Case closed
Every awkward attempt to explain away President Trump’s dirty tricks, every brazen assertion that there’s nothing to see here, has now been definitively undermined — by a Trump loyalist and one of the central players in the Ukraine drama.
Yes, there was a quid pro quo. In testimony Wednesday before the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment hearing, million-dollar-donorturned-E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland explained that Trump’s insistence on Ukraine committing to launch politically motivated investigations was widely known, including to Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former national security adviser John Bolton.
“Everyone was in the loop,” said Sondland.
The blocking of aid and official meetings from Ukraine, he said, came from the top, via Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani — we will no longer call him mayor, so thoroughly has he disgraced himself — who professional diplomats were forced to go through.
“Energy Secretary Perry, Ambassador Kurt Volker and I worked with Giuliani on Ukraine matters at the express direction of the president of the United States,” said Sondland. “We all understood that if we refused to work with Giuliani, we would lose an important opportunity to cement relations between the United States and Ukraine.”
Sondland laid responsibility for his faulty, borderline perjurous, prior testimony on administration stonewalling: “I have not had access to all of my phone records, State Department emails, and other State Department documents. And I was told I could not work with my EU staff to pull together the relevant files. Having access to the State Department materials would have been very helpful to me in trying to reconstruct with whom I spoke and met, when, and what was said.”
So, an administration that blocked some witnesses also helped sabotage the ability of others to testify accurately.
The bulk of Sondland’s compelling testimony is fully supported by other witnesses.
The picture now comes into perfect focus, Trump’s histrionic denials notwithstanding. He and Giuliani held up a White House meeting and withheld aid to Ukraine in an attempt to leverage that country into a promise it would investigate a domestic political rival.
Is this acceptable behavior in a president?