A senior US diplomat on Wednesday directly implicated US President Donald Trump in a scheme to force Ukraine to probe a political rival, in bombshell testimony to a televised impeachment hearing.
US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland told lawmakers that he followed the president’s orders in seeking a quid pro quo deal for Ukraine to investigate former US vice president Joe Biden in exchange for a White House summit.
Trump’s personal lawyer, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, led the effort at Trump’s direction to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the investigation and that top officials in the White House and US Department of State knew about it, Sondland said.
The unexpectedly damning testimony drew a sharp backlash from Trump who said on Twitter: “This Witch Hunt must end NOW. So bad for our Country!”
Trump said that he barely knew Sondland and had not spoken to him much, despite the senior diplomat having donated US$1 million to Trump’s inauguration and testifying that he had spoken to the president about 20 times while ambassador.
US Democrats said that Sondland’s seven hours of testimony before the US House of Representative Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence had bolstered their case for Trump’s impeachment for what they have labeled “extortion.”
“Today’s testimony is among the most significant evidence to date,” committee Chairman Adam Schiff said. “It goes right to the heart of the issue of bribery, as well as other potential high crimes or misdemeanors.”
Sondland said that Trump had directed him and two other senior diplomats to work with Giuliani.
From early this year, Giuliani mounted a pressure campaign on Zelensky’s government to investigate Biden over his son Hunter’s ties to a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, and to probe a conspiracy theory espoused by Trump that Ukraine helped Democrats against him in the 2016 US presidential election.
Biden is one of the favorites to challenge Trump in next year’s presidential election.
“Mr Giuliani demanded that Ukraine make a public statement announcing the investigations of the 2016 election/DNC [Democratic National Committee] server and Burisma,” Sondland told the panel. “Mr Giuliani’s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky.”
Far from being a “rogue” operation outside normal US diplomatic channels, Sondland told the hearing top officials — including US Vice President Mike Pence and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — were kept constantly informed.
“We followed the president’s orders,” Sondland said.
A multimillionaire developer like Trump with a chain of high-end hotels, Sondland, who wore a US$55,000 Breguet white gold watch to the hearing, fended off pressure from both Democrats and Republicans.
He had not implicated the president in earlier closed-door testimony, when he answered scores of questions by saying that he could “not remember.”
However, subsequent testimony by other witnesses that had further implicated him in the Ukraine pressure scheme had jolted his memory, he said on Wednesday.
While he confirmed the linkage between the investigations and a White House meeting between Zelensky and Trump, Sondland would not attest to allegations that Trump froze US$391 million in aid as well to add pressure on Ukraine.
“I never heard from President Trump that aid was conditioned on an announcement” of the investigations, he said, contradicting testimony from two other diplomats.
In separate testimony, a Pentagon official appeared to undermine a key Republican defense in the impeachment battle that Kyiv did not even know until late August or even September about the July 18 aid freeze.
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia Laura Cooper said that Kiev voiced concern over a holdup in aid on July 25.
That was the day that Trump told Zelensky in a telephone call that he wanted a “favor,” asking for investigations into Biden specifically and the 2016 conspiracy theory.
“The Ukrainian embassy staff asked: ‘What is going on with Ukrainian security assistance?’” she told the committee.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in