Analysis: Sondland's Damning, Yet Insufficient, Testimony Both Injures and Helps Trump

The Trump administration's Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, appeared before the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment panel yesterday, and his testimony was very significant. In my view, it confirmed myriad abuses of power and unethical conduct by the president and his team vis-a-vis Ukraine, including the establishment of an explicit quid pro quo. It also, however, handed President Trump and his defenders a number of potent talking points that cut against the impeachment and removal narrative. In his opening statement, Sondland confirmed that he and many others were "in the loop" on an arrangement in which the Ukrainian government was to announce the launch of investigations into Kiev's 2016 interference in the American election, as well as Burisma and the Bidens.

I've argued previously that the former subject, despite some of its adjacent conspiracies, is a legitimate bone of contention for Trump; the latter demand, by contrast, was a clear misuse of power. Especially telling was the insistence, as relayed by Sondland, that the desired probes merely be announced publicly, as opposed to actually undertaken. Here is the key quote, followed by the most plausible interpretation of what it demonstrates:

I can easily be convinced that President Trump held a grudge against Kiev over the previous government's assistance to the Democrats during the last campaign. I cannot be convinced that Trump is fundamentally offended by corruption in an Eastern European country. The most obvious reason Trump kept pushing for the Burisma probe announcement was that it would present a political problem back home for Joe Biden, his strongest on-paper 2020 opponent (who is, in fact, taking a hit on the Ukraine matter, as it happens). But whereas Sondland unequivocally testified to a quid pro quo in which a White House meeting for Zelensky was the reward for the investigations (bad, but not impeachable), he did not testify that he had hard or firsthand evidence of such an arrangement involving a military aid package approved by Congress and destined for Ukraine (far more serious). We know that the president put a hold on said aid, over the objections of his entire national security team, for reasons that remain unclear. It is entirely conceivable, if not likely, that this pause was tied into Trump's fixation on the "deliverable" of investigations being announced. But on the question of whether Trump himself ever linked those investigations with the military aid, Sondland said no:

Sondland quoting Trump: "I want nothing. I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo."