Sondland, Influence Peddling Middleman

The phrase “quid pro quo” has become a kind of shorthand reference to the entire Ukraine debacle. But it is a phrase that Sondland uses himself to explain his negotiating philosophy.

In a 2016 interview with the Portland Business Journal, for example, he used it to describe how he facilitated phone calls between the former Democratic governor of Oregon and then-President George W. Bush.

“We would make these requests, and they were done quietly, they were done with rifle precision and there was always a quid pro quo,” Sondland said. 

“The governor would help the president with something and the president would help the governor with something, and it was very transactional.”


https://www.opb.org/news/article/npr-gordon-sondland-the-ambassador-whose-texts-put-him-at-the-center-of-ukraine-scandal/

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