President Donald Trump has recalled Gordon
Sondland and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, two senior officials who testified
against him at his impeachment trial.
Gordon Sondland, the US envoy to the
EU, said he “was advised today that the president intends to recall me
effective immediately”.
Just hours earlier, Lt. Col.
Alexander Vindman, a top expert on Ukraine, was escorted from the White House.
President Trump is said to desire a
staff shake-up after senators cleared him in the impeachment case on February 5.
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s twin
brother, Yevgeny Vindman, a senior lawyer for the National Security Council,
was also sent back to the Department of the Army on February 7.
In a statement issued by his lawyer,
Gordon Sondland said: “I was advised
today that the president intends to recall me effective immediately as United
States ambassador to the European Union.
“I am grateful to President Trump for having given me
the opportunity to serve, to Secretary [of State Mike] Pompeo for his
consistent support, and to the exceptional and dedicated professionals at the
US mission to the European Union.
“I am proud of our
accomplishments. Our work here has been the highlight of my career.”
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman had
reportedly turned up for work at the White House as usual on February 5.
As he left the executive mansion on February
5 for North Carolina, President Trump told reporters: “I’m not happy with him [Lt. Col. Vindman].
“You think I’m supposed to be happy with him? I’m
not.”
President Donald Trump has so far
not commented further.
According to White House sources,
Alexander Vindman had been expecting a transfer. He was telling colleagues for
weeks that he was ready to move back to the defense department, where he still
holds active-duty soldier status.
On February 5, Defense Secretary
Mark Esper told reporters his department welcomes back all of its personnel
from assignment.
He added: “And as I said we protect all of our service members from retribution
or anything like that.”
Testifying in Congress last
November, Gordon Sondland was very clear in his testimony that a White House
visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was conditional on Kyiv
launching investigations that could be politically helpful to President Trump.
He said: “Was there a quid pro quo [a favor granted in return for
something]?
“As I testified previously, with regard to the
requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is yes.”
Gordon Sondland was at that time
working with President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, on Ukrainian
policy at the explicit direction of the president.
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman also
testified last November. He said he was “concerned” after hearing
President Trump’s “improper” phone call on July 25, 2019 with
Ukraine’s president.
The call led to Presidnet Trump’s
impeachment in December by the House for abuse of power and obstruction of
Congress.
Democratic lawmakers argued that President
Trump had dangled US aid in exchange for political favors.
When asked how he had overcome his
fear of retaliation in order to testify, Alexander Vindman testified: “Congressman, because this is
America… and here, right matters.”
President Trump mentioned the
Vindman twins in a tirade against his political enemies at the White House one
day before ousting them.
Eliot Engel, Democratic chairman of
the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said in a statement: “This is shameful of course.
“But this is also what we should now expect from an
impeached president whose party has decided he is above the law and accountable
to no one. “
However, Republican Congressman
Thomas Massie said he would have fired Alexander Vindman.
He said: “He’s a leaker, not a whistleblower.
“Current Commander in Chief doesn’t take orders from a
Lt Col!”
In his comments to media on February
5, President Trump said reports that his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney would
be fired were “false”.
The president said: “I have a great relationship with Mick.”
North Carolina lawmaker Mark Meadows
is being tipped by the Washington rumor mill as a replacement for Mick
Mulvaney.
Mark Meadows, who is retiring from
the House of Representatives where he led the hardline conservative Freedom
Caucus, traveled with President Trump on Air Force One on February 5.
At a rare White House press conference in October, Mick Mulvaney appeared to
implicate the president in an alleged corrupt deal with Ukraine.
The acting chief of staff told stunned reporters: “We do that all the time.”
President Trump was reportedly outraged by the gaffe.
Mick Mulvaney then walked back his comments in a written statement that said: “Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election.”
US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland has
been accused by three women of sexual misconduct.
The accusations, co-published by Portland Monthly magazine and ProPublica, date back to before he became an ambassador.
At the time of the alleged incidents Gordon Sondland was developing hotels
in Portland and Seattle in the Pacific Northwest.
Gordon Sondland denies all of the allegations, and accuses the women of
targeting him for his role in President Donald Trump’s impeachment hearings.
He said in a statement: “These
untrue claims of unwanted touching and kissing are concocted and, I believe,
co-ordinated for political purposes.
“They have no basis in fact, and
I categorically deny them.”
All three women said Gordon Sondland retaliated against them professionally
after they rejected his advances – by verbally abusing them at their workplace,
reneging on a promised investment, and withdrawing offers of professional
introductions.
One of the women, Nicole Vogel, said she met Gordon Sondland for dinner in
2003 in order to secure investment for her new magazine.
Nicole Vogel is the owner of Portland
Monthly. The magazine said she was not involved editorially in the story,
and it had teamed up with ProPublica,
a respected non-profit news group, to report the claims independently.
She said that after dinner Gordon Sondland took her to one of his hotels and
invited her to see a room. He then requested a hug, she added, but instead
“grabs my face and goes to kiss me”.
Nicole Vogel said she deflected him and left the hotel, and later received
an email from Gordon Sondland changing the terms of his investment.
A second acuser, Jana Solis, said she met Gordon Sondland in 2008 when she
was seeking work as a hotel safety expert.
When Sondland offered her the job, she said, he called her “my new
hotel chick” and slapped her rear. She then said that on another occasion
he invited her to his home in Portland to evaluate his art collection, before
exposing himself.
On a third occasion, Sondland asked her to inspect his penthouse apartment
and then forcibly kissed her, she said.
The third woman, Natalie Sept, was working in local politics in Portland for
a candidate Gordon Sondland had donated money to.
After they were introduced through her boss, she claims Gordon Sondland
invited her to dinner to discuss work opportunities. She said he asked for a
hug at the end of the night, but then pushed himself towards her and tried to
forcibly kiss her.
In response, Gordon Sondland described the article as “underhanded
journalism” that was “fundamentally false”.
He said he intended to take legal action against the two publications.
Gordon Sondland provided key testimony at President Trump’s impeachment hearing last week, where he said he followed the president’s orders to pressure Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rival, Joe Biden.
Former White House aide Fiona Hill has
told the impeachment inquiry that President Donald Trump disregarded the advice
of senior advisers to push a false theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016
election.
She said the president had instead
listened to the views of his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Fiona Hill called the claims about
Ukraine a “fictional narrative”.
The inquiry is assessing if
President Trump withheld aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate a political
rival.
President Trump denies any
wrongdoing.
According to a discredited theory,
it was Ukrainians or individuals with Ukrainian connections who interfered in
the 2016 vote, rather than Russia.
In a phone call with the Ukrainian
president, President Trump urged him to look into the claims as well as open an
investigation into Joe Biden, one of the main Democratic presidential
candidates.
November 21 is fifth and last
scheduled day of public hearings by the House Intelligence Committee.
In her opening statement, Fiona Hill – the former top Russia experts to the
White House – accused other Republicans of sowing doubt about Russian
interference in the 2016 elections.
She said: “Based on questions and
statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that
Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country
– and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did.”
Fiona Hill urged lawmakers not to promote “politically driven
falsehoods” that cast doubt on Russia’s interference in US elections.
“This is a fictional narrative
that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services
themselves,” she said.
During Fiona Hill’s testimony, Democratic lawyer Daniel Goldman asked her: “So is it your understanding then that
President Trump disregarded the advice of his senior officials about this
theory and instead listened to Rudy Giuliani’s views?”
“That appears to be the case,
yes,” she replied.
In her later testimony, Fiona Hill warned that Rudy Giuliani had been making
“explosive” and “incendiary” claims about Ukraine.
She said: “He was clearly pushing
forward issues and ideas that would, you know, probably come back to haunt us.
“I think that’s where we are
today.”
Fiona Hill testified that she had a couple of “testy encounters”
with Gordon Sondland – the US ambassador to the EU who testified on November 20
– over Ukraine, because the ambassador did not keep her informed of “all
the meetings he was having”.
US ambassador to Ukraine David Holmes also testified at November 21 hearing.
In his opening statement, David Holmes said that his work at the embassy in
Kiev became overshadowed in 2019 by the actions of Rudy Giuliani.
He said: “I became aware that Mr.
Giuliani, a private lawyer, was taking a direct role in Ukrainian diplomacy.”
David Holmes added that he was “shocked” on July 18 when an official from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced that military aid to Ukraine was being withheld.
State department official David Holmes has said
at the impeachment inquiry that a US diplomat told Donald Trump Ukraine would
carry out investigations the president had asked for.
David Holmes said he had overheard this during a call in July between
President Trump and the US envoy to the EU, Gordon Sondland.
He said the call came a day after President Trump asked Ukraine to probe
ex-VP Joe Biden.
President Trump has dismissed the impeachment inquiry as “presidential
harassment”.
The inquiry is investigating whether Donald Trump withheld US military aid
to Ukraine in order to pressure the country’s new President Volodymyr Zelensky
to announce a corruption inquiry into Joe Biden, now his rival for the presidency.
On November 15, President Trump launched a Twitter attack on another witness
– former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
He tweeted in the middle of her testimony: “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad.
“She started off in Somalia, how
did that go?”
Asked for her response, Marie Yovanovitch called it “very
intimidating”.
President Trump later hit back, arguing his tweets were not intimidating
“at all”. He told reporters he had watched part of the impeachment
hearing and considered it “a disgrace”.
David Holmes testified behind closed doors before us lawmakers in Washington
DC.
The diplomatic aid said he had overheard the phone call between President
Trump and Ambassador Sondland in which “investigations” are said to
have been discussed.
He said Gordon Sondland called President Trump from a restaurant in
Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on July 26, 2019.
According to a copy of his opening statement obtained by CBS News, David
Holmes said: “Sondland told Trump
that [Ukrainian President] Zelensky ‘loves your ass.'”
“I then heard President Trump
ask, ‘So, he’s gonna do the investigation?’
“Ambassador Sondland replied that
‘he’s gonna do it’, adding that President Zelensky will do ‘anything you ask him
to’.”
Observers have drawn attention to the security implications of making the
call from a restaurant, potentially exposing the conversation to eavesdropping
by Russian intelligence.
David Holmes’ deposition appears to corroborate the testimony given to the
impeachment inquiry by US ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor on November 13.
Bill Taylor said one of his aides heard the same chat.
The aide said President Trump had asked about “investigations” and
Gordon Sondland had replied that Ukraine was ready to move forward.
According to Bill Taylor, Gordon Sondland then told the aide that the
president cared more about the investigation of the Bidens than anything else
involving Ukraine.
The call – which Donald Trump has denied any knowledge of – allegedly
happened the day after the now-famous Trump-Zelensky phone call.
While giving her evidence, Marie
Yovanovitch was alerted to the president’s criticism by the hearing’s chairman
Adam Schiff.
Responding directly to Donald
Trump’s tweet, in which he appeared to blame her for upheaval in Somalia, Marie
Yovanovitch replied: “I don’t think
I have such powers, not in Mogadishu and Somalia and not in other places.
“I actually think that where I’ve served over the years
I and others have demonstrably made things better, you know, for the US as well
as for the countries that I’ve served in.”
Marie Yovanovitch’s response was
broadcast live during the televised hearing.
Adam Schiff, the Democratic Chairman
of the Intelligence Committee overseeing the impeachment inquiry, suggested the
president’s tweets could be classed as witness intimidation.
Marie Yovanovitch was removed as ambassador to Kyiv in May, two months before a controversial phone call between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, which is now key to the inquiry.
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