It’s a simple photograph, just a close-up on a notepad filled with Sharpie letters scrawled in an all-caps shout. But the pad is Donald Trump’s, the notes are a strangled refutation of fact, and the image has instantly become the most iconic yet of the impeachment proceedings that have enveloped his presidency. Lemonade stand for sale concession. In an email, Getty Images photographer Mark Wilson shared with WIRED how he got the shot.Wilson has been with Getty for 20 years; in that time he’s covered presidents Bill Clinton, George W.

Bush, Barack Obama, and now Trump. More recently, he’s been on the scene at the trial of, as well as the Capitol Hill impeachment testimony of Lt. Alexander Vindman and foreign service officer Jennifer Williams. On Tuesday, though, Wilson was stationed at the White House South Lawn, where Trump gave brief remarks before departing on Marine One.“Today was a little different because a number of reporters who would have typically been at this press conference were covering the impeachment hearings on the Hill,” Wilson said in an email. “However, one area where reporters and photographers are stationed, behind the president, was still quite congested and we were jostling for space.”.

“I quickly noticed that the pad contained large handwritten notes in Sharpie and focused my camera to capture what was on the page,” Wilson said.What was on the page was Trump’s talking points, an apparent paraphrase of what US ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified had been the contents of their September phone call: “I WANT NOTHING. I WANT NOTHING. I WANT NO QUID PRO QUO. TELL ZELLINSKY sic TO DO THE RIGHT THING. THIS IS THE FINAL WORD FROM THE PRES OF THE U.S.”The notes say so much, less about what or Sondland testified—the ambassador stated explicitly before Congress that Ukraine had been subject to a quid pro quo—than how he views himself in this moment.

“THE FINAL WORD FROM THE PRES OF THE U.S.” sounds more like a dictum from the great and powerful Oz than from a democratically elected leader. The misspelling of Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky's name betrays a casual disregard for even the most basic facts of the matter. And the giant lettering supports the operating theory that Trump refuses to wear glasses.The public would have none of that additional insight without Wilson’s photograph.

“I am always trying to take a picture that no one else has,” he said. “As news consumers, we tend to see the same images from press conferences day after day, and sometimes situations arise that allow me to use my expertise to take a picture that is really quite unique and different.”At the time, Wilson didn’t realize that he had captured an instantly iconic moment. “Honestly, I was just taking a picture of a page of notes,” he says. But Getty Images quickly tweeted it, and then so did everyone else, and suddenly his phone wouldn’t stop buzzing with notifications from friends and colleagues letting him know that his photo had gone viral. After the press conference, it was back to work.

The first four sentences of Trump's note are his transcription of a portion of the testimony given Wednesday by Gordon Sondland, the U.S.

A quick look at Wilson’s Getty Images page shows his: 'Fall Colors on Display in Front of the US Capitol.' It’s as bucolic a shot as you’ll get out of downtown DC, the calm of autumn buttressing the dome of the Capitol building, belying the rancor inside.“I view my role as a photographer—more so now than ever in covering this administration—as a duty or service to provide a historical record for people to look back on hundreds of years from now,” Wilson said.As unlikely as it may have seemed at the time, a simple close-up shot of a notepad may well be one of those indelible images.

It’s hard to think of one that explains this moment, and this president, more clearly.

(Associated Press)Rep. Dennis Heck (D-Wash.) asked David Hale, the undersecretary of State for political affairs who was stationed in Kyiv, Ukraine, for an assessment of former U.S.

Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, whom Trump recalled at the height of a smear campaign apparently directed by Rudolph W. Giuliani.Upon meeting Yovanovitch this year, Hale said: “I immediately understood we had an exceptional officer doing exceptional work. I believe she should have been able to stay at post and continue the outstanding work she was doing.”. It was the most significant endorsement Yovanovitch has received from a senior State Department official. Secretary of State Michael R.

Pompeo has refused to defend her publicly.Hale added that State Department employees who testified under subpoena at the hearing would not be punished, addressing concerns that some diplomats have voiced. Employees were notified of that in a Nov. A legal fund has also been set up for them.Pentagon official says Ukrainian officials asked about U.S. Aid on July 25Updated 6:29 p.m.

Ukrainian officials raised questions about nearly $400 million in U.S. A Ukrainian official contacted her office on that same day, Cooper said, and asked “what was going on” with the assistance.Cooper said she believed there were additional meetings in August when her staff recalled “the topic came up,” but she could not recall details. She said she never got a full explanation for why the aid was frozen.Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) pressed Cooper about whether the emails proved that the Ukrainian’s knew the aid was being withheld.“I cannot say for certain,” Cooper said, but she added that it would be unusual for the embassy to make a general inquiry of that sort without being prompted by a specific issue or concern.Pompeo denies Sondland’s claims that he was aware of quid pro quoUpdated 4 p.m. ETAs he flew back to Washington from a NATO meeting in Brussels, Secretary of State Michael R.

Pompeo on Wednesday afternoon issued a denial through his spokeswoman of assertions by Gordon Sondland that Pompeo was aware there was a quid pro quo in releasing aid to Ukraine.“Gordon Sondland never told Secretary Pompeo that he believed the president was linking aid to investigations of political opponents,” the spokeswoman, Morgan Ortagus, said. “Any suggestion to the contrary is flat out false.”. (Getty Images)For much of his testimony, Gordon Sondland was cooperative and smiling.

But his impatience began to show by the afternoon, particularly after his appearance took longer than expected and he feared he would miss his evening flight back to Brussels.At one point, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) repeatedly pushed Sondland to acknowledge that Trump would be the person who would personally benefit if Ukraine agreed to his demands that it investigate his political rivals.“Who would benefit from an investigation of the Bidens?” Maloney asked repeatedly.“I assume President Trump would,” Sondland eventually answered.“There we have it!” Maloney says sarcastically.

“Didn’t hurt a bit, did it?”Frustrated when the audience burst into applause, Sondland said he was trying to be forthright with the committee and didn’t appreciate Maloney’s line of questioning.“Mr. Maloney, excuse me, I’ve been really forthright and I resent what you’re trying to do,” Sondland said.Maloney shot back that Sondland had no basis for being frustrated since he had repeatedly changed his version of events. After an October deposition, Sondland had to file a supplemental declaration after other witnesses contradicted his assertions. And his public testimony Wednesday included many significant details that were new.“We got a doozy of a statement from you this morning,” Maloney said sharply. “There’s a whole bunch of stuff you don’t recall. With all due respect, sir, we respect your candor, but let’s be clear about what it took to get it out of you.”.

(Getty Images)Some GOP lawmakers go on offense against SondlandUpdated at 2:37 p.m. ETRepublicans aggressively questioned Gordon Sondland for presuming that U.S. Military aid to Ukraine was being withheld until Ukrainian President Zelensky publicly agreed to the investigations Trump wanted.“So you really have no testimony today that ties President Trump to a scheme to withhold aid from Ukraine in exchange for these investigations,” Rep. Turner (R-Ohio) said.Sondland replied, “Other than my own presumption.”. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)Turner suggested his testimony was misleading. “You left people with the confusing impression you were giving testimony you did not.

You do not have any. Evidence that the president was tied to holding aid from Ukraine,” Turner said.Turner and other members also criticized Sondland for changes in his testimony from his original deposition. “Not only are your answers somewhat circular, frequently you’ve contradicted yourself in your own answer,” Turner said.Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) took issue with Sondland not mentioning in his opening statement that Trump had told him during a Sept.

9 call that there was no quid pro quo. Sondland replied that it was a lengthy statement and he figured people would ask about it if they had questions because that fact was already public.Pence denies that Sondland raised issue of link between aid and investigationUpdated at 12:58 p.m. ETVice President Mike Pence wasted little time Wednesday pushing back on Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s testimony that “everyone was in the loop” about President Trump’s intention to withhold nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine and a White House meeting with the country’s new president until leaders in Kyiv made a public declaration that they were investigating his political rival, Joe Biden.Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, issued a statement claiming that the Sept.

1 conversation between Pence and Sondland in Poland on the eve of the vice president’s meeting with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky “never happened.”Sondland, testifying under oath, said, “I mentioned to Vice President Pence before the meetings with the Ukrainians that I had concerns that the delay in U.S. Military aid to Ukraine had become tied to the issue of investigations,” Sondland said. “I recall mentioning that before the Zelensky meeting.”. Short, in a statement, dismissed that account.' The vice president never had a conversation with Gordon Sondland about investigating the Bidens, Burisma, or the conditional release of financial aid to Ukraine based upon potential investigations,” Short said.

“Ambassador Gordon Sondland was never alone with Vice President Pence on the Sept. 1 trip to Poland. This alleged discussion recalled by Ambassador Sondland never happened.”Short added: “Multiple witnesses have testified under oath that Vice President Pence never raised Hunter Biden, former Vice President Joe Biden, CrowdStrike, Burisma, or investigations in any conversation with Ukrainians or President Zelensky before, during, or after the Sept. 1 meeting in Poland.”After Short’s statement was issued, the Democratic attorney, Daniel Goldman, asked Sondland to recall more details about the meeting, which he explained included more people than just he and Pence.Pence, Sondland said, “heard what I said.

But I don’t recall any substantive response.”Pence has been intent on distancing himself from the matter at the center of the Democratic impeachment inquiry, and has refused to cooperate with the investigation.Republicans emphasize Sondland’s shaky memory, lack of notesUpdated 12:26 p.m. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)GOP counsel Steve Castor appeared to seek to discredit some of Sondland’s testimony, noting that the EU ambassador could not recall some information, did not take notes, did not have access to some of his records, revised his original deposition and gave accounts that differed from other witnesses.“You don’t have records. You don’t have your notes because you didn’t take notes. You don’t have a lot of recollections. (Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)Lutsenko, speaking to senior Ukrainians officials, quoted Giuliani as saying a Trump-Zelensky meeting would not take place, according to an account by the senior U.S.

Diplomat in Ukraine, William Taylor.“Good grief,” Volker responded to Taylor, according to WhatsApp messages that Sondland presented in the hearing. “Please tell Vadym Ukraine Foreign Minister Vadym Pristaiko to let the official USG representatives speak for the U.S.”Still, however, Pompeo continued to instruct Volker to speak to Giuliani at least as late as Sept. 24, Sondland said.“We tried to fix the problem, while keeping the State Department and the National Security Council closely apprised of the challenges we faced,” he said.Trump distances himself from Sondland, calls him ‘a nice guy’Updated at 11:47 a.m. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)In his first comments about Gordon Sondland since the EU ambassador began testifying Wednesday, President Trump sought to create some distance.“I don’t know him very well,” Trump said as he left the White House. “I have not spoken to him much. This is not a man I know well. He seems like a nice guy though.”Sondland, a major donor to Trump, testified that, in keeping with Trump’s directive, a “quid pro quo” was arranged requiring Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political rivals in exchange for a White House meeting between Trump and the new Ukrainian president.Trump’s comments to reporters came in the south driveway as he departed the White House, running nearly an hour behind schedule.

The president spent much of the morning watching the Sondland hearing on TV, although Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, who acknowledged he’d “caught some of it,” insisted he was also busy with “meetings and calls.”Unusually, Trump did not take questions from reporters before departing, instead reading specific quotes from Sondland he believed to be exculpatory from a few pages of written notes. Sondland says Trump never told him Ukraine aid delay was linked to investigationsUpdated at 11:26 a.m. (Associated Press)Gordon Sondland said he never heard directly from President Trump that release of the $400 million in aid for Ukraine was conditioned on the announcement of investigations into Democrats that Trump was seeking.Sondland said he came to that conclusion — which he called a “guess” — based on conversations with Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W.

Sondland repeatedly said he didn’t remember key details of phone calls with the president. But he did not challenge the account of State Department aide David Holmes, who was set to testify Thursday that Sondland said Trump wanted the investigations.Democrats aggressively challenged Sondland’s memory of those key events in an attempt to draw out how closely Trump directed Sondland’s delivery of the quid pro quo demand to the Ukrainians.Sondland cast significant blame on Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, and indicated that the former mayor was advocating for the investigations at Trump’s behest.Sondland said repeatedly he wasn’t a note taker. By contrast, Holmes and others emphasized that they had detailed notes, a point that the Democratic counsel, Daniel Goldman, stressed. Ukraine just had to announce investigations, not ‘do them,’ Sondland saysUpdated at 10:41 a.m. ETUndermining GOP efforts to portray President Trump’s motivations in Ukraine as largely rooted in a desire to fight corruption, EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland testified that Trump was chiefly interested in having investigations into his political rivals publicly announced, regardless of whether they actually took place.Referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Sondland said, “He had to announce the investigations. He didn’t actually have to do them, as I understood it.”Sondland later added, “I never heard anyone say the investigations had to start, or be completed.”Sondland ‘came to believe’ military aid was linked to investigationsUpdated 10:12 a.m.

(Mark Wilson / Getty Images)Sondland testified that the White House had confirmed to his attorneys that he spoke with the president on July 26 via cellphone from Kyiv.Trump has said he has no recollection of the call.Sondland said he had “no reason to doubt that this conversation included the subject of investigations.” He said the call lasted five minutes.State Department official David Holmes testified that he overheard Trump on the phone as he sat with Sondland at a restaurant, and could hear the president asking about “the investigations.”“Given Mr. Giuliani’s demand that President Zelensky make a public statement about investigations, I knew that the topic of investigations was important to President Trump,” Sondland said. “Actually, I would have been more surprised if President Trump had not mentioned investigations, particularly given what we were hearing from Mr. Giuliani about the president’s concerns. However, I have no recollection of discussing Vice President Biden or his son on that call or after the call ended.”Witnesses have testified that, after the call, Sondland said Trump cared more about the investigations into the Bidens than he did about Ukraine. Schiff issues stark warning of obstruction, including PompeoUpdated at 9:35 a.m.

ETIn his opening statement, Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff delivered his most explicit threat that House Democrats might seek to include obstruction of their investigation as one count in an impeachment resolution.Schiff also widened the accusation of obstruction to include Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, who is considering running for the Senate from his home state of Kansas.EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s explosive opening statement specifically points to documents he says are in the possession of the White House and State Department that would back him up. He provided new excerpts of emails and text messages to the committee Wednesday.Sondland decried not having access to his records held by the State Department as “less than fair.”“In the absence of these materials, my memory has not been perfect,” Sondland said. “And I have no doubt that a more fair, open and orderly process of allowing me to read the State Department records and other materials would have made this process far more transparent.”. (Charlie Neibergall / Associated Press)Sondland more directly implicated Vice President Mike Pence in his testimony, saying that in September he mentioned his concerns to Pence regarding the delay in $400 million in U.S. Aid to Ukraine, before a meeting between the vice president and Zelensky.Sondland said he told the vice president “the delay in aid had become tied to the issue of investigations.” He said, “I recall mentioning that before the Zelensky meeting.”Pence has tried to distance himself from the impeachment inquiry.Sondland: ‘Everyone was in the loop’Updated 9:16 a.m.

ETEU Ambassador Gordon Sondland detailed several ways in which other members of the Trump administration were aware of the effort to get Ukraine to open an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.He detailed a July 19 email sent to Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, among others, in which Sondland said President Zelensky assured him an investigation would be announced. The email, sent a week before a July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky, read: “I Talked to Zelensky just now He is prepared to receive Potus’ call. Will assure him that he intends to run a fully transparent investigation and will ‘turn over every stone’. He would greatly appreciate a call prior to Sunday so that he can put out some media about a ‘friendly and productive call’ (no details) prior to Ukraine election on Sunday.”Mulvaney responded: “I asked NSC to set it up for tomorrow.” Sondland to tell lawmakers he was following Trump’s ordersUpdated 9:04 a.m. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland will tell lawmakers this morning that Rudolph W.

Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney, requested a “quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky,” and was expressing the desires of Trump.His testimony - a stark change from his previous deposition last month - is potentially explosive in the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, linking the demand of an investigation to a possible White House meeting with Trump.“Mr. Giuliani demanded that Ukraine make a public statement announcing investigations of the 2016 election/DNC server and Burisma,” Sondland will tell lawmakers according to a prepared version of his written remarks. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the United States, and we knew that these investigations were important to the president.”Sondland will confirm that the president instructed them to work with Giuliani after the May 23 debriefing in the Oval Office and he felt he had to choice but to comply.“We weren’t happy with the president’s directive to talk with Rudy. We did not want to involve Mr.

Giuliani,” Sondland said. “I believed then, as I do now, that the men and women of the State Department, not the president’s personal lawyer, should take responsibility for Ukraine matters.”Sondland – who has been criticized for not remembering many of the details of the events in the investigation in prior testimony – also cast blame on the State Department, which has refused to turn over documents, including Sondland’s emails.“I am not a note taker nor am I a memo writer,” he said.

“In the absence of these materials, my memory has not been perfect.”. Sondland, who had previously been seen as a Trump loyalist, was facing possible perjury charges because his version of several events differed sharply from that of other witnesses.Anticipation about Sondland’s testimonyThe Democrats’ highest-profile witness is slated to testify publicly Wednesday morning in a make-or-break moment for the impeachment inquiry of President Trump.Gordon Sondland, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, has emerged as a pivotal link between the president and a shadow foreign policy led by Rudolph W.

Giuliani, who was urging the Ukrainians to conduct investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son as military aid to Ukraine was being held up.“This impeachment inquiry will come down to tomorrow, regardless of which side you’re on, pro-impeachment or not,” Republican Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina said Tuesday. “His interactions were probably the ones that were closest to the president.”Democrats hope he will show the extent to which the president was involved in the effort. But because he significantly changed his testimony between the time of his closed-door deposition and when the transcript of the deposition was released to the public.Sondland told lawmakers in a sworn statement made after his closed-door deposition that during a Sept. 1 meeting with a top adviser to the Ukrainian president, he delivered a dire message: If President Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t publicly promise an investigation, military aid and a pivotal White House meeting would not likely materialize. He called it an “anti-corruption statement.”Lt. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official, told lawmakers in a public hearing Tuesday that Sondland began to deliver a similar warning more than a month earlier.

At a July meeting at the White House, Sondland begin to tell Ukrainian officials that they had to deliver on the investigations to get a White House meeting with Trump, Vindman said.Sondland will be the first of three witnesses to testify Wednesday. In the afternoon, lawmakers will hear testimony from Laura Cooper, a deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Defense who specialized in Ukraine issues, and David Hale, the undersecretary of State for political affairs who was stationed in Kyiv.Times staff writer Molly O’Toole in Washington contributed to this story. Jennifer Haberkorn covers Congress in Washington, D.C., for the Los Angeles Times. She has reported from Washington since 2005, spending much of that time roaming the halls of the U.S. Before arriving at The Times, Haberkorn spent eight years at Politico writing about the 2010 healthcare law, a story that took her to Congress, the states, healthcare clinics and courtrooms around the country. She also covered Congress and local business news for the Washington Times.

Haberkorn is a native of the Chicago area and graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wis.