“It’s only true that the president said it, not that it was the truth”
Considering that the WH has tried to stop all Executive branch testimony related to Arms for Dirt scandal, this will be an interesting week as Congress returns from recess. There will be testimony, but whether the witnesses arrive is still questionable, requiring ready subpoenas as the House Intel committee did for Ambassador Yovanovich.
“It was a quid pro quo, but not a corrupt one,”
If Sondland's testimony is anything like what is presented here, Trump is done. Not only was Trump blatantly soliciting foreign interference in a US election. He was also clearly using the promise of a WH visit for Zelensky as a quid pro quo. https://t.co/7fZrbJuEkj
The U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, intends to tell Congress this week that the content of a text message he wrote denying a quid pro quo with Ukraine was relayed to him directly by President Trump in a phone call, according to a person familiar with his testimony.
Sondland plans to tell lawmakers he has no knowledge of whether the president was telling him the truth at that moment. “It’s only true that the president said it, not that it was the truth,” said the person familiar with Sondland’s planned testimony, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters.
The Sept. 9 exchange between Sondland and the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine has become central to the House Democrats’impeachment inquiryinto whether the president abused his office in pressuring Ukraine to open an investigation into his political rival Joe Biden and his son, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. The White House and its defenders have held up Sondland’s text, which included “no quid pro quo’s of any kind,” as proof that none was ever considered.
Sondland will hold out the possibility that Trump wasn’t truthful in his denial of a quid pro quo as well as an alternative scenario in which the president’s interest in the scheme soured at a time when his administration faced mounting scrutiny over why it was withholding about$400 million in security assistanceto Ukraine and delaying a leader-level visit withUkrainian PresidentVolodymyr Zelensky.
