Sondland chooses to save himself
Minutes after he took his seat yesterday in the House impeachment hearing, Ambassador Gordon Sondland made himself clear: He had come to save his own reputation, not the president’s.
The one-time Trump loyalist – a longtime Republican donor from Oregon who made his fortune in hotels – Sondland told the anxious row of lawmakers that he was testifying ‘‘despite directives from the White House and the State Department that I refuse to appear, as many others have done.’’ ‘‘I agreed to testify because I respect the gravity of the moment and believe I have an obligation to account fully for my role in these events.’’ Then, with a batch of emails and fresh recollections in hand, he let loose.
‘‘Was there a quid pro quo?’’ he said. ‘‘The answer is yes.’’ Speaking slowly and clearly from a long prepared statement, he implicated President Donald Trump’s entire inner circle as part of a scheme to demand Ukraine investigate President Donald Trump’s political rivals in exchange for US military aid and a White House visit – Vice President Mike Pence, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo.
‘‘Everyone was in the loop,’’ Sondland said repeatedly, denying he was heading a ‘‘rogue operation.’’
‘‘We followed the president’s orders,’’ he said at another point.
Sondland, who has tried to downplay the scheme for weeks, was facing a dilemma that almost everyone in Trump’s orbit confronts sooner or later: Stick with
US Ambassador to the EU
Trump and risk lasting damage, or break away and hope to survive his wrath.
Sean Spicer, then the president’s press secretary, learned it as soon as Trump took up residence in the White House in 2017, when he followed the president’s demands to lie about the crowd size at the inauguration.
His reward? A few supportive tweets and a neon green ruffled shirt when he became a contestant on ‘‘Dancing with the Stars.’’ (He was voted off last week.) Others fared much worse.
Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and his longtime political whisperer, Roger Stone, were all convicted of crimes after trying to protect Trump. They are now hoping for pardons.
Other associates the president.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime New York lawyer and fixer, sits in a federal prison in Otisville, NY, after pleading guilty to tax, abandoned banking and finance crimes.
Cohen broke spectacularly with his former boss, painting the president in sworn testimony as a con man, a cheat and a racist. Trump now refers to Cohen as a liar, a failure and a rat.
Anthony Scaramucci, who lasted 10 days as White House communications director before getting the boot, has become a full-time Twitter troll against his former boss.
Others who hitched their reputations to Trump remain inside the administration.
Attorney General William Barr helped the president portray the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign and possible obstruction as a complete exoneration. Some of his former colleagues were aghast, but Barr has stood fast.
Special adviser Kellyanne Conway, the first in Trump’s circle to argue in favour of ‘‘alternative facts’’ in his defence, has withstood a public dissection of her marriage campaign as her husband, conservative lawyer George Conway, has become a prominent critic and target of Trump.
Sondland’s calculations have been a mystery. Though he was confirmed as ambassador to the European Union, he was trusted by Trump to play a key role in US policy toward Ukraine, a country outside his official portfolio.
In October, Trump described Sondland in a tweet as ‘‘a really good man and great American,’’ and urged him not to testify.
Sondland was close enough to Trump to dial him up on a cellphone from a Kyiv restaurant on July 26. During the five-minute call, which two US Embassy employees overheard at the table, he updated Trump on his efforts to get Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to announce the investigations into Democrats that Trump had demanded.
‘‘He loves your Sondland told Trump.
‘‘That’s how President Trump and I communicate,’’ Sondland explained yesterday, suggesting a lockerroom camaraderie. ‘‘A lot of four-letter words.’’ Last week, Trump said he did not remember Sondland’s call from the Kyiv restaurant ‘‘at all.’’
But, he added, ‘‘I guess Sondland has stayed with testimony that there was no quid pro quo.’’ But Sondland did not stick with that testimony.
Yesterday, he gave Trump only a small thread to hang on. He said many of Trump’s demands were channelled indirectly, through his personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani.
‘‘We did not want to work with Giuliani,’’ he said, but Trump demanded it.
– LA Times
‘‘Everyone was in the loop. We followed the president’s orders.’’
Gordon Sondland
ass,’’