#Gordon #Sondland, a wealthy hotelier from Seattle who parlayed a million-dollar donation to Trump’s 2017 Inauguration into an appointment as the Ambassador to the European Union,
began bundling donations for Republicans in the early two-thousands.

“Look, I bundled for George W. Bush.
I bundled for McCain, Romney, Jeb Bush, and then, ultimately, for Trump,” he said.

“And if you bundled a few million dollars through a fund-raiser or through a lot of cold-calling,
leaning on friends, colleagues, acquaintances
—that was considered a significant achievement.”

At the start of the Trump era, Sondland added,
“you used to get a really good seat at the table at an event for fifty grand. . . .
Now you add another zero to that.

It’s five hundred to get to the roundtable, and that’s just a ten- or fifteen-minute discussion in someone’s dining room with the candidate.”

It’s not only the sums that have changed;
donors now expect more for their money.

“It’s a whole different class,” Sondland said.

“They’re less concerned about the photo op and a visit to the state dinner at the White House.”

Instead, he added, “they want to essentially get their issues in the White House. . . .
They want someone to take their calls.”

During the 2019 impeachment inquiry of Trump,
Sondland acknowledged under oath that there had been a “quid pro quo”
in Trump’s attempt to pressure the Ukrainian President,
Volodymyr Zelensky, into investigating Trump’s political opponents.

Trump fired Sondland two days after the impeachment trial ended in a Senate acquittal.

Nonetheless, Sondland told me that he planned to vote for Trump again.

“It’s a binary choice,” he said. “And I want the Trump policies.”

The bundling of hard-money individual contributions
—currently capped at $3,300 each for the primary and the general election
—which Sondland calls “business as usual” fund-raising,
is still happening.

But, whereas Bush’s Rangers needed to bring in $200,000,
a bundler now has to collect 💥$2.5 million to join the top-tier “Trump Victory Trust,” according to documents obtained by CNBC.

“Bundlers of hard money still have a role, because that is the principal way in which Republicans fund campaigns at the federal level,”
a Trump supporter who was one of the original Bush Pioneers told me.

The reason is structural:
Democrats have retained an advantage in small online donations,
while Republicans rely on a higher percentage of large contributions.

🔸As of late September, sixty-eight per cent of contributions to the Trump political network had come from big donors,
🔸compared with fifty-nine per cent for the Democrats.

Trump, in other words, needs his billionaires more than the other side does.

Raising more money from fewer donors is the Party’s strategy.

Trump’s time in the White House provided ample evidence that some billionaires could have extraordinary sway in a second Trump Administration.

“They think they have a greater chance to have influence over Trump than they have had the last four years over Biden,”
a prominent Republican fund-raiser told me.

Key positions in Trump’s first Administration went to alumni of Goldman Sachs,
the C.E.O. of the nation’s largest oil company,
and scions of wealthy families,
such as Betsy DeVos.

When criticized for appointing so many ultra-rich Cabinet members,
Trump responded,
“I want people that made a fortune!”

♦️His signature legislative accomplishment slashed the top corporate tax rate from thirty-five per cent to twenty-one per cent
♦️and reduced the top individual-income-tax rate.

💦“You all just got a lot richer,” Trump was reportedly overheard saying, at his Mar-a-Lago club, hours after signing the bill.

⬆️ #venalPublicOffice

#Trump already made many public offices venal

A million dollars bought Gordon #Sondland the job for US amb to #EU, where he boasted he had come to “destroy the #EuropeanUnion"

Sondland testified he operated at express direction of Trump and that #Pompeo knew about the shakedown scheme to hold back #Ukraine aid in return for fake investigations of #HunterBiden

He also implicated #Pence, #Giuliani, #Bolton… “Everyone was in the loop,” he said TWICE

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/20/gordon-sondland-trump-impeachment-ukraine-quid-pro-quo