Ukraine has unintentionally wound up at the center of the impeachment investigation against U.S. President Donald Trump, which has just been bolstered by a critical witness to the case, who changed his testimony to confirm a quid pro quo in Trump’s dealings with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland contradicted his Oct. 17 testimony and confirmed the link between U.S. aid to Ukraine and Ukraine’s willingness to investigate Trump’s political rival.
On Nov. 4, Sondland sent investigators a three-page addendum to his original testimony. In the document, he said he remembered a conversation in which he indeed told a top aide to the Ukrainian president that $400 million security aid would stop unless Ukraine publicly committed to investigating former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic frontrunner in the upcoming 2020 election.
Sondland wrote, “I now recall speaking individually with (top advisor to Zelensky Andriy) Yermak, where I said the 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’s new testimony adds to the evidence that Trump made U.S. security aid to Ukraine contingent on an investigation into Biden, a central question in the abuse-of-power case against Trump. The new testimony increases the likelihood that Trump will be impeached.
Sondland’s new statement directly contradicts his original testimony, where he earlier claimed he had “never” thought there was any precondition on the aid to Ukraine.” According to him, the opening statements from top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine Bill Taylor and National Security Council aide Tim Morrison — Sondland’s colleagues — that have “refreshed my recollection about certain conversations.”
“Mr. Morrison recalls that I said to him in early September that resumption of U.S. aid to Ukraine might be conditioned on a public statement reopening the Burisma investigation, ” he wrote, referring to the investigations into the Ukrainian oil and gas company where Biden’s son Hunter worked.
“I have no reason to question the substance of their recollection,” Sondland added.
Burisma was accused of money laundering, but none of the accusations was related to Hunter Biden, and claims of his involvement in Burisma’s corruption are not backed up by evidence. Nevertheless, Trump wanted Ukraine to reopen the case, hoping to damage Bidens’ reputation before the 2020 election.
Last month, Scondland testified that efforts by the Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to persuade Ukraine to open an investigation into Biden “kept getting more insidious” as time went on. Though until now, he had maintained that the suspension of the aid to Ukraine was not connected to the investigation.
