Johnson did note that since Sondland was a political appointee who served at the pleasure of the president, firing him was ultimately Trump’s call.
But the ambassador’s ouster, which came the same day another impeachment witness, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, was removed from his post at the National Security Council, was widely seen as retaliation against those who provided damning testimony to House lawmakers.
Johnson, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee that deals with Ukraine and has pushed to support the country in its fight against Russia, said he made several phone calls to the White House before Sondland was removed to urge the president to not fire him. He declined to say who he talked to or share details of the conversations.
“I think Gordon Sondland was trying to do the right thing and it’s just unfortunate that this all got blown up and good people were harmed by it,” Johnson said, adding that Sondland is a “patriot” who tried to do a good job as the U.S. ambassador to the EU. Sondland received the appointment after donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.
Jim McCarthy, a spokesman for Sondland, said that the ambassador has been in Washington in recent days in consultations with the State Department about his departure and will return to Brussels this coming week to complete that process.
Johnson said Sondland had thanked him via text on Sunday for going to bat for him to the White House. The New York Times reported on Saturday that Johnson, along with Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) had urged the White House to not go after Sondland before Trump ultimately sacked him.
Sunday was the first time Johnson and Sondland had communicated since they last spoke on August 30, the senator said. Sondland reportedly told Johnson on that phone call that hundreds of millions of dollars of American aid to Ukraine had been held up because Trump wanted an investigation into what he believed was an orchestrated effort by the Ukrainian government to damage his electoral campaign in 2016.
Johnson, in his account to the Wall Street Journal, said he confronted Trump the next day on a phone call about what Sondland had told him, and the president denied there was a “quid pro quo.”
Multiple administration officials testified during the impeachment probe that despite Trump’s claims, there was no evidence of a top-down attempt by the Ukrainian government to affect the outcome of the 2016 election.
According to Johnson, Trump was interested in the country in the first place because he had a “basic human curiosity about what happened in Ukraine, what was happening with the Bidens.”
He also said he didn’t have any concern about Trump seeking retribution against Vindman and his brother Yevgeny, who also served on the National Security Council staff and was likewise escorted by security officers out of the White House complex on Friday.
“I’ve got a fair amount of empathy for any president of the United States who can’t trust people inside the White House to stay inside their lane and stay within their chain of command,” Johnson said.
Asked whether he also had empathy and respect for Vindman’s military service, Johnson said: “Sure. I respect anybody who dons the uniform and puts himself in harm’s way but I do not respect the way he conducted himself in his office on the NSC staff.”
Johnson also criticized Trump’s attack on the religious faith of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who had cited his “duty before God” in explaining his vote to convict Trump last week.
During remarks at the White House on Thursday, Trump said Romney had used his faith as a “crutch” and has attacked him repeatedly in the days since.
Those comments were “not the way I would have handled it,” said Johnson, who added that the Utah senator should not be punished for his vote against Trump.
“I think every senator took their responsibility in the trial very seriously,” he said. “I just fundamentally disagreed with the decision that Mitt and other Democrats that voted guilty took on this.”
Source: politico.com
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