What Went Down During Gordon Sondland’s Testimony

Democrats have basically given up on compelling testimony from unwilling witnesses at this point, Nate — it’s just too time-consuming for those battles to wend their way through the courts, and they’re not guaranteed a win. So Giuliani would have to testify voluntarily, which seems extremely unlikely at this point.

I’m going to continue to ask dumb questions of the rest of you, representing the voice of the reader who isn’t paying as much attention as we might be. (Actually, it’s because I’ve been working on the primary model and so the questions are my own dumb questions.) Are we inevitably headed to a point where Giuliani is going to testify? Or a showdown about whether he’ll be willing to testify or not?

Sondland isn’t quite copping to it, but admitting that he asked for investigations at the July 10 meeting with Ukrainian officials is a significant shift from his previous testimony, where he said he didn’t recall asking for investigations. Makes his claim that Vindman and Hill are wrong about the meeting harder to believe.