-In the coming days, Congress will determine
what response is appropriate.
If the President abused his power
and invited foreign interference in our elections,
if he sought to condition, coerce, extort,
or bribe a vulnerable ally
into conducting investigations to aid his reelection campaign
and did so by withholding official acts,
a White House meeting,
or hundreds of millions of dollars of needed military aid,
it will be for us to decide
whether those acts are compatible
with the office of the presidency.
-As numerous witnesses have testified,
temporary holds on foreign aid occur
fairly frequently for many different reasons,
so how do we have an impeachable offense here
when there's no actual misdeed
and no one even claiming to be a victim?
The Democrats have tried to solve this dilemma
with a simple slogan: "He got caught".
-Beginning in March 2019, the situation at the embassy
and in Ukraine changed dramatically.
Specifically, the three priorities of security,
economy, and justice,
and our support for Ukrainian democratic resistance
to Russian aggression became overshadowed
by a political agenda promoted
by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
President Trump had "three times raised
some very sensitive issues,
and that he would have to follow, he, Zelensky,
would have to follow up on those issues
when he and President Trump met in person".
Ambassador Sondland replied, yes,
he was in Ukraine and went on to state
that President Zelensky "loves your ass".
I then heard President Trump ask,
"So he's gonna do the investigation"?
Ambassador Sondland replied that,
"He's gonna do it," adding that
"President Zelensky will do anything you ask him to do".
Ambassador Sondland stated that the president
only cares about big stuff.
I noted there was big stuff going on in Ukraine,
like a war with Russia.
And Ambassador Sondland replied that he meant big stuff
that benefits the president,
like the Biden investigation that Mr Giuliani was pushing.
The security assistance hold was likely intended
by the president
either as an expression of dissatisfaction
with the Ukrainians,
who had not yet agreed to the Burisma-Biden investigation,
or as an effort to increase the pressure on them to do so.
-Based on questions and statements I have heard,
some of you on this committee appear
to believe that Russia and its security services
did not conduct a campaign against our country
and that, perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did.
This is a fictional narrative
that has been perpetrated and propagated
by the Russian security services themselves.
The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power
that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016.
And I refuse to be part of an effort
to legitimatize an alternate narrative
that the Ukrainian government is a US adversary.
It became very clear that the White House meeting itself
was being predicated on other issues,
namely, investigations and the questions
about the election interference in 2016.
In fact, the shameful way in which Ambassador Yovanovitch
was being smeared and attacked.
And I'd asked if there was anything that we could do
about it and Ambassador Bolton had looked pained,
basically indicated with body language
that there was nothing much that we could do about it.
And he then, in the course of that discussion,
said that Rudy Giuliani was a hand grenade
that was going to blow everyone up.
-Did you understand what he meant by that?
-I did, actually. -What did he mean?
-Well, I think he meant that, obviously,
what Mr Giuliani was saying was pretty explosive, in any case.
He was frequently on television,
making quite incendiary remarks about everyone involved in this,
and that he was clearly pushing forward issues
and ideas that would, you know, probably come back to haunt us
and, in fact, I think that that's where we are today.
-Ambassador Yovanovitch's removal, I think,
is relevant to this portion of the inquiry
because, when she was removed,
you know, commentators in Ukraine
believed that Lutsenko, working with Giuliani,
had succeeded in getting her removed.
So they were already aware of Mr Giuliani and his influence,
the issues that he was promoting,
and, ultimately, that he was able to get
an ambassador removed, partly because of that.
So he was someone to contend with.
-And I said, "Well, who put you in charge, Ambassador Sondland"?
And he said the president. -Did that surprise you,
[chuckling] when he told you that?
-It did surprise me. We'd had no directive.
We hadn't been told this.
I've actually realized, having listened to his deposition,
that he was absolutely right:
that he wasn't coordinating with us
because we weren't doing the same thing that he was doing.
Because he was being involved in a domestic political errand
and we were being involved in national security foreign policy
and those two things had just diverged.
-Exploiting the Intelligence Committee
as a venue for impeachment
has been one of the grossest abuses
in a process filled with cynical manipulations, large and small.
But this farce will soon move to the Judiciary Committee,
where impeachment rightfully belongs.
-Not only did Trump invite that interference,
but that he welcomed the help in the campaign,
they made full use of it.
They lied about it.
They obstructed the investigation into it.
And all this is in his testimony and his report.
The day after that, Donald Trump is back on the phone,
asking another nation to involve itself in another US election!
That says to me this president believes he is above the law,
beyond accountability!
And, in my view, there is nothing more dangerous
than an unethical president who believes they are above the law.
And I would just say, to people watching here at home
and around the world,
in the words of my great colleague,
"We are better than that"!
Adjourned.