November 12, 2019
Diplomat Points to Rudy Giuliani as Trump’s Ukraine Shakedown Man
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/11/gordon-sondland-fingers-rudy-giuliani-as-trumps-ukraine-shakedown-man/
"Here’s the thing about Donald Trump’s scandals: they often are too obvious. While Trump and his defenders have claimed there was no shifty quid pro quo in his dealings with Ukraine, all the evidence indicates there was. And the just-released congressional testimony of Ambassador Gordon Sondland, the hotel magnate whose $1 million donation to Trump’s inauguration won him a job as a diplomat, shows that Trump essentially ordered a shakedown of Ukraine and placed his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, in charge of this caper. Kurt Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine, who worked with Sondland and Giuliani in pursuit of Trump’s political objectives in Ukraine, also fingered Giuliani as the mastermind of this effort in his deposition, which was released on Tuesday."