On Wednesday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the Daily Wire editor-in-chief discusses the testimony highlights of E.U. ambassador Gordon Sondland, and also outlines the only credible impeachment defense of the Trump administration. Video and partial transcript below:
My suggestion for months at this point has been that President Trump basically wrapped up all this stuff in a ball on Ukraine, decided he didn’t really want to give aid to Ukraine anyway — because he was always a little bit split on giving more aid to Ukraine, he always felt that Europeans weren’t doing their fair share, he always wondered why the United States was spending so much time and effort in Ukraine — and he finally allowed that to cloud his judgment to the point where he said, “Okay, I’m going to withhold the military aid until I get these investigations, and investigations are everything that bothers me about Ukraine up to and including Burisma and Joe Biden.”
Now, the way that you would establish an impeachable offense is if what you found was — the Democrats basically said this, it’s not just me saying this, this is the Democrats setting the standard — [if] they suggest that this was to get Biden. This was all about Biden, all the rest of this stuff, the CrowdStrike stuff, the 2016 election stuff, all that stuff is a ruse [and] really what Trump wanted was to go get Joe Biden. And all the rest of the stuff he’s mentioned, these other investigations having to do with corruption, these other investigations about the Ukrainian embassy coordinating with the DNC in 2016, all of that was merely a pretext for Trump to force Ukraine to go get Joe Biden — that’s the case.
So Gordon Sondland is the person who, theoretically, could speak to that, right? Gordon Sondland is the guy who could get up before Congress [Wednesday] and he could say, “I talked to Trump. Trump said, ‘Go get the Bidens,’” and the rest of all this was a charade. [But] that isn’t exactly what Gordon Sondland said.
So people are honing in on the fact that Gordon Sondland had changed his testimony. In his original closed door testimony, he said he didn’t understand there was a quid pro quo with Trump and Ukraine. Now, of course, he changed his testimony, and he suggested that there was, in fact, a quid pro quo with Trump and Ukraine. [However] it is not clear exactly whether that quid-pro-quo was wrong, whether that quid pro quo was a problem …
[Sondland began his testimony] by explaining that everybody was in the loop on this, like everybody knew that Trump was basically withholding military aid in order to get investigations, whatever “investigations” means … He says everybody was in the loop, it’s not like this was a giant secret with regard to Ukraine policy.
SONDLAND: He would greatly appreciate a call prior to Sunday so that he can put out some media about a friendly and productive call, no details, prior to Ukraine election on Sunday. Chief of Staff Mulvaney responded, “I asked the NSC to set it up for tomorrow”… Everyone was in the loop. It was no secret, everyone was informed via email on July 19, days before the presidential call.
Okay, so not only did everybody know, says Gordon Sondland, but everybody at the State Department knew, up to and including Mike Pompeo, that President Trump was manipulating Ukraine policy in order to achieve investigations. So everyone was in the loop, Sondland is trying to say [paraphrasing]: “It wasn’t just me, it wasn’t me making up this foreign policy. Don’t try to throw me under the bus. If you’ve got a problem with the foreign policy — I was not the originator of the foreign policy, I’m not going to be the man who gets caught in the crossfire here, I was doing the will of the president of the United States.”
Here’s Sondland explaining that everybody at the State Department knew:
SONDLAND: We kept the leadership of the State Department and the NSC informed of our activities, and that included communications with Secretary of State Pompeo, his counselor, Ulrich Brechbul, his executive secretary, Lisa Kenna, and also communications with Ambassador Bolton, Dr. Hill, Mr. Morrison, and their staff at the NSC. They knew what we were doing, and why.
Everybody knew, right? In other words, this was not a giant secret, which you would assume at this point since half the people on the call, the July 25 phone call, made complaints. And then Sondland continues along these lines and he says, [paraphrasing] “Listen, the only reason we are even working with Rudy Giuliani was at Trump’s behalf. So if you think that I was coordinating with Giuliani’s side, some sort of side relationship with Giuliani, not going to happen.”
Sondland is trying to achieve a couple of things with this testimony. One: He can’t say anything that overtly contradicts his closed-door testimony because then he would be charged with perjury — Republicans would charge him with perjury. Two: Gordon Sondland does not want to be the guy who is basically put out there as he was freelancing the foreign policy.
Now listen, I don’t think that that was a credible accusation in the first place. I think that if anybody had claimed that Gordon Sondland was making up Ukrainian foreign policy on his own — the giant donor to Trump who ended up as E.U. ambassador, suddenly an expert on Ukraine and negotiating with Rudy Giuliani — that was never a credible defense for the Trump administration. Again, the only credible defense was the one that I have presented for Trump, which was an “intent-based defense.”
The “no quid-pro-quo,” [and] “it was a perfect phone call” defense was obviously crap. It was obviously crap from from very nearly the beginning. As soon as it came out that the Ukrainians had found out pretty soon after the July 25 phone call that military aid was being withheld, to say that there was no quid pro quo at all was obviously untenable. To suggest that President Trump had engaged in a perfect phone call on July 25 — obviously, it was also untenable.
The only tenable defense is that President Trump did not have intent to go after Joe Biden specifically in advance of 2020. It was not about getting Biden, it was about all of his thoughts on Ukraine — mashed up together, thrown out there — and Ukraine was supposed to fulfill all of these concerns that Trump had, some of which were legitimate, [and] some of which were were based on bad information being provided by Rudy Giuliani. But Sondland is trying to avoid the “it’s my fault” routine. I think many in the Trump administration wanted Sondland to take a bullet here and Sondland ain’t going to do it.
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