Sondland On Ukraine, "We Followed The President's Orders"; Sondland: Everyone Was In The Loop On Ukraine Pressure
ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Erica Hill, thanks for joining us. Welcome to a special report White House in Crisis, Impeachment Inquiry. We're going to take a deep dive into day four of public testimony to digest everything we've learned over the last 24 hours. And there is a mountain of new evidence. Three more witnesses appearing before cameras. Among them, Gordon, Sondland whose testimony was the most anticipated, and he came back ready to tell all. The President's own ambassador to the E.U. putting Mr. Trump directly at the center of the Ukraine pressure campaign. And from there, he kept naming names.</s>GORDON SONDLAND, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO EUROPEAN UNION: Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker, and I worked with Mr. Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine matters at the express direction of the President of the United States. We did not want work with Mr. Giuliani so we followed the President's orders. We kept the leadership of the State Department and the NSC informed of our activities. They knew what we were doing, and why. Was there a quid pro quo? The answer is yes. Everyone was in the loop.</s>HILL: So what now? Let's bring in CNN Legal Analyst Michael Zeldin, and CNN National Security Analyst Samantha Vinograd and Steve Hall. That moment, obviously, with Ambassador Sondland saying, yes, there was a quid pro quo, grabbing headlines as quickly as those words were uttered. Sam, Republicans are stressing here that yes, he said there was a quid pro quo, but then he went on throughout testimony to make very clear he was not told directly by the President. Just -- let's take a step back and remind us for a minute, how does the messaging usually go? Does a President speak directly with an ambassador?</s>SAMANTHA VINOGRAD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Erica, in the first instance, ambassadors don't typically have a direct line to the president even when they're seasoned, even when their experience, which clearly Gordon Sondland was not, right? He was taking calls from the President from a restaurant in Kiev. He said today that he makes calls from his landline, key surveillance target. But ambassadors typically coordinate their work through the National Security Council. They don't go directly to the President. What we learned today is Gordon Sondland considers his activity to have been part of a "regular channel, not an irregular one," because the leadership was involved. Rather than sitting down and having an interagency process where the President meets with his cabinet, gets briefed on intelligence and makes decisions, there was this informal process and I'll call it irregular because it was so out of touch with reality or excuse me, with actual policy goals, the president to Rudy Giuliani, to Volker, Sondland, Perry, and potentially Secretary of State Pompeo. So what we've seen is a breakdown in the actual interagency policy process because, Erica, this was not about policy, this was about politics. If it was about policy, it would have been worked through that NSC process.</s>HILL: When we -- when we talk about the policy, right, so the President, certainly as we know, he has the power to change, to set policy. It was fascinating what Sam just touched on here is that -- so we have Ambassador Sondland who thought there was essentially one policy here, but then you hear from Bill Taylor, you hear from Volker, who saw something different and who saw perhaps a completely different channel, or more than one. Steve, from a -- Sam touched on this, but also from a security perspective, how concerning is that, that there are multiple messages out here, and it's not clear which one is official?</s>STEVE HALL, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, Erica, I mean, it's very confusing not just for the Americans involved, who are trying to, you know, formulate the policy, and Sam just did a good job of describing how it normally happens. But it's also can be very confusing, you know, for the host country, in this case, the Ukrainians as well who are trying to figure out, OK, who am I supposed to listen to here? We just had a career ambassador Masha Yovanovitch who I served with in Moscow, the consummate professional understands, you know, everything historically about what's going on. And then you've got somebody like Sondland who, you know, is basically an amateur. Now yes, the President, of course, does have the ability to name whoever he wants, but sometimes not necessarily backfires but has, you know, ramifications. And one of the ramifications here is that you've got shifting messages, you've got -- you've got Rudy Giuliani wandering around, you know, putting across whatever his messages perhaps directly from the president, perhaps not. I mean, it's all very confusing not just for the Americans who are trying to actually be professionals and get a real policy across. But it's also really confusing for the Ukrainians to try to figure out OK, who am I supposed to listen here to here? When I need to pick up the phone, who do I talk to? It can be very difficult sometimes especially for a new president like Zelensky.</s>HILL: You know, it's interesting though, when we heard -- when Sondland was saying everybody was in the loop, he was asked specifically if Ukrainians knew as well, and he said yes. So to your point, they sort of have had a sense according to Sondland's view, but again, what they do with that is entirely separate. When we talk about what the President can and cannot do, Michael, Laura Cooper talked about congressionally appointed funds and how they can and cannot be spent or not. Let's take a listen to that moment.</s>REP. JIM HIMES (D-CT): That's a legally specified process. That's not the President in the Oval Office manifesting a general skepticism of foreign aid, right? That's a process.</s>LAURA COOPER, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR RUSSIAN, UKRAINIAN, AND EURASIAN AFFAIRS: It is -- it is a congressionally mandated process. Yes, sir.</s>HILL: The point obviously, Michael, that they were -- that they were trying -- Jim Himes is trying to make there is that the President can't just decide, OK, we're not going to do with this aid what Congress has already mandated for us to do. Legally, what does that do?</s>MICHAEL ZELDIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, that's right, unless he goes back to Congress. And this law that was passed in the post-Nixon era was designed to ensure that Congress when it appropriates money has the final say and how that money is distributed. And the Defense Department, the State Department, whoever else, other distributors of that money, know that process well. And in this case, they cannot legally hold that money back just whimsically. And that's what appears to have been the sort of gravamen of what she was saying. That this hold back without any explanation, without use of the interagency process or congressional consideration was an illegal act. And that's why you saw the testimony the other week from the OMB person saying, look, I'm not going to sign off on this, because it's not lawful, as far as I'm concerned. So they brought on a political person to do the signing off on.</s>HILL: What's fascinating too is as we look at all this, is that from the beginning, one of the reasons that we were given was well -- you know, the reason the aid was held up is because there were concerns about corruption, right? We keep going back to these concerns about corruption. If, Sam, if the President wanted to withhold that aid for some time because he was concerned about corruption, that could have been a very simple public pronouncement that likely few people would have questioned were it done that way? I'm not comfortable with what I see. I'm going to hold off here and I just want to let you all know. That's the plan. That didn't happen.</s>VINOGRAD: Well, Erica, even if that had happened, it wouldn't -- it would not have been backed up by what he said in private. He did not raise corruption in his private engagements with the Ukrainians in the first instance. And number two, Erica, we have a process for assessing corruption in Ukraine. Under the National Defense Authorization Act, we have certain benchmarks that the Ukrainians have to meet in order to get a large portion of their security sector assistance. People like Laura Cooper working coordination with the State Department have an official regular process for assessing whether the defense sector in Ukraine meets those corruption benchmarks. It is not an arbitrary decision by the President of the United States. It relies on expert analysis in line with the law. The President cannot choose just to violate that law because he doesn't trust President Zelensky, or some other explanation. But again, this whole notion that they were trying -- and Jim Jordan, I believe, has put this board that they were trying to kind of suss out how serious Zelensky was about corruption, that could have been something President Trump raised on a phone call with President Zelensky or worked, for example, through the Charge Bill Taylor in embassy Kiev. Instead, they're using this as an explanation when again, it doesn't hold up with respect with the law says.</s>HILL: When we look at to what we're hearing from the president, so the President very clearly today wanted to remind everyone where he's at and where he was at back in September. I just -- I just want to play this moment, and then we'll circle back.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So here's my answer. I want nothing. I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo, tell Zelensky to do the right thing. Then he says, this is the final word from the President of the United States. I want nothing.</s>HILL: OK, so we watched the president there, and this is -- this was earlier today. And you saw him looking down at his notes. And we actually have a picture of these notes. You can see it. It was very clearly written out on his pad there what he wanted to say which was basically verbatim what we heard from Sondland today in his testimony when he was asked about this exchange with the President on September. I believe it is December -- September 9th, right, the same day the I.G. told Congress about the complaint that Congress announced an investigation. Michael, when you see all of this, I'm just curious, what do you make of it?</s>ZELDIN: So it seems pretty self-serving. It seems to me that when Ambassador Sondland says the President of the United States point blank, what do you want from the Ukrainians? His answer should have been, I want to make sure that they are fulfilling their anti- corruption promises. I am concerned about whether or not we're going to give money to them, and it's going to be wasted. So he had an opportunity to speak to the corruption initiative that all of his defenders are saying is at the bottom of what he was doing here. He doesn't. He instead says, no quid pro quo. I want nothing. That seems just too convenient especially in the aftermath of the whistleblower complaint being made known and the quid pro quo becoming part of our daily vernacular. I don't buy it.</s>HILL: So you're not buying it. You know, there's been so much attention on what we heard from Gordon Sondland today and with good reason. But part of what we learned from Laura Cooper today should also be grabbing headlines because what she testified to is that Ukrainians were e-mailing about the assistance. They had questions about the aid of the day of the call, on July 25th. Here's what she laid out today.</s>COOPER: On July 25, a member of my staff got a question from the Ukraine embassy contact asking what was going on with Ukraine security assistance.</s>HILL: And she was asked in further testimony, Steve, about this -- about this reaction. And she made clear, Ukrainians -- when -- it was her experience that when they reached out, they had specific questions. And the fact that this happened hours after the call based on the timestamp of the e-mail, Steve, what does that tell you about what they likely knew and who may have known it?</s>HALL: You know, here in the United States, Erica, we might be a bit confused about who knew what, when and whether or not guys like Sondland, you know, had direct contact with the President. But I'd say one thing -- and I visited Ukraine a number of times, I've met with some of their senior intelligence folks as well as some of their senior leadership, there is no doubt, there is absolutely no doubt that the Ukrainians understood a quid pro quo. There is no doubt. Why? The Ukrainians have lived all these years since Soviet times right under the shadow of the Russian bear. They know that if they don't want to get completely absorbed back into Russia like Crimea did, that there's really only one country that's going to stop them from doing that, and that's the United States of America. So, you know, the President can go on all day long and all night if he wants to about how there was no quid pro quo, I asked for nothing in return, and it's a bunch of garbage because the Ukrainians no better. The Ukraine -- that's why they were asking. They were saying, OK, is everything OK? Is there something else that needs to be done? Have we screwed something up? Because they know that if they don't get that assistance, and specifically, if they don't get the military assistance -- there's other kinds as well, but the military is critically important to them, given the fact that they're essentially at war with Russia. The Ukrainians knew that they had to do what it was that the -- whatever it was really that the United States one of them to do in order to survive as a country. It's an existential threat. So the idea that there was no quid pro quo just because those fancy Latin words were not said is senseless.</s>HILL: Steve, Michael --</s>ZELDIN: Erica?</s>HILL: Go ahead.</s>ZELDIN: May I just add one thing to carry on Steve's point which is that the July 25th transcript is Exhibit A of the fact that the President of the United States wanted a favor from Ukraine in exchange for continued cooperation with them. So in the transcript itself, before you even get to the quid pro quo, there is the favor being asked which is essentially an offer that they can't refuse.</s>HILL: All right, the three of you, don't go far. We have much to discuss in our next hour including that threat from Russia and why we keep seeing things come back to Russia. First, though, when we look at Ambassador Gordon Sondland's testimony, did it harm the Democrats case for impeachment in any way? I'll ask someone who had a front row seat at the hearing, a House Intelligence Committee member who questioned the ambassador. He's with us next.