WASHINGTON (CN) – A former hotelier who landed a big diplomatic post following a $1 million donation to President Trump’s inaugural committee, Ambassador Gordon Sondland took a startling about-face Wednesday as he confirmed a “quid pro quo” directed by Trump and executed by the president's attorney Rudy Giuliani.
“We weren’t happy with the president’s directive to talk with Rudy,” Sondland testified this morning, reciting opening remarks circulated ahead of the hearing. “We did not want to involve Mr. Giuliani.”
Behind closed doors at the House last month, Sondland testified that he never thought the White House caused the delay of military aid to Ukraine. As witness after witness in the impeachment inquiry contradicted that testimony, however, the ambassador to the European Union is now dramatically reversing his testimony.
Read Ambassador Sondland's opening statement
“Mr. Giuliani’s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky,” Sondland said, referring to Ukraine’s head of state. “Mr. Giuliani demanded that Ukraine make a public statement announcing investigations of the 2016 election/DNC server and Burisma. Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the United States, and we knew that these investigations were important to the president.”
Representative Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence leading the impeachment inquiry, seized upon that admission in his lawyerly examination of Sondland.
“Let me get to the top line here, Ambassador Sondland,” Schiff said, going on to recite the statutory language of the federal bribery statute: the exchange of an “official act” in return for a “thing of value.”
Schiff perceives that trade in Trump’s offer of a White House visit in exchange for two political investigations, one sowing confusion about Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential elections and another undermining Trump’s likely rival Joe Biden.
Sondland explained that these sought-after investigations were only for show.
“[Ukrainian President Zelensky] had to announce the investigations,” the ambassador said. “He didn't actually have to do them.”
Multiple times, Sondland clarified these actions had been “directed by” the president, and the ambassador said that the president’s desires were a matter of simple math.
“Trump never told me directly the aid was conditioned on meetings,” Sondland conceded before adding: “The only thing we got directly from Giuliani was that the Burisma/2016 elections were conditioned on the White House meeting. The aid was my own personal guess. To use an analogy: two plus two equals four.”
After a recess, Schiff told reporters that Sondland’s testimony went “right to the heart” of the bribery issue, as well as high crimes and misdemeanors.
“The veneer has been torn away,” the chairman said.