House Republicans said Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s testimony exonerates President Trump and counters a “bribery” allegation Democrats are building in their impeachment investigation.
After a day of testimony Democrats said proved Trump is guilty of bribery, Republicans on Wednesday pointed to Sondland’s insistence that he never heard Trump call for anything from Ukraine in exchange for critical security aid.
“Once again, the American people seen another failure of their preposterous conspiracy theory,” Rep. Devin Nunes of California said at the conclusion of the hearing.
Republicans argued the hearing yielded nothing new in the quest by Democrats to show Trump was withholding security aid to get Ukraine to cooperate and investigate Democrats.
“No one ever told me the aid was tied to anything,” Sondland said in one of several similar statements he made to the House Intelligence Committee Wednesday. “I was assuming it was.”
The comment was one of only a few exonerating remarks in testimony from Sondland that was viewed as damaging to the president.
Democrats accuse Trump of trying to coerce Ukraine into investigating his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, by withholding security money Ukraine needed to fend off aggression from Russia.
Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union and a major GOP donor, said he believed there was a “quid pro quo” demanded by the president but that he was only specifically aware that it was tied to a meeting and phone call with the president.
Republicans seized on Sondland’s repeated assertion that he was never told directly by anyone, including the president, that the security aid was conditional on Ukraine pledging to investigate Biden or efforts by Democrats to dig up dirt on Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“Game over,” Rep. Mark Meadows tweeted after Sondland, in another statement, said “other than my presumption,” nobody in the Trump administration told him the aid was tied to the investigations.
Meadows called the testimony “the real bombshell.”
Republicans zeroed in on Sondland’s recollection of a phone call to the president in which he asked Trump what he wanted from Ukraine in order to secure a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“When he asked President Trump, ‘What do you want from Ukraine?’ President Trump replied, ‘I want nothing. There is no quid pro quo,’” Nunes said.
Nunes, the top Republican on the panel, called Sondland’s testimony was “far from compelling or conclusive.”
Rep. Jim Jordan said the president “was as clear as he could be” in the phone call to Sondland in which he rejected a quid pro quo arrangement.
“Direct evidence, from a central figure, the president of the United States, stating as clearly as he could,” Jordan said.
