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This week, in Washington, D.C., the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on whether to impeach President Donald J. Trump.
The Judiciary Committee took up its work after accepting a 300-page report from the House Intelligence Committee summarizing the findings of that panel's earlier work on the question.
Notable in the report, authored by Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), is the central role U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland played in the committee's conclusions.
Although a newcomer to international diplomacy, the former Portland hotel owner appears in Schiff's report, including footnotes, 600 times. That's more times than Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani (who did not testify but is named 530 times), or central players, such as former ambassadors Kurt Volker (455 times) or William Taylor (311 times).
Sondland's testimony, of course, provided the strongest evidence of a Ukrainian quid pro quo Trump and his supporters, including Giuliani, have long denied.
And in his second round of testimony before Schiff's committee, he produced emails that also implicated his boss, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and other senior officials in the plot to get the Ukrainians to announce an investigation of Trump's leading political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, in exchange for military aid.
As the House ponders its strategy for unseating Trump, Sondland now toils in Brussels, but occupies a very different space from the position he probably expected when he received Senate confirmation June 21, 2018.
"I'm grateful to President Trump for the faith and confidence he's placed in me, and to Secretary Pompeo for his support," Sondland said that day. He also cited in his remarks to the Senate the greatest gifts his immigrant parents bequeathed him. Among them: "faith in the rule of law."