House Intelligence Committee Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) chided the State Department for refusing to hand over a single document related to the impeachment investigation, arguing that new emails shared by Sondland on Wednesday morning show that State Secretary Mike Pompeo and Vice President Pence were in the know on a quid pro quo.

“As Ambassador Sondland’s opening statement today will make clear, those documents will bear directly on this investigation and this impeachment inquiry,” Schiff said. “The knowledge of this scheme was far and wide … We can see why Secretary Pompeo and President Trump has made such a concerted and across the board effort to obstruct this investigation and this impeachment inquiry.”

Schiff was referring to new emails cited in Sondland’s opening statement, where the ambassador is shown to be keeping Pompeo apprised of his demands on the Ukrainians.

“Everyone was in the loop,” he intends to say according to a copy of his opening statement. Schiff also said Trump and White House officials are stonewalling Congress “at their own peril,” noting that articles of impeachment could include a charge on obstruction of Congress.

Notably, Schiff did not chide Sondland for changing testimony he gave under oath behind closed doors several weeks ago. Sondland told impeachment investigators he was not aware of military aid being held up for the Biden investigations but later amended his statement to say he was the one who delivered such an ultimatum to Ukraine.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) has gaveled open the hearing and is delivering an opening statement.

White House lawyers pressed in recent days to learn from Sondland’s legal team what the ambassador would tell Congress about the president and claims of a “quid pro quo” in his much anticipated testimony today.

Sondland’s lawyers declined however to provide the White House with an early peek into the account that this key impeachment witness would give lawmakers about his interactions with the president.

Sondland’s testimony has been the subject of great speculation because of several other administration witnesses coming forward with accounts that directly contradict Sondland’s earlier claim that he knew of no pressure from Trump for Ukraine to investigate his Democratic opponent as a condition of releasing aid to Ukraine.

Witnesses have put Sondland at the center of conversations with Trump, including a July 26 call in which an aide overheard Trump telling Sondland he wanted an investigation of Biden and Sondland assuring him the Ukrainians would do what he wanted.

The White House efforts to learn what Sondland would say were described as cordial, but Sondland attorney Robert Luskin declined to provide descriptions of his client’s upcoming testimony, keeping a professional distance from the White House, according to a person familiar with the attempt, who requested anonymity to share private conversations.

Luskin declined to comment. The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Trump and his top advisers have seen Sondland as a “wild card,” according to one administration official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly.

Sondland planned to testify Wednesday more bluntly than he had before that Trump and his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani sought to condition an important White House invitation for Ukraine’s new president to demands that his country publicly launch investigations that could damage Trump’s Democratic political opponents.

“I know that members of this committee have frequently framed these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there a ‘quid pro quo?’” Sondland planned to say, according to prepared remarks. “With regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is yes.”

Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, also planned to tell the House Intelligence Committee that while he never knew for sure if the White House had frozen nearly $400 million in security assistance as part of the pressure campaign against Ukraine, he operated as if that was the case.

“In the absence of any credible explanation for the hold, I came to the conclusion that the aid, like the White House visit, was jeopardized,” Sondland said. “My belief was that if Ukraine did something to demonstrate a serious intention” to launch the investigations Trump wanted, “then the hold on military aid would be lifted.”

Sondland has arrived at the Longworth House Office Building ahead of his scheduled 9 a.m. appearance before the House Intelligence Committee.

Trump attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ahead of the latest open hearing in the impeachment inquiry.

“Nancy Pelosi will go down as the least productive Speaker of the House in history,” Trump wrote in a tweet in which he also asserted that Pelosi is “dominated” by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and other members of “the Squad,” a group of four minority liberal congresswomen, and “the Radical Left.”

Trump also suggested that the Democratic focus on impeachment has imperiled a new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada.

“Mexico and Canada, after waiting for 6 months to be approved, are ready to flee — and who can blame them? Too bad!” Trump wrote.

Pelosi recently said that House plans to take up the trade legislation “imminently.”

Trump is not likely to offer testimony in the Democratic-led probe, according to Pam Bondi, the former Florida state attorney general who was recently hired to work on impeachment-related messaging and other issues.

Her comments came two days after Trump said that he would “strongly consider” testifying in writing at the suggestion of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

“I know why he wants to testify,” Bondi said during an appearance on “CBS This Morning,” where she argued Trump had done nothing wrong regarding Ukraine.

But, she added: “Do I think it’s likely he’s going to testify? Probably not.”

She derided the impeachment inquiry as a “one-sided court.”

“No, the president should not testify,” Bondi said. “No human being should have to come in and prove their innocence.”

Trump lashed anew at the Democrat-led impeachment inquiry on Wednesday, characterizing it as part of a long-running “hoax” and claiming Democrats are attempting a “takedown” of the Republican Party.

Trump offered his commentary amid a fresh batch of tweets and retweets about the inquiry.

“The three year Hoax continues!” he wrote in one, implying that the probe of the Ukraine controversy was an extension of the investigation into possible coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russia in the 2016 presidential election.

“This is just an attempted takedown of the Republican Party by the Do Nothing Democrats,” Trump said in another tweet. “It will never work. #2020”

As impeachment testimony continues on Capitol Hill, Trump is planning to leave Washington Wednesday morning for Austin, where he is scheduled to tour Apple’s Mac Pro manufacturing plant and meet with Apple chief executive Tim Cook.

Among those expected to join Trump are his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, both senior White House advisers.

Trump is scheduled to depart at 10:45 a.m. When he leaves the White House, he frequently stops to field questions from reporters — including many recent ones about impeachment — before boarding Marine One. Trump is scheduled to return to the White House shortly before 8 p.m.

The House Intelligence Committee plans to hear from three witnesses Wednesday, including Sondland, who could tie Trump most directly to the effort to persuade Ukraine to launch investigations that might benefit him politically.

Sondland, a Trump donor who was rewarded with the job of U.S. ambassador to the European Union, was one of three political appointees chosen by Trump to drive his unofficial Ukraine policy.

Other witnesses have testified that Sondland spoke directly with Trump about conditioning U.S. military aid to Ukraine on an announcement by Zelensky about the investigations Trump sought.

Sondland was one of the first witnesses to testify behind closed-doors in the impeachment inquiry. After other State Department and White House officials pointed to Sondland as having communicated the alleged quid pro quo to Ukrainians, he issued a clarification to his testimony saying he subsequently recalled what he told the Ukrainians.

Sondland is scheduled to appear before the committee starting at 9 a.m.

Two additional witnesses are scheduled to appear in the afternoon: Laura Cooper, the special assistant secretary of defense for Russia and Ukraine, and David Hale, undersecretary of state for political affairs. Their testimony is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. but could be delayed depending on how long Sondland’s appearance lasts.

Cooper learned over the course of several days in the summer that U.S. military aid to the Ukraine had been put on hold for reasons that she and other officials found legally questionable.

Hale, the third-highest-ranking official at the State Department, may be able to shed more light on the dismissal of Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. She was forced from her post by Trump in May after an onslaught of online and conservative attacks questioning her loyalty.

Some of Trump’s allies have argued that his motivation for holding up almost $400 million in aid to Ukraine was his deep-seated concern about corruption — and that he needed to test the new Ukrainian administration’s dedication to rooting it out.

In persistent questioning during the House hearings, Republican lawmakers and their staff lawyer have pressed witnesses to agree that Ukraine has long had a corruption problem and to portray Trump’s desire to have Kyiv investigate his political rivals as fitting within that broader worry.

“Corruption is not just prevalent in Ukraine. It’s the system. Our president said time out, time out, let’s check out this new guy,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said last week, referring to Zelensky.

But while there is widespread agreement that Ukraine has long struggled with corruption, recent congressional testimony, along with interviews with officials who worked closely with the president, raise questions about how much Trump cared about corruption broadly in Ukraine as opposed to investigations that stood to benefit him politically.

In a spate of tweets and retweets Tuesday that stretched nearly until midnight, Trump offered his assessment of the day’s lengthy congressional testimony, calling it “a great day for Republicans,” and shared those of several allies.

That included a video featuring seven Republican members of the Tennessee congressional delegation in which they called the impeachment inquiry a “sham,” a “charade” and a distraction from working on legislation on trade, prescription drug prices and other issues.

“Thank you Tennessee,” Trump wrote.