Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, revised his original testimony in the House impeachment probe into President Donald Trump to add that he conveyed to a Ukrainian counterpart that Trump would not release nearly $400 million in foreign aid until the country agreed to launch specific investigations sought by Trump.
“I said that resumption of the US aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Mr. Sondland said in a document released Tuesday by the three House committees carrying out an impeachment probe, describing his conversation on September 1 with a top Ukrainian official.
Sondland went on to say that the Ukrainian official had pressed him for details about exactly what Trump wanted in exchange for releasing the aid, which had been appropriated by Congress.
Sondland says he recalls telling the Ukrainian that the country’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, would need to deliver a public statement in person announcing the launch of the investigations intended to benefit Trump politically.
The four pages of written revisions to his October testimony was submitted on Monday, just a day before the entire testimony was released by House impeachment investigators.
In it, Sondland also claimed that the testimony of other administration officials who spoke after he did and who contradicted Sondland, had “refreshed my recollection” and prompted him to write an addendum to his original deposition.
The White House claimed Tuesday that newly released transcripts show there is “even less evidence” underscoring House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into President Trump’s interactions with Ukraine than previously known.
“Both transcripts released today show there is even less evidence for this illegitimate impeachment sham than previously thought,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement. “No amount of salacious media-biased headlines, which are clearly designed to influence the narrative, change the fact that the President has done nothing wrong.”
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