President Trump’s impeachment prospects may hinge on how the current contradictions in the testimony between William Taylor and Gordon Sondland ultimately get reconciled.
On Tuesday, Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, gave damaging testimony in which he unequivocally linked the decision to delay congressionally appropriated aid to the country with Trump’s insistence that the Ukrainians investigate Joe and Hunter Biden.
But Taylor’s opening statement conflicts in several key ways with the testimony that Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, gave just last week.
To recap the timeline, which is confirmed by texts among U.S. officials and between them and Ukrainian officials, for much of July, the Trump team was dangling the prospect of a White House visit in front of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an effort to get Ukraine to investigate issues related to Ukraine’s role in the 2016 election interference and Burisma — the company that gave a sweetheart deal to Hunter when Joe Biden was vice president.
On Aug. 29, or about a month after the July 25 Trump-Zelensky phone call, Ukrainians reacted nervously to a Politico report that aid was being held up. (Though the New York Times is now reporting that some Ukrainian officials got word of aid hitting a snag in early August.)
From the Taylor and Sondland opening statements, we now have more context about what was happening at the time of subsequent texts exchanged between the two of them in early September — it’s just that they offer two dramatically different impressions.
Taylor testified that his concerns about the link between the delay of aid and the investigation into the Bidens were initially triggered by a Sept. 1 conversation he had with Tim Morrison, the National Security Council’s senior director for Europe and Russia, who conveyed details of a conversation that Sondland had with Andriy Yermak, an adviser to Zelensky.
According to Taylor, Morrison informed him, “Ambassador Sondland told Mr. Yermak that security assistance money would not come until President Zelensky committed to pursue the Burisma investigation. I was alarmed by what Mr. Morrison told me about the Sondland-Yermak conversation. This was the first time I had heard that the security assistance — not just the White House meeting — was conditioned on the investigations.”
This is a significant revelation. To this point, one of the defenses of Trump has been that even though aid was delayed, it couldn’t have been part of a “quid pro quo” because Trump never mentioned it to Zelensky on their phone call, and the Ukrainians didn’t find out the aid was being held up until late August. Yet Taylor is saying that Sondland in fact, in late August/early September, communicated that the aid delay was linked to the demand to investigate the Bidens.
Taylor said this concern is what prompted him to text Sondland, “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” Sondland replied, “Call me.”
According to Taylor’s account, “During that phone call, Ambassador Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelensky 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 Zelensky was dependent on a public announcement of investigations — in fact, Ambassador Sondland said, ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance. He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.”
Taylor testified that he spoke to Morrison the next day and briefed him on this call. During the call, he said they both commiserated with each other about not knowing what to say to Ukrainian officials asking them about the hold on the security assistance. When the two spoke on Sept. 7, Taylor testified that Morrison told him he had a “sinking feeling” after learning of a conversation in which Trump told Sondland that while he wasn’t after a “quid pro quo” he wanted Zelensky to make a public statement to say he was opening an investigation into 2016 and the Bidens.
When the texts were released by Democrats earlier this month, many puzzled over one in which Taylor wrote to Sondland, “The nightmare is they give the interview and don’t get the security assistance. The Russians love it. (And I quit.)” What exactly was the “interview”? According to Taylor, this was a reference to an interview Zelensky was going to do with CNN in which he would announce the investigations.
On Sept. 8, Taylor said he spoke to Sondland, who told him, “President Trump was adamant that President Zelensky, himself, had to ‘clear things up and do it in public.’ President Trump said it was not a ‘quid pro quo.’ Ambassador Sondland said that he had talked to President Zelensky and Mr. Yermak and told them that, although this was not a quid pro quo, if President Zelensky did not ‘clear things up’ in public, we would be at a ‘stalemate.’ I understood a ‘stalemate’ to mean that Ukraine would not receive the much-needed military assistance.” That’s when Sondland said Zelensky agreed to do the CNN interview.
This, again, is another important example of Taylor claiming that the connection between aid and the Biden investigation was clearly articulated to Ukraine.
During the same call, he said Sondland described Trump as acting like a businessman in withholding the aid while awaiting a public guarantee of the Biden investigation. “When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check.”
On Sept. 9, Taylor texted Sondland, “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” Sondland, about 4 1/2 hours later, shoots back by saying, “Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind.”
Of course, saying something isn’t a “quid pro quo” isn’t the important part — what is important is the underlying actions.
Sondland’s testimony, however, offers a much different account of these events. Unlike Taylor, who saw references to Burisma as synonymous with an investigation into the Bidens, Sondland claims that he wasn’t aware that there was any connection between the two. And he portrays his interactions with Trump and Taylor as being much more benign.
Of his ominous sounding “call me” and “stop texting” messages that drew a lot of media attention, Sondland conveyed that he preferred to discuss complex matters over the phone.
Sondland testified that “to the best of my recollection, I do not recall any discussions with the White House on withholding U.S. security assistance from Ukraine in return for assistance with the President’s 2020 re-election campaign.”
He said, “On September 9, 2019, Acting Charge de Affairs/Ambassador William Taylor raised concerns about the possibility that Ukrainians could perceive a linkage between U.S. security assistance and the President’s 2020 reelection campaign. Taking the issue seriously, and given the many versions of speculation that had been circulating about the security aid, I called President Trump directly. I asked the President: ‘What do you want from Ukraine?’ The President responded, ‘Nothing. There is no quid pro quo.’ The President repeated: ‘no quid pro quo’ multiple times. This was a very short call.”
He then said, “I tried hard to address Ambassador Taylor’s concerns because he is a valuable and effective diplomat and I took very seriously the issues he raised. I did not want Ambassador Taylor to leave his post and generate even more turnover in the Ukraine mission. I further encouraged Ambassador Taylor to contact Secretary Pompeo, as I followed up as far as I could go. As you have seen in the press, my contemporaneous messages support my recollection.”
While we do not have access to a transcript of their full testimony, including questioning, there’s a stark difference between Sondland’s account and Taylor’s insistence that Sondland communicated to both him and the Ukrainians that they needed to publicly commit to the investigations to receive the aid.
So how to reconcile the two?
Some would rely heavily on the resume. Taylor is a career diplomat who served in both Democratic and Republican administrations and who was given his job by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Sondland was a businessman who got his job because he was a major donor to the Trump campaign. But such background isn’t dispositive.
One thing that undermined Sondland’s credibility was saying he didn’t realize that there was any connection between Biden and Burisma, even though Rudy Giuliani had been talking publicly about the connection, which was the subject of a lengthy story on the front page of the New York Times. Trump, who he was in contact with, also mentioned the Bidens (but not Burisma) in his call with Zelensky.
And Taylor’s testimony is bolstered by the fact that he is said to have taken extensive contemporaneous notes of all of his conversations.
But it seems that an increasingly important element that will go a long way to resolving this will be the testimony of Morrison. According to Taylor, he was in regular contact with Morrison, and they briefed each other on their interactions with Sondland, and what they understood about his interactions with Trump and the Ukrainians. If Morrison testifies and his account squares with Taylor’s version of the events and contradicts Sondland’s more benign interpretation, then it will tip the balance significantly in Taylor’s favor. It suddenly goes from a “he said/he said” situation to a “they said/he said” situation. And that will be deeply damaging to Trump’s defense.
