were already on edge before this news. so let s do a round-up of how it s playing. let s begin on capitol hill. cnn s senior congressional correspondent manu raju. what else are we expecting from sondland? we expect gordon sondland to throw rudy giuliani under the bus. but the question is, will he throw the president under the bus as well? that s going to be a big question today because according to witness testimony after witness testimony, gordon sondland had direct interactions with the president and then sondland later told other witnesses that the president himself had essentially linked military aid to ukraine in exchange for this public declaration by the ukrainians to announce investigations into the president s political rivals. now the question is will sondland confirm those accounts or will he say as he did in his closed door deposition, he did not recall some of those key accounts. already amend his testimony saying he later remembered in september he had a conversation w
administration. they urged the president to meet with zelensky, but the president s reaction was decidedly hostile. the president s order was clear, however. talk with rudy. during this meeting, ambassador sondland first became aware of what giuliani and the president were really interested in. this whole thing was sort of a continuum, he testified at his deposition, starting at may at the may 23rd meeting. ending up at the end of the line when the transcript of the call came out. it was a continuum he would explain that became more insidious over time. the three amigos were disappointed with trump s directive to engage giuliani, but vowed to press ahead. ambassador sondland testified we could abandon the goal of a white house meeting with president zelensky which the group deemed necessary for ukrainian relations or we could do as president trump directed and talk to mr. giuliani to
nobody involved in making and implementing policy towards ukraine knew why the aid had been put on hold. during august, sondland participated in conference calls and text messages with volker and giuliani and said that the gist of every call was what was going to go in the press statement? in august 9, text message with volker, sondland stated, i think potus really wants the deliverable which was, according to sondland, a deliverable public statement that president trump wanted to see or hear before a white house meeting could happen. on september 1, ambassador sondland participated in vice president pence s bilateral meeting with zelensky in warsaw. during which zelensky raised the suspended security assistance. following that meeting, sondland approached the senior ukrainian official to tell him that he believed what could help them move the aid was if the ukrainian prosecutor general would go to the mic and announce that he was opening the burisma
i now recognize myself to give an opening statement in the impeachment inquiry into donald j. trump, the 45th president of the united states. this morning we will hear from gordon sondland, the american ambassador to the european union. we are here today as part of the house of representatives impeachment inquiry because president donald trump sought to condition military aid to ukraine and an oval office meeting with the new ukrainian president zelensky in exchange for politically motivated investigations that trump believed would help his re-election campaign. the first investigation was of a discredited conspiracy theory that ukraine, not russia, was responsible for interfering in the 2016 election. the second investigation that trump demanded into was into a political rival that he apparently feared most, joe biden. trump sought to weaken biden and to refute the fact that his own election campaign in 2016 had been helped by russian hacking
address the president s concerns. we chose the latter path. in the coming weeks, ambassador sondland got more clearly involved in ukraine policy making with the june 4 u.s. mission to the eu independence day event in brussels one month earlier. secretary perry, brechtel and state department counselor and sondland met with president zelensky whom he invited on the margins of the event. on june 10, 2019, secretary perry organized a conference call with sondland, then national security adviser john bolton, volker and others. it reviewed ukraine strategy with bolton and decided perry, sondland and volker would assist ambassador bill taylor, the new acting ambassador in kyiv and discuss trump s desire for rudy giuliani to be somehow involved. at the end of the call, according to sondland, we all felt very comfortable with the strategy moving forward. two weeks later, on june 27th,