I have problems with this story.
Who made the call, PDJT or Sondland? If PDJT, I would suspect that an aide or staff actually made the call and then would have handed the phone to PDJT. The call would be on a secure, encrypted phone. Sondland would have been aware that discussions in a public location, (a restaurant), do not provide a setting for confidential or sensitive discussions, and I can’t see Sondland taking a phone call from POTUS in a public place.
It would be more likely that he would explain where he was at the time and arrange for a call back when he was in a more private location. It is also highly unlikely that he would have made a call to PDJT until he was in a secure, private location.
The next issue is the alleged fact that the aide who was with Sondland could hear what PDJT said. That would mean that the phone, (cell phone), was on speaker. That scenario is almost too ridicules to even entertain. So I can’t buy the conversation of PDJT being able to be heard by the aide.
Now, it appears that this aide was siting at a table with Ukrainian diplomats/officials and Sondland when the alleged call occurred and that Sondland was so “negligent”that he had the phone on speaker in a public restaurant while in the company of foreign diplomats/officials.
Taylor made the revelation of the aide in his testimony Wednesday, stating that last Friday he was told about this incident. However, from the article we have this;
“Jayanti was in Washington last month and scheduled for a closed-door interview with impeachment investigators. But the deposition was canceled because of the funeral for former House Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings and has not yet been rescheduled.”
That says that the aide/staff member and Schiff’s committee staff had orchestrated this BS way earlier. And they have to drop it now since Taylor has been shot down because of hearsay. So, they need someone to testify to firsthand knowledge, but are making sure that it is a conversation that there will be no records of so that it can’t be easily refuted an becomes a he said, he said situation.
The fact that a call happened at all has records. I assume it was a cell phone and if it backed the story Schitt would be showing it on CNN.