Gordon Sondland: I told Trump that Ukraine president ‘loves your ass’

EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland laughingly told lawmakers during the House impeachment inquiry on Wednesday that he likely did tell President Trump that his Ukrainian counterpart “loves his ass.”

State Department staffer David Holmes testified that Sondland made the comment during lunch at a restaurant in Kiev when he was speaking to the president on an unsecured cellphone about a meeting with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“He also testified that you confirmed to President Trump that you were in Ukraine at the time and that President Zelensky, quote, ‘loves your ass,’ unquote. Do you recall saying that?” the Democrats’ counsel, Daniel Goldman, asked Sondland.

“Yeah, that sounds like something I would say. That’s how President Trump and I communicate, a lot of four-letter words. In this case, three letters,” Sondland said, laughing himself and cracking up many in the audience in the House Ways and Means Committee room.

Sondland also said that he understood, through Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, that the Ukrainians didn’t have to conduct actual investigations into Joe and Hunter Biden and the 2016 elections — they only had to announce them.

Zelensky “had to announce the investigations. He didn’t actually have to do them, as I understood it. … Through Mr. Giuliani, we were led to believe that that’s what he wanted,” Sondland said.

“Giuliani and President Trump didn’t actually care if they did them, right?” Goldman asked.

“Right, because I never heard … anyone say that the investigations had to start or had to be completed. The only thing I heard from Mr. Giuliani or otherwise was that they had to be announced in some form and that form kept changing,” he replied.

Trump’s July 25 call to Zelensky, in which he pressed the Ukraine leader to probe the Bidens, Burisma — an energy company that added Hunter Biden to its board for up to $50,000 a month — and Ukraine’s role in the 2016 election, sparked the impeachment probe after a whistleblower reported it.

The president has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.