President Trump made comments outside the White House on the impeachment hearings and his notes were visible to reporters.
Nikki Haley Is All In on Trump
New York Times: “Ms. Haley remains close with the president’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, and they warned her to be more careful talking about Mr. Trump, according to two people familiar with the conversation. A spokeswoman for Ms. Haley said she never received such a warning.”
Wrong Time to Go Off the Record
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) asked a group of reporters: “Let me go off the record for just a second.”
He apparently did not realize he was being broadcast live on C-SPAN.
White House Tried to Get Heads Up on Testimony
Washington Post: “White House lawyers pressed in recent days to learn from Sondland’s legal team what the ambassador would tell Congress about the president and claims of a ‘quid pro quo’ in his much anticipated testimony today.”
“Sondland’s lawyers declined however to provide the White House with an early peek into the account that this key impeachment witness would give lawmakers about his interactions with the president.”
Will Today’s Hearing Move Public Opinion?
Nathaniel Rakich: “Today’s hearing strikes me as having the potential to actually change people’s minds about impeachment. So far, we don’t have a lot of evidence that the hearings have done so.”
“We’ve only seen a few polls conducted after last week’s hearings. The Economist/YouGov found that Americans support the House impeaching Trump by 5 percentage points, which was virtually unchanged from the 6-point lead impeachment held in their pre-hearings poll. And while Morning Consult/Politico did find that net support for impeachment has gone from 8 points to 4 points, an ABC News/Ipsos poll found that, among those who made up their minds about impeachment after last week’s hearings, 60 percent came down on the pro-impeachment side.”
Trump Didn’t Care About Actual Investigations
When explaining the quid pro quo with Ukraine, Ambassador Gordon Sondland said President Trump was mainly interested in the announcement of investigations by Ukraine President Zelensky into the Bidens.
Said Sondland: “He had to announce the investigations, he didn’t actually have to do them, as I understood it.”
He later added: “The only thing I heard… was that they had to be announced in some form, and that form kept changing… the way it was expressed to me was that the Ukrainians had a long history of committing to things privately and then never following through.”
Bonus Quote of the Day
“That sounds like something I would say. That’s how Trump and I communicate. A lot of four-letter words. In this case three letters.”
— Ambassador Gordon Sondland, confirming he told President Trump that Ukraine President Zelensky “loves your ass, he’ll do whatever you want” while talking to him on a cell phone at a Kiev restaurant.
A John Dean Moment
Since the start of the impeachment probe, President Trump has insisted that there was no quid pro quo with Ukraine, there were no conditions placed on a White House meeting and no strings attached to releasing U.S. military aid.
Trump has repeatedly claimed it’s just another “witch hunt” or “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats.
Republicans have rallied to Trump’s defense echoing these statements.
Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s explosive testimony before the House Intelligence Committee has undermined everything. To say it was a “John Dean moment” is not an exaggeration.
Sondland Blames Inconsistent Testimony on Administration
Ambassador Gordon Sondland blamed inconsistencies in his previous testimony saying repeatedly that the State Department and the White House didn’t allow him access to the things he needed to provide accurate previous testimony.
Said Sondland: “I have not had access to all of my phone records, State Department emails and other State Department documents. And I was told I could not work with my EU Staff to pull together the relevant files.”
He added that he has never been a “note-taker,” meaning the absence of this information made his recollections even more difficult.
More: “My lawyers and I have made multiple requests to the State Department and the White House for these materials. Yet, these materials were not provided to me. They have also refused to share these materials with this Committee. These documents are not classified and, in fairness, should have been made available. In the absence of these materials, my memory has not been perfect. And I have no doubt that a more fair, open, and orderly process of allowing me to read the State Department records would have made this process more transparent.”
Sondland Throws ‘Everyone’ Under the Bus
U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland will give explosive testimony before the House Intelligence Committee this morning. He will say that “everyone” knew about a quid pro quo demanded of Ukraine for military aid and that the scheme was explicitly directed by President Trump.
Said Sondland: “We followed the president’s orders.”
From his opening statement:
Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker and I worked with Mr. Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine matters at the express direction of the President of the United States. We did not want to work with Mr. Giuliani. Simply put, we played the hand we were dealt. We all understood that if we refused to work with Mr. Giuliani, we would lose an important opportunity to cement relations between the United States and Ukraine. So we followed the President’s orders.
Mr. Giuliani’s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky. Mr. Giuliani demanded that Ukraine make a public statement announcing investigations of the 2016 election/DNC server and Burisma. Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the President of the United States, and we knew that these investigations were important to the President.
The most explosive statement: “Everyone was in the loop. It was no secret.”
NBC News says Sondland “plans to show up for his televised hearing with reams of new text messages and emails he said prove the highest levels of the White House and the State Department were in on it.”
Impeachment Hearings Continue
The House Intelligence Committee begins its most consequential hearings in the impeachment inquiry at 9 a.m. ET.
Ambassador Gordon Sondland is scheduled to testify in the morning session. Laura Cooper and David Hale will testify in the afternoon session.
Leave your reactions in the comments.
Biden Coasts as Opponents Face Firing Squad
Politico: “Michael Bloomberg is under fire for his stop-and-frisk policy. Deval Patrick is facing questions about his lucrative business career. Elizabeth Warren lost ground in a major Iowa poll as her Medicare for All plan revived questions about her electability.
“And Joe Biden is sitting back and watching the show.”
“Biden — who since April has swatted aside questions about his record, age, verbal miscues and lagging fundraising — is, for once, outside the line of fire. The target on the former vice president’s back has shrunk as Warren and Pete Buttigieg have gained ground, and as Bloomberg and Patrick have entered the fray as centrist alternatives to Biden.”
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.”
Sondland Kept Pompeo Informed
New York Times: “Gordon Sondland, the diplomat at the center of the House impeachment inquiry, kept Secretary of State Mike Pompeo apprised of key developments in the campaign to pressure Ukraine’s leader into public commitments that would satisfy President Trump.”
“Mr. Sondland informed Mr. Pompeo in mid-August about a draft statement that Mr. Sondland and another American diplomat had worked on with the Ukrainians that they hoped would persuade Mr. Trump to grant Ukraine’s new president the Oval Office meeting he was seeking.”
Buttigieg Faces Debate Spotlight
Politico: “Pete Buttigieg will take the stage at Wednesday’s debate as a serious threat to the top Democratic presidential candidates for the first time. And that makes the debate a serious threat for him.”
“The South Bend, Ind., mayor, is riding his best poll numbers yet in Iowa and New Hampshire — running in a tight pack with Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in many polls and even pulling into 10-point leads in recent surveys from The Des Moines Register and St. Anselm College.”
“But that surge in the early states comes with the glare of additional scrutiny, including on his struggles appealing to African American voters in other states, and the growing likelihood of attacks from Democratic opponents eager to blunt Buttigieg’s rise and regain momentum of their own.”
New York Times: The Top Four vs. Everyone Else.
$35 Million In Aid Still Hasn’t Reached Ukraine
Los Angeles Times: “The defense funding for Ukraine remains in U.S. accounts, according to the document. It’s not clear why the money hasn’t been released, and members of Congress are demanding answers.”
What Happened Yesterday at the Hearings
New York Times: “Two White House national security officials testified before the House’s impeachment inquiry on Tuesday that President Trump’s request to Ukraine’s president to investigate Democratic rivals was inappropriate, and one of them said it validated his ‘worst fear’ that American policy toward that country would veer off course.”
“Hours later, two more witnesses — another former White House national security official and a former top American diplomat — charted a more careful course but said under oath that the president’s requests on a July 25 phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine were not in line with American national security goals.”
Quote of the Day
“The impeachment effort comes down to one guy, Ambassador Sondland. All the other testimony has a Sondland core to it and a Sondland connection.”
— Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), quoted by the Washington Post.