The NPR Politics Podcast - Sondland Says Trump Conditioned White House Meeting on Announcement of Investigations

Episode Date: November 20, 2019

Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, tied President Trump directly to conditioning a meeting with the Ukrainian president with "a public statement from President Zelenskiy committing to investigations of Burisma and the 2016 election." In this episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, and Justice department correspondent Ryan Lucas.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, this is Zach Khalil, listening on my way to pick up the brand new Pokemon game Sword and Shield, on my way to become a Pokemon master. I listen to the NPR Politics Podcast because you know what? I gotta know something sometimes. This podcast was recorded at, insert time here, 2.38pm on Wednesday the 20th of November. All caps. Things a thousand percent would have changed by the time you hear this, but you know what won't change? My quest to be the best. Alright, enjoy the show.

I love you. Oh my god. You gotta catch them all. I don't actually understand the vernacular of Pokemon, but I do know that I am investing a small fortune in Pokemon cards that I give to my child one a day. It's something of a quid pro quo, I would say. Tam, tam, tam.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. And I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the White House. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. And I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. Committee will come to order. Good morning, everyone.

Today, President Trump's ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, testified in the impeachment inquiry. I appreciate the opportunity to speak again to the members of this committee. And his opening statement was a doozy. I know that members of this committee frequently frame 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 the White House meeting, the answer is yes. This is probably the biggest moment that we have seen so far in the public segment of this impeachment inquiry. The Trump-appointed ambassador to the European Union saying on live television that, yes, there was a quid pro quo,

that the Trump administration was conditioning a visit to the White House for Ukraine's new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to Ukraine conducting two investigations that the president was demanding, an investigation into the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which Joe Biden's son Hunter sat on the board of, as well as into the president's allegations that it was actually Ukraine that colluded with the Democrats in the 2016 election. And that's not all he had to say in his opening statement. Mr. Giuliani conveyed to Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker and others that President Trump wanted a public statement from President Zelensky committing to investigations of Burisma and the 2016 election. Mr. Giuliani expressed those requests directly to the Ukrainians,

and Mr. Giuliani also expressed those requests directly to us. We all understood that these prerequisites for the White House call and the right White House meeting reflected President Trump's desires and requirements. Let's key in on something here, Ryan. Rudy Giuliani seems to be a linchpin here. He is saying that Rudy Giuliani was conveying to them what the president wanted. That's right.

And this is the first time that we've kind of heard this directly from someone with first hand knowledge in this impeachment inquiry who was dealing with Giuliani directly and dealing with the president directly as well. And Giuliani's role is really highlighted in this testimony and that Sondland and the other two officials to who he says were kind of tapped to lead Ukraine policy, which would be Energy Secretary Rick Perry and U.S. Special En to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, that they were under the understanding that the president directed them to interact with Rudy Giuliani and that when Giuliani was expressing what he wanted, Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president. And that is important. And Sondland was pressed on this during the questioning. You testified that Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president, correct? That's our understanding, yes.

But how did you know that? Who told you? Well, when the president says, talk to my personal attorney, and then Mr. Giuliani, as his personal attorney, makes certain requests or demands, we assume it's coming from the president. I'm not testifying that I heard the president tell Mr. Giuliani to tell us, so if that's your question. This is key because what he's saying is that Giuliani was saying that if the Ukrainians wanted a meeting at the White House, that they would have to announce that these investigations were happening. So, you know, this is a way you're that Sondland is connecting President Trump to wanting these investigations and to

putting conditions on them, which would be a quid pro quo. And then to take it the next step, you then have Sondland saying, and then the aid was held up. Yes. So he said he he knew for a fact that there were conditions on getting the meeting at the White House for Zelensky. But when it came to the aid, he said that he came to understand or he presumed, based on everything that he knew and based on the work that he was doing, that it was a condition for that aid to be released, that there would have to be an announcement of investigations. He had to get those two investigations if that official act was going to take place, correct? He had to announce the investigations. He didn't actually have to do them as I understood it.

Okay. President Zelensky had to announce the two investigations the president wanted, make a public announcement, correct? Correct. And those were of great value to the president. He was quite insistent upon them, and his attorney was insistent upon them. I don't want to characterize whether they are value, not value. Again, through Mr. Giuliani, we were led to believe that that's what he wanted. And another thing that he did was he said, I wasn't some rogue agent. I wasn't in some alternate channel. They were all in the loop. I think that's what he said, right? Like 12 times. About that he was letting everyone know what was going on, that people knew what was happening. Everyone was in the loop. So this morning, Democrats felt like they were having a pretty good day.

But Gordon Sondland was not there for the Democrats. He wasn't there for the Republicans either. But as the Republicans started asking their questions and even as the Democratic lawyer was asking Sondland some questions, there were some holes that developed. You know, there was a sense that maybe he was jumping to conclusions and didn't have all the receipts. This was the Democratic lawyer, Daniel Goldman, asking Sondland about how he knew that this is what the receipts. This was the Democratic lawyer Daniel Goldman asking Sondland about how he knew that this is what the president wanted. That was the problem, Mr. Goldman. No one told me directly that the aid was tied to anything. I was presuming it was. Right. He came to the conclusion based on what he had seen, that the fact that the White House wanted these investigations launched,

that the only way for the aid to be released was for Ukraine to launch those investigations. But importantly, the president never explicitly said that. And then under questioning from the Republican lawyer, Steve Castor, Sondland came to seem like a pretty unreliable witness to even his own doings. I would say that the Republicans tried to highlight the fact that in some instances, Sondland was perhaps presuming stuff that he didn't know, was trying to fill in the blanks on his own. And they certainly tried to pull at this possible thread that perhaps his testimony wasn't quite as reliable as Democrats

would like for it to seem to be. You don't have records. You don't have your notes because you didn't take notes. You don't have a lot of recollections. I mean, this is the trifecta of unreliability. And so with them kind of pressing back on his reliability here, it does seem like Sondland's assumption or presumption was shared by other people in the administration, right? Like Vindman and Taylor and others had the same concerns or were reaching the same conclusions about the way this aid was being held up and the request for these investigations. It's funny that you mentioned Vindman, because we saw a similar attempt by Republicans yesterday to try to undermine Vindman as a witness, raising questions about potential dual loyalties, about a number of other aspects of his testimony, about his motivations, potential political

motivations. Did he have contact with a whistleblower, so on and so forth? So this is a line of questioning that we have seen from Republicans before and will likely see in the testimony to come as well. Yeah. I mean, the idea of whether there was a quid pro quo or not has been pretty fundamental to the Republican defense of the president. The President Trump has repeated so many times, no quid pro quo, no quid pro quo. It became like the no collusion of 2019. Well, then Sondland comes out and says, yes, quid pro quo. To a large extent, Republicans have tried to kind of ignore the fact that Sondland said outright that there was a quid pro quo for the White House meeting. Two investigations, the Ukrainians get the White House meeting. What instead they're focusing on is there was no quid pro quo for the

military aid. That's what they're really trying to dig down on, attack his credibility on, and raise the point that nobody has any evidence that the aid was actually tied to these investigations. But the White House hasn't been super clear about why that money was held up ever. That's the other side of this is that the White House hasn't been super clear about why the money was held up and why it was released when it was released. Every every every witness who has come up and testified has said they never got a straight answer from anybody as to why the aid was being held up or why it was released. Right. We are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, how President Trump has responded and also what comes next. This week on the StoryCorps podcast from NPR, we take you back to 2015, when Asma Jama, a Somali-American woman, was assaulted for speaking Swahili at a restaurant.

Tune in to hear how Asma found support from an unlikely source, the sister of the woman who attacked her. And we're back. And President Trump, as he often does, Aisha, went out to the South Lawn of the White House. You did, too. He had somewhere to go. You had to wait for him. I had to wait for him to leave, to head out, as we do. But, yeah, so he was out there talking.

And this time, this was just him delivering a statement. He didn't take questions. He did not take questions. It was not a back and forth. He had something that he wanted to say. There are pictures, and you can look at them online, where photographers did get, because he had notes and written in big letters in Sharpie, this message that he wanted to convey. Here's my response that he gave. Just gave.

Ready? You have the cameras rolling? I want nothing. That's what I want from Ukraine. That's what I said. I want nothing. He did have it written in all caps in Sharpie and it seems as though he is reading it in all caps in Sharpie. And it seems as though he is reading it in all caps in Sharpie. But, yes, so that's what he said. So and this is what he's saying. I think a lot of his if you're on Twitter, the campaign, others, this is what they're highlighting.

This is what he's highlighting on his Twitter feed. This idea that the what he told Sondland explicitly was that he doesn't want anything. He didn't want anything. He just wanted Zelensky to do what he campaigned on, which was to be transparent. Oh, and then he also said he hardly knew the guy, Gordon Sondland. They didn't talk very often, but he is a nice guy. Is that right? Yeah. He said he doesn't really know him. And he wanted to point out that Sondland supported other candidates before he supported Trump. So now he's making that clear. He didn't really know him.

And he also supported other candidates. So Trump wasn't his first choice as a candidate. So he's trying to put some distance there. At the same point in time, we heard from Sondland today under oath that he probably spoke to the to the president around 20 times, meaning that he was he had direct access to the president. He could call him up and actually get the president on the phone. Which is in part why he said he can't remember specific conversations, because he had a lot of conversations with the president, some about Ukraine, some about ASAP Rocky the rapper, some about any number of things because he had a large portfolio. And it's also something that other diplomats who have testified in this inquiry have said they did not have the ability to do. And that's part of what was so nice about having Sondland involved is that he did have that direct access to the president himself.

So we are in the fourth day of public testimony. We know that there is another day scheduled tomorrow. There is another hearing scheduled for tomorrow with the potential for yet more blockbuster testimony. Yes, we are going to hear from Fiona Hill, who was a senior National Security Council staffer, ultimately left this past summer, as well as David Holmes, who is in the U.S. Embassy in Kiev. And he's the one who testified about that call that Sondland had on July 26th with the president, where he says the president mentioned the investigations to Gordon Sondland.

So those could be two very interesting people to hear from. But at the same point in time, a lot of this investigation really is now turning on the testimony of Gordon Sondland. He really has emerged as the key witness in this whole thing. That was clear building up to today. And then with the opening statement, we saw why. So, Aisha, where do you think this leaves things? Well, I think that even based on the NPR, PBS NewsHour, Marist poll that came out yesterday, I do think that people are pretty locked in. That's what the pollPR, PBS NewsHour, Marist poll that came out yesterday, I do think that people are pretty locked in. That's what the poll showed, that two-thirds of Americans are just locked in on

their position and that nothing can come out to change it. In the beginning of this hearing, it did seem like this, and I'm not saying it's not a big deal, what Sondland is saying seems like it could have really big repercussions. But it does seem like now Republicans and the president are kind of falling back into their defenses. The president didn't actually say, I want this aid held up in exchange for investigations. It seems pretty likely that Democrats are going to move ahead with impeachment, but not clear what will happen in the Senate. All right, we are going to leave it there. But hey, we will be back really soon because in case that wasn't enough news for you today,

there's something else happening tonight. The fifth Democratic debate is in Atlanta. We'll have another pod coming your way late tonight to break it all down. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I also cover the White House down. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. And I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.