Gordon Sondland

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Gordon Sondland (2018)

Gordon David Sondland (born July 16, 1957 in Seattle , Washington ) is an American entrepreneur and diplomat . He is the founder of the Provenance hotel chain and co-founder of the commercial bank Aspen Capital . From 2018 to 2020 he was US ambassador to the European Union .

origin

Sondland comes from a Jewish family. His parents Günther Sondland and Frieda Piepsch came from Germany and married in Berlin in 1937 . Then both fled from the persecution of the Jews in the National Socialist German Reich . The pregnant mother ended up in Uruguay , where Sondland's older sister was born. The father joined the French Foreign Legion and fought in North Africa , later he served as a decipherer in the British army . After eight years of separation, the family reunited at the end of World War II . She moved from Uruguay to the United States in 1953 and settled in Seattle, where Gordon Sondland was born. The parents ran a cleaning business .

Career

Sondland attended the University of Washington , but dropped out and worked as a real estate agent. He got into the hotel business in 1985 when he bought the bankrupt Roosevelt Hotel in Seattle for $ 7.8 million on loan from friends and relatives as well as his wealthy brother-in-law. In 1991 he met a wealthy Portland real estate agent, Katherine (Katy) Durant , whom he married two years later. The two are both life and business partners. You have two children. Sondland founded the hotel chain Provenance , which includes 14 hotels, mainly in Portland and Washington State, but also in other states. He also started the credit institution Aspen Capital . Sondland and his wife are major donors to several cultural, social and educational institutions in Oregon , among others. a. the Portland Art Museum , Oregon Health & Science University , the Human Rights Campaign , which advocates for LGBTQ rights, and the Cascade AIDS Project . Sondland and Durant's net worth was estimated at $ 78 million in 2019.

Sondland was politically committed to Ted Kulongoski , a Democrat who was governor of Oregon from 2003 to 2011 . He appointed Sondland chairman of the state's film and television bureau. In this position, he worked to ensure that television series such as Leverage , Grimm and The Quest as well as feature films such as Ring 2 and The Big Trip - Wild were produced in Oregon.

US President George W. Bush appointed Sondland to the Commission of White House Fellows . In the 2012 presidential election campaign , he acted as a so-called bundler , ie fundraiser, for the Republican candidate , Mitt Romney . In the event of an election victory, Sondland would have belonged to its transition team. In the 2016 presidential election campaign , Sondland, who is counted as part of the Republican "establishment", initially supported the campaigns of Jeb Bush and later Marco Rubio and distanced himself from Donald Trump's values. He banned Trump from holding an election campaign in one of his hotels and condemned his attacks on the Muslim parents of a fallen American soldier . After Trump won the election, Sondland donated $ 1 million to him.

Role as EU ambassador

After Reince Priebus was dismissed as chief of staff , Sondland was nominated for the post of ambassador . At his hearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee in June 2018, he received support from Democratic Senator Ron Wyden .

One focus of his work as EU ambassador was the strengthening of trade relations between the EU and the USA, in particular a joint stand against unfair Chinese trade practices.

The New York Times quoted a senior European official as saying that Sondland said it was his job to "destroy the European Union."

Sondland also led the talks about the American withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran and criticized the European plan to circumvent the financial sanctions with Instex .

In March 2019, Sondland also took the long-standing US position that Europe would go with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline depending on Russia.

In January 2020, he and his colleague Ambassador Richard Grenell met EU parliamentarians such as David McAllister to work towards an EU-wide ban on Hezbollah .

Hearings in connection with the Ukraine affair

Sondland traveled to Kiev in May 2019 for the inauguration of the newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selenskyj . The delegation also included Energy Minister Rick Perry and Kurt Volker , the special envoy for Ukraine.

Although the White House tried to prevent him from giving evidence on the Ukraine affair , Sondland followed the summons from the House of Representatives and was interviewed in a closed session on October 17, 2019.

He initially stated that he was unaware of a “ quid pro quo ” between Trump and Ukraine. At the beginning of November 2019, he revised this statement. It was clear to him that there must have been a connection between Trump's insistence on investigations into the Ukraine business of his domestic rival Joe Biden and withheld US aid for Ukraine.

According to Alexander Vindman , the director of European affairs at the National Security Council (NSC), before the committee of inquiry on October 29, 2019, Sondland could hardly deny that he knew Trump's wishes. Vindman had reported to the committee a meeting on July 10, 2019 between Oleksandr Danylyuk , Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, and Trump's National Security Advisor John R. Bolton . Vindman testified that Sondland, Special Envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker and Energy Minister Rick Perry also attended the meeting. At this meeting, Sondland demanded “specific” investigations from Ukraine as a condition for a meeting with Trump. In a meeting after this meeting, Sondland again stressed the importance of Ukraine investigating Burisma Holdings , Joe Biden and his son Hunter .

Vindman had called Sondland's request inappropriateness, advising him that such investigations had nothing to do with national security , that the NSC would not be involved in such investigations and would neither encourage nor encourage them. Vindman's superior Fiona Hill , who came to the debriefing, had also dismissed Sondland's request. Subsequently, both Vindman and Hill reported their concerns to the NSC's chief attorney.

On November 20, 2019, Sondland testified again in the US House of Representatives, this time in a public hearing.

After the US Senate acquitted President Trump in the impeachment process, he fired a number of high-ranking employees whose statements had incriminated him in the process in early February 2020. Gordon Sondland was dismissed as ambassador on February 9, 2020 with immediate effect.

Web links

Commons : Gordon D. Sondland  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Curriculum Vitae: Gordon David Sondland
  2. ↑ PN1945 - Gordon D. Sondland - Department of State . In: Congress.Gov . June 28, 2018. Retrieved June 29, 2018.
  3. ↑ a b David M. Herszenhorn: America's unlikely envoy to Brussels. Gordon Sondland is a wealthy hotel magnate with German roots. In: Politico , May 14, 2018.
  4. ↑ a b Nick Budnick: How Gordon Sondland, 'a Guided Missile for Getting Access,' Landed in the Middle of Trump's Ukrainian measurement. In: Fortune , October 17, 2019.
  5. ^ A b Meret Baumann, Andreas Rüesch: Trump confidante charges the president directly - three answers to the hearing of Gordon Sondland. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , November 20, 2019.
  6. ↑ US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland. US Mission to the European Union.
  7. ↑ Impeachment: Gordon Sondland is an important witness. In: Süddeutsche , November 20, 2019.
  8. ↑ a b c https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/us/politics/gordon-sondland-impeachment.html
  9. ↑ Video with transcript
  10. ^ Adam Taylor: US ambassador to Europe: Let's take on China together . Washington Post, October 4, 2018.
  11. ^ EU and Iran create 'special vehicle' for trade despite US sanctions . Deutsche Welle, 2018.
  12. ↑ https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/interview/senior-obama-official-nord-stream-2-and-brexit-may-weaken-eu-energy-security/
  13. ^ Reliance on Russian gas has big risks for Europe . Financial Times. March 12, 2019.
  14. ↑ EU urged by US to declare Hezbollah a terror group
  15. ↑ Nicholas Fandos: White House Blocks Sondland Testimony, Signaling Plan to Stonewall Impeachment Inquiry . In: The New York Times , October 8, 2019. 
  16. ↑ zeit.de October 8, 2019: Gordon Sondland: EU ambassador of the USA is not allowed to testify on the Ukraine affair
  17. ↑ Excerpts from Joint Deposition Gordon Sondland - United States Ambassador to the European Union - Conducted on October 17, 2019 - House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, House Committee on Oversight and Reform House Committee on Foreign Affairs (pdf)
  18. ↑ tagesschau.de: Ukraine affair: US ambassador burdens Trump. Retrieved October 19, 2019 .
  19. ↑ FAZ.net / Frauke Steffens November 6, 2019: Trump's ambassador revised statement
  20. ↑ spiegel.de: US ambassador tightened his statement against Trump
  21. ↑ Opening Statement of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander S. Vindman Before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, October 29, 2019, p. 5
  22. ↑ spiegel.de, November 20, 2019: Key witnesses confirm the main allegation against Trump
  23. ^ John T Bennett, Phil Thomas: "Trump takes his revenge: Alexander Vindman and Gordon Sondland fired after testifying in impeachment hearings" The Independent of February 8, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Sondland, Gordon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sondland, Gordon David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American entrepreneur and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH July 16, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Seattle , Washington , United States