WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s ambassador to the European Union and a pivotal witness in 2019 impeachment proceedings has sued former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in an effort to recoup $1.8 million in legal fees.
Gordon Sondland of Portland alleges in the lawsuit that Pompeo had committed to reimburse his legal expenses after he was subpoenaed by House Democrats to testify in an impeachment case that accused then-President Donald Trump of withholding military aid from Ukraine while demanding an investigation into political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
He says Pompeo reneged on the promise.
A Pompeo spokesperson calls the lawsuit “ludicrous.”
In 2019, Sondland declared to impeachment investigators that President Donald Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani explicitly sought a “quid pro quo” with Ukraine, leveraging an Oval Office visit for political investigations of Democrats. Sondland testified it was his understanding the president was holding up nearly $400 million in military aid, which Ukraine badly needed with an aggressive Russia on its border, in exchange for the country’s announcement of the investigations.
Trump fired Sondland in February 2020.
Sondland is a co-founder of Aspen Capital, and founder of Provenance Hotels, which oversees a slew of trendy, upscale hotels across the country. Most notably in Portland, Provenance Hotels owns Hotel Lucia, Hotel deLuxe, The Heathman Hotel, Dossier, Sentinel and The Woodlark.
Sondland and his wife, Katherine Durant, have donated thousands of dollars to politicians and political causes over the past 20 years in the Pacific Northwest, records indicate. He has donated to both Democrats and Republicans.
