The House Intelligence Committee is hearing from Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, on the fourth day of public testimony in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.
Sondland is testifying Wednesday morning, and his opening statement is here. In the afternoon, Laura Cooper, the Defense Department’s top official on Russia and Ukraine, and David Hale, the under secretary of State for political affairs, will appear before the committee.
Sondland has put Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani at the center of the effort to extract a promise from Ukrainian officials to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.
Sondland, a Trump donor, is likely to come under intense questioning after new information emerged about a telephone call he had with Trump on July 26, the day after Trump’s phone conversation with Zelenskiy.
David Holmes, a member of the embassy staff in Kyiv, told House investigators last Friday that he overhead Trump asking Sondland about “the investigations.” Holmes said that Sondland told him after he hung up that the president “didn’t give a s--- about Ukraine” and that Trump only cares about the “big stuff” that benefits him “like the Biden investigation.”
Sondland looped in Secretary of State Michael Pompeo on efforts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy into making public commitments to appease Trump so he would grant an Oval Office meeting, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
Sondland advised Pompeo in August about drafting a statement with Ukrainian officials that they hoped would satisfy Trump, the newspaper said, according two anonymous people briefed on the matter. Sondland also discussed pressure on Zelenskiy to take steps Trump sought prior to a scheduled meeting between the two leaders in Poland that was later canceled.
It’s unclear how detailed Sondland was in his communications with Pompeo, who is said to have approved of the plan, according to the report. The previously undisclosed details link Pompeo more directly to the Trump administration’s campaign to push Ukraine to make commitments that House Democrats say would benefit Trump politically and possibly damage U.S. national security.
Sondland will tell the committee that he, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and U.S. envoy Kurt Volker worked with Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine matters at Trump’s “express direction.”
“We played the hand we were dealt,” Sondland will say, according to his prepared opening statement obtained by Bloomberg.“We all understood that if we refused to work with Mr. Giuliani, we would lose an important opportunity to cement relations between the United States and Ukraine. So we followed the president’s orders,” he will say.
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