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INTERVIEWER: I will begin by swearing you in.
GORDON SONDLAND: Was there a quid pro quo? As I testified previously, with regard to the requested White House call and the White House meeting, the answer is yes.
KADHIM SHUBBER: On Wednesday, Gordon Sondland appeared before the House Intelligence Committee to give testimony in the impeachment hearings. His testimony was a challenge to the defence that the White House and Republicans and Donald Trump have maintained all this time in a couple of different ways.
One, the confirmation of the quid pro quo was a direct contradiction of what Donald Trump has said all this time, that there was none. And secondly, the fact that Sondland pointed to so many other Trump administration officials, including Mike Pompeo, secretary of state, and Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House Chief of Staff, makes it all the harder for the White House to maintain its stance of no cooperation with the impeachment inquiry.
Democrats have subpoenaed several officials who have refused to testify because the White House has ordered them not to.
ADAM SCHIFF: We now can see the veneer has been torn away, just why Secretary Pompeo and President Donald Trump do not want any of these documents provided to Congress, because apparently they show, as Ambassador Sondland has testified, that the knowledge of this scheme to condition official acts, a White House meeting and $400 million in security assistance to an ally at war with Russia, was conditioned on political favours the president wanted for his re-election.
KADHIM SHUBBER: Gordon Sondland is in a tricky spot. He is still the US Ambassador to the European Union. After his testimony on Wednesday, he headed back on a flight back to Brussels. And so the question is, how long can he stay in this job? The testimony that he gave today was damaging to the president, and in several ways. Clearly, any relationship that he had with Trump probably has not survived this process.
And he himself kind of laughed about that possibility. He was asked, Trump once said that you were a great American, and then he later said that he hardly knew you. And Sondland sort of almost cheerfully said, easy come, easy go.
