Sondland threw Trump under the bus - and Republicans couldn't believe their eyes

Devin Nunes' smug satisfaction transformed into a blank stare

House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes opened Wednesday’s impeachment hearing with his usual bluster, delivering an opening statement replete with his oft-repeated claim that Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump is the latest iteration of a long-running crusade against the 45th president.

The California Republican’s colleagues nodded along as he read a prepared statement containing the “long list of false charges” he accused those across the aisle of levelling against Trump. Nunes even compared Trump’s use of his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani in an “unofficial channel” to Ukraine with George Washington’s decision, in 1794, to tap chief justice John Jay to negotiate a treaty with Great Britain.

But by the time US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland was four pages into his opening statement, the mood on the Republican side of the dais in the House Ways and Means Committee’s hearing room had started to change.

As Sondland recounted how he, energy secretary Rick Perry and special envoy Kurt Volker had “worked with Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine matters at the express direction of the president of the United States,” Nunes’ expression went from one of smug satisfaction to a blank stare.

When Sondland continued, telling lawmakers that “[Giuliani] demanded that Ukraine make a public statement announcing investigations of the 2016 election/DNC server and Burisma” and in doing so ”was expressing the desires of the president of the United States,” Ohio Republican Jim Jordan slumped back in his chair, mouth agape.​

And as Sondland confirmed that the answer to lawmakers’ question about whether there had been a quid pro quo conditioning of military aid on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s willingness to initiate investigations into a conspiracy theory about the 2016 election and former vice president Joe Biden, Texas Republican Mike Conaway put his head in his hand and kept it there.

The Republicans, it appeared, had no idea that Sondland – a Trump ally who’d been appointed to be America’s man in Brussels after making a $1m donation to the Trump inaugural committee – was going to throw Trump, Perry, Giuliani, Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the entire Trump team under the proverbial bus.

But Sondland did. Under the bus they went.

“Everyone was in the loop,” he said. “It was no secret.”

By the time Adam Schiff and Democratic counsel Daniel Goldman had got halfway through asking Sondland their allowed 45 minutes of questions, it was clear that Nunes and his compatriots had a problem.

At one point during the Democrats’ allowed time, the Republican side of the dais was empty save for GOP counsel Steven Castor and Mr Jordan, who listened as Mr Goldman walked Sondland through the details of Mr Trump’s plan to use $391m worth of military aid to extract announcements of investigations from Zelensky.

As Sondland explained it, Trump was actually less interested in the investigations themselves than the announcements of the investigations Zelensky was supposed to make.

The Republicans eventually returned to their seats but, when it was time for Nunes and Castor to take over, Nunes whispered something in Schiff’s ear and the chairman called for an unscheduled break.

Illinois Democrat Mike Quigley told The Independent it was possible that Republicans were simply stunned and unprepared for what Sondland had come to say.

“I don’t know that anybody had any idea this was coming, but I don’t believe they [Republicans] are going to publicly show any concern for this,” he said. “Facts are really stubborn things, but they don’t seem to bother my friends over there.”

Sondland’s testimony shed the kind of light on presidential wrongdoing that Americans haven’t seen since Richard Nixon’s ex-White House counsel John Dean told senators how he’d told Mr Nixon of “a cancer on the presidency.”

In fact, the comparisons to Dean began almost as soon as Sondland had opened his mouth.

At 9.20am, conservative lawyer George Conway – the husband of Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway – tweeted: “This is a John Dean moment. It will live forever in American political history.”

Like Mr Dean, who was convicted of obstruction of justice for helping Mr Nixon cover up his connections to the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters, Sondland risked criminal charges when he first testified in a closed deposition last month.

But Democrat representative Tom Malinowski from New Jersey told The Independent he believed Mr Sondland’s claim that he was trying to preserve the US-Ukraine relationship.

“We’ve heard from two kinds of witnesses – one group who felt the ‘drug deal’ was wrong and therefore wanted nothing to do with it, and another group, of which Sondland is a part, that devised to go along with it to keep the president on board and preserve the relationship with Ukraine,” said Malinowski, who served in the Obama administration as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labour.

“The problem was not with any of these people... we’re not investigating Gordon Sondland, we’re investigating the president of the United States,” he added.

Representative Val Demmings, a Florida Democrat and former police officer, said the evidence Sondland presented “has been clear and convincing and pretty overwhelming.”

“Every witness has basically corroborated the readout from the infamous July 25 phone call. The only question that remains for is us what do we want to do about it,” she said.

Her colleague, Washington Democrat Denny Heck, told The Independent that he wasn’t sure how his Republican colleagues would respond to Sondland’s revelations.

“I gave up a little while ago on trying to understand their perspective... tried very very hard for a while, but this is very difficult to sit and listen to how it is they’re approaching this,” he said. “I’ll go to my grave not fully understanding this.”

But one person who understood the gravity of what Sondland brought to the table was former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci.

Reached by text message, Scaramucci’s take was simple.

“Trump should resign,” he said.