Washington (CNN)Ambassador Gordon Sondland, a witness at the center of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, kept Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the loop about “activities” connected to the effort to get Ukraine to announce investigations sought by President Donald Trump, he testified Wednesday to a House committee leading the impeachment probe.
Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, also spoke with Pompeo about potentially getting Zelensky to pledge during a meeting with Trump in Poland that he “should be able to move forward publicly and with confidence on those issues of importance to” Trump with the hopes of ending the “logjam” between the two nations. Pompeo expressed his approval of the plan, according to the ambassador’s testimony.
Sondland could face tough questioning from the House Intelligence Committee’s members about his briefings to Pompeo during his public testimony Wednesday, which is shaping up to be one of the most explosive in the impeachment investigation. The New York Times, which first reported earlier Wednesday what Sondlannd planned to say, said the briefings “more directly” link the secretary to the Trump administration’s efforts to get Ukraine to open investigations into Trump’s political rivals and an unsubstantiated theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for hacking Democratic Party emails in 2016. The paper notes that it’s “not clear” how “specific” Sondland was about what was being sought from Ukraine by the administration.
Sondland said that many of Trump’s senior aides, including acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, were all aware that Zelensky was briefed days ahead of the July 25 call to commit to doing investigations.
“Everyone was in the loop,” Sondland said. “It was no secret.”
The Times said that the ambassador’s briefings with Pompeo “suggest that he could use his testimony to counter the testimonies of other administration officials” who have said he was part of a group of people operating outside official government channels in order to carry out the wishes of Trump and Rudy Giuliani, the President’s personal attorney.
Sondland, the paper notes, said last month during a closed-door deposition that he and US special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker tried to get Ukraine to release a statement announcing the investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company his son, Hunter Biden, had served on the board on, in order to “satisfy” Giuliani, “and, by extension, (Trump), and to reset relations between the two countries.” No such statement was ever released by the county, the Times said.
Original Article : HERE ;
from MetNews https://metnews.pw/sondland-says-he-kept-pompeo-briefed-on-activities-related-to-ukraine-campaign/
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