US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. Photo / AP file
It's clear that Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, would rather not incriminate US President Donald Trump in an effort to leverage American aid to Ukraine for politically useful investigations.
It's also clear that Sondland doesn't really want to go to jail for perjury.
Today, investigators in the House impeachment inquiry released a transcript of Sondland's October 4 testimony about his interactions with Ukraine - and a three-page addendum to his testimony in which he clarified some of the comments he'd made a month ago.
When he first appeared on Capitol Hill, Sondland made certain assertions that conflicted with the recollection of later witnesses. With that testimony having "refreshed [his] recollection," Sondland offered new details about his role in trying to persuade Ukraine to announce new investigations of its own.
The most important amendment dealt with a September 2 conversation Sondland had with Andrey Yermak, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. By that point, the White House had stopped aid that had been appropriated to Ukraine, a shift of which Yermak was very much aware.
Acting Ukraine ambassador Bill Taylor told investigators last month that on that day he'd had a conversation with Tim Morrison, then a senior director on the National Security Council, in which Morrison reported back on the Sondland-Yermak conversation.
In the conversation, Taylor said, "Ambassador Sondland told Mr Yermak that the security assistance money would not come until President Zelenskiy committed to pursue the Burisma investigation" - that is, an investigation into a company for which former Vice-President Joe Biden's son had once worked. Morrison confirmed the conversation in broad strokes, though he didn't think an announcement had to come from Zelenskiy himself.
In his revision to his testimony, Sondland admits that he'd made that assertion to Yermak.
"By the beginning of September 2019, and in the absence of any credible explanation for the suspension of aid," his amended statement reads, "I presumed that the aid suspension had become linked to the proposed anti-corruption statement" - a statement from Ukraine about new investigations.
"I now recall speaking individually with Mr Yermak, where I said that resumption of US aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks."
Trump impeachment investigators release the transcripts from the two diplomats' testimony https://t.co/r4RhJCycKU
— POLITICOEurope (@POLITICOEurope) November 5, 2019
He added that he learned the statement should come from Zelenskiy but couldn't remember where he'd learned that: maybe from Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani or maybe from Ukraine special envoy Kurt Volker, who had been in contact with Giuliani.
The existence of the addendum itself asks readers to believe that Sondland suffers from a distinct inability to remember central details about important issues. Especially given that Sondland and Taylor spoke that same day, September 2, after Morrison told Taylor what Sondland had said.
"Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?" Taylor texted Sondland, after getting off the phone with Morrison.
"Call me," Sondland replied.
Taylor called him. "During that phone call, Ambassador Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelenskiy to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 US Election," Taylor said in his testimony. ". . . Ambassador Sondland said, 'everything' was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance."
Sondland's addendum doesn't challenge Taylor's claim. Yet in his original testimony, Sondland never thought to mention his interaction with Yermak.
GOP talking points claiming Trump only cared about combating corruption in Ukraine are contradicted by testimony. “The transcripts, in fact, show both Sondland and Volker believed Trump was interested only in investigations that carried personal benefits.” https://t.co/L7ZZMOF16l
— Colin Kahl (@ColinKahl) November 5, 2019
Asked whether the text message from Taylor indicated that he, Volker and Taylor were discussing a link between aid and the investigations, Sondland said he didn't know. (He also said he and Taylor "probably" had a call.) Asked whether Vice-President Mike Pence had raised the issue of aid when he met with Zelenskiy that day - with Sondland in the room - Sondland didn't reply that he himself had had such a conversation with a key Zelenskiy aide. He said he didn't remember Pence raising it.
As he noted in his original testimony, the interaction with Taylor came two days after a conversation with Senator Ron Johnson, R, in which Sondland told Johnson - according to Johnson - that the aid was halted to elicit the required investigations.
Notice the boundaries of what Sondland offered once he admitted to the conversation. Not that he had been informed that the resumption of aid was contingent on a statement but that he "presumed" it was. Not that he told Yermak a statement had to precede the resumption of aid but that aid would "likely" not resume until that point.
In other words, while Sondland is taking big steps towards an explicit admission of demanding a quid pro quo from Ukraine for the investigations, he's insulating his boss, Trump, from any culpability.
He wasn't told that Trump said aid was contingent on investigations, according to his new assertions, just that he sort of guessed that's what it would take.
“Both transcripts released today show there is even less evidence for this illegitimate impeachment sham than previously thought. Ambassador Sondland squarely states that he “did not know, (and still does not know) when, why or by whom the aid was suspended," says @PressSec.
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) November 5, 2019
This is hard to believe, but Sondland's other testimony similarly insists on his own ignorance as an excuse for questionable activity.
For example, Sondland went to great pains to differentiate between an investigation into Burisma Holdings, the company for which Hunter Biden worked, and an investigation into the Bidens.
He claimed not to understand that requests for an investigation into Burisma were really requests for an investigation of the Bidens, even after admitting that Trump had instructed him and his colleagues to work through Giuliani on Ukraine and Giuliani was publicly and explicitly linking the two. Even while he was working with Volker in early August to draft a statement in which Zelenskiy would announce new investigations, including Burisma, he claims not to have known that the real focus was the former vice-president, because "I would not endorse investigating the Bidens."
"In hindsight, I should've asked more questions about Burisma," he told investigators. "But it was something that was important, apparently, to Mr Giuliani and to the President."
In July, he said, the conversation was only about corruption, but then it "kept getting more insidious."
On July 10, though, there was a meeting at the White House that Yermak also attended. There, according to witnesses, Sondland conditioned a White House visit for Zelenskiy on the requested investigations.
The negative response from others in attendance reportedly was strong. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman testified last week that when Sondland "started to speak about Ukraine delivering specific investigations in order to secure the meeting with the President . . . Ambassador Bolton cut the meeting short." Fiona Hill, Morrison's predecessor on the National Security Council, reportedly testified that Sondland said the demand came from acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.
Full transcript of testimony of Gordon Sondland: https://t.co/NT13rOAV3g
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 5, 2019
Full transcript of testimony of Kurt Volker: https://t.co/4DILKMspaG
Text messages provided to impeachment investigators by Kurt Volker: https://t.co/rLqWzWglVi
In his original testimony, Sondland told investigators that there had been no disagreement during the meeting and that Bolton ended the meeting solely because he had to leave. Sondland claimed to have asked Energy Secretary Rick Perry whether he "had completely forgotten about bad meeting, bad words" but that Perry said he didn't recall it, either.
Sondland presents himself as a busy man whose engagement in the Ukraine issue was infrequent and glancing.
Someone blindsided by Giuliani's surreptitious and unwelcome efforts to insert Biden into the mix.
Someone who forgot that he told a foreign official that acquiescence to Giuliani's demands was a predicate for hundreds of millions of dollars of aid.
Someone who twists that arm not because he's ordered to but because he intuits that this is what the President wants.
Someone who spent a million dollars on Trump's inauguration committee to become an ambassador and who suddenly discovered that he'd been dispatched to the middle of a minefield - and who now wants to convince everyone, however unbelievably, that neither he nor the President planted any of those mines.
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