After Gordon Sondland´s damning impeachment testimony, a shrug might be the Republicans´ only defence
(The Star Television)

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Be careful what you wish for.Gordon Sondland wanted an ambassadorship in the worst way. A hotel magnate and a Republican in deep-Democrat Oregon, he reportedly made no secret of his ambitions to a diplomatic post. After decades of service as a Republican rainmaker, he wrote a million-dollar cheque to President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee, and he got his glamorous appointment as ambassador to the European Union.I’ve heard from people in the diplomatic community that such political patronage appointments are not generally objectionable, because the leader of the country usually answers the phone calls of political ambassadors. The leader trusts them. They usually have the leader’s agenda at the top of their mind.It was Sondland’s direct line to Trump — his ability to communicate with him directly and call him on his cellphone when other senior diplomats have testified they have never even met the president — that made him the central co-ordinating figure in efforts arrange relations with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the new president of Ukraine.It was in that role that he directly informed Ukrainians that both a meeting with the president and hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid was contingent on announcing politically motivated investigations the president wanted.It’s hard to imagine that when Sondland sought this role, he imagined it landing him before impeachment hearings. But here he was on Capitol Hill on Wednesday morning, testifying before the House intelligence committee. What he said torpedoed virtually everything so-far offered by Republicans in defence of the president. Sondland said he and the other diplomats collaborated with Rudolph Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, at “the express direction of the president of the United States.� He said that what they worked on with Giuliani — demanding investigations he claimed not to initially understa ...