During Gordon Sondland's public testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, Republican counsel Stephen Castor asked whether President Trump considered targeting other companies in his supposed anti-corruption push in Ukraine. The ambassador to the European Union mentioned that Naftogaz came up frequently.

Of course Naftogaz was on Trump's mind. Rudy Giuliani's criminal cronies, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, managed to push their moneymaking scheme targeting the national oil company to the upper echelon of our foreign policy.

Unlike Burisma Holdings, which came under global scrutiny for its pro-Putin corruption, Naftogaz has cleaned house. American Amos Hochstein, who pushed the Obama administration to get tougher on Burisma, sits on Naftogaz's supervisory board, which is appointed in part by the International Monetary Fund. That Trump mentioned Burisma, an obviously corrupt pro-Putin company, in the same breath as Naftogaz, a reputable one, calls into question his stated motivation of combating corruption.

It's increasingly evident that Parnas and Fruman got Trump to turn on former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch at the same time they were scheming to make money in Ukraine. A part of that scheme involved trying — and failing — to replace Naftogaz's CEO with someone more amenable to their business interests. And now, Giuliani may be further implicated in that aspect of that plan, as investigators are now questioning whether the former mayor also had financial interests in tinkering with Naftogaz.

Naftogaz has kept its nose clean. That makes even stranger the reports that Rick Perry pushed to oust Hochstein, a key witness to Zelensky's thoughts about the Trump administration, from the company's supervisory board. If Trump really was concerned about corruption, wouldn't he want a corruption hawk-like Hochstein keeping an eye on a formerly unethical company?

Sondland's concession leaves us with two key facts. First, Parnas and Fruman had outsize influence on U.S. foreign policy. And second, Trump's "anti-corruption defense" looks weaker and weaker.