Trump Reportedly Ignored GOP Senators’ Pleas to Not Fire Sondland

President Donald Trump ignored the pleas from some Republican senators that it would look bad to fire US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland on the same day he pushed out the Lt. Col. Alexander and Yevgeny Vindman from his own National Security Council.

According to the New York Times, several senators, Susan Collins (R-ME), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Martha McSally (R-AZ), and Ron Johnson (R-WI), reached out to White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and White House legislative affairs director Eric Ueland to warn against the optics of an abrupt dismissal of the ambassador on the same day both of the Vindman were escorted off the White House grounds by security. The combined personnel moves were widely seen as Trump’s retribution against former impeachment witnesses and the purge was likened to a “Friday Night Massacre,” invoking President Richard Nixon’s infamous firing of the Watergate Special Prosecutor.

“The senators were concerned that it would look bad for Mr. Trump to dismiss Mr. Sondland and argued that it was unnecessary, since the ambassador was already talking with senior officials about leaving after the Senate trial,” sources told the Times. “The senators told White House officials that Mr. Sondland should be allowed to depart on his own terms, which would have reduced any political backlash.”

Trump would not allow Sondland to leave on his own terms, however, “choosing instead to make a point by forcing Mr. Sondland out before the ambassador was ready to go.”

“When State Department officials called Mr. Sondland on Friday to tell him that he had to resign that day, he resisted, saying that he did not want to be included in what seemed like a larger purge of impeachment witnesses,” the Times reports. “Mr. Sondland conveyed to the State Department officials that if they wanted him gone that day, they would have to fire him. And so the president did, ordering the ambassador recalled from his post effective immediately.”

Back during the House impeachment heartings, Sondland implicated Trump and other White House officials in Ukraine misconduct, testifying that “everyone was in the loop.” Trump lated tried to distance himself from the ambassador who had given $1 million to his Inaugural Committee and who he had appointed to the diplomatic post in Brussels, saying: “I don’t know him very well.”