Envoy’s dramatic testimony saps some of GOP’s defenses
WASHINGTON — There have been many dramatic days during Donald Trump’s presidency but perhaps none as consequential as Wednesday’s testimony from Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union.
In clear and unequivocal language, Sondland implicated the president and other senior officials in the effort to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. He made clear that Trump was withholding military aid and a coveted Oval Office meeting until Zelensky announced investigations into Ukraine’s role in the 2016 election as well as former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Sondland’s testimony probably accelerates the moves by House Democrats to impeach the president and send the issue to the Senate for adjudication, though at this point the odds of conviction remain long, absent a significant shift in public opinion away from the president.
Sondland became the latest in a line of witnesses who have said that any effort to pressure a foreign government to investigate a potential political rival is, at a minimum, improper and perhaps worse.
That raises the question of whether Republicans, who have been unified in arguing that nothing improper took place, will now modify that position in any way to acknowledge wrongdoing by the president while arguing that it does not constitute an impeachable offense.
At a minimum, Sondland knocked down some of the defenses that Republicans have been offering during the hearings and outside the hearing room, particularly with his assertion that the terms the president was demanding of Zelenskiy for an Oval Office visit amounted to a quid pro quo.
The president had based his defense on the rough transcript of a July 25 phone call with Zelenskiy, arguing that there was no explicit demand made during the conversation and described the call as “perfect.”
But Sondland described a systematic and long-running effort, directed by the president and led by his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to make clear to the Ukrainian leader what he was demanding of him in order to get what he was seeking from the president.
“We followed the president’s orders,” Sondland told the House Intelligence Committee.
Unlike many of the others who have testified over the past week, Sondland is not part of the executive branch bureaucracy. He is a wealthy businessman who contributed $1 million to the president’s inaugural committee and ended up as the ambassador to the EU. In that sense he is an ally of the president and indebted to Trump for putting him where he is today.
Wednesday’s testimony was the third time he has offered evidence in the impeachment inquiry — once behind closed doors, then in a written statement in which he revised some of his original statements.
He arrived for Wednesday’s hearing facing an obvious dilemma, which was to risk a charge of lying to Congress by significantly disputing testimony that had taken place after his prior statements, or openly disputing the president’s version of events and thereby risking the wrath of the president’s allies as well as many with whom he serves in the administration. He chose to take on the president.
If Sondland provided any lifeline to Republicans, it was his acknowledgment that Trump never personally told him he was demanding investigations into 2016 and the Bidens in exchange for an Oval Office meeting or the resumption of military aid. But he was explicit that he and others were told to follow the lead of Giuliani on dealing with the new government in Ukraine and, he said, that the former New York mayor was asking a quid pro quo of the Ukrainians — an Oval Office meeting in exchange for announcement of investigations.