By May 23, everyone knew that Giuliani wanted the Ukrainians to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. On May 9, The New York Times ran an article headlined, “Rudy Giuliani Plans Ukraine Trip to Push for Inquiries That Could Help Trump,” which described his search for dirt on the Bidens. (“There’s nothing illegal about it,” Giuliani told The Time s. “Somebody could say it’s improper.”) The next day a CNN piece was headlined, “Giuliani Defends Going to Ukraine to Press for Investigations Connected to Biden.” As the controversy grew, Giuliani canceled the trip.

So while it may be a mistake to overestimate the acuity of Trump appointees, it’s probably safe to say that Sondland knew exactly what he was involved with.

He tried to play the naïf elsewhere in his testimony as well. Toward the end of his statement, he condemned the idea of a president leveraging military aid to get a foreign government to help him politically. “Withholding foreign aid in order to pressure a foreign government to take such steps would be wrong,” he said. “I did not and would not ever participate in such undertakings.”

The record suggests he did. In July, the former national security adviser John Bolton reportedly told his aide Fiona Hill, “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.” And as Sondland testified behind closed doors, Mick Mulvaney, the White House acting chief of staff, appeared at a manic, combative news conference and made it clear what said drug deal involved.

One reason military aid to Ukraine was temporarily frozen, Mulvaney said, was that Trump wanted the country to investigate a conspiracy theory that Ukraine intervened in the 2016 election. “The look-back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation,” Mulvaney said. He added, sneering: “Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.”

It’s a common Trumpist strategy to brazenly admit crimes in public, disorienting people through sheer shamelessness. It’s also common for Trumpists to do what Mulvaney did a few hours later, when he issued a statement denying that he’d said what we all heard him say. (“Once again, the media has decided to misconstrue my comments to advance a biased and political witch hunt against President Trump,” Mulvaney wrote.)

But Sondland’s not really a Trumpist. Based on news reports, he mostly just seems like an insecure opportunist. According to The Post, Sondland had envied some of his rich friends who’d been given ambassadorships in the past, and coveted one of his own. I can understand the longing for honor and status. What confounds me is how anyone could think that working for Trump might provide these things, and not see that any title achieved in this crime-syndicate administration will always come with an asterisk after it, or worse.