Everyone is talking about the absolutely devastating testimony offered by Gordon “everyone was in the loop” Sondland, Donald Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, in front of the House Intelligence Committee today, so I won’t go too deep into it. I would, however, like to point out a few of the smaller things that may not be getting as much coverage as, say, the fact that Sondland not only named Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence and Mick Mulvaney as his co-conspirators, but essentially laid the whole scandal at the feet of the President, explaining how it was Donald Trump himself who had instructed members of his administration to take direction from Rudy Giuliani relative to this off-the-books mission in Ukraine. [Among other things, Sondland confirmed that, yes, there was a “quid pro quo”. And, yes, Sondland said, the military aid to Ukraine which had been passed by Congress had been withheld in order to force these concessions from the new Zelensky administration. “In the absence of any credible explanation for the suspension of aid, I later came to believe that the resumption of security aid would not occur until there was a public statement from Ukraine committing to the investigations,” Sondland noted, “as Mr. Giuliani had demanded.”] So, with all that said, here are just a few points to ponder.
1. I suspect Sondland hasn’t yet told us everything he knows… As we’ve discussed here before, Sondland had initially said under oath that he wasn’t aware of anything that might be of interest to investigators. “Nothing was ever raised to me about any concerns regarding our Ukraine policy,” he said at the outset, before going on to add that he “never” thought there was any precondition placed on the American aid to Ukraine. This narrative, of course, soon fell apart, as others in the administration, like William Taylor and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, defying the administration’s command that they not provide sworn testimony, came forward to confirm the quid pro quo at the center of this scandal. And, when their testimony was made public, Sondland’s memory apparently started to improve. At this point, he asked to revise his testimony, adding that he not only knew about, but actually conveyed the terms of the extortion scheme to the Ukrainians. “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,” he said. And, today, as you just read above, he went even further, confirming that it was Donald Trump who was directing everything. “We followed the President’s orders,” he said…. But, is he telling everything he knows? I suspect not. Before I get into that, though, here’s footage of Representative Sean Patrick Maloney reminding the Ambassador that he’s lied to the members of this committee before.
But, yes, as bad as this was, I think there’s more. For instance, Sondland, while he did make quite a bit forward progress this time, still maintained that he didn’t know, when Trump and Giuliani were initially demanding an investigation into Burisma, that it had anything to do with the Bidens. When asked about the sworn testimony of Colonel Vindman, who claimed to have heard the Ambassador say, “That the Ukrainians would have to deliver an investigation into the Bidens,” Sondland denied it, saying that, while it seems clear to him now, he didn’t know at the time that all of this was an attempt to coerce an investigation into the Bidens. And he also denied the sworn statement of U.S. diplomat David Holmes, who said that the Ambassador had once told him that Trump only cares about “‘big stuff’ that benefits the president, like the ‘Biden investigation’ that [Rudy] Giuliani was pushing.” If I had to guess, I’d say that there’s reason Sondland kept saying today that he never took notes, and was having trouble remembering things. And that’s because he knows it’s likely that he’ll eventually be forced to revise his sworn statement again.
2. Trump never cared about corruption in Ukraine, or cared whether they really investigated the Bidens… Many on the right have been making the ridiculous claim these past several weeks that Donald Trump held up the $400 million in Ukrainian military aid because he felt as though, before receiving said aid, they should first make significant efforts to route out corruption. Well, guess what? Sondland today confirmed that Donald Trump never really wanted a legitimate investigation. All he wanted, according to the Ambassador, was the announcement of an investigation that he could point to, claiming that the Ukrainians had reason to believe that the Bidens had committed crimes, and that the Russians didn’t really interfere in our 2016 election. “(President Zelensky) had to announce the investigations,” Sondland said under oath today. “He didn’t actually have to do them.” Here’s the footage.
And, as if that weren’t enough, Sondland also confirmed the testimony of David Holmes, which I mentioned earlier. Holmes, as you’ll recall, told investigators that Sondland, when asked, “if it was true that the President did not ‘give a shit’ about Ukraine,” responded in the affirmative, saying that he only cared about the “big stuff” that affected him? Well, when asked about it today, Sondland didn’t dispute that he’d said that. So, again, Donald Trump does not care about the Ukraine. He does not care that they’re battling Russian aggression. He does not care about corruption. He just cares about the “big stuff,” like press conferences to announce investigations into his domestic political rivals.
3. Schiff, once again, does an admirable job… While Sondland threw a number of people under the bus, and painted a picture of a corrupt president hell-bent on abusing his power for political gain, I’d have to say that Adam Schiff deserves the credit for what was yet another amazing day. Here, to give you a sense of how he handled things, is his closing statement, delivered just before he gaveled Sondland’s testimony to a close. It’s powerful stuff. ““Getting caught is no defense – not to a violation of the Constitution, or to a violation of his oath of office. And it certainly doesn’t give us reason to ignore our oath of office,” the Chairman Schiff says, as the crowd rises to give him a standing ovation, once again reminding all of us that we still have a fighting chance of saving this democracy of ours.
4. At least Trump gave them the weapons. That’s more than Obama did… The Republicans don’t have much to cling to after these past several days of hearings. They have the fact that Sondland has said under oath that, when he called the President and asked point blank what in the hell was going on relative to Ukraine deal, the President told him, “No quid pro quo,” and they have the fact that the Trump administration eventually resented their hold on the $400 million aid that had been authorized by Congress. [By the way, it’s illegal for the President to withhold aid that has been authorized by Congress, but we won’t get into that now.] The administration, of course, didn’t release the aid until after the whistleblower’s complaint had been made public, and they didn’t have a choice, but the Republicans don’t mention that part. They just mention that Trump eventually released the funds. And, invariably, they then note that, in doing so, Trump did a lot more than Obama, who just gave the Ukrainians blankets to fight the Russians. “This was the Obama administration’s approach,” Devin Nunes has said several times during the impeachment inquiry. Of course, it’s a lie, like everything else. [Speaking of which, Donald Trump announced the opening of an Apple plant in Texas today that actually opened in 2013, buy why the fuck not, right?] Here’s the truth from the Associate Press.
…While the Obama administration refused to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons in 2014 to fight Russian-backed separatists, it offered a range of other military and security aid — not just “blankets.”
By March 2015, the Obama administration had provided more than $120 million in security aid for Ukraine and promised $75 million worth of equipment, including counter-mortar radars, night vision devices and medical supplies, according to the Defense Department. The U.S. also pledged 230 Humvee vehicles.
The U.S. aid offer came after Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2014 annexed Crimea and provided support for separatists in eastern cities near Russia’s border.
Ultimately between 2014 and 2016, the Obama administration committed more than $600 million in security aid to Ukraine.
In the last year of the Obama administration, the U.S. established the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which provided U.S. military equipment and training to help defend Ukraine against Russian aggression. From 2016 to 2019, Congress appropriated $850 million for this initiative…
So, yes, it’s true that Donald Trump eventually handed over funds for the purchase of $47 million in Javelin anti-tank missiles, but it’s not true that Obama did nothing. Furthermore, I don’t know that providing more in the way of lethal weapons systems would have been prudent prior to Zelensky’s 2019 victory. Let’s remember that, up until 2014, the President of Ukraine was Putin associate Viktor Yanukovych, a man currently living in exile in Russia, and wanted for high treason in the country that he fled. And, as we know, corruption in the country continued to run rampant even after the 2014 democratic revolution. To hear foreign policy experts tell it, the election of Zelensky was the opening that we were looking for, a real opportunity to build a solid bulwark against Russian expansion. So, yes, Trump finally released the money for Javelins, but let not buy into the false equivalency of the Republican argument. Obama didn’t just give blankets, and he did so at a time when the deployment of Javelins may not have been called for.
5. But Trump said that it wasn’t a quid pro quo… As I mentioned earlier, the Republicans are making a lot of hay out of the fact that, according to Sondland, the President himself said, “I want no quid pro quo,” on a phone call. Again, however, they’re leaving out a little context. Most notably, Donald Trump is said to have uttered these words when Sondland called him, demanding to know why aid had been withheld, and whether or not there was any truth to what he’d been hearing about said aid having been tied up in the same quid pro quo they’d all been pursuing with Ukraine. The President, he said, was adamant that there was no quid pro quo. We know, of course, that he was lying, but, as it’s all the Republicans have, we should expect that they’ll stick with it. It’s our job, however, to keep pointing out that Sondland himself has said that, regardless of what Trump may have said, military aid was being withheld until such time as Zelensky made a public statement about opening an investigation into the Bidens… Oh, by they way, here are the notes, written in sharpie, that Donald Trump had with him while talking with the press today. As you can see, this was his only talking point… essentially saying, “We have someone on record who swears that I once explicitly told him that I was not engaging in blackmail.”
6. Trump doesn’t know Sondland… After taking credit for opening that Apple manufacturing plant that had actually opened under President Obama, Donald Trump doubled down on his “I don’t know him very well” defense against Sondland’s testimony. According to Trump, Ambassador Sondland, a man whom he appointed to office, was just “a guy who got put there.”
As for how people just get “put” in his administration without his knowledge, the President didn’t elaborate. He also didn’t reconcile the fact that, not too long ago, he not only knew who Sondland was, but called him “a really good man, and great American.”
7. The White House explains everything… Ok, I’m falling asleep, but here’s one more thing before I drift off — a message from the White House announcing complete exoneration.
This, as you might guess, never happened. Sondland was asked to repeat several times that Donald Trump once said to him that he wasn’t committing a crime, but denial of criminal activity is not, in and of itself, a viable defense, let alone proof of innocence. [Just because I turn to an associate and say, “I’m not mugging this woman,” as I push her to the ground and take her purse, does not mean that prosecutors cannot convict me of the crime.] And, more importantly, Sondland also implicated the President in a lot of shit… shit that will no doubt get him impeached.
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