What Went Down During Gordon Sondland’s Testimony

Sondland again repeats the phrase, “Everyone was in the loop.” The self-preservation message here is clear: If he’s the bad guy for executing this policy, so are a lot of other people.

Right, Perry and Nathaniel, it’s hard to find a good spin on Sondland not remembering the July 26 call with Trump. Either there were so many conversations with Trump about the investigations that this one didn’t stand out to Sondland (not great) or it was a bigger deal and he’s just not being forthcoming about it.

One thing that stood out to me in Sondland’s opening remarks is his citations of individual emails and texts, as he’s doing now. Citing one email as evidence is deeply problematic, in my view, when we don’t have access to the entire thread. Imagine someone pulling one email out of the hundreds you’ve sent and received … what could they represent with that email and how close would that representation be to reality?