Sondland throws Giuliani under the bus
WASHINGTON — In his opening statement before the House Intelligence Committee, Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union — who has been widely seen as the impeachment inquiry’s most consequential witness — put President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani at the center of the effort to pressure the president of Ukraine to carry out Trump’s political agenda.
Sondland later said that he was displeased by a May 23 order from the president to effectively hand the Ukraine portfolio to Giuliani. “We weren’t happy with the president’s directive to talk with Rudy. We did not want to involve Mr. Giuliani,” Sondland said. “If I had known of all of Mr. Giuliani’s dealings or of his associations with individuals now under criminal indictment,” Sondland said, according to a version of his opening statement provided to the media, “I would not have acquiesced to his participation. Still, given what we knew at the time, what we were asked to do did not appear to be wrong.”
Sondland also described how his parents fled the Holocaust and how, as a private entrepreneur, he has donated to Democrats and Republicans alike. A $1 million donation to Trump’s 2016 presidential inauguration went unmentioned, though Sondland did say that being named the U.S. ambassador to the European Union was “the highest honor in my public life.”
In a remark that has since become famous, former national security adviser John Bolton denounced that proposed bargain as corrupt, comparing it to a “drug deal.”
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