Gordon Sondland impeachment testimony- zero interest in taking a fall for a crime boss

Echo opinion syndicated column by Dick Polman*. 

Do you remember the climax in the Agatha Christie novel, "Murder On The Orient Express?". 

 It turned out, all the murder suspects were guilty.

And, as Donald Trump's hand picked ambassador, Gordon Sondland, publicly declared during the House impeachment hearing, that all the suspects in the illegal scheme to squeeze Ukraine for fake Biden dirt are guilty. Starting at the very top, with Trump. (IMO, evidence to support this illegal scheme is evident.)

And, Sondland is certainly a credible guy, right? After all, Trump recently praised him as, "a really good man and great American."

https://www.thenation.com/article/gordon-sondland-dean-impeachment/
Gordon Sondland

Here's what the good man and great American Sondland told Congerss: "Everyone was in the loop." In fact, the whole mission was about how to "make the boss happy." And, if it made the boss happy to hold back taxpayer-financed military aid from an ally fighting Russian aggression, until the ally agreed to launch bogus investigations of the Bidens, then fine. In Sondland's explosive words, "Was there a quid pro pro? The answer is yes....We followed the president's orders."

Translation: I paid a million bucks to get myself an abassadorship, and never imagined I'd get sucked into something like this. There's no way I'm gonna take the fall. If that happens, I'm gonna take everyone down with me- starting with Trump.

Sondland's sworn testimony is more delicious than a chocolate sundae. Historians will look back on the day when Sondland testified as being conclusive proof that Donald Trump blatantly abused his office, pursuing his own personal inerests and solicited collusions with a foreign government, all at the expense of our national security. And, as Sondland testified, "everyone was in the loop" on the impeachable act.

Moreover, Sondland fingured Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, ex-national security advisor John Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and of course he fingered Rudy Giuliani. In short, "everyone knew what we were doing and why."
Am I overracting? I'll yield the floor to Ken Starr, the conservative Clinton-hunting special prosecutor. On Fox News, Wednesday, he said, "Articles of impeachment are being drawn up if they haven't alreay been drawn up....This obvioiusly has been one of those bombshell days."

Sondland also blew up two desperate Republican defenses. The mantra of "no quid prop quo" is dead. The notion that Rudy and a handful of confederates, "went rogue," and that Trump had no role in the scheme for fake Biden dirt, is buried.

Now, here is the fun part. Sonland was quizzed about his cellphone conversation with Trump on July 26. Sondland was at a Kiev eatery when a foreigh service official, David Holmes, has already sated in a sworn deposition that he was with Sondland at the time, that he overherard Trump's end of the conversation (because Trump was speaking so loudly), and that Trump specifically asked Sondland for an assurance that Ukraine would indeed launch a Biden dirt investigation.

Sondland today: "I have no reason to doubt that the conversation included the subject of investigation." And, "I have no reason to doubt" Holmes' recollection about the cellphone call.

As a matter of fact, Holmes, in his deposition, said that Sondland assured Trump that Ukraine's president was ready to play ball- and, that, in fact, "he loves your ass".

Sondland was asked whether he really said that. His response: "It sounds like something I would say." He and Trump talked frequently, and liked to engage "in Trumpspeak," which featured "a lot of four-letter words"- or, in the cse of ass, "a three letter word."

(So, they spoke a lot? But, didn't Trump say that "I hardly know the gentleman"?)

Looking back, Sondland now laments: "I really regret that the Ukrainians were placed in that predicament."  It's nice that he feels compelled to voice remores. And, it's amazing how his memory keeps getting better as the noose keeps tightening.  Luckily for us, Sondland as zero interest in taking the fall for a crime boss.

Indeed, Trump knows how that game works.  Last year he told Fox News: I know all about flipping. For 30, 40 years, I've been watching flippers."  

In Trumpspeak, Wednesday's flipper is beautiful.  

*Dick Polman, is a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the Univeristy of Pennsylvania. 

Impeachment witnesses were brave and credible - out did cowardly colleagues who will not yet submit "under oath"

"...everybody was in the loop, including the vice-president (Mike Pence), the secretary of state (Mike Pompeo) and White House acting Chief of Staff (Mick Mulvaney)..."- Fiona Hill.

The impeachment witnesses are the silver lining to this embarrassing chapter in our history

Echo opinion by Kathleen Parker published in the Bangor Daily News, a Maine newspaper.

Former White House national security aide Fiona Hill testified under oath before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington during a public impeachment hearing of Donald Trump's illegal efforts to tie U.S. aid for Ukraine to investigations of his political opponents.

After fidgeting through five days of public hearings, a dozen witnesses and countless political pontificators, Americans should be gratified by the quality of the people who testified and who actually do the nation’s work abroad.

If there was a silver lining to an otherwise embarrassing chapter in our history, it was that we were able to meet and hear from those whose names aren’t well known except to their colleagues. To listen and observe was to have one’s faith restored in America’s image despite the withering damage suffered these past few years.

One after another, the men and women who testified, subjecting themselves to the sometimes-scurrilous scrutiny of political profilers, maintained their focus and their cool. It was grating to hear the screech of Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, whose raised voice surely signaled a stretch-and-restroom break for many viewers. While we’re on the subject, can’t the man put on a blazer? Jordan appeared without one, putting in mind a teenager who refuses to play by his parents’ rules.

May I remind him and others that dress codes are intended to show respect for the occasion and for others in attendance. Surely, our congressional leaders owe their constituents — and, in this case, the process — the small personal sacrifice of dressing appropriately. To do otherwise is to telegraph to the world that you think you’re more important than everyone else. Jordan also proved that age and maturity can be mutually exclusive.

There, I got that off my chest. (Parents may clip for personal use.)

Quite apart from the question of whether Trump should be impeached, viewers of the hearings were privy to history and were beneficiaries of a primer on current events. Often lost in the drama of the impeachment proceedings is the profound importance of Ukraine as a buffer to a resurgent Russian empire. 

Trump’s withholding of $400 million in military funding from Ukraine during its war with Russia — pending assurances that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would at least say he’d investigate the Biden’s involvement with the gas company Burisma — put Ukrainian lives at risk and signaled to Russia that U.S. support of Ukraine was credibly iffy.

One of the pivotal questions during the hearings was whether America’s diplomatic corps understood that “Burisma” was actually code for the “Bidens,” meaning political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who was employed by Burisma. Only two witnesses claimed not to have known about the connection. One was Kurt Volker, a former envoy to Ukraine, who later said he should have caught on sooner. The other was U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, whose claim was deemed “not credible” by witness Fiona Hill, the National Security Council’s former senior director for Europe and Russia, and a standout in the lineup of witnesses.

At several junctures, Hill schooled House Intelligence Committee members about the significance of Ukraine and the perils of advancing the false claim that Ukraine and not Russia had interfered with the 2016 election. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves,” she said. Critical of partisan rancor, she beseeched members to “not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.”

As for the inferred quid pro quo between Trump and Zelensky, Hill confirmed Sondland’s earlier testimony that “everybody was in the loop,” including the vice president, the secretary of state and the White House acting chief of staff.

While true that the administration under pressure did release the military-aid funds, without Zelensky’s public announcement of an investigation, which Trump had specifically requested, his intentions alone created problems for those serving in Ukraine. In Hill’s words: “[Sondland] was being involved in a domestic political errand. And we were being involved in national security, foreign policy. And those two things had just diverged.”

Whether Donald Trump is impeached remains to be seen. But the shame of his highly irregular behavior in seeking political favors from a foreign entity is softened somewhat by the pride one can feel in our diplomats, experts and fact witnesses to whom we are beholden for their good grace.

Kathleen Parker is a columnist for The Washington Post. 

Hill’s testimony jibed with earlier testimony by acting Ukraine Ambassador William Taylor that there was a regular policy executed by the diplomatic corps and a “highly irregular” policy run by Rudy “Hand Grenade” Giuliani, whose legacy as former New York City mayor, we should note, has definitively expired.

Donald Trump truth meter and his lie surrotages

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker’s count as of Oct. 9, the president had made 13,435 false or misleading claims since taking office. 

Truth itself is distorted under a political lense.  Republicans have turned their back on truth and their oath of office.  Every court of law requires defendents to swear an oath to tell the truth before they testify.  In the Ten Commandments:  Honesty must always characterize our speech and conduct (John 14:6)

“No legacy is so rich as honesty.” William Shakespeare

Kathleen Parker opinion echo published in the Goshen News, an Indiana newspaper:

Shakespeare long ago wrote that “truth will out,” meaning that what’s true — by virtue of its basis in fact and logic — eventually will conquer the lie.

Sometimes truth is so eager to be heard that it slips past the speaker’s tongue without his conscious cooperation.

Enter acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. On Thursday, Mulvaney’s cat escaped the bag he had been carrying for Trump during his 10-month-long “acting” tenure.

Yes, yes, yes, we withheld funds to Ukraine in order to obtain help investigating the 2016 hacking of a Democratic National Committee server! You could almost hear the relief of having gotten it out — the truth, that is — so that he could get some REM sleep for a change.

Keeping the lie that there was no quid pro quo, as the official White House narrative went on and on, would have been a burden to the good, which Mulvaney is. If he were otherwise, surely he’d be the non-acting chief of staff by now. It’s the liars and the not-so-good who seem to survive in the Trump administration.

Mick Mulvaney's alternate reality

Mulvaney’s days, on the other hand, are likely numbered. Truth may be the heart’s best friend, but it is not helpful in the sort of presidential politics being played out on Pennsylvania Avenue. This may explain Mulvaney’s near-immediate walk-back of his comments to the press. He issued a statement asserting “there was absolutely no quid pro quo” (because Ukraine didn’t produce anything?) and that the pause on funding was related only to “corruption” in Ukraine and had nothing to do with the fantastical server heist.

Mick Mulvaney tries to put the truth-paste back into the tube

Remember that the Mueller report concluded that Russian operatives did, in fact, hack a DNC server to gain information that might be helpful to Trump’s election. Trump is still so undone by this now-obvious truth that he seems determined to disprove it and has become obsessed with the conspiracy that the server somehow ended up in Ukraine and contains evidence that there was no hacking by the Russians. Even though the special counsel also concluded that there was no coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, the president seemingly has a desperate need to prove that he won by his own genius.

“I want to see the server,” he told reporters in the White House last Wednesday. “I think it’s very important for this country to see the server.” Really? I have bad news for the president: The idea even that a single server exists — and can be hidden somewhere — is ludicrous. Nowadays, a “server” is actually dozens of different interconnected systems.

In other words, Trump has risked everything, inviting impeachment, to prove that he won fair and square. His Ukraine parry was a matter not of national security but of ego. Trump's need for reassurance and public validation is so consuming that he’s apparently blind to consequences, never more obvious than his recent dealings with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which led to Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria. In that case, however, people — not reputations — died. What part Trump’s ego played in that transaction hasn’t been discovered yet, but Utah Sen. Mitt Romney’s theory that Erdogan issued an ultimatum and Trump caved may be getting warm.

Before we leave the subject of the 2016, election, let’s be very clear: Trump didn’t win so much as the Democrats lost. And, if they’re not very careful starting immediately — that is, if they don’t stop sounding like aliens whose implanted data receivers haven’t yet mastered the code for “Mainstream America” — they could lose again.

Mulvaney’s stab at survival, meanwhile, may have been a smart move. A wise friend once told me: “Always tell the truth as soon as possible.” You may not win friends; you may sacrifice something wanted. But over time, lies will consume the liar, make you crazy, and paranoia usually follows. Mulvaney may lose his job over the truth — the bus under which so many have been cast sits idling outside the West Wing — and it calls for thee.

Granted, he might have skipped his other lines about “Get over it” and “We do that all the time,” but he must feel that a weight has been lifted. Mulvaney, at least, will enjoy an afterlife beyond the White House. As for Trump, his paranoia expands with his prevarications. By The Washington Post’s Fact Checker’s count as of Oct. 9, the president had made 13,435 false or misleading claims since taking office.

If truth ever does slip off his tongue, Congress will have to declare a national holiday.

Kathleen Parker is a columnist who writes for The Washington Post.

Republicans on the down staircase - A quid pro quo echo opinion!

Republicans descending the "down"political staircase

This echo opinion was published in the Chicago Tribune by Rex Huppke

Devoted diplomat saw quid pro quo, dishonest Trump says all was ‘perfect.’ Guess who we should trust?
HUPPKE- Trump says he never pressured Ukrainian officials to investigate Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden, or to (require) a chase down a harebrained conspiracy theory about interference in the 2016 election.

Taylor said that Trump absolutely did all of those things and, in fact, refused to release desperately needed U.S. military aid — money that had already been approved by Congress — until Ukrainian officials publicly announced an investigation into Biden and the harebrained conspiracy theory.

Former Ambassador William Taylor leaves a closed-door meeting after testifying as part of the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump on Oct. 22, 2019. (Andrew Harnik / AP)

Trump is a 73-year-old real estate developer with a long history of dishonesty and a president who, according to the Washington Post’s fact-checking team, has made more than 13,000 false or misleading claims since taking office.

Taylor, on the other hand, is a 72-year-old diplomat who described his credentials, under oath, to Congress like this:

“I have dedicated my life to serving U.S. interests at home and abroad in both military and civilian roles. My background and experience are nonpartisan and I have been honored to serve under every administration, Republican and Democratic, since 1985.

“For 50 years, I have served the country, starting as a cadet at West Point, then as an infantry officer for six years, including with the 101​st​ Airborne Division in Vietnam; then at the Department of Energy; then as a member of a Senate staff; then at NATO; then with the State Department here and abroad — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jerusalem, and Ukraine; and more recently, as Executive Vice President of the nonpartisan United States Institute of Peace.”

That sounds good, but then the Trump administration released a statement following Taylor’s testimony describing people like him as “radical unelected bureaucrats waging war on the Constitution.”

Boy, I don’t know! Yup, it’s a tough call. Do you trust the Vietnam War veteran who has dedicated 50 years of his life to serving the country in military and civilian roles, or do you trust the inveterate liar who has dedicated his life to self-aggrandizement and thinks it’s fine to call an unimpeachable public servant a “radical” who is “waging war on the Constitution”?

What about the other evidence that Trump used taxpayer money and the office of the presidency to pressure a foreign country to interfere in the upcoming presidential election? (Wow, it sounds bad when you put it all together like that.)

Well, there’s the White House’s rough transcript of Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president.

On one hand, people who can read words and understand what they mean can see that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asks Trump for more military aid, to which Trump says, “I would like you to do us a favor though.”

Trump then says Ukrainian officials need to investigate a wholly debunked conspiratorial tale about a mysterious computer server that will prove Ukrainians were behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, not the Russians. And he also wants Zelenskiy to investigate another debunked scandal involving Biden and his son, who served on the board of an energy company called Burisma.

That sure sounds like Trump is pressuring Zelenskiy to do this “favor” in order to get the military aid and a possible meeting at the White House.

On the other hand, Trump, the aforementioned extremely dishonest person, says it was a “perfect phone call” and Republican lawmakers — at least those still able to speak while their integrity is exiting their bodies — say it’s clear there was no “quid pro quo,” and even if there was, who cares?

Hmmmm. Words released by the White House itself that clearly show a president with mob-boss envy pressuring another world leader to dig up dirt on his political opponent versus that same president and his slavish supporters saying, “Nothing to see here!”

It’s tricky.

Because on the one hand you have acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney standing in front of the press corps and admitting the president made military funding contingent on a Ukrainian investigation into the mysterious nonsense server.

In an attempt to clarify that admission, a reporter asked Mulvaney: “But to be clear, what you just described is a quid pro quo: The funding will not flow unless you’re getting an investigation into the Democratic server.”

To which Mulvaney replied: “We do that all the time with foreign policy.”

On the other hand, Mulvaney later said that he didn’t say that. So who can you really trust in this scenario? The Mulvaney who said it, or the Mulvaney who said he didn’t say it?

This is a conundrum.

I want to believe Taylor, the West Point graduate and war veteran, who on Tuesday described under oath a September phone call he had with Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union: “During that phone call, Ambassador Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelenskiy to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Ambassador Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelenskiy was dependent on a public announcement of investigations — in fact, Ambassador Sondland said, ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance.”

But then there are people like Trump who call war veterans like Taylor “radical unelected bureaucrats,” and those people all promise nothing bad happened and say we should just get over it.

Who do you believe in this situation?

Heck if I know.

rhuppke@chicagotribune.com