Presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway Wednesday denied that the changing testimony offered by Gordon Sondland, the Trump administration's ambassador to the European Union, points to any quid pro quo between President Donald Trump and Ukraine's president.
"No quid pro quo was proven in that statement," Conway told Fox News' "Fox and Friends."
"I thought the transcript releases, what he thought he was supplementing there, proved nothing yesterday."
She added that she looked at page 106 of Sondland's transcript, and he said "he engaged in no small talk with President Trump."
"He asked him, 'what do you want from Ukraine?'" she said, "and President Trump said, 'I want them to do what they ran on which is anti-corruption.' There was no quid pro quo in the conversation."
She added that Sondland has said he "presumed" the matter of quid pro quo.
In his new statements, Sondland acknowledges that he understood by September that American aid to Ukraine was linked to a public statement promising to investigate corruption in the country.
"How are we going to impeach a president, an extraordinary event in our constitutional democracy, less than a year away from the next election?" said Conway. "Are we going to impeach a president because one witness says 'my interpretation was X' and another person presumed 'Y?'"
She also stressed that the whistleblower whose report led to the impeachment inquiry was not on the telephone call between Trump and Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
"They're trying to knit together very specious and very sparse claims from individuals who are admitting, in the case of Ambassador Sondland, he presumed," said Conway. "He also admits he doesn't know if the aid was held up or why it was held up, and he still doesn't know."
She added that in the end, Ukraine got its aid, where President Barack Obama "gave them pillows and blankets."
"If not for President Trump they wouldn't have this kind of aid," said Conway. "They didn't have it in the past. That is number one. Number two, most importantly, the Ukraine president said he never knew aid was being held up. He felt no pressure."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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