Stunning reversal by US envoy
Sondland hands House impeachment investigators key testimony
I said that resumption of US aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks — GORDON SONDLAND
US diplomat
Washington, Nov. 6: “I now do recall.” With that stunning reversal, diplomat Gordon Sondland handed House impeachment investigators another key piece of corroborating testimony. He acknowledged what Democrats contend was a clear quid pro quo, pushed by President Donald Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, with Ukraine.
Sondland, in an addendum to his sworn earlier testimony, said that military assistance to the East European ally was being withheld until Ukraine’s new president agreed to release a statement about fighting corruption, as Trump wanted. Sondland knows that proposed arrangement to be a fact, he said, because he was the one who carried the message to a Ukrainian official on the sidelines of a conference in Warsaw with vice president, Mike Pence.
“I said that resumption of US aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Sondland recalled.“It kept getting more insidious,” Sondland told investigators, as the “timeline went on.”
Sondland testified that he spoke with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about Giuliani, “and Pompeo rolled his eyes and said: ‘Yes, it’s something we have to deal with.’”
His three-page update, tucked beneath hundreds of pages of sworn testimony from Sondland and former Ukraine Special Envoy Kurt Volker, was released by House investigators as Democrats prepared to push the closeddoor sessions to public hearings as soon as next week.
Trump has denied any quid pro quo, but Democrats say there is a singular narrative developing since the president’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy when he first asked for “a favour.” That request,
David Hale plans to tell congressional impeachment investigators that secretary of state Mike Pompeo and other senior officials determined that defending Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch would hurt the effort to free up US military assistance to
Ukraine. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said the House panels conducting the inquiry are releasing the word-by-word transcripts of the past weeks’ closeddoor hearings so the American public can decide for themselves.
“This is about more than just one call,” Schiff stated. “We now know that the call was just one piece of a larger operation to redirect our foreign policy to benefit Donald Trump’s personal and political interests, not the national interest.”
Pushing back, White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, issued a statement saying the transcripts “show there is even less evidence for this illegitimate impeachment sham than previously thought.”
In his revised testimony, Sondland, says his memory was refreshed by the opening statements of two other inquiry witnesses, William Taylor and Tim Morrisson. — AP