Gordon Sondland, the American ambassador to the E.U., is pointing the finger at President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former national security adviser John Bolton in explosive public testimony on Wednesday in which he says explicitly that there was a “quid quo pro” linking a White House visit by Ukraine’s president to investigations into a political opponent of the president.
Under fire from all sides after multiple witnesses contradicted his earlier deposition, Sondland blames everyone but himself for the pressure campaign on Ukraine now driving impeachment proceedings against Trump. He showed up for his televised hearing with reams of new text messages and emails he said prove the highest levels of the White House and the State Department were in on it.
“They knew what we were doing and why,” Sondland plans to tell the House Intelligence Committee, according to his opening statement obtained by NBC News. “Everyone was in the loop. It was no secret.”
He says he knows that House members have asked “was there a quid pro quo,” adding that when it comes to the White House meeting sought by Ukraine’s leader, “The answer is yes.”
Sondland also draws Pompeo more deeply into the effort than has previously been known, including emails to the secretary and a top aide in which the basic contours of the quid pro quo alleged by Democrats seem clear.
At the time, the Trump administration had frozen military aid to Ukraine. On Aug. 11, Sondland emailed top Pompeo aide Lisa Kenna that he and former Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker “negotiated a statement” for Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to deliver. Kenna responds saying she’s passing the message along to Pompeo.
Eleven days later, Sondland wrote Pompeo directly, suggesting Zelenskiy meet Trump in Warsaw “to look him in the eye” and say he should be able to proceed on issues important to Trump “once Ukraine’s new justice folks are in place.” Earlier, in a July 25 phone call, Zelenskiy had told Trump that installing his own prosecutors would remove an obstacle to opening the investigations of the Bidens and the 2016 election.
“Hopefully, that will break the logjam,” Sondland wrote.
“Yes,” Pompeo responded three minutes later. Kenna followed up saying she would try to arrange the meeting. Ultimately, Trump sent Vice President Mike Pence to Warsaw instead.
Further implicating Pompeo, Sondland plans to testify that it was “based on my communications with Secretary Pompeo” that he felt comfortable telling a top Zelenskiy aide the funds likely wouldn’t be unfrozen until Ukraine committed publicly to the investigations sought by Trump. Those included probes into former Vice President Joe Biden’s family and alleged Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election.
“State Department was fully supportive of our engagement in Ukraine affairs, and was aware that a commitment to investigations was among the issues we were pursuing,” Sondland will testify, according to his opening remarks.
Pompeo twice ignored questions about Sondland’s testimony in Brussels, where he’s meeting with NATO allies.
Sondland’s 19-page opening statement — plus texts and emails not previously made public — is filled with new details and disclosures he omitted from both his over nine-hour closed-door deposition and a sworn declaration he made later. He will say his memory had been refreshed by other witnesses’ testimony, but lawmakers are likely to grill Sondland over his failure to produce the information previously and whether his testimony can be trusted after changing so many times.
But the email and text records Sondland is providing to Congress on Wednesday may corroborate some of his new account.
In one email to Bolton on Aug. 26, Sondland sent him a contact card for Rudy Giuliani, the Trump personal lawyer who drove the push for investigations into the Bidens and 2016. That email came days before Bolton traveled to Ukraine, and Sondland plans to testify that “Bolton’s office requested Mr. Giuliani’s contact information.”
As the impeachment proceedings have moved into the public televised phase, Republican lawmakers have sought to distance Trump from the allegations by pressing witnesses to concede that they never heard Trump personally link a meeting with Zelenskiy or the Ukraine aid to investigations. Those arguments have set up Sondland and Giuliani — as the emissaries who conveyed the conditions to the Ukrainians — as potential scapegoats if Trump’s allies can successfully portray them as acting on their own volition and not on Trump’s behalf.
But Sondland’s testimony that they were carrying out Trump’s wishes — and briefing top officials along the way — may complicate any efforts to use him and Giuliani as buffers between the president and allegations of wrongdoing.
“Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the United States, and we knew that these investigations were important to the president,” Sondland will tell the House Intelligence Committee.
Sondland will largely concede that the accounts of his July 26 phone call with Trump from a restaurant in Kyiv are accurate. In his earlier deposition, Sondland had not mentioned that call, which was overheard by several U.S. diplomats dining with Sondland but only came to light recently, in other hearings.
During that call, according to testimony from diplomat David Holmes, Trump could be overheard asking Sondland about the investigations and was told the Ukrainians were ready to commit to them. Sondland also told Trump that Zelenskiy will do “anything you ask him to,” Holmes testified.
Sondland, in acknowledging that call, will suggest that his memory is hazy, but that he has “no reason to doubt that this conversation included the subject of investigations.” He says the White House recently gave his lawyers phone records showing the call lasted five minutes.
“It is also true that we discussed ASAP Rocky,” Sondland will say, a reference to a rapper jailed in Sweden that Holmes said was mentioned during the call and whom Trump had taken an interest in.
Arguing he bears no personal fault and acted in good faith, Sondland repeatedly blames Trump for forcing him, Volker and Energy Secretary Rick Perry to work with Giuliani on Ukraine, despite all of them thinking that it was a bad idea.
“We followed the president’s orders,” Sondland plans to testify about the president’s instruction to work with Giuliani.
In some instances, he disputes the testimony of others whose depositions contradict his own, including Holmes, who testified that Sondland had referred to “the Biden investigation” as part of the “big stuff” that Trump cared about. Sondland insists he did not mention Biden.
He will concede that in a July 10 meeting with Bolton and Ukrainian officials at the White House, Sondland mentioned “the prerequisites of investigations before any White House call or meeting.” But Sondland will dispute the accounts of former White House official Fiona Hill and Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, the Ukraine director in the White House, both of whom testified Bolton was so disturbed by his comment that Bolton abruptly ended the meeting.
“Their recollections of those events simply don’t square with my own or with those of Ambassador Volker or Secretary Perry,” Sondland will say.
