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GORDON SONDLAND
AGE: 66
BEST KNOWN FOR: Deal-making for President Trump, then flipping on him.
Alt-country legend k.d. lang once described herself as “a hell of a lot more famous than I am rich.” For most of Gordon Sondland’s career he was the opposite: Never a household name, the CEO of Provenance Hotels was a pillar of Portland’s moneyed establishment behind the scenes and a major political donor.
His most fateful donation, however, would be the $1 million he quietly gave to Donald Trump’s presidential inaugural committee after the 2016 election. Shortly after receiving Sondland’s largesse, Trump realized the hotelier was in fact America’s best-qualified candidate for ambassador to the European Union. What a crazy coincidence!
Shortly after taking office in 2018, Sondland would be caught up in the military-support-in-exchange-for-dirt-on-the-Bidens deal Trump and his then-chief of staff Mick Mulvaney were trying to force on Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenskyy. (This is the plot National Security Adviser John Bolton meant when he said, “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”)
A diplomatic novice, Sondland was arguably careless in allowing a phone conversation with Trump to be overheard that brought the whole scheme to light, ultimately leading to Trump Impeachment I. After a brief, seemingly half-hearted attempt at stonewalling, Sondland became a star witness for the prosecution in the impeachment inquiry, telling the committee that “yes, there was” a quid pro quo.
For reasons that now seem as ancient and frightening as a Robert Mueller votive candle, Sondland’s smirking testimony in 2019 made him a brief #Resistance star—a funny reversal of fortune from the protests that once clogged the valet parking at his Portland hotels. (The goodwill was short-lived; three weeks later, Portland Monthly and ProPublica published the accounts of three women, including the magazine’s editor, who said Sondland made unwanted sexual advances in the workplace. He denies the allegations and calls the reporting “deceitful.”)
Today, Sondland has largely receded into the diamond-encrusted shadows he occupied before his brush with fame. He has kept one souvenir from his time in the Trump administration, however: an ongoing lawsuit against former CIA director Mike Pompeo (and others) for reneging on a promise to cover his impeachment-related legal bills.
In 2022, he and his wife, Katy Durant, divorced. Sondland and Durant sold the operating division of Provenance for an undisclosed (but probably pretty large) sum. The hotel business has grown unpleasant, Sondland writes in his memoir: “It was if a massive fire, earthquake, tsunami, or tornado had struck in every city where we owned property. Simultaneously.”
He moved to Fort Lauderdale. Attempts to reach Sondland through his attorney and his hotels were unsuccessful.
But it’s possible to divine what he learned from his adventures by reading his memoir, The Envoy: Mastering the Art of Diplomacy with Trump and the World. In it, he reflects: “I usually love the limelight, but once I found myself in the press globally and relentlessly, I realized I previously had no idea of the pressure it brings. I don’t wish the experience on anyone. And yes, I brought it upon myself.”
Still, Sondland says he’ll be fine. “Life goes on,” he writes, “and so will I.”