(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Former E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland, who played a starring role in President Trump’s first impeachment hearing, wants someone to pay the $1.8 million in legal fees he racked up telling the world about that quid pro quo with the Ukrainian government for dirt on Joe Biden. Either Mike Pompeo or the U.S. government needs to pay up — he’s not picky.
To that end, Sondland just filed a breach of contract suit in U.S. District Court in D.C. alleging that the former Secretary of State verbally agreed that the federal government would foot the bill for the ambassador’s private counsel Robert Luskin, Jim McDermott, and Kwame Manley of Paul Hastings, whom he hired after Pompeo said the government wouldn’t represent him before the House. According to Sondland, his lawyers were on multiple conference calls when Pompeo promised to cover the costs associated with his testimony.
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“At all times pertinent hereto,” he alleges, “Pompeo represented that he possessed the authority to bind the Government to an agreement whereby the Government, through the United States Department of State (“Department of State” or “State Department”), would reimburse Plaintiff for all of his attorneys’ fees and costs in connection with complying with Congressional subpoenas.”
The theory of the case is that Pompeo either had the authority to commit the government to pay Sondland’s legal bills, in which case Uncle Sam is on the hook. Or he didn’t, in which case Pompeo is personally liable because the “Indemnity Undertaking” was “made entirely for personal reasons for his own political survival in the hopes that Ambassador Sondland would not implicate him or others by his testimony.”
On the surface, there are one or two little problems with this argument, not least of which is that the Department expressly instructed Sondland not to testify. That’s why he was denied access to Justice Department lawyers and even blocked from referring to his own calendar and notes to bolster his account. He can hardly argue that he was carrying out officially sanctioned business when Pompeo and half the State Department defied congressional subpoena and told Sondland to do the same.
There’s also the pesky fact that Sondland was, in fact, offered some recompense for his legal fees — just not the seven-figure payout he was looking for.
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Attempts to renege on the Indemnity Undertaking began on March 3, 2020, when an Office of Legal Adviser Attorney informed Private Counsel that Ambassador Sondland would only be reimbursed $86,040. He explained that the number was calculated pursuant to the State Department’s official reimbursement policy, which was irrelevant to the case of Ambassador Sondland, who had been promised by Pompeo that he would receive full reimbursement from the Government.
And although Sondland argues that he hired his own lawyers “in consideration for the promise that his fees would be reimbursed,” he concedes in the same brief that he had “no alternative” but to hire private counsel when he discovered the government would not provide DOJ attorneys to represent him before congress, which rather undercuts the reliance claim.
For his part, Mike Pompeo seems unruffled.
“The lawsuit is ludicrous,” a spokesperson told NBC News later. “Mr. Pompeo is confident the court will see it the same way.”
And perhaps he’s right. But not as ludicrous as making a $1 million contribution to the inaugural committee of a candidate you didn’t back in the election, getting named to a high-ranking diplomatic post for which you have no qualification only to find yourself embroiled in a historic scandal, forking over $1.8 million in legal fees while your hotel business faces calls for boycotts, watching various Trumpland loyalists keep their mouths shut and get indemnified by the RNC, and still thinking that somehow someone in this swamp is going to cut you a check after you ratted out the boss.
Now that is ludicrous.
Sondland v. Pompeo [Docket via Court Listener]
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.