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By C.J. Atkins
I was only following orders. It’s the classic defense offered by someone further down the chain of command who gets caught up in the nefarious deeds of their superiors. And it’s exactly the mea culpa offered by Gordon Sondland, Trump’s Ambassador to the European Union, when he testified at the House Intelligence Committee’s public impeachment inquiry Wednesday morning.
In his opening statement and subsequent testimony, Sondland confirmed—as have all other officials subpoenaed so far—the main details of the president’s campaign to extort an election interference effort from the government of Ukraine. Trump withheld $391 million of military and other aid to Ukraine earlier this year, conditioned upon the country’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, agreeing to open an investigation into the business activities of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. The younger Biden served on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which is notoriously corrupt, at the time his father was overseeing Obama administration policy in Ukraine. Trump’s extortion effort was exposed by the whistleblower report that initiated the current impeachment inquiry.
Sondland is a wealthy hotel owner and major Republican donor who secured his nomination as EU representative following a $1 million donation to Trump’s inauguration. He told Congress that he was appearing despite a White House and State Department order not to do so. Whether sensing that the investigation is closing in on Trump or just displaying more of the daftness that has characterized his time as ambassador, Sondland ended up offering testimony that was even more damning of Trump than expected. He effectively threw not only Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani but also the president himself under the bus.
Complaining about the administration’s embargo on letting him review any of his own records, Sondland testified from memory about his role in Ukraine—memories which conveniently portrayed himself, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker, and others as powerless to stop the machinations of Giuliani. He said they were essentially forced to cooperate with Giuliani’s campaign to secure a Burisma/Biden investigation, doing so “at the express direction of the President of the United States.”
He also dared to utter the phrase that Republicans have latched onto in their defense of Trump—quid pro quo. “Mr. Giuliani’s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky,” he testified—contradicting claims made by Trump and the GOP that...
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