Impeachment Disaster For Trump As Sondland Transcript Confirms Ukraine Quid Pro Quo

A: You know, this whole thing was sort of a continuum, starting at the May 23rd meeting, ending up at the end of the line when the transcript of the call came out. And as I said to counsel, it started as talk to Rudy, then others talk to Rudy. Corruption was mentioned. Then, as time went on—and, again, I can’t nail down the dates—then let’s get the Ukrainians to give a statement about corruption.

And then, no, corruption isn’t enough, we need to talk about the 2016 election and the Burisma investigations. And it was always described to me as ongoing investigations that had been stopped by the previous administration and they wanted them started up again. That’s how it was always described.

And then finally at some point I made the Biden-Burisma connection, and then the transcript was released. So I can’t tell you on that continuum when, what dates, but that’s kind of what happened. … Because the first time I recall hearing about 2016 and Burisma was during the negotiations of the press statement. Again, unless there’s some text that I’ve completely have [sic] forgotten about, that’s when I first remember getting into those issues. It was always just about corruption prior to that. It kept—it kept getting more insidious as [the] timeline went on, and back in July, it was all about just corruption. …

The continuum was, first of all, an unconditional phone call and an unconditional invitation to the White House, and then I believe the next part of the continuum was some kind of a commitment to investigate corruption generally. And then the next part of the continuum was talking about the Burisma and the 2016 election, which as I recall, was heavily discussed during the negotiation of the short-lived press statement, which only lasted a few days, and then it died.