Three ladies say they confronted sexual misconduct by using Gordon Sondland before he become the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union and at the center of the presidential impeachment inquiry. They say he retaliated in opposition to them professionally once they rejected his advances.
In one case, a capacity commercial enterprise associate remembers that Sondland took her to tour a room in a lodge he owns, only to then grasp her face and try to kiss her. After she rejected him, Sondland backtracked on investing in her business.
Another woman, a work partner on the time, says Sondland uncovered himself to her in the course of a enterprise interplay. She additionally recalls falling over the back of a sofa looking to break out from him. After she made her lack of interest clean, she says Sondland known as her, screaming about her activity overall performance.
A third female, 27 years Sondland’s junior, met him to discuss a capacity task. She says he driven himself in opposition to her and kissed her. She shoved him away. She says his task assist stopped.
All three girls have agreed to be named in this story. In all of the instances, buddies, circle of relatives participants or colleagues of the women do not forget being informed approximately the encounters on the time. The cases span a seven-year length, ending much less than a decade in the past. Sondland denies the allegations.
“In many years of my profession in business and civic affairs, my conduct may be affirmed by way of hundreds of employees and co-workers with whom I have worked in limitless instances,” Sondland stated in a announcement. “These untrue claims of unwanted touching and kissing are concocted and, I believe, coordinated for political purposes. They have no foundation in fact, and I categorically deny them.” (Read his assertion.)
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Sondland’s legal professional delivered in a letter: “Notably, what each of these 3 women share in common is that they pursued Ambassador Sondland for economic and private benefit — an funding, a activity, and insurance brokerage paintings — and he declined their proposals.”
The attorney, Jim McDermott, additionally wrote that the 3 women are trying to undermine Sondland’s latest testimony. “Given the timing of your supposed tale, an affordable conclusion to be drawn is that you are attempting to have an effect on Ambassador Sondland’s credibility as a truth witness inside the pending impeachment inquiry,” McDermott wrote. “Given the politically charged climate in which current events are unfolding, a few would possibly recollect this to be veiled witness tampering.”
Reporting in this story commenced in October, around the time of Sondland’s preliminary impeachment testimony, wherein he subsidized the president’s assertion that there was no quid pro quo related to Ukraine.
The day after Sondland gave that testimony, Nicole Vogel spoke on the Day of the Girl Luncheon in Seattle, an event hosted via a regional nonprofit, Girls Inc., whose task is to inspire “all women to be sturdy, clever, and bold.” Vogel determined to recount her Sondland tale and name him.
Vogel additionally cited it to an editor at Portland Monthly, the co-publisher of this story, and he or she later spoke approximately it once more at a breakfast occasion in Portland.
[Editor’s note: Vogel is the owner of Portland Monthly. Vogel cooperated with the story as a source. She was not involved in editorial decisions. The magazine’s editorial team decided to partner with ProPublica to independently report her story.]
“There had been a whole lot of indecent proposals when I become raising capital, but none as brazen as his,” Vogel recollects. She encountered Sondland 16 years in the past while she become looking to improve cash to begin her mag. “I have nothing to mention about what he did or didn’t do [involving Ukraine]. But if humans are asking what his moral character is, I even have one greater piece of evidence for them.”
The ladies had saved their stories to their very own circles, even after Sondland was nominated and vetted for an ambassadorship via a president who himself has been accused of sexual misconduct with the aid of greater than 20 women. The women say they have been now not contacted by using the authorities for any heritage tests.
In 2003, Vogel had an concept to begin a mag with her journalist brother that would chronicle Portland’s exploding art, culture and meals scenes. She became 34 years antique and clean off a task at Move.Com. Armed with full mock-united statesof the mag and special economic projections, the search for buyers led her to Sondland.
Sondland has long been a electricity player in Portland, wherein he is one of the area’s most outstanding business figures. He owns five resorts in Portland under the umbrella of the enterprise he based, Provenance Hotel Group. He became as soon as requested at a panel why he got into the enterprise. “It combines all of the elements that give me a reason to get up within the morning,” Sondland said. “You have meals, you have wine, you have got layout, you have got art, you have intrigue, you have sex. You have the whole thing you could think of.”
Sondland is also a prominent philanthropist. He has served on numerous high-profile nonprofit forums, along with because the chairman of the board of trustees of the Portland Art Museum. A outstanding staircase there bears his call and that of his spouse, Katherine Durant.
According to Vogel, Sondland became beneficial, connecting her with ability advertisers and buyers. Then, inside the spring of 2003, he invited her to dinner at El Gaucho, a clubby, vintage-school steakhouse, asking for information at the enterprise’s projected financials. Over dinner, he advised her that he might invest his very own money inside the mag, and that Portland wished human beings like her.
“Gordon had said that night that he became going to make investments,” Vogel recollects. “And in truth, he said to me that he became inquisitive about investing inside the agency, however that he became more interested in investing in me, due to the fact he felt as if Portland didn’t maintain people of excessive ambition and skills.”
After dinner, Vogel remembers Sondland offering a stroll across the road to Hotel Lucia, which Provenance had obtained years earlier than and full of splashy art. Vogel says he delivered her to personnel on the primary ground — the concierge, the doorman, the front table attendants — earlier than suggesting that she would possibly want to peer one of the rooms.
In Vogel’s memory, the room became small and mundane, but she made admiring comments before turning to open the door and let herself out while Sondland’s voice stopped her.
“I don't forget seeing my hand drop from the door manage,” she says. “I turned around, and he’s status proper in the back of me, and he says, ‘Can I just have a hug first?’”
So she did the best component she should think about to make certain a secure exit, giving him a hearty-returned-pat-we’re-all-pals-here hug.
“And as I pulled back, he grabs my face and is going to kiss me.”
Vogel deflected the kiss and brought out a well-practiced line, designed, she says, to maintain his ego: “I said, ‘Ooh Gordon, you’re a married man, and also you’d just ruin my coronary heart.’” She left through the hotel foyer, making sure to say good-bye to every person she’d been added to, so they’d all don't forget that she hadn’t been upstairs for greater than a couple of minutes.
Shortly after, Vogel’s records show, Sondland emailed her requesting a monetary analysis for her business plan. He blanketed a quick aside: “Sorry I became one of these dud.”
Afterward, Vogel confided in a friend, Craig Sweitzer, and her sister, each of whom confirmed her account. “I assume she was simply exhausted,” Lorrie Vogel says. “All you’re trying to do is lift funding for some thing, and also you’re appalled that human beings could use their electricity to try to take gain of you.”
Sondland and Vogel had a 2d lunch on the calendar for some weeks later to hammer out information of the funding. Vogel says she determined to preserve the appointment, hoping the encounter at the Lucia were a temporary lapse in judgment.
Vogel and Sondland had offices within the identical neighborhood, Portland’s contemporary Pearl District, that is full of warehouses-turned-galleries, shops and many eating places. Instead of going to lunch there, Vogel recalls Sondland showed up in a vintage convertible and drove them to an out-of-the-way restaurant eight miles away, throughout two rivers.
Vogel remembers little of the meal itself, however she recollects the power lower back nicely. She says Sondland positioned his hand on her midthigh and left it there for 10 or so minutes. She clamped her very own hand on pinnacle of his so he couldn’t move it any farther up her thigh. They spent the relaxation of the experience in silence.
“God, I would love to have told him to shove it. To have kneed him within the balls,” she says. “But I didn’t try this. It became precarious.” She knew that having her fledgling mag in Sondland’s motel rooms, accomplishing hundreds of visitors, might increase readership numbers and advert charges.
Then, just days earlier than she turned into due to close her first spherical of financing, Sondland sent an e-mail, changing the terms on his funding.
“Nicole,” Sondland’s e mail started. “After further mirrored image on this possibility, I have come to the particular end that this may be a ‘exertions of love’ funding, at least at the start. In checking in addition, I even have determined that the Lucia cannot take part underneath your very creative structure.”
Sondland’s attorney disputes that the turnabout turned into prompted by way of something apart from commercial enterprise. “A decision not to invest can not fairly be characterized as retaliation,” McDermott wrote. “Ambassador Sondland, in truth, conducted lengthy due diligence about Ms. Vogel’s funding inspiration that included enlisting analyses from different local publishers, earlier than determining not to make investments.”
Vogel says that Sondland had been planning to install as a minimum $25,000, her minimal required funding. That money would have allowed Vogel to reach her marketing strategy’s intention of $300,000. Instead, Sondland stated within the electronic mail that he could decide to $10,000 and would simplest accomplish that if Vogel raised a further $a hundred,000.
Vogel says she ended up emptying her very own financial institution account to make up for Sondland’s reversal, and the mag went forward with out him. Today, she runs magazines in six states.
In his letter denying the ladies’s money owed, Sondland’s attorney wrote:
As you are possible conscious, one of the three complainants, Nicole Vogel, is the proprietor and writer of the Portland Monthly. She and her e-book stand to benefit at once from publishing these allegations, and Ms. Vogel’s delay in bringing those ahead — while Ambassador Sondland turned into undergoing public scrutiny through Congress as part of his confirmation in 2018 — casts grave doubt on her credibility. Indeed, we apprehend that Portland Monthly is underneath considerable economic strain and Ms. Vogel’s efforts seem designed to salvage it.
Vogel says the only cause she has shared her story is due to the fact “it feels like the right element to do.” Vogel provides that she “can’t believe a situation in which there's a monetary gain to Portland Monthly from this tale.” The mag, which Vogel says has been worthwhile this yr, was lengthy placed in rooms in Sondland’s accommodations in each Portland and Seattle. Vogel says she determined last week to stop placing the magazines there. Halting that association hurts the mag’s attain, says the magazine’s publisher.
Sondland’s attorney additionally wrote:
You should realize that Ms. Vogel is a near accomplice of Rep. Earl Blumenauer who has maligned Ambassador Sondland and threatened his organisation, misconduct this is now the problem of a Congressional Ethics Office grievance. Congressman Blumenauer is likewise a vocal critic of the Trump Administration.
Vogel says she has no relationship with the congressman. Blumenauer did once in a while make contributions to the magazine, which is noted on considered one of Vogel’s pages on the website. The ethics grievance became filed by using Provenance in response to Blumenauer calling for a boycott of Sondland’s business enterprise. The congressman did this after Sondland first of all declined to testify within the impeachment inquiry. When Sondland did in the long run testify publicly, undercutting the president’s defense, Blumenauer praised him.
Jana Solis met Sondland in 2008. Solis, who went via Janice Schnabel on the time, worked as a hospitality protection engineer for New York City-based coverage giant Marsh & McLennan, creating risk management plans and comparing the protection of eating places and hotels. The govt additionally every so often pitched clients to signal with the enterprise. (Solis first of all misremembered the 12 months she met Sondland as 2003 or 2004. She reviewed her statistics after Sondland’s lawyer referred to that Marsh’s paintings with Provenance started out in 2008.)
Knowing that Solis had revel in inside the lodge industry, a colleague asked her to take a meeting with Sondland, a lunch at Pazzo Ristorante, the Italian mainstay at what was then the Hotel Vintage Plaza.
“He became flirting via the lunch, and finally ends up just pronouncing, ‘OK, I’ve heard sufficient,’” Solis recollects. “‘You’re employed. Congratulations. You’re my new motel chick.’”
Then, at the way out, Solis remembers that Sondland “slap[ped] me on the a** and stated, ‘I look forward to running with you.’”
Sondland’s legal professional wrote that Sondland rejects that account: “Ambassador Sondland denies slapping Ms. Solis at the rear stop.”
Next, Sondland asked she visit his home, in order that she could compare his non-public artwork collection. Solis wasn’t trained in art valuations, but she agreed to visit his home, she says, to keep the business account intact. She changed into difficult, she figured, after years spent working in industries like production.
The toured Sondland’s domestic in Portland’s unique West Hills, Solis making notes approximately the paintings because the hotelier confirmed off photographs of himself with then-President George W. Bush and Bush’s dog. And then, she recalls, he advised her there was even extra of his collection to see in the pool house. She’d meet him there, she said, excusing herself each to go to the rest room and map out a ability exit strategy.
“I get out to the pool house, and he is now naked from the waist down,” Solis recalls. “He said some thing approximately, ‘I notion we ought to chat.’ And I said something, seeking to preserve his ego intact — no longer that he needed that, now not that it wouldn’t had been besides — I stated something like, ‘I can’t have that verbal exchange.’”
Solis recollects apologizing, saying she was sorry if she’d given Sondland the wrong impression. She wanted to hold the commercial enterprise dating and not jeopardize her senior role at a task she loved. Also, he became her journey domestic: “I concept, ‘I need to keep myself intact and get out,’” she recollects. “So that’s what you do, apologize.”
“So he’s like, ‘Well, I just concept we should have a few amusing, but you understand, it’s cool.’”
Sondland positioned his pants returned on. Then he drove her again to downtown Portland, but now not earlier than, in Solis’ reminiscence, he made one greater request: “Can I have a hug?”
It wasn’t Solis’ closing come across with Sondland. A few months later, she turned into tasked with examining and conserving body of workers schooling sessions at his resort houses, which include the Roosevelt Hotel in Seattle (now renamed the Hotel Theodore), where Sondland maintains a penthouse condo.
“And the final day I was there doing the education, he said, ‘I want you to look the penthouse as nicely.’” She didn’t are aware of it became his private dwelling quarters.
“So I’m appearing very expert, and I’m going over some of the things I assume he desires to deal with [as part of my inspection] and simply trying to stay down that street. [He says:] ‘Have a drink. Thanks for all you’ve executed this week.’”
Solis recalls sitting at the couch with him, having a glass of wine and hoping as tough as she may want to — praying — that it might go no in addition.
“The subsequent factor I understand, he’s all over me,” she remembers. “He’s on top of me. He’s kissing me, shoving his tongue down my throat. And I’m trying to wiggle out from under him, and the next issue you recognize, I’m kind of growing up to escape from him, and I fall over the lower back of the sofa.”
She remembers suddenly locating herself on the ground. “And I’m like: ‘Gordon, I’m no longer sure what else to mention. You recognize, I virtually, really want to do enterprise with you, however I’m now not sure we will. I don’t recognise what your problems are, but I am telling you, I cannot make them mine.’”
Sondland’s lawyer says the ambassador denies that happened. “Ambassador Sondland additionally denies exposing himself to her or forcibly kissing her,” he wrote. “We were capable of review Provenance’s statistics interacting with Ms. Solis’s agency, and at no time did she or her business enterprise bring any difficulty approximately Ambassador Sondland, his comportment, or the character of any business dealings he had with them or their employees.”
Solis’ former husband, Kevin Schnabel, recalls Solis became disenchanted whilst she arrived home from that experience. “One of the matters that constantly caught in my head is her remark that he literally had his tongue down [her] throat, [and as she was] trying to get away from him she had fallen over the returned of the couch,” Schnabel recollects. Solis also informed Schnabel her recollection of what occurred within the pool residence.
A few days later, Solis was lower back in her office, operating late, when the smartphone rang. She recollects Sondland turned into on the opposite give up, screaming at her over coverage troubles tangential to her process. “At the end of the day, it wasn’t approximately insurance. He changed into pissed. He didn’t get his manner [with me], and he changed into making it approximately paintings,” she says. “And he was making all of it my fault.”
Alone at her desk, Solis started to sob. She says a colleague found her there; he’d heard Sondland’s screams at the speakerphone from his workplace. The colleague, who declined to be named, says he noticed the incident. She “became emotional,” he says, “and concerned approximately what Marsh might assume if [she] lost the account over the problem.”
It became the final time Solis ever spoke with Sondland. Solis left the account. Provenance is currently a purchaser of Marsh. Today, she nonetheless works within the coverage industry and frequently travels the united states of america as a speaker and chief in her industry.
Sondland’s lawyer furnished an email that one of Solis’ colleagues at her contemporary corporation despatched to Provenance in 2016 pitching them on enterprise. The colleague wrote that he were referred through Solis.
Solis says she didn’t know about the e-mail. “You didn’t see me on the signature block, nor did you spot me copied on it,” she says. “I genuinely wouldn’t have directed him to Provenance and, at a minimum, absolutely could no longer have stated ‘use my name when you’re talking to Gordon.’ That’s a entire recipe for catastrophe.”
The 1/3 female who says she faced sexual misconduct by Sondland is Natalie Sept. In 2008, Sept moved home to Portland after a put up-college process teaching within the Chicago suburbs. Sept had usually been interested by politics and subsequently related with Portland City Council member Nick Fish, who become going for walks for reelection and wanted a fundraiser. He employed Sept, whose function ultimately accelerated to campaign supervisor.
After Fish won his 2010 election in a landslide, Sept had breakfast with him at the eating place of the Heathman Hotel (Provenance would upload the lodge to its portfolio in 2017), a common watering hole for Portland’s political magnificence. Sondland, who had donated to Fish, was at a nearby table.
Sept remembers that her boss brought her to Sondland and stated: “‘This is Natalie. She’s a growing big name.’” Intrigued, Sondland invited her to any other breakfast, this time at Gracie’s, the cavernous eating room on the Hotel deLuxe (Provenance sold the century-antique resort in 2004).
“So I’m speaking to him approximately sports and downtown economic improvement, and he’s telling me approximately the Oregon governor’s movie board doing a tour in LA, promising me huge opportunities, and the risk to paintings with the governor,” Sept recollects. In addition to being a first-rate benefactor of the art museum, Sondland was the chair of the film board.
“I become so starry-eyed about all of those institutions and people and strength related to these varieties of opportunities,” Sept says. “I was satisfied it was something he should assist me achieve.”
Soon after, Sept learned her path crisscrossed with Sondland’s in familial ways: Sondland had employed her uncle to color his residence, and her stepfather served with Sondland’s wife at the Oregon Investment Council. “I started out to sense truly comfortable,” Sept remembers. “We had a majority of these factors of connection. I thought, ‘I can believe this character.’”
Sondland invited Sept to dinner at El Gaucho, the identical spot he took Vogel, to speak about a capability task on the film workplace. Sept confirmed up in a business healthy, geared up to network. When she arrived, she located that Sondland had ordered them what she recollects as “the nicest bottle of wine” on the menu.
Sondland spent tons of the meal, Sept recollects, speakme about his circle of relatives and showing her pics of his kids at the White House with then-President Bush. (The former president had appointed Sondland to the Commission on White House Fellowships.) It wasn’t until the tail stop of the meal that the film workplace activity finally came up. So Sept agreed to keep the communication down the street at Saucebox, a cocktail bar.
Sept says she right now headed for the bar’s bathroom.
“When I come lower back, he's sitting on the booth aspect of this massive table,” she remembers. “He says, ‘Come take a seat next to me.’ And I notion, ‘Oh my god, this isn’t good.’ So I said, ‘Oh, I forgot, I ought to move home.’”
Sept says she apologized for slicing the evening brief. Sondland paid the tab after which supplied to stroll her to her vehicle. “He keeps insisting, and I’m frightened and afraid and I don’t need to make a scene, so I say, ‘OK, first-class,’” Sept says.
At her automobile, Sept says, Sondland leaned in for a hug.
“So I deliver him a brief hug and he holds onto my shoulders and looks at me and pushes himself into me and attempts to kiss me.”
Sept says she driven him to the aspect, were given into her automobile and sped off. The subsequent day, trying to be the conscientious professional, she despatched a observe-up email scheduling Sondland for a meeting with Fish.
“What turned into most essential was that I keep professionalism. I didn’t need him to think I changed into frazzled with the aid of this,” she says.
In response to Sept’s account, Sondland’s lawyer wrote: “Ambassador Sondland did talk Ms. Sept’s process prospects together with her, however he denies any undesirable touching. He in particular denies attempting to kiss her, at the side of her declare that she pushed him away.”
Soon after Sept’s come across, she told a friend in nearby government approximately the incident. “She became shaken up,” says the pal, who declined to be identified. “That type of conduct is shocking and should be surprising, and that’s how she reacted.”
Sept by no means heard from Sondland again approximately the nation film commission activity. She went directly to work for distinguished Democratic politicians, along with on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016.
In his assertion, Sondland stated he has by no means been aware about any accusations of undesirable touching or kissing towards him. “There has by no means been mention of them in any shape during the period of the allegations,” he wrote, “even though one of these complaint could easily have been aired through multiple channels. These fake incidents are at odds with my character.”
Sondland might have remained a Northwest strength participant, if now not for his attention on turning into an envoy, reportedly an entire life purpose.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Sondland had pulled far from Trump, removing his call as one of the hosts of a Seattle fundraiser after Trump ridiculed the Muslim circle of relatives of a slain U.S. Soldier. He initially supported Jeb Bush’s presidential marketing campaign. But whilst Trump changed into elected, Sondland donated $1 million to his inaugural committee.
Sondland’s dream of being an envoy was found out while Trump nominated him to be ambassador to the European Union in May 2018, the contemporary in a line of political donors named to the location.
Sondland has given hundreds of heaps of dollars in election marketing campaign donations to commonly Republican applicants and reasons. But he’s additionally donated to various Democrats, along with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.
Wyden spoke in guide of Sondland during his affirmation hearings. The senator stated he’s regarded “Gordy” for more than 25 years and said he expected that Sondland might constitute “the Oregon way,” which Wyden described as “being concerned approximately human beings, having a very good coronary heart.”
The Senate accredited Sondland’s nomination through a voice vote.
This fall, Vogel changed into driving to work, taking note of NPR, whilst she heard “Morning Edition” co-host Rachel Martin detailing Sondland’s involvement within the impeachment inquiry.
“Was there a quid seasoned quo?” Martin requested. “And did Sondland make it appear?”
Vogel started out to cry in her car.
“I’m any person who has type of laughed it off and rolled my eyes and said, ‘What a jerk,’ these kind of years, and all at once I’m crying in my vehicle?” she says. “What the hell? That doesn’t sound like me.” She recalls wondering at that second approximately the transactional nature of Sondland’s Ukraine venture and noticed it as a painful reminder of her personal enjoy.
“The reality that [Sondland] uses his energy to terrorize folks that he perceives as having less energy is absolutely disgusting,” Sept says. “I want other girls to sense comfortable to share their tales, and be believed.”
“I would hate to see every person else undergo it. This runs to date beyond only a little groping. It influences how I do commercial enterprise. And who I can do business with,” says Solis. So if speakme “is the proper aspect to do, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
She wishes her kids to recognise “what mom did what turned into proper, that I had a feel of self and a sturdy individual. And I want my individual to be discovered to human beings in a positive way and in a way this is brave to the diploma that I can be.”
Marty Patail and Conner Reed contributed to this report.
Do you've got records about Ambassador Sondland? Contact Portland Monthly’s Fiona McCann and Julia Silverman, and ProPublica’s Maryam Jameel. You can reach Maryam on Signal at 202-681-0779.