FILE PHOTO: U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland poses ahead of a meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner (unseen) at the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, June 4, 2019. Picture taken June 4, 2019. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir
EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland testified before the impeachment investigation that Rudy Giuliani was acting at the direction of Trump in the Ukraine scheme.
Ambassador Sondland wrote in his opening statement:
Indeed, Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker, and I were disappointed by our May 23, 2019 White House debriefing. We strongly believed that a call and White House meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelensky was important and that these should be scheduled promptly and without any pre-conditions.
We were also disappointed by the President’s direction that we involve Mr. Giuliani. Our view was that the men and women of the State Department, not the President’s personal lawyer, should take responsibility for all aspects of U.S. foreign policy towards Ukraine.
However, based on the President’s direction, we were faced with a choice: We could abandon the goal of a White House meeting for President Zelensky, which we all believed was crucial to strengthening U.S.-Ukrainian ties and furthering long-held U.S. foreign policy goals in the region; or we could do as President Trump directed and talk to Mr. Giuliani to address the President’s concern.
In other words, Trump was running the Ukraine operation. Rudy Giuliani was working at the direction of the president as Giuliani claimed. It is easy to connect the dots from the Justice Department to the State Department to the Oval Office and see that the one central figure with the authority to direct a cabinet wide operation in Ukraine is Trump.
Trump’s actions are a crime. They go beyond impeachable offenses and into criminal activity.
The president’s lawyer and his EU ambassador have now laid the blame solely on him.
Gordon Sondland might have donated a million dollars to Trump, but he is not going to go down for this president.
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