Ambassador to E.U. to Testify That Trump Delegated Ukraine Policy to Giuliani

Mr. Sondland will say that Mr. Trump put him and top diplomats and administration officials dealing with Ukraine in an impossible position, as they tried to conduct diplomacy with an important European ally.

“Please know that I would not have recommended that Mr. Giuliani or any private citizen be involved in these foreign policy matters,” he planned to say. “However, given the president’s explicit direction, as well as the importance we attached to arranging a White House meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, we agreed to do as President Trump directed.”

Mr. Sondland will say that he; Kurt D. Volker, the special envoy to Ukraine, and Rick Perry, the energy secretary, began coordinating with Mr. Giuliani, who insisted the Ukrainians put out a statement committing to a series of investigations. The ambassador will say that he failed to appreciate how Burisma, a company that Mr. Giuliani wanted the Ukranians to look into, was directly tied to Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son.

“Although Mr. Giuliani did mention the name ‘Burisma’ in August 2019, I understood that Burisma was one of many examples of Ukrainian companies run by oligarchs and lacking the type of corporate governance structures found in Western companies,” Mr. Sondland will say. “I did not know until more recent press reports that Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma.”

Hunter Biden’s involvement with Burisma had been widely reported beginning in the spring.

Still, Mr. Sondland’s prepared testimony leaves unaddressed obvious questions that investigators are sure to press him to answer. It offers no real explanation of why Mr. Giuliani was involved in Ukraine policy in the first place or if Mr. Sondland took any steps to find out why.

Nor do the prepared remarks explain whether Mr. Sondland questioned why Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump repeatedly singled out two topics for investigation that would have benefited the president politically.

“I did not understand, until much later, that Mr. Giuliani’s agenda might have also included an effort to prompt the Ukrainians to investigate Vice President Biden or his son or to involve Ukrainians, directly or indirectly, in the president’s 2020 re-election campaign,” he will say.

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