Oh Donnie, You're invited

[PaulS]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

i meant when Sondman asked trump what he wanted, and trump told him nothing, no qpq.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

https://www.justsecurity.org/67536/h...ever-happened/


At the heart of the impeachment inquiry, members of Congress may have been mistakenly led to believe that there were two phone calls between President Donald Trump and Ambassador Gordon Sondland in early September—with the second call having the possibility of helping the President’s case. That’s not what happened. There was only one call, and it was highly incriminating.

The call occurred on September 7th. In this call, Trump did say there was “no quid pro quo” with Ukraine, but he then went on to outline his preconditions for releasing the security assistance and granting a White House visit. The call was so alarming that when John Bolton learned of it, he ordered his deputy Tim Morrison to immediately report it to the National Security Council lawyers.

Sondland has testified there was a call on September 9th in which Trump said there was “no quid pro quo,” but that he wanted President Zelenskyy “to do” the right thing. A close reading of the publicly available evidence shows that the latter call was actually the very one that sent Morrison to the lawyers, and that Ambassador Bill Taylor foregrounded in his written deposition to inform Congress of the quid pro quo.

As this article was in the publication process at Just Security, the Washington Post published a report raising doubts about the existence of the September 9 call. The analysis that follows is consistent with the Post’s report and, among other points, shows why Sondland’s “no quid pro quo” call is in fact the same as the September 7th call that Morrison reported to NSC lawyers on September 7th

One of the central questions that the House’s impeachment inquiry is attempting to resolve is “whether President Trump sought to condition official acts, such as a White House meeting or U.S. military assistance, on Ukraine’s willingness to assist with two political investigations that would help his reelection campaign.” And, over the past several weeks, witnesses testifying before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) have given uncontested testimony that established the following:
∙During a July 10, 2019 meeting at the White House, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union told Ukrainians officials that there would be a “pre-requisite of investigations” before any White House meeting would occur. (Sondland Opening Statement, Nov. 20, 2019, at 10; Hill Depo. at 27; Vindman Depo. at 29)
∙During a July 25, 2019 phone call, President Trump asked President Zelenskyy for the “favor” of an investigation into Joe Biden and the false, Russian-backed claims that it was Ukraine that interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. (Memcon of Trump-Zelenskyy Call, July 25, 2019)
∙Following a July 26, 2019 meeting between the Ambassador to the EU and Ukrainians officials, President Trump asked the ambassador, “So [Zelenskyy is] going to do the investigation?”, to which the ambassador replied, “He’s going to do it.” (Holmes Depo. at 24; Sondland Testimony on Nov. 20, 2019)
∙President Trump demanded that President Zelenskyy make a public announcement that he was opening an investigation into Biden and the 2016 election as a pre-requisite before he would agree to a White House meeting. (Sondland Opening Statement, Nov. 20, 2019, at 14)
∙President Trump’s personal attorney told both American officials and Ukrainian officials that the president would require, as a quid pro quo, that Ukraine announce the desired investigations before any White House meeting would occur. (Sondland Opening Statement, Nov. 20, 2019, at 14)
∙At a meeting in Warsaw, Poland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union informed a senior Ukrainian official that the security assistance money would not be released until Ukraine publicly announced an investigation into “Burisma and 2016.” (Sondland Declaration, Nov. 4, 2019, at 2; Taylor Opening Statement, Oct. 22, 2019, at 10-11; Morrison Depo. at 144-145)

That list is by no means exhaustive. In addition to other testimony before the HPSCI supporting these facts, the Acting Chief of Staff/Director of the Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney stated during a press conference that the security assistance to Ukraine was withheld as a quid pro quo in exchange for Ukraine conducting an investigation into false allegations of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.

What then, is there left for the impeachment inquiry to prove?

In the face of this damning and conclusive evidence, the White House and House Republicans have been forced to retreat to their current defense: that President Trump himself has not been proven to have done anything wrong, because there was no witness who testified to having personally heard the President announce that he was seeking a quid pro quo from Ukraine, in exchange for release of the security assistance.

This “defense,” it should be noted, is hardly a defense at all. There is no dispute that the President used the powers of his office to coerce a foreign state into investigating a domestic political rival, nor is there any dispute that the Ukrainians were informed by the Trump administration that the hold on security assistance would not be lifted until these investigation were publicly announced. Multiple witnesses also testified that EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland had told them that, in his conversations with the president, Trump had described his requirement for Zelenskyy to publicly announce the investigations into Biden and 2016. However, to the extent that no witness testified to having personally heard Trump request a quid pro quo in regards to the security assistance, there are two reasons for this.

The first is that, with a single exception, every individual who interacted directly with President Trump refused to comply with House subpoenas for their testimony.

The second is that the single exception who did testify, Ambassador Sondland, did not testify accurately when he said that President Trump had never asked him for a quid pro quo from Ukraine. In fact, President Trump had personally informed Sondland of his specific demands for a quid pro quo from Ukraine – and the White House National Security Council is sitting on documents that confirm it.

I. The “No Quid Pro Quo” Call

Of all the omissions from Ambassador Sondland’s testimony, one of the most significant has to do with his testimony about what has been dubbed the “no quid pro quo” call. Because the White House and State Department did not comply with the House’s subpoenas for records, no documents concerning this call have been produced, but all witnesses agree that, some time around the second week of September, President Trump and Ambassador Sondland had a phone call, and at some point during this call, Trump said the words “no quid pro quo.”

Sondland has, at times, been ambiguous as to when exactly this phone call took place, and has vacillated between the dates of September 6-9. But in the version of events that Sondland most frequently describes in his testimony, he says that he made the “no quid pro quo” call on September 9th. Sondland has testified it was a brief conversation, in which he asked President Trump a single question:


I asked him one open-ended question: What do you want from Ukraine? And as I recall, he was in a very bad mood. It was a very quick conversation. He said: I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. I want Zelenskyy to do the right thing. (Sondland Depo. at 106)

It is this testimony from Sondland that the White House and House Republicans have clung to, in support of their claim that the impeachment inquiry has failed to show misconduct by the President. ’’

President Trump has taken to regularly invoking Sondland’s testimony at rallies and at press events, asserting that Sondland’s description of the “no quid pro” call exonerates him. In fact, in the middle of Sondland’s public testimony, President Trump made an appearance on the White House lawn, a portion of Sondland’s paraphrased testimony in hand, to perform a dramatic reenactment of the call, as it was described by Sondland.



Overall, it must be noted, Sondland’s testimony was incredibly damning for Trump. However, it was not quite as damning as it should have been.

Because in reality, as shown from the testimony of other witnesses, the “no quid pro quo” call did not take place on September 9th. What’s more, the call was not prompted by any text from Bill Taylor. And lastly, Sondland’s testimony about the “no quid pro quo” call omitted the most important part: the part where President Trump informed Sondland that the security assistance would be at a “stalemate” until President Zelenskyy stood in front of a microphone and personally announced that he was opening an investigation into Trump’s political rivals.

II. The “No Quid Pro Quo” Call Took Place on Sept. 7, Not on Sept. 9

The “no quid pro quo” call did not take place on September 9th, as Sondland claimed at one point in his testimony; instead, it took place on September 7th. This is shown from the testimony of Tim Morrison, Senior Director for European Affairs for the National Security Council, and Charge D’Affaires Bill Taylor, both of whom were briefed on the call by Sondland shortly after it occurred.

This detail is critically important, not because the precise date of the call is significant in and of itself, but because of what it shows about the true content of that call – the substance of the conversation that Morrison and Taylor described in their testimony, and that Sondland omitted from his.

Sondland’s Testimony

Though Ambassador Sondland testified that, to the best of his recollection, the “no quid pro quo” call occurred on September 9th, Sondland was also quick to point out that as a result of his inability to review certain State Department records, his “memory admittedly has not been perfect.” (Sondland Testimony of Nov. 20, 2019) Still, Sondland said he had a distinct reason for remembering the date of this particular call: it was prompted by what Sondland described as a “fairly shocking” and “alarming” text message he received from Charge Taylor, in a group chat that included Ambassador Kurt Volker. It was in response to this text, Sondland said, that Sondland made the call to President Trump:


So rather than ask the President nine different questions – is it this, is it this, is that – I just said what do you want from Ukraine? I may have even used a four letter word. And he said I want nothing, I want no quid pro quo, I just want Zelensky to do the right thing, to do what he ran on or – or words to that effect. (Sondland Testimony of Nov. 20, 2019)

Because Ambassador Volker’s text exchanges were one of the few documentary records produced in response to the HSPCI’s subpoenas, we have a copy of the text exchange Sondland referred to. Per Volker’s records, Taylor’s text was sent at 12:47am on September 9th: