When the news broke yesterday that Trump “ambassador” Gordon Sondland had miraculously refreshed his memory about the impeachable scheme in Ukraine, I was reminded of a scene in Bullitt, the Steve McQueen cop flick best known for its iconic car chase.
A crime had taken place in a seedy hotel, but the sleazy desk clerk was reluctant to help. Steve’s cop partner wanted to know whether the clerk had seen the bad guy in the lobby. He told the clerk, “Think back.”
But the clerk said, “I don’t remember nuthin’. Nuthin’.”
Steve’s partner said, “Start remembering.”
“I can’t. That’s the honest truth.”
Then Steve stepped in. He told his partner: “Take him downtown.”
And, like magic, the clerk’s memory suddenly kicked in. He said to the cops, “One thing about the guy. He had a square face…Gray (hair), getting bald. Bald on both sides. Am I helping you, sir?”
Steve’s sardonic partner: “I never had it so good.”
Gordon Sondland made the same calculation. A hotelier by trade, he had donated a million bucks to Trump’s inaugural festivities, and Trump had rewarded him with an ambassadorship for which he had zero training or experience. That was a very good deal before things went very bad. He has now clearly decided that there’s no upside in taking a fall for Trump. No way he wants to end up in jail like Michael Cohen or Paul Manafort.
Under oath recently in front of the House Intelligence Committee, he’d said that his memory was fuzzy, that he couldn’t recall whether the Trump regime was squeezing Ukraine’s President Zelensky for a dirt-digging investigation of the Bidens. But that was before a parade of patriotic public servants testified that of course there was quid quo pro – promised military aid in exchange for Zelensky announcing a purported “anti-corruption” probe of the Bidens – and that Sondland was right in the thick of the action.
Well. Sondland certainly hadn’t bought his way into the Trump regime to risk getting hit with a perjury charge. So presto! – now we’ve got this, in an addendum to his testimony:
“I now do recall a conversation on September 1, 2019 with (Zelensky aide Andriy) Yermak…I now recall speaking individually with Mr. Yermak, where I said that resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks.”
In his words, “I have refreshed my recollection.” And in doing so, he becomes the first Trump toady to flip and confess that the regime sought to extort a foreign government for help in rigging the 2020 American election. Trump still seems fixated on unmasking the whistleblower, but his man Sondland has now joined the public servants (led by career ambassador William Taylor) in publicly confirming that the whistleblower was right all along.
But will this turn of events prompt Senate Republicans to keep an open mind about removing Trump after he’s impeached? If you believe that, I have a crate of Trump Steaks to sell you.
They’ll be tasked to act as “jurors,” and jurors are supposed to weigh evidence. That’s how it is supposed to work in America. But just because Sondland has confirmed the quid quo pro, it doesn’t mean they’ll accept that evidence. The cultist mindset doesn’t work that way.
Take Lindsey Graham (please). Back in September, he said: “If you’re looking for a circumstance where the President of the United States was threatening the Ukraine with cutting off aid unless they investigated his political opponent, you’d be very disappointed. That does not exist.” But when he was asked yesterday about Sondland’s flip, he replied: “I’ve written the whole process off…I think this is a bunch of BS.”
One of Graham’s fellow Senate “jurors,” Republican John Kennedy, dismissed Sondland’s confession as “a sterile transcript.” Another “juror,” Republican Mike Braun, said: “Regardless of how many people you bring out to make the point, I don’t think that’s going to do the job for most of us to change our opinion.”
Since they’re stonewalling eyewitness evidence, perhaps last night’s grassroots election results might nudge them toward enlightenment. They continue to fear Trump, but apparently the voters don’t. The Trump GOP was wiped out in Virginia, where Democrats took both state legislative chambers for the first time in a generation. Closer to my Philadelphia home, Democrats took control of suburban Delaware County for the first time since the Civil War era. And Trump was rebuked in ruby-red Kentucky, where Trumpist governor Matt Bevins was thrown out. Trump had even stumped for Bevin in Kentucky on election eve, railing against impeachment, and he made the race a referendum on himself, telling his rally acolytes that Bevin losing ” sends a really bad message,” and “you can’t let that happen to me!”
Well, it happened. If Senate Republican “jurors” refuse to do their jobs, ignoring flippers like Sondland, then voters in 2020 will be tasked to do the job for them.