November 6, 2019: Sondland Says Security Aid to Ukraine Was in Our Vital National Interest

 

11/6/19: At a rally in Kentucky, standing beside “Fat Nixon,” Sen. Rand Paul shouts that it’s time for the free press to “do your job.” 

Yes, Sen. Paul wants the free press to………expose the whistleblower! 

Name him (or her), he shouts.

 

____________________ 

“Have you no sense of decency? At long last, have you no sense of decency?” 

Joseph Welch, replying to Sen. Joseph McCarthy

____________________

 

 

For once, this threat proves too much even for some of Sen. Paul’s GOP colleagues. A lawless president has trampled a supine Republican Party for years. Perhaps we are approaching our “Joseph Welch” moment. 

This was the televised instant in 1954, when Welch, representing the U.S. Army during congressional hearings, reached a point where he had had all he could stand. Sen. Joe McCarthy was attacking the reputation of a young lawyer on Welch’s staff, without producing any evidence. 

“Until this moment, Senator,” Welch said with icy calm, “I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” When McCarthy dared continue, Welch interrupted angrily. “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency? At long last, have you no sense of decency?” 

In fact, like President Trump, McCarthy did not. From that moment forward, McCarthy went into decline.

Sen. Joseph McCarthy, left, with aid Roy Cohn.

(Ironically, Cohn would later be a confidante of Donald J. Trump.)

 

Now a few Republicans dared, if not to stand tall, at least not to crawl and crouch. “We should follow the law,” Sen. Lamar Alexander said. “And I believe the law protects whistleblowers.” 

“The whistleblower statute is there for a reason,” Sen. John Thune agreed. “And I think we need to respect the law where whistleblowers are concerned. Eventually that person may decide to come forward voluntarily.” 

Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has worked for years to build up whistleblower protections, concurred. “All I can say is I expect whistleblowers to be protected according to what the law gives them,” Grassley explained.

 

But Sen. Rand Paul stood by his threat to name names; and Sen. Lindsey Graham backed his craven play. 

Cowardice runs thick in most Republican veins.

 

* 

SEN. JOHN CORNYN hits the nail square on the head. There’s not much reason to go hunting the whistleblower now. “It’s kind of a moot issue,” he says. “People can read the transcript themselves.” 

Yes, they can! People are free to read the original nine-page whistleblower complaint. It won’t even take long. 

Or they can dive into the transcripts documenting the testimony of career diplomats and military men, which are being released daily. Even a cursory reading shows that the whistleblower complaint has been validated on nearly every point. As Sen. Cornyn says, the whistleblower’s identity is “kind of a moot issue.” 

 

Rep. Jim Jordan cites two entire words from a transcript. 

You can take your pick of transcripts if you want to dig for truth. On Twitter, Rep. Jim Jordan does just that. He selects one transcript, and cites two entire words of testimony to prove that Donald J. Trump is the best man ever to plant a fat fanny in the Oval Office.

Interesting how Rep. Jordan wants to ignore hundreds of pages of transcripts,

save for two words: "no linkage."

 

 

Of course, if you really wanted to understand what was going on, you could dive deeper. You had, for example, the 156 pages of testimony from Michael McKinley – who, by the way, accused Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of lying. You could read Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s testimony, 317 pages in length. If you enjoyed that you could wade through 360 pages of testimony provided by Ambassador Volker, not simply pluck out two random words. 

Or you could delve into the 379 pages served up for lawmakers by Ambassador Gordon Sondland. That would include the four pages of amended testimony Sondland added after his memory was jogged by testimony from Ambassador Bill Taylor and National Security Council official Tim Morrison, and, perhaps, motivated by fear he might have perjured himself.

 

* 

BY THE WAY, Sen. Graham, who really wants good Americans to know the name of the whistleblower, has said that he’s not going to read any of this testimony, because, 

lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala… 

He doesn’t care what any of the witnesses have said. 

Let’s go the senator one better, and tax our brains and peruse just the last four pages of amended testimony from Ambassador Sondland. His original comments provided President Trump at least a fig leaf of cover. 

Now to remove that fig leaf and… 

Gag.

  

 

“Security aid to Ukraine was in our vital national interest.” 

As early as May 23, 2019, Sondland originally said, he understood that, 

a White House visit for President Zelensky was conditioned upon President Zelensky’s agreement to make a public anti-corruption statement. This condition had been communicated by Rudy Giuliani, with whom President Trump directed Ambassador Volker, [Energy] Secretary [Rick] Perry, and me…to discuss issues related to the President’s concerns about Ukraine.

 

Sondland added, “I understood that satisfying Mr. Giuliani was a condition for scheduling the White House visit, which we all strongly believed to be in the mutual interest of the United States and Ukraine.” 

So, last spring, there was already a quid and a quo, and Sondland knew it. Zelensky gets the meeting. Quid. 

Rudy and his boss get an anti-corruption statement that they hope will damage Joe Biden. 

Quo.

 

Now, in his amended testimony, Sondland has even more to say. This time he related a meeting in Warsaw, on September 1, involving Vice President Pence and Mr. Zelensky. Three days earlier, the suspension of U.S. military aid to Ukraine had been revealed by the free press. Now the suspension of aid was openly discussed. “I always believed that suspending aid to Ukraine was ill-advised,” Sondland made clear in his amended testimony, “although I did not know (and still do not know) when, why, or by whom the aid was suspended.” 

Is this, then, a second and more critical quid pro quo? Sondland explained, that in the absence “of any credible explanation for the suspension of aid, I presumed that the aid suspension had become linked to the proposed anti-corruption statement. As I said in my [original] prepared testimony, security aid to Ukraine was in our vital national interest and should not have been delayed for any reason.” 

Sondland’s amended testimony offers depth to our understanding of what was happening behind the scenes. At the conclusion of the meeting in Warsaw, he told lawmakers, “President Zelensky had raised the issue of suspension of U.S. aid to Ukraine directly with Vice President Pence.” In fact, it had been the first matter Zelensky brought up, to start the meeting. Afterwards, Sondland spoke briefly with Andrey Yermak, a top adviser to Zelensky. He told Yermak “that resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks [emphasis added].”

 

Soon after, he learned that “the public statement would need to come directly from President Zelensky himself.” 

Military aid. Quid. 

Zelensky gives Trump a statement he badly wanted. 

Quo.

 

Sondland goes on to say he cannot recall whether he had “one or two phone calls with President Trump in the September 6-9 time frame.” He does know this. 

Despite repeated requests to the White House and the State Department, I have not been granted access to all of the phone records, and I would like to review those phone records, along with any notes and other documents that may exist, to determine if I can provide more complete testimony to assist Congress.

 

Or as Sen. Lindsey Graham might say, 

Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. 

 

NOT-SO-FUN-FACT: Ambassador Sondland is the second person to testify, after Bill Taylor, that the Department of State has refused to let him review his own documents to prepare for testimony in front of Congress.