Did Republican Mega-Donor Gordon Sondland Hang Trump?

I don't know if Ambassador Gordon Sondland is going to turn out to be the John Dean of Trump's impeachment or not-- or if he's just the one who winds up putting Rudy Giuliani in prison-- but his testimony yesterday was pretty damning. Watch the quid pro quo segment above. Fox anchor Chris Wallace mentioned on Fox News-- so watched by Trump supporters living their bubble-- that Sondland "took out the bus and ran it over President Trump, Vice President Pence, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, Mick Mulvaney. He implicates all of them." That must be disturbing for them.

Jamie Raskin (D-MD), one of the smartest and most capable members on the House Judiciary Committee, was watching Sondland in front of the House Intel Committee yesterday. "His testimony was explosive and definitive," he told us. "Sondland made it perfectly clear that the President organized and executed the Ukraine shakedown. Trump essentially bribed Zelensky with a presidential meeting and hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign assistance in return for Zelensky’s announcement of a criminal investigation into Joe Biden and statements validating the Russian disinformation conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine-- and not Russia-- which intervened in our 2016 election. There is no rival theory about what happened. Everyone involved now agrees.  The fulminating Republicans would be wise to stop their campaign of character assassination against the witnesses-- most of them members of the Trump administration itself-- and instead go with their final last-ditch argument: that the Ukraine shakedown was a terrible injury and offense but is not impeachable like something really serious, such as lying about sex. That’s all they have left."

The Washington Post's team on the ground-- Seung Min Kim, Josh Dawsey and Kayla Epstein-- noted that Sondland's "bombshell testimony" left the Trumpists scrambling to contain the damage.

As he traveled on Air Force One to Texas, Trump called members of the House to argue that the testimony was good for him, according to an aide familiar with the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks. Trump also professed to reporters that he had little familiarity with Sondland, a major donor to his inauguration who testified that he had spoken with the president about 20 times.

...On Sondland, key Republican allies sought to undermine the ambassador’s credibility, while insisting that the basic facts had not changed as to whether Trump had committed an impeachable offense by pressuring Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

“I say that he’s changed his story several times and one needs to be suspicious of that. But having said that, take what he says, compare it to the facts,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said Wednesday of Sondland. “I just know this: That [Ukraine] got the money, and Hunter Biden and Joe Biden weren’t investigated. That’s what I do know.”

Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) said he heard Sondland’s “interpretation and his presumption, and to me, that kind of makes it a little bit confusing in and of itself.”

Central to the Republicans’ case was testimony from Sondland where he recounted a Sept. 9 conversation during which Trump, according to the ambassador, said: “I want nothing. I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo.” The White House and its allies argued those remarks were exculpatory, and Trump read them to reporters as he departed from the South Lawn of the White House for Texas.

Republicans also highlighted an exchange from later in the hearing when Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, pressed Sondland on whether anyone “on this planet” told him that Trump was tying any investigation to the military assistance to Ukraine, which was meant to help the Eastern European nation fend off Russian aggression.

Sondland responded that no one had, and that his perception of any move to withhold military aid in exchange for a political investigation was based primarily on his “own presumption.”

“Mike Turner’s ability to get Ambassador Sondland to say that he had not heard from anyone in the administration that would suggest that aid was tied to any investigations was really powerful and compelling,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), one of Trump’s most ardent defenders in the House. “And certainly if this were a jury trial of peers, there’s no way that the president would be convicted.”

...The White House sent 14 different sections of talking points to congressional Republicans, coming in at more than 3,300 words, an official said. Included was a list of 10 times Sondland said he believed or presumed information to be true but could not prove it.

“Sondland Could Not Be Clearer, the President Was Not Involved in a Quid Pro Quo,” one segment was headlined, even though Sondland testified in his opening remarks that there was a quid pro quo.

Other Trump allies sought to argue that, even if there was a quid pro quo as Sondland had testified, there were other factors to consider.

“I don’t think the quid pro quo is the issue. If you’re talking about an illegal quid pro quo, there are legal and illegal quid pro quos,” said Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-LA). “And an illegal quid pro would be based on a president’s intent.”

This morning The Post was back with a blow-by-blow description of how the day had gone: "The political megadonor-turned-ambassador was almost nonchalant as he implicated the president and his top advisers in a scheme to pressure Ukraine. He agreed amiably with Democrats that it was wrong for Trump to use his office to go after political opponents and shrugged off denials from Cabinet officials he named as they were read into the record by fuming Republican lawmakers. There was no somber rhetoric, no cancer on the presidency in his eyes-- but rather a businessman for a president who had a transactional issue to solve: Trump wanted certain things from Ukraine, and vice versa. 'Look,' Sondland said, 'we tried to fix the problem.' He recounted-- without a hint of remorse-- using his perch as U.S. ambassador to the European Union to pressure a foreign government to pursue investigations sought by his boss, the sitting U.S. president. Sondland also acknowledged reversing the testimony he’d given under oath to Congress a month earlier, chalking it up to a busy schedule. He’d simply forgotten that he told a top Ukrainian official in September that the country needed to announce the investigations to see U.S. security assistance flow again, Sondland said."

His opening statement surprised Democrats, who were not expecting him to embrace the quid pro quo phrase or to implicate other Cabinet members.

And Republicans appeared not to know what to make of a top political appointee-- one who had contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration-- flatly undercutting the president’s repeated defense that there was “no quid pro quo.”

...While he said it was “abundantly clear to everyone that there was a link” between the aid and the investigations, Sondland acknowledged that “President Trump never told me directly that the aid was conditions on the meetings.”

More often, the questioning added up for Democrats.

“Is this kind of 2 + 2 = 4 conclusion that you reached? Pretty much is the only logical conclusion to you that given all of these factors, that the aid was also a part of this quid pro quo?” asked Daniel S. Goldman, the attorney for the Democrats.

“Yep,” Sondland replied.

Trump, who watched the testimony from Air Force One en route to Texas, argued that beneath the pizazz and bluster, Sondland had not proven he did anything wrong, according to a senior administration official. While some aides wanted to hit Sondland harder, Trump thought he affirmed the president’s “no quid pro quo” argument and could be spun as a positive witness.

But Democrats saw Sondland confirming a quid pro quo that occurred at the direction of the president, implicating not only Trump but Vice President Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“Everyone was in the loop,” Sondland said. “It was no secret.”

...At one point earlier this fall, Trump had praised Sondland as “a great American.” On Wednesday, a lawmaker read Sondland the latest presidential comment: “This is not a man I know well.”

Sondland seemed unperturbed, saying with a chuckle, “Easy come, easy go.”

Mark Gamba, mayor of Milwaukie, Oregon and a candidate for Congress, said today that "Sondland's testimony is like pouring gasoline on the already burning dumpster fire that is the Trump Administration. This qualifies as sufficient evidence for impeachment.  Most folks in the Portland Metro region don't think much him, this may dramatically improve his standing here." Before Trump sold Sondland an ambassadorship for a million dollars, he has been a GOP-mega-donor, having made over a hundred contributions to Republicans, Republican organizations and Republican PACs, like these dozen:

• May 16, 2017- NRSC- $33,900
• May 31, 2016- NRSC- $33,400
• Sept. 11, 2015- RNC- $33,400
• June 28, 2013- RNC- $32,400
• Jan. 30, 2012- RNC- $30,800
• July 21, 2011- NRC- $30,800 (x 2)
• Jan. 17, 2008- NRC- 28,500
• Jan. 14, 2015- Jeb Bush SuperPAC- $25,000
• March 29, 2007- RNC- $25,000
• April 19, 2016- Kentucky GOP- $10,000
• June 24, 2016- Ohio GOP- $10,000
• Oct. 12, 2012- Oregon GOP- $6,700

On top of that, Sondland gave max contributions to one Republican candidate after another: John McCain (AZ), Joe Heck (NV), Mitch McConnell (KY), Rob Portman (OH), Thom Tillis (NC), Rand Paul (KY), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA). He also gave significant money to home-state Democratic Senator Ron Wyden.

It's worth noting that during Sondland's testimony, Ken Starr mused on Fox News about what Republican senators would be able to handle it and whether or not they might do a replay of the Nixon scenario, where a party of Republican senators went to the White House and told Nixon he was about to be impeached and that the Senate would convict and remove him and that he should resign, which he did. Starr: "Are senators going to now say in light of what we hear today, it’s going to be a long day even with the ambassador alone, in light of what we have heard, 'We need to make a trip down to the White House'? That historic example set during the Nixon presidency. From what I’ve been able to glean I don’t think that’s going to happen. But obviously what happens today could-- has the potential to be a game-changer... this obviously has been one of those bombshell days... There will be articles of impeachment. I think we’ve known that, it was just confirmed today. Substantively, what we heard from the chairman just now is: It’s over. We now know-- this is his position-- we now know that the president in fact committed the crime of bribery."

Rudy Giuliani-- "Super Ethical And Always Legal" by Nancy Ohanian

Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution makes the president subject to impeachment and removal for “"Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." As Ben Wittes of Lawfare explained right after Sondland's testimony, the exchange between Schiff and Sondland at the end of the morning session was seems to have unambiguously described "a corrupt demand for something personally valuable (investigations of political opponents) in return for being influenced in the performance of two official acts (granting a White House meeting and releasing hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance)."

What did Giuliani, to whom Trump had personally directed Sondland, say to him? “Mr. Giuliani emphasized that the President wanted a public statement from President Zelensky committing Ukraine to look into corruption issues. Mr. Giuliani specifically mentioned the 2016 election (including the DNC server) and Burisma as two topics of importance to the President.”

In other words, behind the exchange with Schiff is a specific claim that Trump personally directed Sondland to Giuliani, who then made substantive demands on Trump’s behalf for the investigations he wanted.

But it doesn’t end there. Sondland also confirms, while quibbling over details, that he spoke by phone with Trump on July 26 from a restaurant in Kiev and that the president, as another witness recounts, asked him whether Zelensky was going to deliver the investigations. “Actually,” Sondland testified, “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.”

And then there’s, of course, the text of the Trump-Zelensky call itself, in which Trump asked for Zelensky to initiate the very investigations described in these other incidents, shortly after Zelensky asked for his continued military assistance.

Was Trump here acting “corruptly”? Duh. Seeking investigations of political foes for personal political gain is a prototypically corrupt. But beyond that, Sondland was clear in his testimony that Trump wasn’t actually asking for the investigations themselves, but merely the announcement of them. In other words, he wanted not an investigation of corruption, but the political optics of Ukraine’s declaring that his political opponents were under investigation. What’s more, Sondland also confirmed that Trump seemed not to care a whit about Ukraine-- that he only cared about the investigations that could benefit him.

In short, a witness with first-hand knowledge of both U.S. interactions with the Ukrainians and the president’s own conduct today accused President Trump of soliciting a bribe from a foreign head of state. Whether or not this would qualify as a bribe under the criminal law, I would have no hesitation describing it as one if I were a member of Congress considering the impeachment of a president.

This mornings's press went badly for the Trumpist regime

Pramila Jayapal, who represents Seattle in Congress and is the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, serves on the House Judiciary Committee and after Sondland flew back to Brussels last night sent a statement to her constituents: "Gordon Sondland’s bombshell testimony today further corroborated the facts and evidence the House has already gathered through our impeachment inquiry. One by one, we have seen career civil servants, a decorated military officer, and now a Trump appointee-- who gave $1 million to Trump-- all saying the President directed efforts to pressure a foreign ally to dig up dirt on a political opponent. Sondland also corroborated under oath what President Trump and Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney have admitted to: There was a quid pro quo. He so clearly painted a picture of President Trump using American foreign policy as leverage to further his own personal and political interests. The President of the United States inviting a foreign ally to interfere in our elections-- using taxpayer dollars as hostage-- is a gross abuse of power and a betrayal of our Constitution, values and national security. My Republican colleagues shift their defense of President Trump on a daily basis, but the stark reality is that there is no defense of the President’s conduct."

And the GOP response? One that truly represents what the Republican Party stands for right now-- and is a fair representation of how it presents itself and why it is losing so many supporters-- came from corrupt Louisiana Trumpist, John Kennedy: "You know what these proceedings look to me like right now? They look like the Kavanaugh hearing without the vagina hats."

All those years pretending to be a moderate... flushed