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| Subject: | The Daily 202: What Sondland allegedly said after Trump hung up on July 26 badly undercuts him and the president | |
| Sent: | Tue, 19 Nov 2019 14:36:12 +0000 | |
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# What Sondland allegedly said after Trump hung up on July 26 badly undercuts him and the president
Career diplomat Holmes, a political counselor at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, arrives at the Capitol on Friday. House investigators released the transcript of his deposition on Monday night. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)
with Mariana Alfaro
THE BIG IDEA: Holmes, the political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, testified that he “vividly” remembers his July 26 lunch at a restaurant in Kyiv because he’d “never seen anything like this.”
After ordering a bottle of wine, Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland used his unsecured cellphone to update President Trump on his meeting that morning with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Holmes said he could hear Trump say, “So he’s going to do the investigation?” And he said Sondland responded, “Oh yeah, he’s going to do it.” The ambassador explained to the president that Zelensky, whom Trump spoke with the day before, “loves your a--,” according to the transcript of Holmes’s deposition released last night by House impeachment investigators.
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But it’s what purportedly transpired after this two-minute conservation that’s most problematic for both Sondland and Trump. According to Holmes, the E.U. ambassador volunteered that the president cared more about the investigation of Joe Biden that Rudy Giuliani was pursuing than anything having to do directly with Ukraine.
Holmes explained that he asked Sondland, point blank, whether it was true that the president “doesn’t give a s--- about Ukraine” because “it had been very difficult for us to get the president interested in what we were trying to do in Ukraine.”
“Ambassador Sondland agreed that the president did not give a s--- about Ukraine,” Holmes said under oath. “I asked why not, and Ambassador Sondland stated, the President only cares about ‘big stuff.’ I noted that there was ‘big stuff’ going on in Ukraine, like a war with Russia. And Ambassador Sondland replied that he meant ‘big stuff that benefits the president,’ like the ‘Biden investigation that Mr. Giuliani was pushing.’”
-- Holmes, a career Foreign Service officer, has agreed to testify publicly on Thursday at 9 a.m. alongside Fiona Hill, the former National Security Council official who also provided damaging closed-door testimony against Sondland. The 213-page transcript suggests that Holmes is poised to offer a gripping narrative for the benefit of a television audience.
“This was an extremely distinctive experience in my Foreign Service career,” Holmes said. “I’ve never seen anything like this, someone calling the President from a mobile phone at a restaurant, and then having a conversation of this level of candor, colorful language. There’s just so much about the call that was so remarkable that I remember it vividly.”
-- House Intelligence Chairman Schiff (D-Calif.) questioned Holmes about his bluntness with Sondland. “I’m not proud of my language,” the diplomat answered.
“But the informal tone of the lunch and the language I had heard him using in his call with the president, we were just sort of, you know, two guys talking about stuff, and it seemed to me that was the kind of language that he used.” Holmes recalled that Sondland’s exact words were: “Nope, not at all, doesn’t give a s--- about Ukraine.”
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Waiters were coming and going as all this played out on the outdoor terrace at SHO, a central Kyiv restaurant. Holmes said he was surprised a presidential conversation so candid would take place on a cellphone since the Russians own or hold significant stakes in the mobile networks and government officials should always assume that they’re being monitored. Acting ambassador Bill Taylor revealed the July 26 call between Trump and Sondland during his testimony last week.
Unraveling three discrepancies in Gordon Sondland's testimony
-- Holmes’s sworn testimony links Trump himself much more directly to the efforts to coerce Ukraine to investigate Biden at a time when the former vice president was leading in polls. It also further undermines another favorite GOP talking point: that Trump put assistance on ice because he was sincerely concerned about corruption and the rule of law in Kyiv. The rough transcript of Trump's initial April call with Zelensky, released Friday, revealed that the president didn’t even broach corruption during that conversation, despite the White House’s readout from the time that said he had raised the issue. “I think the Ukrainians gradually came to understand that they were being asked to do something in exchange for the meeting and the security assistance hold being lifted,” Holmes testified.
Not to mention, the president's reported disregard for Ukraine's future is a boon for the Kremlin's propaganda efforts in Russia's ongoing invasion in the east and its occupation of Crimea.
-- It stands to reason that Sondland would know about Trump’s interest in Biden. The rough transcript of the July 25 call shows Trump mentioning his political challenger to Zelensky. But Sondland insisted under oath that he didn’t know the president was interested in securing a Biden investigation until later. “Sondland did not disclose any conversation with Trump while in Kyiv in his testimony or in the follow-up statement,” Glenn Kessler notes. “In his initial deposition, he said: ‘Again, I recall no discussions with any State Department or White House official about former vice
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president Biden or his son. Nor do I recall taking part in any effort to encourage an investigation into the Bidens.'
"Sondland in his testimony indicated that he did not understand until late in the game that administration requests that Ukraine investigate the Ukrainian gas company Burisma – where Hunter Biden was a director – were related to the Biden family. He expressed ignorance about statements and tweets made by Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, making that connection. ‘I became aware of his [Giuliani’s] interest in Burisma sometime in the intervening period, but I never made the connection between Burisma and the Bidens until the very end,’ Sondland said. ‘I heard the word ‘Burisma,’ but I didn't understand that Biden and Burisma were connected.’"
Trump on Sondland: 'I hardly know the gentleman'
-- Tomorrow morning, Sondland will get a chance to clear up these and other discrepancies during his own televised testimony. Holmes’s deposition gives him more to answer for when he’s in the hot seat. The Portland, Ore., hotelier already significantly revised his testimony regarding the existence of a quid pro quo after other officials gave conflicting accounts of his role.
-- Trump claimed last week that he doesn’t have any recollection of the July 26 conversation, and the White House refuses to turn over call logs that could illuminate the extent of the president’s Ukrainian-related contacts. The president has begun distancing himself from Sondland. “I hardly know the gentleman,” Trump said on Nov. 8. The president has previously taken this tack with Flynn, Cohen, Paul Manafort and others who he apparently concluded had outlived their usefulness to him.
-- Sondland previously sought to minimize his contacts with Trump. “I think I’ve
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spoken with President Trump – and this is a guess – maybe five or six times since I’ve been an ambassador,” he said during his deposition. “And one of those I recall was a Christmas, ‘Merry Christmas,’ and it was zero substance.”
But former National Security Council senior director Morrison said it was his understanding that Sondland had a lot of conversations with the president.
“Ambassador Sondland believed and at least related to me that the president was giving him instructions,” Morrison testified, adding that Sondland related to him that he was “discussing these matters with the president.”
-- Democrats also released the transcript last night from Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Hale’s appearance. Hale, the top career official at Foggy Bottom, revealed that Mike Pompeo spoke with Giuliani by phone on March 28 and March 29 as officials in the department tried to get a statement of support for then-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch as the president's personal lawyer participated in a smear campaign against her. Hale said Yovanovitch was doing an “exceptional” job.
Pompeo: 'I'm not going to get into issues surrounding the Democrat impeachment inquiry'
-- Pompeo continues to defy a subpoena and refuses to turn over records that could validate – or undercut – some of the most damning witness testimony about Trump’s conduct. Sondland turned over communications from his personal devices to the State Department, but State won’t share them with investigators.
-- Holmes also testified that aides to Energy Secretary Rick Perry were “very aggressive in terms of promoting an agenda” in Ukraine, as well as in “excluding embassy personnel from meetings without giving explanations.”
-- He will return to the Capitol on Thursday with a deep reservoir of credibility because he has a proven track record of speaking truth to power. “Holmes won an award in 2014 for raising concerns about then-President Barack Obama’s policy toward
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Afghanistan, where Holmes had served,” Anne Gearan reports. “The ‘constructive dissent’ honor recognizes mid-level State Department officials who use an internal process to flag problems they observe, which in his case was about how Obama had, in his view, muddied decision-making on Afghanistan and Pakistan. … A rising star in the Foreign Service, Holmes had a string of sought-after jobs before landing as the senior political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. In addition to the National Security Council — a high-stress, high-profile plum — Holmes also was picked for a prestigious job working for the State Department’s No. 3 official during the Obama administration.”
-- Two more-junior staffers who were sitting at the table might also be able to corroborate Holmes’s testimony if Sondland disputes his allegations: Suriya Jayanti arranged Sondland’s schedule in Kyiv, and Tara Maher, a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Brussels, where Sondland is based.
-- Holmes said he also told others in the embassy: The encounter was so “extraordinary” that Holmes immediately told his direct supervisor at the embassy. “You're not going to believe what I just heard,” he recalled telling her. “I would refer back to it repeatedly in our morning staff meetings,” he added. “We'd talk about what we're trying to do. … And I would say, 'Well, as we know, he doesn't really care about Ukraine. He cares about some other things.'”
-- House investigators have now released all but two deposition transcripts. Mark Sandy from the Office of Management and Budget testified on Saturday and hasn’t come back to the Capitol to approve the text. Philip Reeker, the acting assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, has not completed a review of his transcript either.
Jennifer Williams and Alexander Vindman arrive on Tuesday morning to testify before the House Intelligence Committee in the Longworth House Office Building. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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## HAPPENING TODAY:
-- Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, European affairs director at the National Security Council, and Jennifer Williams, Vice President Pence’s special adviser on Europe and Russia, are testifying this morning. They are the first public witnesses who heard Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky. This afternoon, lawmakers will hear from Kurt Volker, a former Trump administration envoy to Ukraine, and Morrison, the former top Russia and Europe adviser on the National Security Council.
-- Vindman, a Purple Heart recipient, plans to testify about his alarm at Trump’s request that Ukraine investigate his political opponents. “But Republicans are also seizing on Vindman’s testimony as an opportunity, signaling that they plan to try to discredit one of the key witnesses in the inquiry by questioning his motives and his loyalty to the president,” Tom Hamburger, Carol Leonnig and Rachael Bade report. “Sen. Ron (R-Wis.) suggested in a letter released Monday that Vindman fits the profile of ‘a significant number of bureaucrats and staff members within the executive branch [who] have never accepted President Trump as legitimate and … react by leaking to the press and participating in the ongoing effort to sabotage his policies and, if possible, remove him from office.’ Vindman’s lawyer, Volkov, called assertion ‘such a baseless accusation, so ridiculous on its face, that it doesn’t even warrant a response.”
-- "Trump and many of his allies have seized on a core defense strategy by attacking career public servants who are testifying as witnesses in the probe and spreading disinformation about their motives as ‘unelected bureaucrats,’" Elise Viebeck and Isaac -Becker report.
-- Vindman is the second of three immigrants scheduled to testify. (My Big Idea from Friday explains the significance.)
-- Volker will modify his testimony and plans to say this afternoon that he didn’t know the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations. From the Times: “Mr. Volker will say that he did not realize that others working for Mr. Trump were tying American
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security aid to a commitment to investigate Democrats. His testimony, summarized by a person informed about it who insisted on anonymity to describe it in advance, will seek to reconcile his previous closed-door description of events with conflicting versions offered subsequently by other witnesses. … Mr. Volker will modify his account as well, addressing disparities between his testimony and that of other witnesses. While he has been lumped together with Mr. Sondland and Energy Secretary Rick Perry as ‘the three amigos’ working on behalf of the president, he plans to try to distinguish his role, insisting that he was not part of any inappropriate pressure and that he was unaware of certain events that he has only now learned about through other testimony. ...
"Mr. Volker plans to say that he never knew that Mr. Sondland told the Ukrainians that the aid and investigations were linked and that he did not know that Mr. Zelensky was being pressed to appear on CNN and announce that he would open the investigations Mr. Trump sought. He also will seek to explain why his description of a key July 10 meeting in the White House with Ukrainian officials differed from those provided by several others. According to other witnesses, John R. Bolton, then the national security adviser, abruptly ended the meeting when Mr. Sondland raised the investigations."
-- State Department officials were informed that Zelensky was feeling pressure from the Trump administration to investigate Biden even before the July phone call, the AP reports: “In early May, officials at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, including then-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, were told Zelenskiy was seeking advice on how to navigate the difficult position he was in ... He was concerned [Trump] and associates were pressing him to take action that could affect the 2020 U.S. presidential race ... State Department officials in Kyiv and Washington were briefed on Zelenskiy’s concerns at least three times ... Notes summarizing his worries were circulated within the department ... The briefings and the notes show that U.S. officials knew early that Zelenskiy was feeling pressure to investigate Biden, even though the Ukrainian leader later denied it in a joint news conference with Trump in September.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), left, confers with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) during a Finance Committee
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committee hearing on Oct. 24. (Mark