Gordon Sondland, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union is the Democrats' star witness. He is mentioned more than 600 times in a 262-page report authored by Chairman Schiff, which purports to be a summary of the HPSCI hearings. Ambassador Sondland was not on the July 25 call. He repeatedly testified that the only direct statement from President Trump was that President Trump wanted nothing from Ukraine except for it to clean up its corruption.
Other statements of Sondland, that there was a quid pro quo, and everyone was "in the loop," were simply assumptions he made. In fact, he acknowledged that "no one on earth" told him that there were any preconditions on release of aid. His only direct knowledge was the President's explicit contradiction of the entirety of Sondland's presumptions. Presumptions cannot be the basis for an impeachment. All the presumptions in the world do not overcome the direct evidence of the President's statement. In a conversation with Ambassador Sondland, President Trump said, "I want nothing [from Ukraine]. I want no quid pro quo. I want Zelensky to do the right thing. I want him to do what he ran on." In this case, President Trump is referring to President Zelensky's campaign to root out corruption within the Ukrainian government. The President's statement directly contradicts Ambassador Sondland's presumption.
The appropriated aid was released to the Ukraine without any investigation or announcement of an investigation by Ukraine. But the Democrats even put their own spin on the ultimate reasoning for release.
Democrats infer that President Trump released the aid because the delay on delivery was made public and Ukraine was made aware. Because they have no direct evidence to substantiate this assertion, they have attempted to rely on a timeline that says the whistleblower complaint became public before President Trump released the money to Ukraine. That temporal coincidence is a pin prick through which they attempt to drive a truck. But their inference is wrong.
That timeline is their only evidence. While that timeline of events is in fact true, that the whistleblower complaint was made public prior to the aid being released, there is a stronger rationale for the President's release of aid. In late August 2019, the Ukraine legislature was working on strong anticorruption legislation, which even Democrat witnesses said would be a significant curb on rampant Ukrainian corruption.
President Trump released the aid the very same day that President Zelensky signed into law two anti-corruption measures: one that ended immunity for Ukrainian legislators and the reinstatement of a vigorous anticorruption court.
The United States had provided aid to Ukraine in 2017 and 2018, but aid was only paused in 2019. The Democrats assert this is because President Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate a political rival. In fact, several Democrats asked what changed between 2017, 2018, and 2019.
