“Everyone was in the loop.” Donald Trump is going to be impeached
US Ambassador Gordon Sondland testified Wednesday there was a quid pro quo for Ukraine to announce investigations into President Donald Trump’s political opponents that came from the President’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani at the “express direction of the President.”
What’s more, Sondland provided House impeachment investigators with emails and texts showing it wasn’t just him and Giuliani pushing for the investigations outside government channels — Trump’s inner circle knew what was going on, too. He even said he raised concerns with Vice President Mike Pence that the freezing of $400 million in security aid to Ukraine was linked to the investigations.
Sondland’s testimony is the most damning evidence to date directly implicating Trump in the quid pro quo at the heart of the impeachment inquiry. His public remarks show a link between US security aid and a White House meeting and Ukraine publicly announcing investigations that would help the President politically. From the beginning of Wednesday’s hearing, Sondland’s comments dragged some of Trump’s senior most officials — including Pence, his chief of staff and his secretary of state — into the scandal.
“Everyone was in the loop,” Sondland said. “It was no secret.”
In his remarkable opening statement before the fourth day of public impeachment hearings, Sondland told House impeachment investigators that Trump “wanted a public statement from President (Volodymyr) Zelensky committing to investigations of Burisma and the 2016 election.”
