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<\/a>On Sept. 25, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi initiated an impeachment inquiry against President Trump, following the whistle-blower complaint over his dealings with Ukraine. Select Congressional committees returned to the Capitol to continue impeachment proceedings throughout the week as Congress remains on recess.<\/p>\n
(Pictured) Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, arrives to give a statement to members of the media on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 8. The Trump administration barred Gordon Sondland, the U.S. European Union ambassador, from appearing before a House panel conducting the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The decision to block Mr. Sondland from being interviewed was delivered at the last minute, after the ambassador had already flown to Washington from Europe, and lawmakers had returned from a two-week recess to observe the questioning.<\/p>\n
Trump administration lawyers and aides have spent days puzzling over how to respond to the impeachment inquiry, and the abrupt move suggested that the president\u2019s team has calculated that he is better off risking the House\u2019s ire \u2014 and even an impeachment article focused on the obstruction \u2014 than setting a precedent for cooperation with an investigation they have strenuously argued is illegitimate.<\/p>\n
The strategy, if it holds, carries substantial risk to the White House. Privately, some Republicans had urged the White House to allow witnesses like Mr. Sondland to appear, in order to deflate Democratic accusations of a cover-up and offer a public rationale for the president\u2019s actions toward Ukraine. Now, some Republicans worry, Democrats have more fodder to argue publicly that Mr. Trump has something to hide.<\/p>\n
Mr. Schiff said the Intelligence Committee, working with both the Foreign Affairs and the Oversight and Reform panels, would continue its work regardless. But beyond issuing a subpoena for Mr. Sondland, the chairman did not detail how he might seek to crank up pressure on the White House to comply, and the standoff may create a quandary for Democrats who had hoped to move quickly in extracting crucial evidence and decide in short order whether to push forward on impeaching Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it was too early to know whether Democrats might draft an article of impeachment based on the obstruction issue, akin to one adopted by the House Judiciary Committee in the 1970s impeachment proceedings against Richard M. Nixon.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president is obstructing Congress from getting the facts that we need,\u201d Ms. Pelosi told reporters in Seattle, where she was holding an unrelated event. \u201cIt is an abuse of power for him to act in this way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Sondland has become enmeshed in the burgeoning saga of how the president sought to push the Ukrainians to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., his son and Democrats. Although Ukraine is not in the European Union, Mr. Trump instructed Mr. Sondland \u2014 a wealthy hotelier and contributor to his campaign \u2014 to take a lead in his administration\u2019s dealings with the country.<\/p>\n
Democrats consider him a key witness to what transpired, including whether the president sought to use a $391 million package of security assistance and the promise of a White House meeting as bargaining chips to essentially bully President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine into digging up dirt on the Bidens and other Democrats.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump\u2019s allies on Capitol Hill rushed to his defense on Tuesday and condemned Mr. Schiff and the Democrats for running what they described as an unfair process, though they made clear they thought Mr. Sondland would have been a helpful witness for the president\u2019s case.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were looking forward to hearing from Ambassador Sondland,\u201d said Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the Oversight and Reform Committee, adding that Republicans believed Mr. Sondland would \u201creinforce exactly\u201d what lawmakers and aides heard least week from Kurt D. Volker, the former American special envoy to Ukraine. Mr. Volker\u00a0told investigators he knew of nothing improper<\/a>\u00a0between the two countries, although he turned over a trove of documents that raised further questions.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we understand exactly why the administration, exactly why the State Department has chosen to say, \u2018Look if it\u2019s going to be this kind of process \u2026,\u2019 \u201d Mr. Jordan added.<\/p>\n And in the Senate, Mr. Trump\u2019s allies shifted into high gear to orchestrate a counteroffensive on his behalf. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would invite Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump\u2019s personal lawyer who was deeply involved in the pressure campaign on Ukraine, to testify before his panel. Mr. Giuliani led the push to enlist the Ukrainians to help investigate the business dealings of the Bidens and a conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven the House of Representatives\u2019 behavior, it is time for the Senate to inquire about corruption and other improprieties involving Ukraine,\u201d Mr. Graham said.<\/p>\n Democrats did not flinch at the suggestion, and Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, Mr. Graham\u2019s Democratic counterpart on the committee, said she looked forward to questioning \u201cRudy Giuliani under oath about his role in seeking the Ukrainian government\u2019s assistance to investigate one of the president\u2019s political rivals.\u201d<\/p>\n It was unclear what the Trump administration\u2019s position would mean for other witnesses expected to testify in the House investigation. Marie L. Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, is currently scheduled to appear on Friday. The State Department has also missed a subpoena deadline to hand over documents the House has demanded related to Ukraine.<\/p>\n Mr. Sondland interacted directly with Mr. Trump, speaking with the president several times around key moments that House Democrats are now investigating, including before and after Mr. Trump\u2019s July call with Mr. Zelensky. The president asked Mr. Zelensky in that conversation to do him \u201ca favor\u201d and investigate the Bidens and matters related to 2016.<\/p>\n Text messages provided to Congress<\/a>\u00a0last week showed that Mr. Sondland and another senior diplomat had\u00a0worked on language for a statement<\/a>\u00a0they wanted the Ukrainian president to put out in August that would have committed him to the investigations sought by Mr. Trump. The diplomats consulted with Mr. Giuliani about the statement,\u00a0believing they needed to pacify him<\/a>\u00a0in order to allow the United States to normalize relations with the Ukrainians.<\/p>\n Mr. Sondland was also involved in a back-and-forth with top American diplomats to Ukraine over text last month that suggests some senior State Department officials believed that Mr. Trump may have been holding up the security aid as leverage for getting its leaders to conduct the investigations Mr. Trump wanted.<\/p>\n \u201cAs I said on the phone, I think it\u2019s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,\u201d William B. Taylor Jr., a top American official in Ukraine, wrote in one exchange in early September.<\/p>\n After receiving the text, Mr. Sondland called Mr. Trump, who asserted it was false.<\/p>\n \u201cBill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump\u2019s intentions,\u201d Mr. Sondland wrote in the messages. \u201cThe President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo\u2019s of any kind.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Sondland added: \u201cI suggest we stop the back and forth by text.\u201d<\/p>\n There have been conflicting accounts of Mr. Sondland\u2019s views, however. Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin,\u00a0told The Wall Street Journal last week<\/a>\u00a0that Mr. Sondland had told him in August that the release of the aid was contingent upon Ukraine opening the investigations. Mr. Johnson said he was alarmed and asked Mr. Trump if there was a quid pro quo involved. The president adamantly denied it, he said.<\/p>\n Robert D. Luskin, Mr. Sondland\u2019s lawyer, said in a statement that as a State Department employee, his client had no choice but to comply with the administration\u2019s direction. He said Mr. Sondland was \u201cprofoundly disappointed\u201d he was not able to testify, and would do so in the future if allowed.<\/p>\n Correction:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0October 8, 2019 This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the White House counsel. He is Pat A. Cipollone, not Cippolone.<\/em><\/p>\n