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Sondland, Defiant, Says He Followed Trump’s Orders to Pressure Ukraine

WASHINGTON — An ambassador at the center of the House impeachment inquiry testified Wednesday that he was following President Donald Trump’s orders, with the full knowledge of other top administration officials, when he pressured the Ukrainians to conduct investigations into Trump’s political rivals in what he called a clear “quid pro quo.”

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Sondland, Defiant, Says He Followed Trump’s Orders to Pressure Ukraine
By
Nicholas Fandos
and
Michael S. Schmidt, New York Times

WASHINGTON — An ambassador at the center of the House impeachment inquiry testified Wednesday that he was following President Donald Trump’s orders, with the full knowledge of other top administration officials, when he pressured the Ukrainians to conduct investigations into Trump’s political rivals in what he called a clear “quid pro quo.”

Gordon Sondland, a Trump’s envoy to the European Union, told the House Intelligence Committee that he reluctantly followed Trump’s directive. He testified that the president instructed him to work with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, as he pressured Ukraine to publicly commit to investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and an unsubstantiated theory that Democrats conspired with Kyiv to interfere in the 2016 election.

“We followed the president’s orders,” Sondland said.

His appearance amounted to an act of defiance by an official who has been described by other witnesses as a point man in the push to extract the investigations. In his testimony Sondland linked the most senior members of the Trump administration to the effort — including the vice president, the secretary of state, the acting chief of staff and others. He said they were informed of it at key moments, an account that severely undercut Trump’s frequent claims that he never pressured Ukraine.

Instead, Sondland, a wealthy Republican megadonor, described an expansive effort to help the president do just that.

Later Wednesday, a Defense Department official, Laura Cooper, testified that Ukrainian officials may have known as early as late July that a $391 million package of security assistance was being withheld by the Trump administration.

The testimony by Cooper called into question another central element of the president’s defense: that there was no pressure because Ukrainian officials were unaware that the money was frozen.

Two months into the investigation, Sondland’s account came as close as investigators have gotten to an admission from an official who dealt directly with Trump. But Sondland’s accounts have shifted since the committee first deposed him in October, opening him up to Republican criticism that he is not credible.

Sondland has repeatedly claimed not to have recalled key episodes and he conceded during testimony Wednesday that he did not record precisely what had happened. He blamed the State Department for not providing him with all his emails, call logs and other records.

Still, he offered revelations and had the evidence to corroborate them.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed off on parts of the pressure campaign, Sondland testified, and Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, was deeply involved. They understood, as he did, that there was a quid pro quo linking a White House meeting for President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine to a promise by him to announce investigations into Trump’s political rivals, he said.

“I know that members of this committee have frequently framed these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there a quid pro quo?” Sondland said. “As I testified previously, with regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is yes.

“Everyone was in the loop,” he said. “It was no secret.”

Sondland testified that he came to believe that Trump was also linking congressionally approved military assistance to Ukraine with a public commitment by Zelenskiy to investigate Trump’s political adversaries. Sondland said he informed Vice President Mike Pence of his concern about that connection during a Sept. 1 meeting in Warsaw, Poland.

Cooper testified that Ukrainian officials had reached out to the State and Defense Departments with questions about the status of the military funding July 25, just hours after Trump pressed Zelenskiy during a phone call for the investigations. Republicans have insisted that Ukraine did not know that the aid had been held up until it was reported in the news media in late August.

Beyond the evolving timeline, Sondland’s testimony raised questions about whether the other top administration figures he mentioned — including Pompeo, Mulvaney and John Bolton, the president’s former national security adviser — will come forward to testify. The Trump administration tried to block the testimony of Sondland, Cooper and David Hale, the No. 3 State Department official who also appeared Wednesday, and refused to allow Sondland access to certain documents, he said, which it also withheld from the committee despite a subpoena.

Democrats pointed to the administration’s stonewalling as yet another piece of evidence for an impeachment article against Trump for obstruction of Congress.

“It goes right to the heart of the issue of bribery, as well as other potential high crimes and misdemeanors,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the Intelligence Committee, told reporters during a brief break in the hearing.

Republicans, moving to discredit Sondland, seized on his assertion that Trump never personally or explicitly told him about conditions on the White House meeting or the security assistance. Sondland said under questioning that he came to the conclusion on his own.

Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, hammered on the point, his voice rising as he sharply questioned the ambassador.

“No one told you? Not just the president — Giuliani didn’t tell you, Mulvaney didn’t tell you, nobody?” Turner demanded. “Pompeo didn’t tell you?

“No one on this planet told you that President Trump was tying aid to investigations,” he added. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Sondland responded.

The ambassador, who smiled often during his appearance and cheerfully admitted to a flair for colorful language and frequent use of “four-letter words” in his conversations with Trump, appeared to relish pulling other top officials into the spotlight. For weeks Republicans had cast him as a rogue actor.

“The suggestion that we were engaged in some irregular or rogue diplomacy is absolutely false,” he said, pointing to messages and phone calls in which he kept the White House and State Department informed of his actions.

Some of the senior officials who figured prominently in Sondland’s testimony quickly challenged his account, and Trump tried to distance himself from the ambassador.

“I don’t know him very well — I have not spoken to him much,” Trump told reporters before leaving for Texas on Wednesday afternoon.

Holding a page of notes scrawled in marker in large block letters, Trump quoted Sondland’s closed-door deposition in which the ambassador described a phone call in which the president had told him he did not want a quid pro quo.

Before boarding Marine One, Trump shouted “This is the final word from the president of the United States.” The White House press secretary later put out a statement saying that Sondland’s testimony “completely exonerates President Trump of any wrongdoing.”

Through an aide, Pence denied that the two men had spoken one-on-one.

“There was never a time when Sondland was alone with the vice president in Warsaw, and if he’s recalling the pre-briefing, I was in that, and he never said anything in that venue either,” said Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff.

Defying the State Department’s wishes, Sondland shared previously unseen emails and texts that demonstrated how he kept Pompeo and other administration officials apprised of his efforts to push the Ukranians. In one of them, Sondland tells Pompeo about a draft statement in which the Ukranians would commit to the investigations, and about a plan to have Zelenskiy speak directly with Trump about the matter.

“The contents will hopefully make the boss happy enough to authorize an invitation,” Sondland wrote in an email to Pompeo.

A week and a half later, Sondland sent Pompeo another email asking whether he should arrange a meeting in Warsaw for Trump where Zelenskiy would “look him in the eye” and promise him the investigations, breaking a “logjam.”

Pompeo issued a statement that appeared intended to deny Sondland’s testimony but that did not directly address the ambassador’s assertion that the secretary of state knew and approved of his efforts.

“Gordon Sondland never told Secretary Pompeo that he believed the president was linking aid to investigations of political opponents,” according to the statement from Morgan Ortagus, the State Department spokeswoman.

Sondland even took shots at Bolton, who other witnesses have said harbored deep concerns over the ambassador’s actions and repeatedly instructed subordinates to report them to White House lawyers.

“Curiously — and this was very interesting to me — on Aug. 26, shortly before his visit to Kyiv, Ambassador Bolton’s office requested Mr. Giuliani’s contact information from me,” said Sondland, who repeated himself and then paused to smirk before continuing with his testimony.

One of the more dramatic moments of the day occurred in the final hour in an exchange between Sondland and Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., who elicited a grudging admission from the ambassador that the investigations that Trump wanted would benefit him politically.

“See? It didn’t hurt a bit,” Maloney said, drawing a testy response from Sondland, who said he was trying to be “forthright.”

“It didn’t work so well the first time, did it?” Maloney shot back, referring to the multiple changes Sondland has made to his story.

“We appreciate your candor,” Maloney said, “but let’s be really clear on what it took to get it out of you.”

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