Disclosures and leaks as to what ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified in response to congressional questioning on Thursday have been scant, but he did release prepared remarks prior to his testimony. They demonstrate a man clearly concerned with covering his ass while not pissing off the president, which appears to have led to a strategy of professing ignorance of the president’s plan to pressure Ukraine in order to subvert the 2020 election. At multiple points, Sondland emphasizes that prior to the release of the between the Ukrainian energy company Burisma and the fact that Hunter Biden sat on the company’s board, and by extension his ignorance of the fact that when the president pressed for investigation of Burisma, this meant creating dirt to sully the Biden family’s reputation.
But as Jonathan Chait effectively demonstrates, there is no realistic way Sondland could have been unaware of the Burisma-Biden connection as he worked to follow the president’s directions on Ukraine. Chait notes that The New York Times ran multiple stories on Trump’s strategy of using Ukraine to bludgeon Joe Biden; the first of the articles ran on the front page, and included the word “Burisma” some three dozen times! Even if the ambassador was unaware of this mainstream coverage about a country that Sondland proudly testified was within his portfolio, Chait continues, the right-wing media was even more ablaze with stories linking Biden and Burisma. He concludes:
There is no way Sondland believed Trump was taking a personal interest in withholding diplomatic recognition of an important ally out of some idiosyncratic obsession with tighter regulatory scrutiny of one particular energy company. If Sondland is trying to maintain that he was handling American policy toward Ukraine over a period of months, during which he failed even to peruse a single headline pertaining to the president’s obsessive interest in that very country, then he should be charged with criminal stupidity.
With this reality check in mind, Sondland’s testimony reads like a house of cards, ready to blow over at the first irrefutable evidence that he was aware of the Biden connection to Burisma. As Chait reminds us, testimony earlier in the week from Fiona Hill, former senior director for European and Russian affairs at the White House, revealed that “when [then-National Security Advisor John] Bolton told Ukrainian officials in July that Trump would not meet with Ukrainian president Zelensky, Sondland contradicted him to say that Trump would hold the meeting if Ukraine investigated Burisma, the Ukrainian firm that had employed Joe Biden’s son.” Sondland was deep into enforcing the quid pro quo of an investigation in exchange for a meeting; his knowledge that the investigation was meant to attack Joe Biden would mean he was a full co-conspirator in the president’s scheme, and not just a witless participant as he’d have us believe.
The idea that Sondland was ignorant of the true ends of the policies he was charged with implementing is further undermined by testimony by another State Department employee. According to George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state responsible for Ukraine, Sondland, along with Energy Secretary Rick Perry and special U.S. envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, were tasked with pushing Ukraine policy outside of normal diplomatic and internal channels. Kent also testified that acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney headed up a meeting last spring in which the three men were given this role. To echo Chait’s line of criticism, Sondland would ask us to believe that he was the least inquisitive, most naive diplomatic in the history of the republic, not knowing why he was being tasked with such a special role outside the usual lines of communication.
Without a fuller picture of how he answered Democrats’ questions on Thursday, it’s difficult to know what Sondland’s role will be in the impeachment proceedings going forward, particularly as to whether he will be willing to turn on the president if caught out in a lie about his involvement. By my reading, his prepared testimony passes the blame to other actors - including Guiliani and perhaps even Secretary of State Mike Pompeo - without offering much new evidence of the Ukraine plot. But this last week also brought more reporting on Sondland’s record as EU ambassador, and it provides some clues as to his willingness to expose himself to legal and political harm in service of the president.
First, according to The New York Times, Fiona Hill had harsh words about Sondland’s professionalism, testifying about
her fears that Mr. Sondland represented a counterintelligence risk because his actions made him vulnerable to foreign governments who could exploit his inexperience. She said Mr. Sondland extensively used a personal cellphone for official diplomatic business and repeatedly told foreign officials they were welcome to come to the White House whenever they liked.
Ms. Hill said that his invitations, which were highly unusual and not communicated to others at the White House, prompted one instance in which Romanian officials arrived at the White House without appointments, citing Mr. Sondland.
Ms. Hill also testified that Mr. Sondland held himself out to foreign officials as someone who could deliver meetings at the White House while also providing the cellphone numbers of American officials to foreigners, the people said. Those actions created additional counterintelligence risks, she said.
Hill also testified about Sondland’s involvement with Ukraine issues, including the explicit statement Chait noted as to Trump’s willingness to meet with the Ukrainian president being contingent on Ukraine investigating Burisma. Suggestively, Hill’s boss, national security advisor John Bolton, appeared to have no reservations about Sondland’s complicity in an off-the-books plot; Bolton indicated that he did not want to be part of the “drug deal” that Sondland and White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney were working on. To those interacting with Sondland and trying to suss out what he and others were up to, the idea that going after the Bidens was at the center of it was quite clear, again raising the unlikeliness that Sondland, a direct participant in the plot, did not know the plot’s actual point.
Unconnected to the Ukraine scheme, but going to questions of Sondland’s character, The Washington Post reported on the nearly $1 million in renovations Sondland has been making to his ambassador’s residence in Brussels on the taxpayers‘ dime, including “more than $400,000 in kitchen renovations, nearly $30,000 for a new sound system and $95,000 for an outdoor “living pod” with a pergola and electric heating, LED lighting strips and a remote-control system.” (The “remote-control system” reminds me of an earlier story of how, as ambassador, Sondland carries a buzzer with which he can request that staff bring him refreshments during meetings, like magic!). Sondland has argued that the residence was badly in need of updates, but the details suggest he has taken advantage of the situation:
The renovations at the E.U. ambassador’s residence, which include $33,000 for handmade furniture from Italy, appeared driven by Sondland’s lavish tastes rather than practical needs, people familiar with the matter said.
Two former U.S. officials said Sondland delighted in the trappings of being an American ambassador in Brussels.
“He got addicted,” one former official said. “The way you’re treated as a senior U.S. official, there’s nothing like it in terms of adrenaline and ego boost.”
Also troubling is the fact that some of the renovations are intended not for diplomatic purposes, such as entertaining, but for the particular comfort of the ambassador:
The records show $82,000 was spent on a bathroom renovation labeled “backside office.” Renovation of a restroom in a vestibule, a more public space, cost about $54,000, the records show.
Sondland has also tried to upgrade the offices where he and the staff of the U.S. mission to the E.U. work, former officials and colleagues said.
“He had a weird obsession with creating a snack room after he visited Uber headquarters in the Bay Area,” a former U.S. official said, referring to the ride-hail service headquartered in San Francisco.
“He was often trying to use his own money for renovations that weren’t allowed,” the former official said.
It is difficult to read such details and retain much sense that Gordon Sondland sees his ambassadorship as an act of public service, rather than an act of self-service. Someone who’s rich enough to throw in his own money once he’s fleeced the public sufficiently would seem to have broken loose of the basic sense of mission and purpose involved in diplomatic service. To my mind, this small-scale corruption, conducted out of view of the public eye but at the public expense, makes his conscious involvement in the president’s plot against the United States more plausible.
This sense is only strengthened by what we already know about Sondland’s willingness to embrace Donald Trump in order to advance his long-standing interest in being an ambassador: recall that Sondland had backed out of a fundraiser for candidate Trump in 2016 based on Trump’s disparaging remarks about the Muslim parents of an American soldier killed in Iraq, yet then funneled $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. The ambassadorship soon followed (talk about a qui pro quo!). But now we have reporting that Sondland has set his sights higher; as The Washington Post reports, “Current and former U.S. officials and foreign diplomats say Sondland seemed to believe that if he delivered for Trump in Ukraine, he could ascend in the ranks of government. A person close to Sondland disputed that notion, but other officials said Sondland had been talked about in the administration as a possible successor to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.” Once again, public service seems the farthest thing from Sondland’s mind; service to Trump seems all-important, as a means to self-aggrandizement. Having made himself so pliable to Trump’s ends, let us hope that this has, in turn, made him vulnerable to congressional and public pressure as the impeachment seeks to lay bare the details and mechanisms of the president’s plot against the 2020 election.