The Daily - The Saga of Gordon Sondland

Episode Date: November 8, 2019

Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, told impeachment investigators he knew “nothing” about a quid pro quo in Ukraine. Now Mr. Sondland, a blunt-spoken hotelier, has changed tack. In a new four-page sworn statement released by the House, he confirmed his role in communicating President Trump’s demand that Ukraine investigate the Bidens in exchange for military aid. Today, we discuss the road to Mr. Sondland’s sudden reversal, and what his new testimony means for the impeachment investigation.Guest: Michael S. Schmidt, a Washington correspondent for The Times who covers national security and federal investigations. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: Mr. Sondland’s reversal offers a potentially critical piece of evidence to investigators trying to determine whether Mr. Trump abused his power.Late-night show hosts mocked Mr. Sondland, saying he had reversed his testimony after remembering “one important detail: that I don’t want to go to jail for perjury.”

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily. Today, he was brought into the Trump administration as a loyal donor to the president. Now, his testimony in the impeachment inquiry is so damning that Republicans are accusing him of betrayal. Mike Schmidt on the saga of Gordon Sondland. It's Friday, November 8th.

Mike, over the past week, what has been the story of the impeachment inquiry? The first transcripts from closed-door depositions at the heart of the Ukraine impeachment inquiry are out. Every day. Next this evening, the impeachment showdown tonight. Investigators releasing the first wave of transcripts. New transcripts of depositions. Former Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch describing a shadow campaign. that were conducted with witnesses

behind closed doors in the basement of the Capitol have been released. At the Capitol, the impeachment battle for now is on paper, but no less intense

as today, committees released transcripts of two key witnesses. These are the State Department and National Security Council officials who have been interviewed by the members of Congress in the impeachment investigation. The room that the recent parade of witnesses has been testifying in is called a SCIF, for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. The interviews were done in a SCIF, this special secured room where classified information can be discussed. It should be a sanctuary where politics stops at the door.

And we've only known some of what's gone on in there. And we've only known some of what's gone on in there. Some of the witnesses released short statements before they went in. And we got some dribs and drabs afterwards about what was said. But these transcripts provide the entire dialogue of what went on behind closed doors. Republican lawmakers are demanding to see the transcripts of interviews conducted by House investigators. Right. And this is what Republicans said all along that they wanted to be released. Republicans had complained that this process had no transparency and they wanted the transcripts out there. Now the public will get to read their testimony. So almost all the transcripts were verbatim logs of what had gone on in these interviews.

House Democrats have released two more transcripts from closed-door testimony in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Telling the back and forth that went on between the members of Congress and the witnesses. U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and former U.S. Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker are considered some of the most crucial witnesses to testify so far. But when the transcripts were released, one of them had something different attached to it. In the 739 pages released today, Sondland revised a critical piece of his testimony.

Tacked on to the testimony of the ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland. This is the full Sondland's testimony. That's your day today. This is our day-to-day part of it. But of this, it's really these few pages that we're talking about, his revision.

Was a letter and a three-page addendum that revised what he had said in his interview, things that he wished he had initially laid out. And they turned out to include new evidence about how the Trump administration was directly pressuring the Ukrainians. was directly pressuring the Ukrainians. So Mike, I want to get to Sondland's testimony, but I want to start with Sondland himself,

whose name we have heard a lot over the past few weeks, but who we've never really gotten to know all that well. What is his story exactly? And how does he fit in to the story of the Trump administration and Ukraine? But for now, let's bring Gordon up and welcome him to the stage. Gordon Sondland is a middle-of-the-road Republican. Well, I started in Seattle as a commercial real estate broker. I know there are quite a few out here.

Who built massive hotel management and commercial real estate businesses in the upper northwest. Well, what do you love about it? A hotel has so many moving parts. You have food, you have wine, you have intrigue, you have sex. You have everything you can think of in the hotel business. in the hotel business. His company ran and bought and refurbished boutique hotels in cities like Portland and Seattle and Denver.

It's sort of show business and real estate and theater all combined, and that's what makes it so interesting. Well, geez, when you talk about it like that, it does sound really exciting. So as he becomes this successful businessman,

he becomes more and more interested in politics and begins dabbling as a fundraiser. He helps raise money for George W. Bush, for Mitt Romney, and is following a familiar path of wealthy donors who ingratiate themselves with politicians in the hopes of getting plum jobs if they're elected. But because of circumstances in his own life and his involvement in his business, he doesn't have a chance to do that until Donald Trump is elected president. And what is his relationship with President Trump? They had no relationship. Sondland had not even been a big champion of Trump's during the campaign.

But after Trump was elected, Sondland gave a million dollars to his inaugural fund. That's a very significant sum of money. And a very good way to get on Donald Trump's radar. And by March of 2018, he's appointed.

Hi, I'm Gordon Sondland, the new ambassador to the European Union. And that June, with bipartisan support, he's confirmed as the ambassador and heads off to Brussels. I'm very excited about being President Trump's selection to be the United States ambassador to the European Union. Being ambassador to the European Union, while sounding lofty,

is often a job that doesn't get a lot of attention. It's a plum assignment. One of my most favorite hobbies is flying. You're living in Brussels. I'm also a lover of art. You're meeting with heads of state, but in terms of American foreign policy, you're certainly not the face of it. Right. Think more dinner parties than signing national trade agreements.

President Trump has asked us to accomplish a great deal in the coming years. I hope to get to meet many of you in person. In normal circumstances, he would have faded into the background of the State Department and been just another donor who became a top diplomat. And I look forward to it. But then something else happened. Which is what? He gets roped into the administration's policy towards Ukraine. When Sondland sat down for his first briefing in Brussels, the career State Department officials started talking about Ukraine. And he says, why are you talking about Ukraine?

It's not even in the European Union. And they said, no, no, no, you don't understand. Ukraine is where the fight for Europe is going on. Russia has moved in and we need to be there to support them because if we're not, there could be impact throughout the rest of the continent. So with that, he finds himself involved in becoming schooled in the politics of a country outside the european union so what happens so he's heading along as the ambassador with ukraine in his portfolio and good morning ukraine today on the 20th of May... He's dispatched in May...

Ukraine is having a very important day... To go to the inauguration of the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Distinguished MPs and guests of the parliament. He and the special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, and the energy secretary, Rick Perry. Please welcome the president-elect, Vladimir Zelensky. Come back super pumped about Zelensky. They think he's a reformer

who's willing to fight corruption, and the United States should be there to help him to help repel the Russians and make sure that he doesn't turn to Russia for help. And Sondland and these two other diplomats go in to meet with Trump in June to tell the president about how great this new president is and how the United States needs to do everything it can to help. And what happens in that meeting? Trump goes nuts. Why? He blames the Ukrainians for the problems he's had coming out of the 2016 election. He starts talking about conspiracy theories that they were actually the ones behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.

And he tells the officials, whatever you want to do with Ukraine, you've got to go talk to my personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. And how does he respond to that suggestion that Giuliani should guide him on this? Sondland's thrown off by this. He's bothered. Why is it that American foreign policy should be run through the president's personal lawyer? And we know this because Sondland went into details on it during his testimony. He said, our view was that the men and women of the State Department, not the president's personal lawyer, should take responsibility for all aspects of U.S. foreign policy towards Ukraine.

However, based on the president's direction, we were faced with a choice. Stalin's essentially saying we had to make a decision. We could either try and stop doing business with Ukraine and leave this new president to fend for himself as Russia bears down. Or we could do as President Trump directed and talk to Mr. Giuliani to address the president's concerns. And Sondland says they chose the path of working with Giuliani. And what does that end up meaning for Sondland to have to accede to this directive to work with Giuliani on Ukraine? At first, it seems unusual to Sondland and it progressively gets worse. Giuliani initially wants to have the Ukrainians put out a statement committing to anti-corruption investigations.

Okay, Sondland says, that makes sense. The United States has long fought corruption in Ukraine. But then Giuliani starts coming up with specifics that he wants in the statement. Giuliani wants the Ukrainians to commit to investigating a company that Sondland's never really heard of and whether the Ukrainians had a role in pushing the theory that Russia was behind the hacking of the 2016 election. So these are requests that we've now come to understand

are for Ukraine to do two investigations that the president and Giuliani want. The first is into this company that Joe Biden's son, Hunter, sits on the board of. And the second involves the role that Ukraine may or may not have played in 2016 election meddling. Correct. So again, Sotlin faces a choice. He can walk away or work around these weird barriers that have emerged from the president and his personal lawyer, who he believes are standing in the way of good U.S.-Ukrainian

relations. And once again, he tries to pacify Giuliani and get the Ukrainians to do what he wants. And what in Sondland's mind would be an explanation for why it's worth making all of these compromises and to do what Giuliani wants? It sounds like he understands this is a pretty funky scenario. It's a situation that many Trump officials

have found themselves in. If I'm not here, who will be here to stop even worse behavior? And Sondland has a case of that in his own head. If I don't stand in the way and sort of help get this to a decent place, then Giuliani will have free reign to do whatever he wants with the United States and Ukraine. And so what does working within the system start to look like for Sondland? Sondland and Volker go to work trying to get the Ukrainians to put out the statement Giuliani wants. It bothers Sondland,

but he continues to do it. The summer goes on. Trump has his now infamous call with Zelensky. call with Zelensky. Trump orders military aid to Ukraine to be held up. Sondland becomes aware that the military aid is frozen. Some of his colleagues at the State Department reach out directly to Sondland to ask, hey, what's going on here? Sondland picks up the phone and calls Trump and Trump tells him in an angry tone, there's no quid pro quo on the aid. And by all accounts, does it sound like Sondland believes President Trump? In his initial testimony, yes. A Republican investigator for the committee asked him, to the best of your knowledge, do you know about any preconditions on the aid?

No, Sondland said. And you have never thought there was a precondition to the aid. No, Sondland said. And you have never thought there was a precondition to the aid. Is that correct? Never. No, Sondland said. I mean, I was dismayed when it was held up, but I didn't know why. So Sondland is being crystal clear here that he did not think the aid and the investigations were linked. So Mike, the story that Gordon Sondland tells the impeachment investigators in his original testimony is, look, I don't like a lot of what I see and hear,

but let me be entirely unambiguous. When it comes to the central question of whether the U.S. withheld military aid to Ukraine in order to get these investigations done by Ukraine. I didn't know anything about that. As far as I'm concerned, that didn't happen. Correct. And that testimony was in complete contradiction

with all the other witnesses who had been questioned. Which makes Gordon Sondland a very powerful counter-argument to everything else that's being said to impeachment investigators and an incredibly important figure to Republicans in Congress. The biggest question about the entire Ukraine scandal has been whether there was a quid pro quo on the military aid. Quid pro quo! Quid pro quo! Quid pro quo.

Quid pro quo. The president seems to talk about it every day. Now all of a sudden, quid pro quo doesn't matter because now they see in the call there was no quid pro quo. He says there was no quid pro quo. He said that was a perfectly fine call. There was no pressure. There was no anything.

He said it was a perfect call. perfectly fine call. There was no pressure. There was no anything. He said it was a perfect call. The whistleblower said quid pro quo eight times. It was a little off, no times. It is his top talking point on why he should not be impeached and removed from office. removed from office. And here's someone directly involved in it backing up that notion and saying that he talked to Trump in the middle of all of this and he said there was no quid pro quo. Right. So how are you going to convict Trump if he said that? If he said that. And that is the story that starts to unravel when Gordon Sondland adds three new pages to his testimony this week. We'll be right back.

Mike, what does Gordon Sondland reveal in these three new pages of testimony? sonland went to a top ukrainian official and told him that if they wanted the aid unfrozen they would likely need to put out the statement committing to the investigations trump wanted what he's saying is the question of the quid pro quo that thing in my testimony that i said i didn't think happened actually i was the guy who communicated it to the Ukrainians. That is as big a revision to testimony as I think I've ever heard. He's now saying that the thing I told you I had no knowledge of, actually, I did have knowledge of it, so much knowledge of it that I was the person who communicated it to the Ukrainian government. Correct. I mean, what could possibly be his explanation for somehow not

remembering that during the first testimony? What he says is that in reading the statements that other witnesses have provided, it's freshened up his memory of what occurred. He's saying, provided, it's freshened up his memory of what occurred. He's saying, I'm re-remembering things that I had previously forgotten. Correct. I mean, look, he's basically saying, on one day I said the color was blue, and now I'm saying the color was red. I mean, they're directly in conflict with each other. Mike, how can a witness who delivers sworn testimony before the United States Congress

Mike, how can a witness who delivers sworn testimony before the United States Congress say one thing and then just suddenly add on a new bit of testimony that completely alters, undermines, contradicts the previous thing he said still under oath? Well, who knows what will happen out of this? But what Sondland is doing is giving the Democrats testimony that they need. They want to have a witness who is not just a career diplomat, but someone who was interacting with the president, testifying to the quid pro quo. So the Democrats were more than happy to take that statement. And the fact that he is so senior, that he has a relationship with the president, that he speaks with the president and was appointed by the president, it seems like that is important as a factor. Yes. One of the weaknesses of the Democrats impeachment case is that they do not have a lot of witnesses who directly spoke with the president. directly spoke with the president. Sondland is one of them. They now have his testimony.

They do not have Sondland saying Trump explicitly said this was a quid pro quo. In fact, they have the opposite. But they do have Sondland laying out his own role in it. And being someone that was so close to the president, that's a compelling piece of evidence. I guess there's one element of this that is a bit confusing. Sondland testifies that he spoke with President Trump and that the president said to him there was no quid pro quo, and that's a very powerful exchange. Now he's testifying that he understood there was a quid pro quo and that he communicated it to Ukraine.

It's as if he's saying, I was told by the president that something wasn't, but I understood it to be anyway. So how exactly does that work? Well, what Sondland's essentially saying is that he didn't believe the president, that the president lied to him. Mike, this would seem to be, correct me if I'm wrong, the most damning testimony so far.

So I wonder what you made of it when you read this addendum to Sondland's testimony. What did I make of it? Mm-hmm. I thought, okay, this is interesting new stuff. It gives us a fuller picture. You now have a witness implicating themselves in this problem.

Mm-hmm. It's damning, and it comes from someone close to the president. But I thought it comes with some warts on it. If enough Republicans are going to turn on the president, the Democrats are probably going to need more. They're going to need more evidence that directly ties Trump to the quid pro quo. What exactly do you mean? Because here is a Trump appointee saying, I delivered a message of a quid pro quo at the direction of the president's personal lawyer and of the administration.

But Trump can still blame it on Giuliani. Giuliani was freelancing. Sondland was just doing what Giuliani told him. I didn't tell him to do that. I, in fact, told Sondland there was no quid pro quo. Let's put Sondland up on to testify and let's have him say, yeah, the president told me explicitly, I don't think there's a quid pro quo. So how are you going to prove that? The second thing is that Sondland has changed his story. And if and when he's called at a public hearing, how does this undermine his credibility? The Republicans will be able to say to him, hey, on one day you said this thing, on the next day you said that, why should we believe you? You're just saying this because you don't want the Democrats to

send a referral to the Department of Justice to investigate you for perjury. So you're saying you do not think that for Republicans in the House or, crucially, in the Senate, where the presidency itself will be debated in a trial if he's impeached in the House, that this and everything else around it is going to be sufficient? I think the impeachment story is fairly simple. It all comes down to a few dozen Republicans in the Senate. And will there be enough public pressure or evidence to move them against Trump? When I looked at this statement, I said, that's not good for the president. This gives us a fuller understanding of what occurred. But I'm not sure that it turns those Republicans.

Because of those warts, so-called warts that you just described. Because of those warts and because it only gets you so far on Trump. You mean for some Republicans in the Congress, the only thing that will make a difference that could change their minds on this question of impeachment is whether the president himself directly sought and communicated this quid pro quo possibly but i don't think that gordon sonlin gets you there i don't think gordon sonlin is powerful enough himself to change the minds of republican senators who come from red states where the president is more popular than they are. Mike, I'm curious, what's happening right now to Gordon Sondland? Is he still

the EU ambassador? And what is his status? you, Ambassador, and what is his status? He's now felt the wrath of the right and the president's supporters. No quid pro quo is proven in that statement. I actually thought the transcript releases and even what he thought he was supplementing there proved nothing yesterday. The White House has attacked his own credibility. Yeah, that statement's full of crap. Now, here's a question. Why did Sunderland change his testimony? Was there a connection between Sunderland and Democratic operatives on the committee? Lindsey Graham, the senator from South Carolina, went on Fox News last night to attack him.

Did he talk to Schiff? Did he talk to Schiff staffers? I've been a lawyer for a very long time. When somebody changes their testimony, they suddenly recall something they didn't know before. It makes me incredibly, incredibly suspicious. So Sondland finds himself in this pretty unpleasant position of still working for Trump, still being his top person dealing with Europe, Trump still being his top person dealing with Europe, but also being attacked by the president's party and his allies and the White House and having to do his day job amid all

of this. You kind of have to wonder whether he regrets giving that million dollars. Thank you, Mike. I wonder whether he regrets giving that million dollars. Hmm. Thank you, Mike. Thanks for having me. On Thursday, the Times reported that at the urging of diplomats like Gordon Sondland, Ukraine's president was prepared to announce the investigations sought by President Trump in exchange for the release of U.S. military assistance. Volodymyr Zelensky's staff planned to make the announcement during an interview on CNN scheduled for September 13th,

but President Trump ended up releasing the military aid before the interview, which as a result, never happened. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Thursday, a state judge in New York ordered President Trump to pay $2 million in damages for misusing money from his charitable foundation to, among other things, pay down debts,

assist his presidential campaign, and purchase a portrait of himself. The ruling ends a long-running lawsuit over Trump's handling of his charity and included a rare admission of misconduct from a sitting president. In a court filing, Trump acknowledged that he had failed to follow the laws over how to operate a charity. And Juul Labs, the e-cigarette maker,

said it would stop selling mint-flavored vaping products in the U.S., which accounts for about 70% of its domestic sales. In a statement, Juul said it had made the decision in light of new data showing the popularity of mint with underage vapers, whose use of Juul products has made the company a target of federal regulators. The Daily is made by Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Chung, Alexandra Lee Young, Jonathan Wolfe, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Mark George,

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