I don't understand the kerfuffle about the dates of Sondland talk with Trump

[question everything]

The call occurred on September 7th. In this call, Trump did say there was “no quid pro quo” with Ukraine, but he then went on to outline his preconditions for releasing the security assistance and granting a White House visit. The call was so alarming that when John Bolton learned of it, he ordered his’ deputy Tim Morrison to immediately report it to the National Security Council lawyers.

Sondland has testified there was a call on September 9th in which Trump said there was “no quid pro quo,” but that he wanted President Zelenskyy “to do” the right thing. A close reading of the publicly available evidence shows that the latter call was actually the very one that sent Morrison to the lawyers, and that Ambassador Bill Taylor foregrounded in his written deposition to inform Congress of the quid pro quo.

(snip)

In the face of this damning and conclusive evidence, the White House and House Republicans have been forced to retreat to their current defense: that President Trump himself has not been proven to have done anything wrong, because there was no witness who testified to having personally heard the President announce that he was seeking a quid pro quo from Ukraine, in exchange for release of the security assistance.

This “defense,” it should be noted, is hardly a defense at all. There is no dispute that the President used the powers of his office to coerce a foreign state into investigating a domestic political rival, nor is there any dispute that the Ukrainians were informed by the Trump administration that the hold on security assistance would not be lifted until these investigation were publicly announced. Multiple witnesses also testified that EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland had told them that, in his conversations with the president, Trump had described his requirement for Zelenskyy to publicly announce the investigations into Biden and 2016. However, to the extent that no witness testified to having personally heard Trump request a quid pro quo in regards to the security assistance, there are two reasons for this.

The first is that, with a single exception, every individual who interacted directly with President Trump refused to comply with House subpoenas for their testimony. The second is that the single exception who did testify, Ambassador Sondland, did not testify accurately when he said that President Trump had never asked him for a quid pro quo from Ukraine. In fact, President Trump had personally informed Sondland of his specific demands for a quid pro quo from Ukraine – and the White House National Security Council is sitting on documents that confirm it.

More..

https://www.justsecurity.org/67536/heres-the-proof-that-trumps-no-quid-pro-quo-call-never-happened/

(Don't know anything about this source "Just Security," but I like and can follow this analysis)

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. It's significant because of what happened immediately after the 9/7 call.

From the article:

This detail is critically important, not because the precise date of the call is significant in and of itself, but because of what it shows about the true content of that call – the substance of the conversation that Morrison and Taylor described in their testimony, and that Sondland omitted from his.

.... it makes little sense that Sondland would have considered Taylor’s September 9th text message to be “fairly shocking” and “alarming,” or necessitate a pre-dawn call to the White House to ask the President about whether there was a quid pro quo. After all, Sondland himself had told Taylor just one day before that the President had communicated a quid pro quo, and Sondland had told Morrison the same thing the day before that.

...In addition to Sondland giving incorrect testimony about the date of the “no quid pro quo” call, Sondland was also incorrect about what had prompted the call in the first place. His September 9th text exchange with Bill Taylor could not have been what caused him to call President Trump, because that call had happened at least two days before the text. Instead, Sondland had called Trump in order to confirm whether a proposed modification to the quid pro quo arrangement would be acceptable to Trump.

[Grasswire2]

2. because Sondland lied again.

For one thing.

This twitter thread from several days ago started the fuss, I think.

[link:http://

Link to tweet

?s=20|

[question everything]

3. But I think that we should be able to fight the truth