In a substantial
update to his initial account, Gordon D. Sondland recounted how he told
Ukrainian officials military aid was tied to their commitment to
investigations President Trump wanted.
WASHINGTON
— A critical witness in the impeachment inquiry offered Congress
substantial new testimony this week, revealing that he told a top
Ukrainian official that the country likely would not receive American
military aid unless it publicly committed to investigations President
Trump wanted.
The disclosure from
Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union,
in four new pages of sworn testimony released on Tuesday, confirmed his
involvement in laying out a quid pro quo
to Ukraine that he had previously not acknowledged. The issue is at the
heart of the impeachment investigation into Mr. Trump, which turns on
the allegation the president abused his power to extract political
favors from a foreign power.
Mr. Trump has consistently maintained that he did nothing wrong and that there was no quid pro quo with Ukraine.
The Inquiry
Read the transcripts or skim key excerpts.
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Mr.
Sondland’s testimony offered several major new details beyond the
account he gave the inquiry in a 10-hour interview last month. He
provided a more robust description of his own role in alerting the
Ukrainians that they needed to go along with investigative requests
being demanded by the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani.
By early September, Mr. Sondland said, he had become convinced that
military aid and a White House meeting were conditioned on Ukraine
committing to those investigations.
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The
additions Mr. Sondland made to his testimony were significant because
they were the first admission by a senior figure who had direct contact
with Mr. Trump that the military aid for Ukraine was being held hostage
to the president’s demands for investigations into his political rivals.
A wealthy Oregon hotelier who donated to the president’s campaign and
was rewarded with the plum diplomatic post, Mr. Sondland can hardly be
dismissed as a “Never Trumper,” a charge that Mr. Trump has leveled
against many other officials who have offered damaging testimony about
his conduct with regard to Ukraine.
As
such, Mr. Sondland’s new, fuller account is likely to complicate
Republicans’ task in defending the president against the impeachment
push, effectively leaving them with no argument
other than that demanding a political quid pro quo from a foreign
leader may be concerning, but — in the words of Mr. Trump himself — is
not “an impeachable event.”
Mr. Sondland had said in a text message exchange in early September with William B. Taylor
Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, that the president had been
clear there was no quid pro quo between the aid and investigations of
former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., his son and other Democrats.
But Mr. Sondland testified last month that he was only repeating what
Mr. Trump had told him, leaving open the question of whether he believed
the president. His addendum suggested that Mr. Sondland was not
completely forthcoming with Mr. Taylor, and that he was, in fact, aware
that the aid was contingent upon the investigations.
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In his updated testimony, Mr. Sondland recounted how he had discussed the link with Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, on the sidelines of a Sept. 1
meeting between Vice President Mike Pence and Mr. Zelensky in Warsaw.
Mr. Zelensky had discussed the suspension of aid with Mr. Pence, Mr.
Sondland said.
What’s New in the Impeachment Case
Updated Nov. 4, 2019
-
- Impeachment investigators released the transcripts of closed-door interviews with Marie Yovanovitch, the former American ambassador to Ukraine, and Michael McKinley, a top diplomat who advised Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The campaign to oust Ms. Yovanovitch from her post has been key to the investigation.
- Investigators are expected to release two more transcripts tomorrow that are central to their case, including one for Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union.
- Four Trump administration witnesses refused to sit for interviews today with investigators, including John Eisenberg, the top lawyer on the National Security Council, and Robert Blair, an aide to Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff.
- The White House informed Mr. Eisenberg’s lawyer on Sunday that President Trump was directing him not to testify. The White House is claiming “absolute immunity” — a form of executive privilege that contends the president’s closest advisers are not obligated to cooperate with Congress.
Sign up for updates: Get the latest developments from the House impeachment inquiry in your inbox.
“I
said that resumption of the U.S. aid would likely not occur until
Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been
discussing for many weeks,” Mr. Sondland said in the document, which was
released by the House committees leading the inquiry, along with the
transcript of his original testimony from last month.
The new information surfaced as the House committees also released a transcript of their interview last month with Kurt D. Volker,
the former special envoy to Ukraine. Rushing to complete their final
round of requests for key witnesses before they commence public
impeachment hearings, the panels also scheduled testimony on Friday by
Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff. And two more
administration witnesses who had been scheduled to testify on Tuesday —
Michael Duffey, a top official at the White House budget office, and
Wells Griffith, a senior aide to the energy secretary, Rick Perry —
failed to appear.
In his new
testimony, Mr. Sondland said he believed that withholding the aid — a
package of $391 million in security assistance that had been approved by
Congress — was “ill-advised,” although he did not know “when, why or by
whom the aid was suspended.” But he said he came to believe that the
aid was tied to the investigations.
“I presumed that the aid suspension had become linked to the proposed anticorruption statement,” Mr. Sondland said.
In his closed-door interview last month, Mr. Sondland portrayed himself
as a well-meaning and at times unwitting player who was trying to
conduct American foreign policy with Ukraine with the full backing of
the State Department while Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, repeatedly
inserted himself at the behest of the president. He also said repeatedly
that he could not recall the events under scrutiny, including details
about the Sept. 1 meeting, according to the 375-page transcript of his
testimony.
But some Democrats painted
him as a lackey of Mr. Trump’s who had been an agent of the shadow
foreign policy on Ukraine, eager to go along with what the president
wanted. They contended that Mr. Sondland had deliberately evaded crucial
questions during his testimony.
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And
other witnesses have pointed to him as a central player in the
irregular channel of Ukraine policymaking being run by Mr. Trump and Mr.
Giuliani, and the instigator of the quid pro quo strategy.
In the addendum, Mr. Sondland said he had “refreshed my recollection” after reading the testimony given by Mr. Taylor and Timothy Morrison, the senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council.
Mr.
Morrison, the National Security Council official, testified last week
that it was Mr. Sondland who first indicated in a conversation with him
and Mr. Taylor on Sept. 1 that the release of the military aid for
Ukraine might be contingent on the announcement of the investigations,
and that he hoped “that Ambassador Sondland’s strategy was exclusively
his own.”
Mr. Sondland’s new testimony
contradicted the notion that he was a lone wolf pushing the quid pro
quo idea himself, and portrayed him instead as just the messenger who
had discovered there was a linkage between the aid and the
investigations and articulated it to others. He said it “would have been
natural for me to have voiced what I presumed” about what was standing
in the way of releasing the military assistance.
Mr.
Sondland originally testified that Mr. Trump had essentially delegated
American foreign policy on Ukraine to Mr. Giuliani, a directive he
disagreed with but still followed. He said that it was Mr. Giuliani who
demanded the new Ukrainian president commit to the investigations, and
that he did not understand until later that the overarching goal may
have been to bolster the president’s 2020 election chances.
Mr.
Sondland said that he went along with what Mr. Giuliani wanted in the
hope of pacifying him and restoring normal relations between the two
countries. Under questioning, he acknowledged believing the statement
was linked to a White House visit the new president of Ukraine sought
with Mr. Trump.
Eileen Sullivan and Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.
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