Thread by @TheViewFromLL2

Time for the GOP's 45 minute round.

Nunes stakes out the Republican response to Sondland: it was the Democrats who started this by colluding with Ukraine. He falsely claims there are "financial records" to prove it.

Nunes: "Knowing all these facts" about Ukrainian election interference (that Nunes made up), "it probably makes a bit more sense about why Trump thinks Ukraine was out to get him."

Nunes disparagingly refers to Sondland as "someone who likes to do 2+2=4 games."

Nunes claims that Democrats "seem to have a timeline problem," because the whistleblower says on July 25th that there were "all these promises being made," yet "the drug deal the three amigos were cooking up... are you aware of any drug deal on July 25th?"

Nunes says the quid pro quo Sondland testified about didn't happen until a month later, in August. The "timeline problem" is that the whistleblower was concerned by activity on July 25th, therefore the whistleblower couldn't have been talking about Sondland's quid pro quo.

Nunes: "It's an inconvenient truth that the Democrats don't want to admit, that Democratic operatives were dirtying up Republicans in the Ukraine in 2016."

Castor: "There wouldn't be any documentary record that personally ties Trump to any of this, would there?"
Sondland: "I wouldn't want to speculate."

Castor grills Sondland on how he could know the quid pro quo order came from Trump. "Well when the president says go talk to his personal attorney," and the attorney gives them instructions, they "assumed that was coming from the president."

Castor is arguing that when Sen. Johnson asked Trump if there was a quid pro quo arrangement, Trump strongly denied it and was upset Johnson even asked. Castor says, with a remarkably straight face, that Trump would have no reason top lie to Johnson.

Castor asks what knowledge the Ukrainians had about the aid hold. Sondland says he doesn't know if it was the Politico article, and then volunteers "or if Giuliani told them."

First time I can remember a witness bringing up the obvious here.

Seriously????

And we're back. Castor is Sideshow Bobbing now: "These allegations that were was a quid pro quo, it never came to fruition?"

Yesss, thank you Castor. He asks Sondland about whether Burisma was the only company brought up -- and Sondland gives the answer he was looking for. "It might've been Naftogaz." Says it was related to another deal they were working on.

Ding ding ding. Goldman, please follow up.

The Naftogaz deal Sondland is talking about is the LNG deal Giuliani was being paid to pursue. Sondland just confirmed that Giuliani brought up both Burisma and Naftogaz all the time, in the context of ongoing Ukraine issues.

"I don't remember anyone sounding the alarm" about what was going on, Sondland complains. If they had, he would have sat up and taken notice.

But everyone was treating the corruption like normal, so Sondland did too.

Sondland now raising the "all of these calls with very important people start to blur together" defense.

Castor says that Sondland doesn't have documents, doesn't have notes, doesn't recall a lot, and this is "the trifecta of unreliability." Sondland pushes back stronger than I would have expected.