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The United States ambassador to the European Union told an impeachment hearing yesterday that he followed President Donald Trump’s orders in seeking a “quid pro quo” deal for Ukraine to probe a political rival in exchange for a White House summit.
In explosive televised testimony, Sondland, whose appearance was being watched especially closely as he was a Trump ally said he believed the president was pressing Ukraine to investigate his potential 2020 challenger Joe Biden.
“We followed the president’s orders,” Sondland testified before the House Intelligence Committee. He said that Trump forced US diplomats to work with his personal lawyer, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. Sondland said that Trump held off on offering a summit with Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as Giuliani demanded that Kiev publicly announce it was investigating a gas company on which former vice president Biden’s son Hunter held a paid board position.
Giuliani also wanted Zelensky to investigate a widely discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine planted evidence on a server of Biden’s Democratic Party to show that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. “Mr Giuliani’s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky,” Sondland said.
Sondland said he “never received a clear answer” on why the White House suspended $391 million in security aid to Ukraine, which is battling Russian-backed separatists, but that he “came to believe” it was also tied to the investigations sought by Trump.
