Over nine hours of closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on October 17, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland lied his ass off. That is now abundantly clear based on the testimony and depositions of pretty much anyone who had any dealings with him in 2019 related to Ukraine. He lied about what he knew. He lied about what he said. He lied about how often he talked to the president. He lied about what he discussed with the Ukrainians. He omitted key facts even when an honest response to questioning would have included them. He has already amended his original testimony once, and he will certainly need to do so again on Wednesday when he testifies in a public hearing.
The suspense lies mainly in figuring out how Sondland will approach the legal jeopardy he has created for himself. He could try to assert a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and see if the Democrats are willing to give him immunity in return for honest testimony. He could try to do what Kurt Volker did on Tuesday, which was basically to raise bullshit to an art form by making a few concessions, a few minor corrections based on implausible claims of an imperfect memory, and a few pretzel logic attempts to argue that his perjurious testimony was really a matter of a monumental naivety about what the word “Burisma” really means. But Sondland lied about some things that cannot be spun as a difference of opinion or a matter of semantics. Trying to bulllshit his way through Wednesday’s hearing is not a strategy that any responsible lawyer would endorse.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that the man won’t choose that path. By almost all accounts, he’s a loudmouth and a braggart whose opinion of himself is not matched by his abilities. Telling the truth probably does come naturally to him, but it also won’t come for free. The Republicans will want him prosecuted for perjury if he changes his testimony in a way that harms Trump. The Democrat will want to prosecute him either way he goes. If he doesn’t come clean, they’ll have new perjury charges to add to the already existing examples, and if he does come clean he’ll be confirming that he lied under oath back on October 17. Again, asking for immunity from the Democrats may be his best option. Hoping for an eventual pardon from Trump could be a less certain fallback plan.
He should be careful about thinking he can find a new safe place to stand because the Democrats are not done calling witnesses, and someone like John Bolton could turn up with the kind of evidence that would put Sondland in jail for a long time.
In fact, people are predicting that Sondland’s performance tomorrow will be the key event of this whole impeachment process, determining the outcome either way. That’s very possible, but John Bolton would eclipse him in a nanosecond if he were compelled or agreed to testify.
It should be an interesting morning.
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