No secret....

‘It was no secret’: Sondland says Trump ordered Ukraine pressure campaign

"Was there a 'quid pro quo?’" he said. "The answer is yes."

By ANDREW DESIDERIO and KYLE CHENEY

President Donald Trump’s top Europe envoy Gordon Sondland told House impeachment investigators Wednesday that Trump conditioned a valuable White House meeting for Ukraine's new president on his willingness to launch investigations into Trump’s Democratic adversaries, including former Vice President Joe Biden.

“Was there a ‘quid pro quo?’” Sondland — a close Trump ally and longtime GOP donor — said in his opening remarks to the House Intelligence Committee. “The answer is yes.”

Sondland's testimony, the most explosive to date in a series of public impeachment hearings, portrayed Trump as the driver of an effort to pressure a foreign power to investigate his political rivals. Democrats quickly seized on the bombshell testimony as they seek to make the case that Trump abused his power by conditioning official acts to benefit his re-election campaign.

But it went further than that, according to Sondland, who said the scheme was widely known, understood and discussed at the highest levels of the Trump administration.

“Everyone was in the loop. It was no secret,” said the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, adding that he directly communicated the “quid pro quo” to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Sondland claimed that senior officials including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and even cabinet secretaries were aware of the arrangement — and that it was carried out at the “express direction” of the president. Sondland specifically cited a July 19 email copied to Mulvaney, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and “a lot of senior officials.” In that email, Sondland reveals that he “just talked to Zelensky” and secured a commitment for a “fully transparent investigation.”

Trump on Wednesday quickly distanced himself from his ambassador. “I don't know him very well. I have not spoken to him much. This is not a man I know well,” the president told reporters at the White House.

In a statement, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Sondland’s testimony was “related to his presumptions and beliefs, rather than hard facts,” and slammed Democrats for relying on “unreliable and indirect evidence.”

During the hearing, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, walked Sondland through a chronology intended to make the case that Trump conditioned “official acts” — a White House meeting and nearly $400 million of military aid — on receiving a “thing of value,” his favored investigations. Schiff’s questioning was a nod to the language of federal bribery statutes.

Schiff said Sondland’s testimony “goes right to the heart of the issue of bribery as well as other potential high crimes and misdemeanors,” adding: “The veneer has been torn away.”

Republican lawmakers portrayed Sondland as an unreliable witness.

Under questioning from GOP counsel Steve Castor — who called Sondland a “trifecta of unreliability” — Sondland said he never heard directly from Trump about any pre-conditions for the military aid or the White House meeting. Republicans also sought to highlight Sondland’s claim that it was only his “presumption” that the military aid was part of a quid pro quo, and that he did not take contemporaneous notes.

“President Trump never told me directly that the aid was tied to that statement” about investigations, Sondland said.

In his opening statement, Sondland injected a new wrinkle into the quid pro quo claim: that Trump's July 25 phone call with Zelensky itself was the product of a quid pro quo for investigations. On that day, Trump spoke directly to Zelensky and referenced his request for a Biden investigation during the phone call, which has become the central focus of the impeachment inquiry.

Sondland told members of the Intelligence Committee on Wednesday that he “later came to believe” that the military assistance — which had been frozen at Trump’s direction over the summer — would not be delivered to Ukraine unless the country publicly committed to pursuing Trump’s desired investigations. When asked if the “only logical conclusion” is that the military aid was part of the quid pro quo Sondland was describing, he responded: “Yup.”

Sondland emphasized that he never heard those words from Trump, but that after multiple conversations with the president about Ukraine, Trump’s intentions were clear to him. “It was abundantly clear to everyone that there was a link” between military aid and investigations, he added.

The ambassador, who donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee, also testified that he told Vice President Mike Pence on Sept. 1 that he was concerned that the delay in military assistance was tied to “the issue of investigations.” But Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff, said such a conversation “never happened.”

Ukraine, lawmakers have noted, depends on military assistance from the U.S. to fight a war with Russia, which has invaded and attempted to annex Crimea. The legitimacy conferred by a White House visit would have also been extremely valuable to Zelensky as he sought to establish his bona fides in a country with a legacy of corruption.

Sondland attributed much of his concern to Trump's “directive” that his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani be involved in any Ukraine effort. Giuliani had been publicly calling for Ukraine to investigate Biden, as well as to probe a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, hacked a Democratic Party server in 2016.

But Giuliani wasn’t freelancing, Sondland emphasized.

“We all understood that these pre-requisites for the White House call and White House meeting reflected President Trump’s desires and requirements,” he said. “Mr. Giuliani’s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky. Mr. Giuliani demanded that Ukraine make a public statement announcing investigations of the 2016 election/DNC server and Burisma.”

Burisma is a reference to the Ukrainian energy company for which Biden's son Hunter sat on the board, and several State Department officials have indicated they came to understand that Trump's demand for an Burisma investigation was code for going after the Bidens.

Sondland said he has no doubt Giuliani was “expressing the desires of the president of the United States, and we knew that these investigations were important to the president.” He also said he had no desire to work with Giuliani but felt it was a requirement imposed by Trump and would be the only way to conceivably convince Trump to adopt a more productive posture toward Ukraine.

“We had no desire to set any conditions on the Ukrainians,” he said. “I believed then, as I do now, that the men and women of the State Department, not the president’s personal lawyer, should take responsibility for Ukraine matters.”

Wednesday’s hearing was Sondland’s third attempt at providing a complete account of his role in the unfolding Ukraine saga. His closed door testimony to lawmakers last month omitted crucial details that he later added in a written supplement. But his opening statement appears to be a more complete accounting of his activities — and it was quickly picked apart by Trump's defenders, who once counted him as a potential ally.

Sondland acknowledged that his memory “has not been perfect,” adding that he does not regularly take notes and that the State Department has not given him access to all of his phone records and emails. He said the process would have been “more transparent” if the State Department had provided the documents — though a department official pushed back late Wednesday night, saying Sondland “continues to retain full access” to his documents and emails.

Sondland indicated that the White House only recently confirmed that he did in fact speak with Trump on July 26, buttressing an account by David Holmes, a U.S. embassy official in Kyiv, who recalled Trump and Sondland spoke by phone while Sondland was at a restaurant in the Ukrainian capital city.

Trump has publicly denied the existence of such a phone call. But Sondland detailed the conversation to lawmakers, saying he had “no reason to doubt” that “this conversation included the subject of investigations.”

After the call, Holmes said Sondland revealed that Trump didn't “give a shit” about Ukraine except as a vehicle to advance the Biden probe. Sondland said he has no reason to dispute that account, though he could not recall some details.

“I would have been more surprised if President Trump had not mentioned investigations, particularly given what we were hearing from Mr. Giuliani about the president’s concerns,” Sondland said. “However, I have no recollection of discussing Vice President Biden or his son on that call or after the call ended.”

Democrats have already questioned Sondland’s honesty, noting that he could not recall crucial moments during his closed-door testimony. Some Republicans, too, have wondered whether Sondland was acting on his own when he muscled his way into meetings on the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.

The questions about Sondland’s credibility came into focus when Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) accused Sondland of evading his questions. Sondland responded by saying he resented the implication, causing Maloney to interject.

“All due respect sir, we respect your candor, but let’s be really clear what it took to get it out of you,” Maloney said.