Impeachment hearings takeaways: 'Everyone was in the loop'

WASHINGTON — Gordon Sondland, US President Donald Trump's ambassador to the European Union, bolstered Democrats' impeachment narrative Wednesday as he repeatedly talked of a "quid pro quo" involving Ukraine.

He said "everyone was in the loop" about President Donald Trump's push for Ukraine to announce investigations into a Ukraine gas company and the 2016 US election.

Sondland was one of the most anticipated witnesses as Democrats are holding an rigorous week of hearings into whether Trump's dealings with Ukraine are grounds for impeachment.

Sondland told lawmakers that he worked with Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine at Trump's direction and that he eventually came to believe that military aid for the country was dependent on Ukraine launching the investigations.

Separately, in a second evening hearing, a Defense official provided new details about when Ukrainians learned that the aid was being held up — a key question in determining whether the aid and investigations were linked.

Takeaways from Day 4 of the impeachment inquiry before the House intelligence committee: THIS FOR THAT Sondland repeatedly referred to a quid pro quo — one thing in return for another — in describing the administration's dealings with Ukraine.

It was a remarkable spectacle: Trump's own ambassador using the exact term that the president himself has disavowed. Sondland is hardly a Never-Trumper: He donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural committee before being named ambassador.

"I know that members of this committee have frequently framed these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there a 'quid pro quo?' As I testified previously, with regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is yes," Sondland said.

The quid pro quo in this case, he said, involved arranging a White House visit for Ukraine's new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in return for Zelenskiy's announcing investigations of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, and a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Biden's son Hunter was a Burisma board member.

That proposed arrangement was pushed by Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, who conveyed Trump's wishes to multiple administration officials. Sondland said he did not know until September that what was actually desired was an investigation into the Bidens.

AP