Trump buddy discovers nothing focuses the mind like a looming charge of perjury
Something curious happened while supporters of President Bone Spur were busy vilifying Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, an Army combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient, for telling what he heard on the bizarre July 25 White House phone call to the president of Ukraine.
As Vindman’s outstanding military and diplomatic service was being trashed by pampered worms like Donald Trump Jr., another major witness in the House impeachment investigation was experiencing an eerie awakening.
Gordon Sondland, the president’s personal pick as ambassador to the European Union, got up one morning and discovered that his memory of key events had mysteriously improved. All of a sudden he could recall conversations that he’d previously claimed didn’t happen.
Originally, for instance, Sondland testified he never said that $400 million in U.S. security aid to Ukraine was being withheld until that country agreed to investigate Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
In fact, Sondland’s text that there was “no quidpro-quo” had been waved by the president’s defenders as proof that the White House reconstruction of that weird Ukraine call was being misinterpreted.
Unfortunately, other national security officials and diplomats began testifying otherwise. That’s when the self-survival cells in Sondland’s brainpan began to twitch.
Some folks with failing memories gorge themselves on drug-store products like ginkgo or jellyfish proteins. Sondland needed no such potions.
The fear of being charged with perjury was plenty.
He asked House investigators if he could revise his initial account with a “supplemental declaration,” an innocuous-sounding phrase crafted by a lawyer.
It definitely sounds better than saying, “My client wants to change his story and cover his ass. Please?”
Perhaps a bit of sympathy is in order.
Sondland, a wealthy hotel developer from Oregon, has been involved in Republican politics for much of his life. He is civically active and philanthropic.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Sondland and a business partner withdrew their support for Trump after Trump lashed out at the Pakistani-American parents of an Army captain who’d been killed in Iraq.
They said Trump’s “evolving” positions on certain issues were at odds with their “personal beliefs and values on so many levels.”
Despite his reservations, Sondland badly wanted to be an ambassador. There’s one tried-and-true trick to nailing a plum job like that: Open your wallet.
After the election, Sondland donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration ceremonies. In return he was named ambassador to the EU, a portfolio that included tumultuous
Ukraine.
To say Sondland is in his over his head would be kind.
A former White House foreign policy adviser testified that Sondland has raised counterintelligence alarms by using a personal cell phone for diplomatic business, and handing out the private numbers of U.S. officials to foreign contacts.
He also amiably invites people to the White House without clearing the visits in advance. One time a group of Romanian officials showed up unexpectedly, saying Sondland had encouraged them to drop by any time.
He’s not the first inexperienced, naive person to buy a prime diplomatic post. Democratic administrations sell those jobs, too.
But in his worst nightmares Sondland never imagined he’d wind up taking orders on Ukraine from a mercenary snake such as Rudy Giuliani, who couldn’t find the State Department building with a GPS.
In his “supplemental declaration,” submitted to House investigators last week, Sondland stated that recent testimony by other witnesses — including William Taylor Jr., the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine — “refreshed my recollections.”
Sondland said he now remembers telling a Ukraine official that the aid funds “would likely not” be released unless the government agreed to Trump’s request for investigations of Bursima, the energy company that had hired
Joe Biden’s son, and of discredited rumors of meddling in the 2016 election.
That’s a textbook quid pro quo. You’ll get your money when you do what the president wants. Boom.
The “refreshed” Sondland elaborated that, “In the absence of any credible explanation for the suspension of aid, I presumed that the aid suspension had become linked” to Ukraine’s lack of action on the investigations sought by Trump.
This is from the president’s own guy, not some career military officer or CIA whistleblower that can be falsely branded a “deep state” operative. Sondland is the opposite of deep.
In Trump World, though, speaking the truth is the same as betrayal. As of this writing, Sondland still has a job, but his ambassador days are numbered.
There will be lots of time for reflection on the long flight back to Portland, and one of the many questions he should be asking himself is:
How do I get my $1 million back?