Gordon Sondland Testifies

Playbook: “Theoretically, he should be a great witness for Democrats: He’s the man who, in their telling, was leading the effort to get Ukraine to commit to investigating the Bidens in exchange for aid and a visit with Trump.”

“Here is the Republican game plan to discredit Sondland: The GOP will try to paint Sondland as a political hack who was carrying out what he thought Trump wanted, but not what the president told him directly. Rudy Giuliani, Republicans will try to say, was making most of the orders, and maybe Trump was asking about them, but he was not directly giving them. Sondland’s testimony is full of holes; it’s already been corrected and questioned by other witnesses. Republicans feel that if they can inject enough doubt about Sondland’s credibility, they can undermine some of the larger arguments about the substance. Republicans — especially in the White House — are exceedingly uncomfortable with Sondland, and unsure what he will say.”

“Democrats, of course, have a different game plan. That is to show that Sondland was, in fact, the agent Trump was using to carry out his ‘shadow foreign policy’. He spoke to the president — there are witnesses to that. But it’s by no means clear how forthcoming he’ll be about those encounters, let alone whether he’ll make a compelling witness in general.”