Lindsey Graham won't read impeachment depositions with quid pro quo evidence he said doesn't exist

Sen. Lindsey Graham
(Image credit: Screenshot/Twitter/The Hill)

House Democrats released hundreds of pages of transcribed impeachment depositions Tuesday, including testimony from Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union and a key player in President Trump's Ukraine policy. Sondland, who testified two weeks ago that he did not recall U.S. military aid for Ukraine being conditioned on Kyiv opening investigations on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, changed his testimony in a "supplemental declaration" submitted Monday.

Sondland declared Monday that he did in fact tell a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that "resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks." He said Trump had not directly told him to offer this quid pro quo, but there was no other "credible explanation for the suspension" of the military aid. Five other administration officials have described a similar no-cash-unless-investigation scheme in their testimony.

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.