Sondland g amb
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MERRI OK
AN 1 26
Former Ambassador Gordon Sondland, who served as a diplomat to the European Union on behalf of the United States, continued to promote his "mad man" defense of President Donald Trump in an interview with CNN Friday morning.
"So you have in the past kind of defended the sort of mad men defense of Trump that he's unpredictable," said host Audie Cornish.
She played a clip of the audio of Trump's interview with the New York Times in which he claimed, "I don't need international law. I'm not looking to hurt people."
Cornish asked, "If there's no international law, no bureaucratic process, no committee. No oversight that he believes that can restrain him. What is the check on the president's power?"
Sondland confessed, "I'm a full-time Trump-speak interpreter."
He explained, "I think what he was trying to say was, I don't even need to look at international law because my own morality is well within the bounds of international law."
While it has caused unnecessary global panic, Sondland said it's something people should get used to.
"He's a 70-something-year-old man," Sondland continued speaking about the president, who turns 80 in 2026. "He's not going to change. He speaks in metaphors. He speaks with grandiosity when he says, I'm going to solve the Ukraine problem in 24 hours. No one believed he meant 24 hours."
Sondland said what Trump was trying to say is that he'll focus on Ukraine "like a laser," giving it his full attention. However, even that hasn't been the case, as Trump has been distracted by his new invasion of Venezuela, his faltering peace plan in Israel and building his White House ballroom.
As for Stephen Miller, Sondland chuckled and said that the top Trump aide "loves hyperbole."
"He is not invading Greenland with the military," Sondland continued.
"Like any real estate developer, what he loves to do is he loves to put an offer on the table that's ridiculous. Let me put it in money terms. If he wants to pay $10,000 for something that someone wants, $20,000 for, you know, what he's going to offer. He's not going to offer 9 or 8 or something. He's going to say, I'll give you ten bucks, and people are going to say ten bucks," said Sondland
Cornish said that other Trump observers see Trump metaphorically hit them in the face and threaten them.
Sondland said that because it's the "U.S.'s money" and the "U.S.'s boots on the ground in the past, largely." Sondland said the work is redundant, as the U.S. is already providing these funds in another capacity. "But they don't want to neglect any potential revenue that they can achieve."
"And so when it comes to Greenland, what they've been doing is they've been talking to Russia, they've been talking to China quietly, but definitely.
"And Trump is saying, wait a minute, Greenland is an asset of NATO. Essentially. Forget about the United States. It's an asset of NATO. It's critical for our defense. Quit playing these games," Sondland continued. "If you're going to do this, we're going to take Greenland. And he says that in quotes. 'We're going to take Greenland.' Think about it. Multiple presidents have talked about Greenland. Now everyone is focused."
Cornish noted that the U.S. has had a deal with Greenland since the 1950s, but Sondland said that the "deal" includes China and Russia and Trump doesn't want them included. In fact, the deal with Greenland includes NATO, of which neither Russia nor China is a member. Greenland allows for a U.S. base to exist on Greenland soil and create "defense areas" that NATO deems necessary., CNN's Jim Sciutto explained. Given that the U.S. is a member of NATO, it can move freely through such areas, while Russia and China cannot.
Cornish said there was a way the U.S. could have had these conversations without "freaking out" NATO partners.
Any anger he sees coming from Congress, Sondland attributes to "bruised egos" and not legitimate concern about the separation of powers. He argued that every modern president has been given huge leverage in operating military actions. The difference, however, is that all of those were related to Middle East terrorism and fell under the AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force), which Congress passed in 2001.
Other than the bruised egos, Sondland said others are "miffed that the president didn't pick up the phone two seconds before he toppled Maduro. So, even if he had done so, what are they going to do?"
- YouTubE
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wow, -->a trend?
https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/mike-pompeo/
Former U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland is suing former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the U.S. State Dept. for $1.8 million, to cover what he says are his costs of legal representation during President Donald Trump's first impeachment trial.
"The suit, filed Monday in federal court in the District of Columbia,"
The Washington Post reports, "alleges that Pompeo reneged on his promise that the State Department would cover the fees after Sondland delivered bombshell testimony accusing Trump and his aides of pressuring the government of Ukraine to investigate then presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter in exchange for military aid."
Sondland, a hotelier who donated $1 million to Trump's infamous inaugural committee, was nominated to be the E.U. ambassador in March of 2018.
Because of his intimate knowledge of Trump's Ukraine dealings, including the President's conversation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky during which he blackmailed him, threatening to withhold valuable U.S. military aid if he did not initiate an investigation into Joe Biden, Sondland was called to testify in Trump's first impeachment.
"The complaint alleges that Pompeo told Sondland that government lawyers would not be made available to represent him but that if he hired his own counsel, his attorney fees would be covered by the U.S. government," The Post adds. "Top aides to Pompeo also acknowledged this commitment, the suit alleges, but 'everything changed' after Sondland delivered his testimony alleging a 'quid pro quo' and then refused to resign despite a request from one of Pompeo's most trusted aides, Ulrich Brechbuhl."
The White House attempted to block Sondland's appearance during the impeachment, but ultimately he did testify, delivering damning evidence, substantiating "quid pro quo" allegations.
On February 7, after the Senate refused to convict Trump, he fired Sondland in an act of vengeance, along with Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his twin brother. Some experts at the time called Trump's firings illegal.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/democrats-say-the-gops-attempt-to-smear-biden-accidentally-exposed-a-trump-officials-corrupt-scheme/
igor salon
the Republican report aimed at raising questions about the dealings of Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in Ukraine appears to have accidentally implicated former Energy Secretary Rick Perry in an energy scheme in the foreign nation, according to the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.
Republicans led by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., released their much-hyped report on Hunter Biden’s role at the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma on Wednesday. However, it found no evidence of actual wrongdoing and relied largely on debunked claims, old statements and narratives pushed as part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
But the report did find new evidence related to Perry’s actions in Ukraine while he served in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.
Amos Hochstein, a member of the supervisory board at the state-owned Ukrainian energy firm Naftogaz, told lawmakers that Perry “inappropriately pressured the Ukrainian government” to place Texas oil executive Robert Bensh on the board of the company while officials at the Department of Energy pressured the government to sign a deal with a “private business entity connected to Mr. Bensh,” according to a letter Wyden sent to Department of Energy Inspector General Teri Donaldson.
perry also pressured the Ukrainian government to place one of his longtime campaign supporters, Michael Bleyzer, on the board during a trip to Ukraine for President Volodymyr Zelensky’s inauguration in 2019, Wyden wrote. Bleyzer and his partner were later awarded a drilling contract in the country.
“Mr. Bleyzer’s contract that he was awarded was despite the fact that he was not the highest bidder in the process,” Hochstein told lawmakers. “Other . . . bids were higher, and therefore, Ukraine chose a bid that paid itself less.”
The heads of the state-owned Naftogaz conglomerate have since filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the contract, arguing that the Ukrainian government acted “illegally and with bias” in agreeing to the deal, Wyden noted.
“Witness testimony in this investigation has directly implicated former Secretary Rick Perry in alleged wrongdoing, and the department more broadly, in a scheme to undermine anti-corruption efforts that were implemented by Ukraine in partnership with the international community,” Wyden wrote.
Politico reported last year that Perry — who along with then-Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker were the “three amigos” who pushed a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine— played an active role in the Trump administration’s pressure on Zelensky, which ultimately led to thepresident’s impeachment.
ProPublica reported earlier this month that Perry repeatedly pushed deals that “were potentially worth billions of dollars to Perry’s friends and political donors” and could “stand to benefit” the secretary himself. Two of the deals, including one worth $20 billion, went to the Texas firm Energy Transfer. Perry served on the company’s board before and after his stint at the Energy Department and bought shares now worth about $800,000 three months after leaving his post, according to the report.
Ethics experts told the outlet that Perry’s efforts were violations of federal regulations. His actions also caught the attention of federal prosecutors, though he is reportedly not the target of any investigations.
The interview with Hochstein was part of the Senate Republicans’ investigation into whether Hunter Biden’s position at Burisma affected U.S. foreign policy. The report asserted that his position was “problematic and did interfere in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine.” However, it did not include any new evidence suggesting his role affected the Obama administration’s policy. It also acknowledged that “the extent to which Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board affected U.S. policy toward Ukraine is not clear.”
Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said the probe pushed “Russian disinformation.” He further described it as “an attempted political hit job facilitated by the State Department.”
A Finance Committee aide told Talking Points Memo that finding new evidence against the Trump administration “was certainly not Republicans’ goal.”
“While Republicans’ Ukraine investigation showed Vice President Biden did nothing wrong,” the aide said, “it succeeded in implicating former Secretary Perry in a corrupt scheme to pressure the Ukrainian government to change the board of Naftogaz.”
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/ambassador-sondlands-relationship-with-controversial-romanian-politician-coming-under-nsc-scrutiny-report/
Most of the conservations about Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s activities outside the United States have focused on his activities in Ukraine, where President Donald Trump wanted President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. But journalists Erin Banco and Betsy Swan, in a report for the Daily Beast, focus on Sondland’s activities in another East European country: Romania, where his connection to former Deputy Prime Minister Ana Birchall — according to the report — has come under scrutiny.
Sondland’s “close relationship” to Birchall, Banco and Swan report, has “generated significant concerns” within the National Security Council (NSC), according to Beast sources. Banco and Swan note that last winter, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union (EU) “attempted to help Birchall clinch a meeting and a photo opportunity” with John Bolton — who was still serving as national security adviser for the Trump Administration at the time — and Birchall “showed up at the White House” without a scheduled meeting. The Beast’s article explains why Birchall is controversial in Romania, where she was ousted as deputy justice minister. Birchall, Banco and Swan explain, has a history of fighting anti-corruption measures in Romania and was a long-time supporter of Romanian politician Liviu Dragnea — who previously served as head of Romania’s Social Democratic Party (PSD) and was convicted of corruption. In Romania, Dragnea was sentenced to three and one-half years in prison, and the Romanian Supreme Court upheld that sentence in May.
Banco and Swan report that according to Beast sources, Sondland “assured Birchall a meeting at the NSC was set up — and that the State Department arranged an official meeting for Birchall in February after her first failed attempt.” NSC officials, according to Banco and Swan, “alerted their superiors after the incident, raising concerns not only about Sondland’s disregard for the interagency process, but also, his dispatching of a Romanian official with a checkered political past to the White House without proper sign-off. Birchall’s relationship with Sondland underscores yet another backchannel effort by the EU ambassador to carry out foreign diplomacy that circumvented key national security officials.”
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Sondland's Ties to Romanian Official Ana Birchall Set Off ...
https://www.thedailybeast.com › sondlands-ties-to-romanian-official-ana-bi...
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National Security Council had concerns about Gordon ...
https://www.rawstory.com › 2019/11 › national-security-council-had-conc...
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no lnx
nyt
Opinion
The Revenge of the Bureaucrats
Honesty is the best foreign policy.
By Elizabeth Drew
Ms. Drew is a journalist based in Washington who covered Watergate.
Nov. 16, 2019, 2:30 p.m. ET
The opening hearings on the Ukraine scandal demonstrated that mundane government processes and seemingly colorless bureaucrats are what keep our country going. It was these sorts of unknown public servants who maintained the executive branch functioning during Watergate — and are doing so now while our distracted president and his acolytes try to circumvent the rules.
The witnesses in the first week of open hearings were three lifelong career diplomats — on Wednesday, William Taylor, currently the chargé d’affaires in Ukraine, and George Kent, the senior State Department official on Ukraine; and on Friday, Marie Yovanovitch, the career diplomat whom President Trump fired as ambassador to Ukraine because she got in the way of his private schemes.
While the three witnesses came across as unusually admirable, they’re not atypical of their breed. They will endure only so much abuse or see only so much scandal around them before rising up in some way. All three testified in defiance of the president.
Mr. Trump cannot fathom such people, because they’re not interested in big money or fame. The “bureaucracy” may seem sluggish, stubborn and unimaginative at times, but it also can stand as a bulwark against assaults on the laws and the Constitution by the passers-through who inhabit the administration of the moment. Mr. Trump made a big mistake by demeaning civil servants from the outset (his awkward, self-reverential speech to the C.I.A. on his first full day in office was an embarrassment and also an omen) and then setting about trying to make them irrelevant.
The problem for presidents who, in their frustration over the limits on their power, empower extragovernmental groups to carry out their extragovernmental policies, is that it usually comes a cropper. If Richard Nixon’s “plumbers” hadn’t been such stumblebums, botching every wayward project they took on, the Nixon presidency just might have survived its attempts to determine the opposition party’s candidate for the next election.
In the case of the current scandal, the “three amigos” — Kurt Volker, a foreign policy expert who signed on as a special envoy to Ukraine; Rick Perry, the departing energy secretary who has close ties to the energy industry; and Gordon Sondland, a hotel magnate whose donations to the Trump inaugural committee helped him secure his job as ambassador to the European Union — usurped Ukraine policy from normal State Department channels, setting Mr. Trump’s private whims against the stated policies of his government. Mr. Sondland appears to have known even less about Ukraine than he did about Europe before taking that job.
The three men seem to have reported to Rudolph Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer and a freelance provocateur. Mr. Giuliani, now under federal investigation in New York, has had his own business interests in Ukraine’s natural gas industry. Under arrest are a couple of his sidekicks, Soviet-born Americans known by their first names, Lev and Igor, with substantial Ukraine interests.
Mr. Giuliani and the three amigos were reportedly part of the president’s scheme to hold up $391 million in congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine in order to wring from the new president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, a public announcement that he would order an investigation of Joe Biden and Mr. Biden’s surviving son, Hunter, who took an ill-advised membership on the board of one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies while his father was managing Ukraine policy for the Obama administration. (Numerous press investigations have turned up no actual misbehavior on the Bidens’ part.) The fragile Hunter, who lost his brother, to whom he was very close, to brain cancer and has struggled with addiction, remains a Republican political target.
Mr. Sondland inadvertently provided the only real news on the first day of the hearings, when Mr. Taylor testified that a member of his staff overheard the president talking to Mr. Sondland when the latter called him on his cellphone from a restaurant in Kiev. Mr. Trump volubly asked how things were going in getting President Zelensky to announce an investigation of the Bidens. This linked Mr. Trump directly to the pressure on Ukraine. Later, it was learned that a second person also overheard the call. Mr. Trump’s allies have also pushed Mr. Zelensky to look into the fantasy that the foreign interference in the 2016 election involved Ukraine, and not Russia.
But the hearings are less about big disclosures than about building the case, brick by brick, of why the president should be impeached. The Democrats have suggested various terms on which to charge him, and they’re not yet united on that. Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested on Thursday that the charge should be bribery, since that’s a constitutionally stated reason for impeachment, and it's a crime that people can understand. But this is a disheartening choice, because a more significant ground for impeachment is abuse of power, which isn’t in the statute books, and it would apply to Mr. Trump’s holding up the arms aid, among other offenses in this instance.
Yet, just a few days ago, Ms. Pelosi and others were talking abuses of power. A House Democrat advised me not to take too seriously the flurry of competing rationales: The Democrats haven’t actually met to decide on a unified position, he said; that may wait until the Judiciary Committee draws up the actual articles of impeachment.
The Republican strategy of the moment is apparently to seal off Mr. Trump from Mr. Giuliani and the amigos’ activities. Their attempts to engage in their specialty of disrupting hearings was swiftly shut down by the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, who was firm but fair, leaving them little to dispute. They’ve found it awkward to defend Mr. Trump since they know that squeezing the Ukrainians for desperately needed military aid in their war against Russia for his own political purpose is indefensible. Moreover, Mr. Trump has complained about their focus on process issues, continuing to insist, ridiculously, that his infamous July 25 phone call to Mr. Zelensky was “perfect.” Regrettably, he may actually think it was....
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He's rich and he's in the hotel business. But the similarities largely end there.
Gordon D. Sondland, Donald Trump's pick for ambassador to the EU, is a patron of fine-art museums who at one point publicly disavowed Trump's presidential candidacy because of his anti-immigrant and nationalist views.
A long-time establishment Republican, Sondland is also a first-generation American whose parents escaped Nazi Germany. And he is a self-made, multimillionaire hotel magnate from the Pacific Northwest, which is about as European as it gets in America without crossing the Canadian border.
The contrasts with Trump could prove a major asset if Sondland's nomination is approved, given that the EU is mostly seething at the U.S. president these days over an array of policy disputes — pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, threatening steel tariffs, and abandoning the Paris climate change accords to name just a few.
In the last presidential campaign, Sondland had initially been a supporter of Jeb Bush.
Even in their common industry, the sensibilities of the two men could not seem more different. Unlike Trump, whose tastes trend toward gilded and gaudy, and who never owned a building he didn't want to slap his own name on, Sondland's company, Provenance Hotels, is known for refurbishing and reimagining old, historic buildings, and its properties have names like the Sentinel Hotel, the Healthman Hotel, and the Hotel Preston.
Sondland and his wife, Katherine Durant, also run a charitable foundation.
Sondland's political views on Europe are largely unknown, and like other political appointees with no experience in diplomacy he is likely to face a steep learning curve.
Trump nominates Oregon hotelier as EU ambassador
US ambassador to UK: Trump is ‘very thick-skinned’
He will also likely face doubts about whether he has Trump's ear. He is a longtime major donor, and fundraising "bundler," for the Republican Party, who was appointed to the Commission on White House Fellows by President George W. Bush, and served in fundraising roles for Bush, former Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain, as well as for the Republican National Committee.
But he is an ally of Reince Priebus, the ex-chief of staff, who was an early casualty of the chaotic churn in Trump's White House. In the last presidential campaign, Sondland had initially been a supporter of Jeb Bush, and had been named part of the former Florida governor’s Jewish leadership team.
Sondland speaks with Portland Business Journal editor Suzanne Stevens in March 2016 | Portland Business Journal video]
Later, Sondland abruptly withdrew from participating in a major fundraiser for Trump in Seattle in August 2016, and publicly disavowed his candidacy, after Trump feuded with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, whose son, Humayun Khan, was an army captain killed in the Iraq war.
The president of Provenance Hotels, Bashar Wali, who immigrated to the U.S. from Syria, also withdrew as a host of the Seattle fundraiser.
At the time, a company spokeswoman explaining the decision had noted Sondland's historic support for Republican candidates. "However, in light of Mr. Trump's treatment of the Khan family and the fact his constantly evolving positions diverge from their personal beliefs and values on so many levels," the spokeswoman said in a statement to local media, "neither Mr. Sondland or Mr. Wali can support his candidacy."
After Trump was elected, however, Sondland donated $1 million to his inaugural committee, through four limited liability companies that he controlled. The donations were traced to Sondland by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that tracks the influence of money in U.S. politics. The same spokeswoman then declined to comment when journalists inquired about the donations.
Sondland has never worked in government, but he served on the transition team for Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski, a Democrat who held that office from 2003 to 2011. Kulongoski named Sondland to the Governor's Office of Film and Television, which Sondland led for more than a decade.
Reached by email, Wali said he expected Sondland to do well in Brussels. "Gordon is a self-made American success story, and the same skill set that led to his success in business, here at home and internationally, will be crucial when acting as a representative of our country, negotiating on behalf of the U.S. and managing multiple agendas."
Survival story
While the nomination to the ambassador's post is undoubtedly a direct result of Sondland's generous financial support, and decades of aggressive fundraising on behalf of the Republican Party, his family history is a European survival story that will resonate in Brussels and across the Continent.
His parents, Günther Sondland and Frieda Piepsch, were born in Germany where they married in 1937, when she was just 16.
Sondland told their story in a public interview with the Portland Business Journal.
"They were both born in Berlin," he said. "They had to escape Nazi Germany. That was the beginning of the uprising of Hitler, and they left Germany in a very, very precarious way. My mother was able to get out of Germany because her father was Russian, and those with a Russian passport could leave. My father was not so fortunate and he had to be smuggled out of Germany."
His mother, then pregnant, ended up in Montevideo, Uruguay, where his sister was born. And it would take another eight years for the couple to be reunited.
Sondland's mother recounted the escape story, of his father being hidden in the vegetable bin of a freighter and nearly losing his legs, for an oral history project.
In telling the family's remarkable journey, she also described how she instilled an entrepreneurial spirit in her son by offering to pay for half of a tape recorder he wanted when he was 12.
"I said, 'Gordie if you can earn half the money I pay the other half,'" she told the interviewer. "So he went, he did lawn work for the neighbors and all sorts of thing and he earned half."
Sondland met Durant, his wife, in the early 1990s when she was working as a commercial real estate broker and showed him a building that he didn't buy.
As for his father, Sondland said, "He wound up in France. And the French took him in. He joined the French Foreign Legion, fought in North Africa and then was put in a concentration camp in Africa, was rescued by the British, and joined the British army. He obviously spoke fluent German so he wound up helping the British army decode German ciphers."
After being reunited, the couple moved to Seattle in 1953, where Sondland was born four years later. In the interview, he credited international aid workers with helping his parents stay in touch.
"I have a huge amount of respect for the Red Cross, the International Red Cross," he said. "Because they were the agency actually that facilitated communication between refugees. So they passed letters back and forth, and my mother still to this day has several shoeboxes full of letters between she and my father."
Sondland met Durant, his wife, in the early 1990s when she was working as a commercial real estate broker and showed him a building that he didn't buy, according to a joint interview the couple gave to Oregon Business. They married in 1993 and have a college-age son and daughter. "Today we say it was the best deal we’ve ever done that didn’t go through,” said Durant, who goes by Katy and runs their foundation as well as one of their real estate investment firms.
Durant is originally from Oregon and the couple own a home there but Sondland has also maintained a residence in the state of Washington, where he grew up, and which critics assert has been used to avoid Oregon's higher state income taxes. Indeed, the nomination Trump sent to the Senate lists Sondland's home state as Washington.
In the Portland Business Journal interview, Sondland described his mother as “Dr. Ruth’s twin sister” — with the same short stature and heavy German accent as the American sex therapist Ruth Westheimer — and said his parents had imparted to him their deep love of fine art.
In addition to other philanthropic efforts, Sondland and Durant are major benefactors of the Portland Museum of Art, where they endowed a program to allow children under 18 to visit free. Sondland, in the public interview, also talked his own approach as a collector, in which he described himself as far more deliberative than the impulsive president he would represent in Brussels.
"So if, after a few visits, I still feel the same about it and Katy and I agree on the piece, then we'll put it in the collection.""Any dealer who says 'you have to buy it now or it's going to be gone,' I generally won't do business with," he said. "I try to go back and visit it again because ... art interacts with you differently depending on what mood you are in. And I might be in a manic mood, I might be in a great mood, I might walk in and look at the painting and say, 'I want to buy that,' but then the next day I'll go and look at the same painting and — what was I thinking? — it doesn't inspire me."
As for their tastes, he said, it runs the gamut. "Figurative. Impressionist. Contemporary. We have glass. We have sculpture. We have a little bit of everything and you react to different mediums differently. And a lot of the works we have no room for in our home, so they are in some of the hotels and they are loaned to museums."
He added, "We were fortunate enough that we loaned two works to the White House, which hung there for eight years."
If Senate confirmation goes smoothly, he will have a new home of his own to decorate soon enough.
Related stories on these topics:
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Gordon Sondland - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Sondland
2.
Residence: Seattle, Washington, U.S
Political party: Republican
Born: Gordon David Sondland; 1957 (age 61–...
Career · United States ... · Political involvement · Philanthropy
Sondland, Gordon - US Department of State
https://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/283664.htm
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America's unlikely envoy to Brussels – POLITICO
https://www.politico.eu/.../gordon-d-sondland-donald-trump-eu-diplomacy-unlikely-p...
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Trump's man in Brussels slams 'out of touch' EU – POLITICO
https://www.politico.eu/article/trumps-man-in-brussels-slams-out-of-touch-eu/
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/saudis-and-the-us-team-up-to-kill-european-union-effort-to-create-a-dirty-money-blacklist/
United States and key ally Saudi Arabia saw their lobbying efforts pay off on Friday after the European Commission’s proposed dirty money blacklist—which included the oil-rich kingdom and several American territories—fizzled.
“The Americans fell on us like a tonne of bricks,” an anonymous Brussels official told the *Financial Times*.
The effort “to protect the integrity of the E.U. financial system,” the commission said last month, included blacklisting 23 territories that had “strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing frameworks.” They included American Samoa, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico as well as Saudi Arabia.
However, as the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, “European governments, under pressure from Washington and Riyadh, have refused to endorse” the list.
“The rejection of the governments is a farce at the expense of security,” declared Sven Giegold, Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Germany, in a statement quoted by Bloomberg. “France and the U.K. want to remove Saudi Arabia and other countries from the list. Spain is protecting Panama. The United States is exerting massive pressure because four U.S. jurisdictions,” he said.
“Governments must ask themselves whether they are on the side of autocrats or their citizens!” he added in a tweet.
As Politico reported, the list, which would need the backing of the European Parliament and Council of the E.U. to go into effect, “is politically sensitive because it has teeth. E.U. banks that handle payments connected to the blacklisted countries and territories would have to conduct ‘enhanced due diligence’ on any cash that moves to and from the E.U. and the blacklisted jurisdictions.”
Politico also noted the “intense backlash and behind-the-scenes lobbying from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.”
The proposal drew ire from the U.S. Treasury Department, which denounced the commission’s methodology, and its head, Secretary Steven Mnuchin, wrote to the commission to denounce the effort, as FT reported.
U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, even acknowledged that “we had to spend our energy killing this bad idea.”Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, for his part, also wrote to E.U. leaders about the “surprising and unexpected” list, and warned of its damage to “trade and investment flows between the kingdom and the European Union.”
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