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Read: Gordon Sondland’s opening statement for the impeachment hearing

“We followed the president’s orders,” Sondland says.

By Andrew Prokop
US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland arrives to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, on Nov. 20, 2019.
Andrew Harnik/AP
Andrew Prokop is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He’s worked at Vox since the site’s launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker’s Washington, DC, bureau.

Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, is testifying to the House Intelligence Committee Wednesday morning in the highest-stakes impeachment hearing yet — and his opening statement has now been released.

In it, Sondland confirms that there was a “quid pro quo” imposed on Ukraine, and says that he was carrying out the “orders” of President Donald Trump.

Sondland faced intense criticism for omissions and purported failures of recollection in his October closed-door testimony, and he already submitted an “addendum” to supplement it. This is the latest version of Sondland’s account. Read it at this link, or below:

Watch Sondland’s full opening statement and testimony on the official House Intelligence committee live stream here, you can also watch it on C-SPAN or on Vox’s Facebook and Twitter.

Impeachment hearings: Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland testifies

Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland testifies in impeachment inquiry hearing. If you watch one hearing this week, make it this one:

Posted by Vox on Wednesday, November 20, 2019

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