A Watergate prosecutor said the Sondland impeachment testimony was the 'tipping point' for Trump, and he now has 'no defence' left
- Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman in an interview with Newsweek said that EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland's testimony was a "tipping point" in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.
- "There's no defense to any of it now, there's nothing. What's he going to say, the Devil made me do it? That's what they're left with. There's no good defense. There's no good reason why he did this. It's purely for personal campaign purposes," Akerman told the publication.
- Sondland on Tuesday testified to the House impeachment probe that President Trump had sought a "quid pro quo" deal with Ukraine, using withheld military aid to attempt to pressure Ukraine to announce a criminal investigation into Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden.
- Trump has denied any deal with Ukraine was sought, in remarks to reporters Wednesday he read from the transcript of a call with Sondland, in which he said he wanted "nothing" from his dealings with Ukraine.
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A prosecutor who worked on the Watergate scandal told Newsweek that EU ambassador Gordon Sondland's testimony was a "tipping point" in the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump's dealings with Ukraine.
"Yesterday was the tipping point completely," Nick Akerman, assistant special prosecutor during Watergate, told the publication of Sondland's testimony Wednesday.
Of lines of defence now open to Trump, he remarked: "There's no defense to any of it now, there's nothing. What's he going to say, the Devil made me do it? That's what they're left with.
"There's no good defense. There's no good reason why he did this. It's purely for personal campaign purposes."
For Akerman, Sondland's testimony was evidence that Trump committed at least one impeachable offence.
"What we're really talking about here is two things: bribery and extortion. That's what the facts amount to."
"Bribery is important because bribery is listed in the U.S. Constitution as an impeachable offense in addition to high crimes and misdemeanors," he told Newsweek.
Sondland, a multimillionaire hotel magnate and Trump donor, in testimony before the impeachment inquiry dramatically revised his original deposition to the House - seriously damaging the president's claim that he sought no "quid pro quo" deal with Ukraine.
Sondland recounted how Trump attempted to leverage a high profile White House visit for Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid in exchange for a criminal investigation into Democrat Joe Biden, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.
His testimony devastated Trump's central defense that in seeking a Biden probe he was simply asking Ukraine to tackle longstanding corruption, and the decision to freeze the military aid was not made to pressure Ukraine to meet his demands.
Of the military aid depending on a Biden probe Sondland remarked that he was "under the impression that, absolutely, it was contingent."
However he said he was never told directly by Trump that aid depended on the probe.
In remarks to reporters Wednesday, Trump read part of a transcript from a phone call with Sondland in which he told the ambassador he wanted "nothing" from Ukraine.
The impeachment hearings are only the third since 1974, in which Akerman served as an assistant special prosecutor in the investigation into President Richard Nixon and the Watergate break in.