NEW: Gordon Sondland, key witness in Ukraine probe, blocked from testimony in midnight call by Isikoff
The State Department waited until 12:30 a.m. Tuesday morning to tell U.S. Ambassador Gordon Sondland not to show up for his scheduled deposition with three House committees later that morning, the ambassador’s lawyer told Yahoo News.
The blocking of Sondland’s testimony was immediately denounced by House intelligence committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff who said members had returned to Washington in the middle of a recess to hear his scheduled closed door testimony. “The failure to produce this witness, the failure to produce these documents, we consider yet additional strong evidence of obstruction of the functioning of a co-equal branch of government.”
While those messages were on Sondland’s personal devices and platforms, they are covered by laws governing official government records and therefore decisions about releasing them belong to the State Department, not his client, Luskin said.
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