By Veronica Rocha, Meg Wagner and Mike Hayes, CNN
From CNN's Adam Levine
US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland told lawmakers that he had a brief exchange with President Trump during a White House gathering where the President told him to “go tell the truth."
White House counsel wanted to sit down with Sondland to interview him about what he knew after the whistleblower complaint was filed. That never happened, though he did speak to them on the phone for a few minutes.
From CNN's Marshall Cohen
Former special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker told lawmakers that the Ukrainians didn’t know about the holdup of military assistance until after the Trump administration stopped pressing them to announce an investigation into the Bidens.
His testimony, released today, bolsters a key tenet of Trump’s defense – that there was no “quid pro quo” with Ukraine because the new government in Kiev was not aware that military aid was being withheld.
Their position cuts against Democratic allegations that Trump used the $400 million aid package as leverage.
“To my knowledge, the news about a hold on security assistance did not get into Ukrainian Government circles, as indicated to me by the current foreign minister, then diplomatic adviser, until the end of August,” Volker said. “And by the time that we had that, we had dropped the idea of even looking at a statement.”
From CNN's Kevin Liptak
Former special representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker told impeachment investigators he was surprised and troubled by President Trump’s phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart in July, which is at the center of the impeachment inquiry.
“Asking the President of Ukraine to work together with the Attorney General and to look into this, you can see, as it has now happened, this becomes explosive in our domestic politics,” Volker said, according to an excerpt of his testimony.
Volker said he was surprised when he read a transcript of the July 25 phone call because, in preparing for the conversation, he didn’t believe the Bidens were going to come up.
He said the request could have the effect of impeding other areas in US-Ukraine ties.
“It creates a problem again where all of the things that we’re trying to do to advance the bilateral relationship, strengthen our support for Ukraine, strengthen the positioning against Russia is now getting sucked into a domestic political debate in the U.S., domestic political narrative that overshadows that. And I think that is extremely unfortunate for our policy with Ukraine,” he said.
From CNN's Jeremy Herb and Katelyn Polantz
US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland amended his previous closed-door testimony with House impeachment investigators to say that he told a top Ukrainian political aide that the release of US security aid was likely conditioned on Ukraine publicly announcing an investigation that would help the President Trump politically.
Sondland’s attorney sent the committee a letter and a three-page addition to his testimony, which said he had remembered a conversation on Sept. 1 with Andriy Yermak, an aide to the Ukrainian president, linking the aid to the investigations.
“I now recall speaking individually with Mr. Yermak, where I said 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,” Sondland said.
Sondland’s new testimony, which was included in the public release of his closed-door deposition transcript, adds to Democrats’ evidence that the President connected the freezing of $400 million in US security aid to Ukraine to investigations into the 2016 election and former Vice President Joe Biden.
From CNN's Katelyn Polantz
US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland admitted to House committees he eventually became aware that Ukraine aid was held up to entice Ukrainian corruption investigations, and eventually realized the investigation was linked to the Bidens, according to transcript excerpts released today.
"Finally at some point I made the Biden-Burisma connection, and then the transcript was released," Sondland said during his testimony.
He said he couldn't remember specific dates, and for some time hadn't made the connection between the Bidens and Burisma, the Ukrainian natural resources company for which Hunter Biden sat on the board.
Sondland previously had maintained he didn't make the connection to the Bidens until well after President Trump's July 25 call with the Ukrainian president.
"I did not know until more recent press reports that Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma," he had said in a prepared opening statement released before his testimony.
Sondland also gave the committees a full overview of how Trump sent him and other officials to work with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, and how his request for help from the Ukrainians developed.
"You know, this whole thing was sort of a continuum, starting at the May 23rd meeting, ending up at the end of the line when the transcript of the call came out. And as I said to counsel, it started as talk to Rudy, then others talk to Rudy. Corruption was mentioned. Then, as time went on—and, again, I can’t nail down the dates—then let’s get the Ukrainians to give a statement about corruption. And then, no, corruption isn’t enough, we need to talk about the 2016 election and the Burisma investigations. And it was always described to me as ongoing investigations that had been stopped by the previous administration and they wanted them started up again. That’s how it was always described. And then finally at some point I made the Biden-Burisma connection, and then the transcript was released. So I can’t tell you on that continuum when, what dates, but that’s kind of what happened," he said.
He also described how the administration held up aid to Ukraine in exchange for political help.
"And then at the end of that continuum I became aware that there might be a link between the White House visit and aid to the Ukraine that was being held up when I couldn’t get a straight answer as to why the aid was being held up, both Senator Johnson and Ambassador Taylor raised the possibility that there might be a link," he said, according to the excerpts. "And then the aid was released, and then this whole thing blew up."
The transcript of the House interview with former special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker has been released.
Moments ago, the transcript of testimony from US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland was released. Earlier today, Congress published excerpts from both interviews.
We're going through all the documents now, and we'll post highlights here when we get them.
From CNN's Jenny Hansler
According to excerpts of his testimony, former special representative Kurt Volker advised the Ukrainians to drop a proposed public statement after learning that the Justice Department had not requested investigations into Burisma or the 2016 election — despite what Rudy Giuliani was promoting.
“It died. I mean, no one—once we started seeing a tempo of engagement with Ukraine, we had first the sense that Rudy was not going to be convinced that it meant anything, and, therefore, convey a positive message to the President if it didn’t say Burisma and 2016. I agreed with the Ukrainians they shouldn’t do it, and in fact told them just drop it, wait till you have your own prosecutor general in place. Let’s work on substantive issues like this, security assistance and all. Let’s just do that. So we dropped it,” Volker said.
Some background: President Trump has repeatedly claimed that former vice president Joe Biden had called for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was "investigating his son." There is no evidence Hunter Biden was ever under investigation. The investigation was into the business dealings of the owner of a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, where Hunter Biden sat on the board of directors.
US Ambassador to the European Union, in a text message to Volker, had proposed that the Ukrainians put out a statement “about Ukraine’s commitment to fighting corruption and investigating things that happened in the past,” in the words of Volker.
“(That) was where we had this question that we discussed earlier about whether it would specifically mention Burisma and 2016 or not,” Volker said.
Volker testified that the statement went through various iterations, and that Giuliani wanted it to specifically mention Burisma and 2016.
Volker said Zelensky aide Yermak Andrey Yermak asked him “whether any request had ever been made by the US to investigate election interference in 2016. Volker discovered that the DOJ had not requested investigations that were being promoted by Giuliani, so he said he advised the Ukrainians not to include it in the statement.
From CNN's Alex Rogers
In an excerpt of his testimony, Gordon Sondland, the US Ambassador to the EU, did not recall the details of a July 10 White House meeting with Ukrainian officials.
“I may have chimed in on a point or two, but I remember it being a very friendly meeting,” said Sondland.
When asked if he brought up the prospect of investigations that Ukraine needed to conduct, Sondland responded, “Not to the best of my knowledge.”
Bill Taylor, the top diplomat to Ukraine, Fiona Hill, Trump's former top Russia adviser, and Lt. Col Alexander Vindman, the NSC’s top Ukraine expert, have testified that then-NSC advisor John Bolton ended the meeting after Sondland discussed investigations. Hill and Vindman then reported the incident to NSC lawyer John Eisenberg.
CNN reported that Bolton said the operation carried out by Sondland and acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney was like a "drug deal,” according to a source familiar with Hill’s testimony.
The transcript of the Congressional interview with US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland has been released.
We're going through it now, and we'll post details here.
Excerpts from the Sondland interview, as well as from an interview with former special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker, were released earlier today.
