Yep, Sondland isn’t talking about doing work for State here. And this is definitely pre-emptively trying to answer the question of what the EU Ambassador was doing in the Ukraine. It’s not going to answer those questions very well, mind you, and it’s going to raise a whole lot of new questions, but there you go.
I remember reading that the Justin Kennedy/Trump ties were overblown. Anthony Kennedy Should vilified for lobbying for Kavanaugh instead.
This song is exactly 40 years old today. Let’s have a musical interlude!
Clearly Sondland’s lawyers are advising him to get out of this mess by distancing himself from the whole thing and throwing Trump under the bus.
That’s kind of the sense I get here too. I mean, I think Sondland wasn’t going to come testify, and now he is. And it was safe to think and a lot of folks did (I know I did), that it was kabuki theater, and that they wanted him to testify to put the Administration’s talking points into the record.
But now it appears that he wanted to talk legitimately to avoid failing to comply with subpoena, or getting subpoenaed at all, at least. And that while he’d probably like to say “No quid pro quo”, his lawyers have told him “They’re going to ask you what evidence you have that it wasn’t. Do you have any? No? It just came from the President directly that it wasn’t? Yeah, that’s what you’re going to have to say, unless you want to be on the hook for some of this.”
Indeed, now WaPo is reporting that he will say there clearly was a quid pro quo, just not the one he imagined. He thought the quid pro quo was ‘generic statements about fighting corruption’ in exchange for a meeting with the President, and was shocked to learn it was actually about targeting Biden.
The ol’ non-corrupt quid pro quo.
It’s a beautiful quid pro quo, everybody does it.
KevinC
1812
“Sir,” he said, “Sir, it’s truly the most tremendous quid pro quo I’ve seen. Thank you, sir”.
It’s not a quid pro quo like Obama’s book deal is.
Beware the expectations trap. I’ll believe Sonland is going to testify against the President when it actually happens, otherwise this could be just another setup to build his credibility before he goes in there to muddy the waters.
He’ll surely try to muddy the waters, no doubt about that.
His testimony and contents thereof has been independently confirmed by the Washington Post, NYT, CNN, NBC, and the Wall Street Journal. He may try to spin things as pro-Trump as possible, but this is toothpaste that isn’t going back into the tube.
Menzo
1817
This is what Democrats do. Resignin from this board creates the impression that there’s truth to Trump’s bullshit claims.
There are issues with PEPs and PEP associates being senior executives in foreign state owned or funded corporations but the problem is undue influence from PEPs and PEP associates is not limited to Biden, or even Trump and the US.
but still, when the Washington oligarchy has been enriching itself for generations by normalising this behaviour and then one side doesnt have to keep to any moral or ethical values you are going to have a problem with them weaponising it.
