly good way to keep the heat off Pompeo - I assume Kenna will be questioned in some fashion.

He also said that Pompeo was still working with Rudy as late as September.

McClatchy already has an article up on this: Pompeo is directly implicated in Ukraine scandal by Sondland in impeachment testimony.

Sondland also dragged Mike Pence into the path.  Or at least at the edge, and if the bus gets any larger, it will take him down with the others.

Yesterday, the Democrats took lots of heat from the Republicans for turning from using the term quid pro quo to bribery.  At some point - maybe his closing remarks yesterday - Adam Schiff gave a definition of bribery to the effect it's withholding an official act for something of value.  (I'm not sure why they don't just say, "What the fuck do you people think quid pro quo means?"  Unless it's because the Constitutional provision for impeachment specifically includes bribery in the language.)

This morning, in his questioning of Sondland, Schiff asked a series of questions that were obviously meant to unequivocally make the case, without using the word bribery,  but getting Sondland to say about certain things that they were "official acts."  That little morsel is lying in wait.  It'll come up again.

At one point in Sondland's opening statement he stressed there was something mysterious about the date August 26 when Bolton's office asked Sondland for Rudy Giuliani's contact information.  I'm still waiting for someone to explain that.

At the end of his statement, Sondland said, "It's an honor to serve the people of the United States as ambassador."  Nothing about serving Trump or this administration.  That seems quite intentional.  And he might not be serving for much longer after today.

Where we are in the hearing at this point (early into GOP counsel Castor's interrogation), Sondland is getting testy.   ("I'm not going to say whether I believed him [Trump] or not.")   He says he's just stating what he knows.  Castor's approach is not working if he wants to get Sondland on record in their favor.

Before Sondland gave his statement, Nunes, in his opener, told him, "The Democrats are going to try to smear you."  Sondland seemed pleased to think the Republicans had his back.  I'm guessing he's getting the opposite picture now.

To be continued...

They never thought of that

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

Ukrainians still need Trump on their side

Ukraine's foreign minister told reporters on Thursday that U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland did not link

[...]

"I have never seen a direct link between investigations and security assistance. Yes, investigations were mentioned, you know, in a presidential conversation. But there was no clear connection between these events," Prystaiko added.

[...]

On Wednesday, the House held its first public impeachment, during which William Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine appeared.

Taylor said during the hearing that someone on his staff overheard a July 26 call between Trump and Sondland during which Trump asked Sondland “about the investigations.”

Sondland, according to Taylor, replied “the Ukrainians were ready to move forward.”

[...]

Sondland is scheduled to testify publicly next week.

  The Hill

So now he knows he's clear to deny linking assistance and investigations.

The only problem is he already admitted to linking them.

Sondland corrected his earlier testimony last week to say that, after reviewing testimony from other witnesses, he recalled a meeting with a Zelensky aide in early September during which he said aid to Ukraine would likely not flow unless Kyiv made a public statement about pursuing investigations.

  The Hill

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

George Kent transcript released

Kent testified in a closed session on Oct. 15, telling lawmakers that, like other career diplomats, he was essentially cut out of decisions about Ukraine due to maneuvering by other administration officials and outsiders, including Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Kent accused Giuliani of conducting a "campaign of lies" about the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, that led to her early recall from Kyiv.

Kent is among the witnesses scheduled to testify in open hearings next week. He has been in the Foreign Service since 1992, serving in posts ranging from Warsaw to Bangkok.

[...]

Kent makes clear in his testimony that he was alarmed by the role the president’s personal lawyer was playing in trying to shape Ukraine policy — especially his efforts to work with a Ukrainian prosecutor to smear the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv, Marie Yovanovitch.

But he said that others, like Kurt Volker, the special envoy to Ukraine, thought that it was better to engage with Giuliani than to ignore him because of the influence he wielded on President Donald Trump. Volker even brushed off Giuliani’s campaign against Yovanovitch and push to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, a rival for the White House in 2020, saying, according to Kent: ”Well, if there’s nothing there, what does it matter?”

  Politico

Under the bus for Volker.

Kent told investigators that, based on his conversations with other senior American diplomats, Gordon Sondland relayed that Trump “wanted nothing less than President Zelensky to go to microphone [sic] and say investigations, Biden, and Clinton.”

Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, was describing “in shorthand” what Trump wanted the Ukrainians to do, according to Kent.

“Zelensky needed to go to a microphone and basically there needed to be three words in the message, and that was the shorthand,” Kent added.

And I suppose Trump will say he can't be held responsible for how Sondland portrayed what Trump wanted.

As Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani was interested in getting Ukraine to investigate Biden and the 2016 election. And Yuriy Lutsenko, a top prosecutor in Ukraine at the time, saw Yovanovitch as an apparent threat to his ability to keep his position as it became clear that U.S. officials felt he was not doing enough to battle corruption.

“Based on what I know, Yuriy Lutsenko, as prosecutor general, vowed revenge, and provided information to Rudy Giuliani in hopes that he would spread it and lead to her removal,” Kent said.

Kent said he learned that Lutsenko had even met in private with Giuliani in New York, where Lutsenko’s purpose was to “throw mud” at Yovanovitch and Kent himself.

Kent said the two men essentially waged a “campaign of lies” about Yovanovitch, who would be recalled early from her post in May.

[...]

At one point, after Giuliani slammed Yovanovitch, Kent and others in a May 2019 interview, Kent was told by his superiors to "keep my head down and lower my profile in Ukraine,” he said.

The instruction came via an intermediary from David Hale, the undersecretary of State for political affairs, according to Kent’s understanding. It wasn’t clear if Hale had talked to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about it.

Hale testified to impeachment investigators on Wednesday, but little has yet emerged about what he told them.

[...]

“It was Ambassador Sondland's connections with Mulvaney” that got the U.S. delegation that attended Zelensky’s inauguration a meeting afterwards with President Trump, Kent testified. That meeting “was not done through NSC staff,” Kent said, explaining how it deviated from the typical process for such debriefings.

Sondland, for his part, had testified that “I don’t believe I’ve ever had a formal meeting with Mulvaney … we say hello, we walk by and wave. I don’t believe I’ve sat down with him for a formal meeting on any subject.”

[...]

At a certain point, Kent said, he realized he needed to make a record of his concerns about Ukraine policy. Two conversations in particular triggered the move.

One was with Catherine Croft, a special assistant to Volker. She asked Kent in mid-August, he recalled, whether the U.S. had “ever asked the Ukrainians to investigate anybody.”

He explained to her that if there had been a crime committed in the U.S., there was a treaty that allowed for asking for such assistance, among other options. But if she was talking about asking the Ukrainians to prosecute someone for political reasons, he said, “the answer is, I hope we haven’t, and we shouldn’t because that goes against everything that we are trying to promote in post-Soviet states for the last 28 years, which is the promotion of the rule of law.”

The next day, he learned from William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Kyiv after Yovanvitch had been pulled out, that Volker had raised the possibility of “investigations” with top Ukrainian officials. So Kent decided to write a “note to the file saying that I had concerns that there was an effort to initiate politically motivated prosecutions that were injurious to the rule of law, both Ukraine and the U.S.”

[...]

Republican Senators Jim Inhofe, Rob Portman and Mitch McConnell called Trump and asked him about the hold on military aid to Ukraine just before the hold was lifted, according to Kent. The questions, and bipartisan criticism of the hold from members of Congress, may have contributed to Trump’s decision to release the aid on September 11.

No doubt. I would love to hear that conversation with McConnell, et al.

Kent says it was his “personal opinion” that only the White House meeting, not the military assistance, was part of a quid pro quo.

“It strikes me that the association was a meeting with the White House, at the White House, not related to the security assistance,” Kent told investigators. “But again, that’s just my personal opinion, other people may have different opinions."

And they do. Nearly everybody else who's testified, in fact. Particularly Gordon Sondland, who was in direct contact with Trump and would know, after his memory was "refreshed".

Full transcript.