[“Was there a quid pro quo? The answer is yes.” Mr.
Giuliani’s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House
visit for President Zelensky...the Ukraine had to make a public
statement announcing investigations of the 2016 election/DNC server]
[[link removed]]

GORDON SONDLAND THROWS TRUMP, GIULIANI UNDER THE BUS (BACKS UP, DOES
IT AGAIN)  
[[link removed]]


 

Bess Levin
November 20, 2019
Vanity Fair
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]

_ “Was there a quid pro quo? The answer is yes.” Mr. Giuliani’s
requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for
President Zelensky...the Ukraine had to make a public statement
announcing investigations of the 2016 election/DNC server _

Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican counsel Steve Castor, and
Representative Jim Jordan confer during the impeachment-hearing
testimony of Gordon Sondland, on Wednesday., Photograph by Samuel
Corum / Getty // The New Yorker

 

When Republican lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee sat down
for GORDON SONDLAND’s testimony this morning, they likely breathed
a sigh of relief. Finally, after days of hearings with traitorous
government officials hell-bent on taking the president down with
facts, they’d get to hear from the Trump donor turned E.U.
ambassador, who would no doubt testify that this whole impeachment
inquiry is a sham, and that DONALD TRUMP is an innocent, noble man
with an IQ of 390 and a body from the gods. We know they thought this
because, mortifyingly, ranking member DEVIN NUNES’s opening remarks
suggested he thought Sondland was in the GOP’s corner:

But as Sondland’s opening statement
[[link removed]] made
evident, such was not the case! Noting that “a few critical points
have been obscured by noise over the last few days,” Sondland made
clear to the committee that he, Energy Secretary RICK PERRY, and
Ambassador KURT VOLKER “did not want to work with Mr. [RUDY]
GIULIANI,” but did so “at the express direction of the president
of the United States.” Sondland noted that to refuse would mean
losing “an important opportunity to cement relations between the
United States and Ukraine. So we followed the president’s orders.”
He added that, at the time, he didn’t think Giuliani‘s role was
improper, nor did he know that the ex-mayor was working with
individuals now under indictment
[[link removed]],
but, in retrospect, knowing what he knows now, he “would not have
acquiesced to [Giuliani’s] participation.”

Then he dropped the bomb that Republicans will have difficulty
spinning on Fox News, though they’ll no doubt rise to the occasion:

...as I testified previously, Mr. Giuliani’s requests were a quid
pro quo for arranging a White House visit for PRESIDENT
ZELENSKY. 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.

In sum, per Sondland, not only was there a quid pro quo, but it came
at the behest of the president, blowing up the GOP’s arguments that
nothing of the sort occurred and that Trump was just an innocent pawn
[[link removed]].
(In reference to his revised testimony delivered
[[link removed]] privately
to lawmakers earlier this month, Sondland said his lawyer had made
“multiple requests to the State Department and the White House”
for his “phone records, State Department emails, and other State
Department documents,” all of which were denied.)

Elsewhere, GoSo testified that upon learning military aid had been
suspended, and understanding that it would not be released “until
there was a public statement from Ukraine committing to the
investigations of the 2016 election and Burisma,” he went to
Senator RON JOHNSON with his concerns, as well as the Ukrainians.
(For those of you keeping up at home, that also destroys the
Republican argument that the Ukrainians had no idea why the aid was
being held up.) Sondland again made clear, in case Nunes and Co.
didn’t hear it the first time, that he was simply following “the
directions of the president,” and was working with Giuliani
“because the president directed us to do so,” despite having “no
desire to set any conditions on the Ukrainians.”

Referring to the July 26 phone call discussed by Ambassador BILL
TAYLOR last week, wherein Sondland allegedly spoke to Trump from a
restaurant in Kiev and assured the president that Zelensky would do
“anything” he wanted, Sondland said that he had no reason to doubt
the account, adding, “Actually, I would have been more surprised if
President Trump had not mentioned investigations, particularly given
what we were hearing from Mr. Giuliani about the president’s
concerns.”

Finally, just to put as fine a point on it as possible, Sondland told
the room: “I know that members of this committee have frequently
framed these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was
there a quid pro quo? As I testified previously, with regard to the
requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is
yes.”

The president, of course, will no doubt attempt to claim at some point
today that Sondland has no idea what he’s talking about, or that
he’s a Never Trumper, so, just for posterity:

TRUMP, GIULIANI AREN’T THE ONLY ONES WHO SHOULD PROBABLY LIE LOW FOR
A WHILE

According to Sondland, the Ukraine scheme was a real team effort
[[link removed]]:

Sondland said...“there was no secret” about the work within a much
larger circle of Trump’s cabinet. [Secretary of State MIKE]
POMPEO, [Vice President MIKE] PENCE and [acting chief of
staff MICK] MULVANEY were among those Sondland named as senior
officials who were aware of the pressure campaign. “Everyone was in
the loop,” Sondland said.

Sondland said that Pompeo was involved at several points. The
secretary of state “was aware that a commitment to investigations
was among the issues we were pursuing” and the State Department was
“fully supportive,” the ambassador testified. That coordination
with Pompeo extended to navigating what Sondland said he believed was
another bargaining chip the White House had put in play in July to
pressure Ukraine: $400 million in security assistance to fend off
Russian aggression.
 

Pompeo and Pence have both insisted that neither they nor the
president did anything wrong, though Mulvaney, of course, just came
out and said it last month, telling
[[link removed]] reporters
that of course there was a quid pro quo deal with Ukraine, and that
such arrangements happen “all the time.”

JUST A MEMO TO ANYONE CONSIDERING SIGNING UP WITH THE MAN OF THE HOUR

If you want to get in good with the boss man, nix the industry jargon
and keep the words to three, four letters, max
[[link removed]]:

Among the revelations Wednesday in the impeachment inquiry into Donald
Trump—an ambassador revealed how he employs profanity-laden
“Trump-speak” in hopes of relating to the U.S. president. In an
unusual moment of levity in the televised hearing, Gordon Sondland,
the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, acknowledged he may have
told Trump that Ukraine’s leader “loves your ass.”

“That sounds like something I would say,” Sondland, a hotel owner
who received the ambassadorship after donating to Trump, said with a
smile when asked by the Democratic counsel about the account.
“That’s how President Trump and I communicate—a lot of
four-letter words. In this case, three-letter,“ he said, drawing
laughter from the crowd. Sondland said he was trying to explain to
Trump how Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was “very
willing to work with the United States and was being very amicable.

“So putting it in Trump-speak—by saying ‘he loves your ass,
he’ll do whatever you want’—meant that he would really work with
us on a whole host of issues,” Sondland said.

ERIC TRUMP THINKS Y’ALL SHOULD CELEBRATE HIS FATHER BEING A CRIMINAL
WITH A NICE BOTTLE OF RED

(It’s probably beside the point to mention this, but a wine
connoisseur described
[[link removed]] the
offerings from Trump Winery as having notes of “Welch‘s grape
jelly.”)

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web [[link removed]]
Submit via email
Frequently asked questions [[link removed]]
Manage subscription [[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org [[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]