Those who’ve followed the Ukraine scandal are familiar by now with Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union. He’s a key player in the alleged scheme to subvert President Donald Trump’s political opponents by coercing Ukraine into launching sham investigations. Unlike many of the other figures in the scandal, Sondland is not a real diplomat. He got a plum ambassadorship in Europe the old-fashioned way: by donating more than $1 million to the president’s campaign and inaugural committee.

This is not some great secret. A relatively brief biography from The Washington Post, published earlier this month, found more space to discuss his history of funding various GOP candidates than Sondland’s own business dealings. When he testified before Congress a few weeks later, The New York Times described Sondland, who is an Oregon hotelier by trade, as “a Trump campaign donor” on second reference, as if that were his actual profession. The Wall Street Journal unsparingly summarized him as “a Republican donor and former hotel executive with no diplomatic experience before his Brussels posting.”

Some of Trump’s corruption is without precedent in modern American history. But rewarding high-dollar financial backers with diplomatic posts around the world is an all-too-familiar bipartisan tradition in Washington. Barack Obama nominated dozens of top Democratic donors to represent the United States in foreign capitals, as did George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton before him. This is an unseemly practice even in the best of circumstances. And while ending it should not be the biggest takeaway from the Ukraine scandal, it should still be one of them, because it is an embarrassment to the country.

In fairness to Sondland, his path to his ambassadorship isn’t an unusual one in the Trump administration. In April 2017, NBC News reported that Trump had already nominated at least 14 ambassadors who had donated to his inaugural committee. The average donation was around $350,000, a figure that’s slightly skewed by some of the biggest contributors. Jamie McCourt, the former Los Angeles Dodgers owner who now serves as the U.S. ambassador to France, donated roughly $50,000. Kelly Knight Craft, who served first in Canada and then at the United Nations, donated $1 million alongside her husband. Sondland contributed the same amount.

Not all of Trump’s non-career ambassadors gave him money. Some of the most important posts have gone to other elected officials. Jon Huntsman and Terry Branstad, who respectively serve as ambassadors to Russia and China, previously served as governors. So did Nikki Haley, who represented the U.S. at the United Nations until earlier this year. Scott Brown, the current ambassador to New Zealand, is a former Massachusetts senator. But even key diplomatic posts aren’t off-limits to those who’ve made financial contributions: David Friedman, who donated $50,000 to the Trump campaign and the RNC in 2016, currently serves as U.S. ambassador to Israel.