After several days of testimony last week, impeachment hearings will continue this week, with at least seven witnesses expected to publicly testify before the House Intelligence Committee. This includes Gordon Sondland, the Trump-appointed Ambassador to the EU, who has deep ties to the Seattle area.
Sondland is a political donor and hotel owner who has given large sums to both Democratic and Republican candidates, including Donald Trump. After giving $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, Trump named him ambassador, and he was confirmed by the Senate. But how he ended up having anything to do with Ukraine policy is still a mystery, because Ukraine is not in the EU.
And it is his actions regarding Ukraine that have made him a key figure in the impeachment investigation.
As the Washington Post explained it, after the Ukraine election last spring, “an unexpected figure stepped forward to assert that he was now in charge of the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, had no apparent standing to seize this critical portfolio, nor any apparent qualifications as a diplomat beyond the $1 million he’d given to Trump’s inauguration.” When asked who had given Sondland the authority, Sondland reportedly answered, “The President.”
Sondland has already testified in closed-door hearings, but on Wednesday he will testify for the first time in public. All eyes will be on that hearing because, on a number of key points, what Sondland has said in his testimony has not matched what everyone else has said in theirs.
In Seattle, Sondland may not exactly be a household name, but he and his family have a long presence in the city. His parents, Jews who fled Nazi Germany and eventually wound up in Seattle, owned Fauntleroy Cleaners in West Seattle and lived for many years in Seattle and on Mercer Island.
Sondland, who was raised here, made his money in hotels. He dropped out of UW to go into business, and in the mid-’80s, he raised funds from wealthy friends and family to buy the Roosevelt Hotel in downtown Seattle. His portfolio expanded from there, and his company, Provenance Hotels, now owns hotels across the US, including the Hotel Max and Hotel Theodore in Seattle, the Hotel Murano in Tacoma, and many others in Portland, Nashville, and New Orleans.
Sondland stepped down as CEO of the company after his appointment as ambassador to Ukraine the EU, but his wife took over as chairman and he remains a shareholder.
Provenance did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how Sondland’s involvement in the Ukraine scandal has impacted the business, but there have been calls for boycotts, including from Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer. “Anyone who cares about America should not do any business or stay at any of Gordon Sondland’s hotels,” Blumenauer said in a statement in October, after Sondland had declined to testify before the House Intelligence Committee. “Not until he fulfills his duty as a citizen to testify and turn over all relevant documents to the House of Representatives. Nobody is above the law. Mr. Sondland and the entire Trump administration need to be reminded of that.”
Sondland issued his own statement in response through his lawyer. “Congressman Blumenauer’s irresponsible attempt to hurt a homegrown business that supports hundreds of jobs in our local economy is just shameful and ought to outrage all Oregonians,” said Jim McDermott, his attorney.
In any case, Sondland now is testifying, so maybe the call to boycott was effective. Blumenauer did not immediately respond to request for comment on whether he thinks the boycott should end now that Sondland has testified and will do so again.
But some of the more pressing questions—did Sondland pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens under instruction from Trump, as ambassador Bill Taylor’s testimony last week suggested? Did Sondland perjure himself in previous testimony?—may be answered when he testifies before the Senate on Wednesday.
