An attorney representing U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland has disputed parts of the testimony of top diplomat to Ukraine William Taylor.
Responding to emailed questions by The Washington Post, Sondland’s lawyer Robert Luskin said his client did not recall conversations recounted by Taylor in his House deposition.
Taylor testified that Sondland told Andriy Yermak, a representative for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, that security assistance would only come when Zelensky committed to a politically charged probe.
Luskin said that Sondland “does not recall” a conversation about assistance cutoff.
{mosads}“Sondland does not recall any conversation in Warsaw concerning the aid cutoff, although he understood that the Ukrainians were, by then, certainly aware of the cutoff and raised the issue directly with Pence,” Luskin told the Post.
Taylor also reportedly testified that National Security Council official Tim Morrison told him about a Sept. 7 conversation between Trump and Sondland in which Trump said Zelensky should “go to a microphone” and commit to “opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference.”
Luskin told the Post that Sondland does not remember any such conversation.
He said that the ambassador “was asked about all of his interactions with Trump on this subject matter. These did not include another call on the 7th.”
The lawyer also pushed back on a reported assertion by Taylor that “Sondland told me on June 28 that he did not wish to include most of the regular interagency participants in a call planned with President Zelenskyy. … Sondland said that he wanted to make sure that no one was transcribing or monitoring as they added President Zelenskyy to the call.”
Luskin said that Sondland “believes that it was monitored routinely and that an appropriate file memo was prepared. He never suggested otherwise.”
Both Sondland and Taylor were interviewed by House members as part of a Democratic impeachment inquiry into President Trump over his dealings with Ukraine.
Democrats see Taylor’s testimony, in which he said he understood the administration to be pushing for a quid pro quo, as particularly damaging for Trump. Trump has insisted there was not a quid pro quo or other wrongdoing in his Ukraine dealings.