Testifying a brave move
Iassumed that Gordon Sondland, the US Ambassador to the European Union, would ‘‘take five’’ on Wednesday under the bright lights of the House impeachment inquiry.
‘‘Taking five’’ is lawyer slang for invoking the Fifth Amendment’s protections against self-incrimination. As with most legal systems, anyone testifying in a US proceeding under oath can simply refuse to answer questions in order to avoid committing perjury, or admitting to a crime.
Sondland had previously given conflicting testimony about his knowledge of President Donald Trump’s alleged attempts to pressure Ukraine into helping him smear Joe Biden, Trump’s top 2020 political rival. I expected Sondland, rather than face a perjury charge, to simply refuse to answer questions about his communications with the president, the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and others in the administration.
Boy, was I wrong.
According to Sondland, Trump, through Giuliani, explicitly conditioned a White House visit for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Zelensky committing to publicly announcing two investigations: The first into alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 US presidential election; the second into the oil and gas company Burisma, the company where Hunter Biden, former vice-president Joe Biden’s son, once sat on the board.
Also, ‘‘resumption of the US aid [to the tune of US$400 million would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks’’, Sondland testified.
The New York Times reported this week that Zelensky’s people had organised an appearance on a CNN weekly news and political affairs show, Fareed Zakaria GPS. Zelensky was prepared to follow through with the announcement into the 2016 and Burisma investigations.
A ‘‘tug of war’’ had gone on between Zelensky’s aides, many of them worrying that by assisting Trump in this way they would upset Democrats and harm the longer-term relationship with the United States.
Zelensky’s team ultimately decided that essential military aid and a White House visit were simply too important to pass up.
As it turned out, the CNN appearance never eventuated. The Whistleblower complaint, filed in August and made public in September that alerted Congress to Trump’s unusual Ukraine demands blew the negotiations wide open. The aid was later released, and no anti-corruption statement was ever made.
Sondland testified that he had come to believe (but had no direct evidence) that US military aid was being held up for the same reason as the White House visit. His testimony echoed that of the witnesses before and after him: a long line of foreign service professionals who related their concern and alarm about what was going on.
Sondland was frank and energetic. Early on, he took a shot at the White House and Department of State which, on the president’s orders, have refused to turn over documents to either the investigators or the witnesses. Sondland had nothing to refer to, not even his phone records, to help him piece together the events of the summer.
Sondland told the committee that the president expressly told him and others to work with Giuliani, even though none of them wished to. He testified that Giuliani’s demands that Ukraine make a public statement announcing investigations of the 2016 elections and DNC server as well as
Burisma were an expression of the desires of Trump, and that the investigations were important to the president.
And that they were a quid pro quo.
Sondland sat for hours, at times seeming full of mirth. Never betraying that he had his own agenda, and facing up to harsh questioning from both sides, Sondland told it like he saw it.
And the way he saw it was this: There were many people at the highest levels of the US government who understood that the president was trying to get something in exchange for the meeting and the military aid.
Although a widely debunked theory (and reportedly part of Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaign), they understood that the president believed Ukraine had meddled in the 2016 election (and liked to believe it because it meant Russia didn’t help him).
They also understood that the president wanted to harm Joe Biden, his political rival. They knew it was improper to condition anything on these demands. They were trying to resist and constrain the president’s impulses, while making sure that the meeting with Zelensky occurred and the aid was released to Ukraine. They all understood that a strong Ukraine is (and has always been, at least in living memory) in the United States’ best interests.
Sondland implicated Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, energy secretary Rick Perry, former National Security adviser John Bolton, and Vice-President Mike Pence in the scheme, stating they all had knowledge of what Sondland called ‘‘what we were doing and why’’.
‘‘Everyone was in the loop,’’ he said.
Seeing that a man now embroiled in the one of the biggest scandals in US presidential history was until two years ago a hotelier who also donated to Republican causes, including US$1m to Trump’s inauguration fund, it got me thinking about what it takes to be an ambassador.
The short answer is, ‘‘it depends’’.
There are two paths to a US ambassadorship. Some ambassadors are experienced foreign service professionals. The so-called ‘‘career’’ appointments. Others are political appointees with varying degrees of political, legal, or policy experience. For example, Scott Brown, the US Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa (and a former law firm colleague of mine, though we worked in different offices) was a political appointee who came to the post as a former US senator and colonel in the Massachusetts and Maryland National Guard.
Sondland is somewhat of a political odd-jobber, having taken on some national political service, especially as a liaison between his home state of Oregon and the White House. He came to the job with very little experience. And yet he very clearly grasped the US interests at stake in Ukraine, and the mess that was unfolding around him.
In the annals of US history, it is unlikely that Sondland will be remembered for his work with the European Union, or even for his chain of hotels or his philanthropy. His decision to testify rather than hide behind the Fifth Amendment was brave. And in fairness, his testimony did create on-therecord support for both the House investigators and the defenders of the president.
Perhaps the most important statement Sondland made was not about the quid pro quo (or lack thereof). It was about what was to happen after Zelensky announced the investigations that President Trump had asked for.
‘‘I never heard . . . anyone say that the investigations had to start or had to be completed,’’ Sondland told Daniel Goldman, the lawyer questioning witnesses for the Democrats.
‘‘The only thing I heard from Mr Giuliani or otherwise was that they had to be announced in some form.’’
In other words, what mattered was not the investigation, but the announcement of the investigation.
If the president didn’t want an investigation, then he only wanted headlines. Headlines that absolved Russia of interference in his favour in the 2016 election. Headlines that smeared Hunter Biden and Joe Biden as corrupt.
What a way to win in 2020.
Danielle McLaughlin is the Sunday Star-Times ’US correspondent. She is a lawyer, author, and political and legal commentator, appearing frequently on US and New Zealand TV and radio. She is also an ambassador for #ChampionWomen, which aims to encourage respectful, diverse, and thoughtful conversations. Follow Danielle on Twitter at @MsDMcLaughlin.
If the president didn’t want an investigation, then he only wanted headlines. Headlines that absolved Russia of interference in his favour in the 2016 election. Headlines that smeared Hunter Biden and Joe Biden as corrupt. What a way to win in 2020.