WASHINGTON (AP) – Was there a “quid pro quo?”
The ambassador entangled in an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump is telling House lawmakers: “Yes.”
Gordon Sondland is testifying Wednesday publicly.
Sondland says “we all understood” that a meeting at the White House for Ukraine’s president and a phone call with Trump would happen only if President Volodymyr Zelenskiy agreed to an investigation into the 2016 U.S. election and the son of former Vice President Joe Biden.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has opened Wednesday’s impeachment hearing with a warning for President Donald Trump’s administration.
Schiff said the House has “not received a single document” from the administration as it has investigated Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. He said Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have made “a concerted and across the board effort” to obstruct the investigation and “they do so at their own peril.”
Ambassador Sondland says he never heard President Donald Trump say that military aid to Ukraine was conditioned on a public announcement by the Ukrainian president that the country was investigating Democrats.
Sondland tells a House committee in the impeachment inquiry into Trump that it was clear that a meeting in the White House was conditioned on investigations.
He also said Trump never told him a White House meeting with the Ukrainian president would not happen without a public announcement. He heard that from Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Sondland said it was a personal guess that the military aid was being held up until an announcement, one that others eventually also made.
A top aide to Vice President Mike Pence says a conversation with EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland about a link between military aid to Ukraine and investigations “never happened.”
Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff, says Pence never spoke with Sondland “about investigating the Bidens, Burisma, or the conditional release of financial aid to Ukraine based upon potential investigations.”
President Donald Trump is insisting Wednesday that he wanted “nothing” from Ukraine and declared that impeachment hearings should be brought to an end.
The president read from handwritten notes when speaking to reporters on the White House lawn nearly an hour later than his scheduled departure for Texas.
Trump addressed the ongoing testimony from Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union, who linked the president to a decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into a political rival.
But he only highlighted specific, helpful parts from Sondland’s remarks, saying “it is the final word” that he did not demand a quid pro quo.
Trump, who claimed that means “it’s all over” for the impeachment proceedings, did not take questions from reporters.
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