Tag: Lt. Col. Vindman

Impeachment witnesses ousted amid fears of Trump revenge campaign

The removal of Vindman and Sondland came after a promise of “payback” by White House officials.

The purge of impeachment witnesses has begun.

Within hours of each other, President Donald Trump and the White House removed two of the most crucial witnesses against the president in the investigation that led to his impeachment for abuse of power.

Late Friday, news emerged that Trump had ordered the recall of Gordon Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union — “effective immediately,” the ambassador noted in a statement. Hours earlier, the White House escorted out Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the top Ukraine policy officer on the National Security Counsel — along with his twin brother Yevgeny, who was not an impeachment witness. Continue reading.

Impeachment witness Alexander Vindman escorted from White House

The Hill logoLt. Col. Alexander Vindman was escorted out of the White House on Friday and told to leave his position at the National Security Council (NSC), according to a statement released by his attorney.

Vindman was one of the key witnesses who testified in connection with the House impeachment inquiry about President Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president during which Trump raised investigations of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine.

“There is no question in the mind of any American why this man’s job is over, why this country now has one less soldier serving it at the White House,” David Pressman, Vindman’s attorney, said in a statement. “LTC Vindman was asked to leave for telling the truth. His honor, his commitment to right, frightened the powerful.” Continue reading.

‘Smoking gun so hot it’s still on fire’: Former US attorney astonished by text shown in Vindman testimony

AlterNet logoA former U.S. Attorney says Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman has delivered “smoking gun” evidence of a quid pro quo arrangement between President Donald Trump and Ukraine.

The National Security Council staffer told a House impeachment inquiry that he was aware of — and alarmed by — efforts as early as March to pressure Ukraine to announce an investigation of Joe Biden and his son, which he believed were conducted to deliver a political benefit the president.

The counsel for House Democrats then showed a text sent 30 minutes before Trump’s July 25 call to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, which shows the special envoy Kurt Volker dangling a White House visit to a Zelensky aide in exchange for an investigation.

View the complete November 19 article by Travis Gettys from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Trump said his Ukraine call was ‘perfect.’ Impeachment witnesses testified otherwise.

Washington Post logoThree current and former Trump administration officials described Tuesday how they harbored a variety of concerns surrounding a July phone call in which President Trump pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate former vice president Joe Biden — boosting Democrats’ inquiry into whether Trump should be impeached and substantially undercutting the president’s assertion that the conversation was “perfect.”

Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been at the heart of Democrats’ impeachment investigation, and on Tuesday, they solicited public testimony from the trio of firsthand witnesses, who had been tasked with listening in.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council’s European affairs director, said he considered the president’s demand of the Ukrainian leader “inappropriate,” because it could have “significant national security implications” for the United States.

View the complete November 19 article by Karoun Demirjian, Mike DeBonis and Matt Zapotosky on The Washington Post website here.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman to be rotated off National Security Council

AlterNet logoEditor’s note: The headline of this article has been updated to more accurately reflect Vidman’s pending departure from the NSC:

2/ agencies and they eventually go back. That’s true as far as it goes. But he was asked a pretty specific question about whether Vindman was losing his job over the testimony. If he is not it’s pretty easy to say, no he’s not. No NSC appointments from any of these agencies …

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 11, 2019

Original article below:

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified on October 29 concerning his reaction to Donald Trump’s phone call to Ukrainian President Zelensky, was removed from the National Security Council on Sunday. In an interview on CBS “Face the Nation,”  National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, who replaced John Bolton in that position in September, said that Vindman would be leaving his position along with several others as part of a “streamlining” of the National Security Council. Continue reading “Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman to be rotated off National Security Council”

Conservative columnist explains how Sean Duffy’s knee-jerk attack on Alexander Vindman exposed Trumpism’s moral bankruptcy

AlterNet logoA clickbait headline in The Bulwark reads, “In Praise of Sean Duffy.” Because the publication is The Bulwark — which anti-Trump conservatives Bill Kristol and Charles Sykes founded in December 2018 — and former Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy is stridently pro-Trump, one naturally assumes that the headline is being used ironically. And sure enough, it is: although the article, written by Sykes, chastises Duffy for shamelessly smearing Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, it also stresses that the far-right Republican and Trump sycophant did the political world a favor by exposing how morally bankrupt Trumpism is.

On Tuesday, Vindman, who served on the National Security Council, testified on Capitol Hill at a closed-door hearing held in connection with House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. Duffy, a former reality television star and CNN contributor, followed the lead of Fox News’ Laura Ingraham and reflexively smeared Vindman.

This week on CNN, Duffy said of Vindman, “it seems very clear that he is incredibly concerned about Ukrainian defense. I don’t know that he’s concerned about American policy…. We all have an affinity to our homeland where we came from…. He has an affinity for the Ukraine.”

View the complete October 30 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Meet Alexander Vindman, the Colonel Who Testified on Trump’s Phone Call

New York Times logoHe fled Ukraine at age 3 and became a soldier, scholar and official at the White House. That’s where, he told impeachment investigators, he witnessed alarming behavior by President Trump.

WASHINGTON — The twin brothers were 3 when they fled Ukraine, then a Soviet republic, with their father and grandmother, Jewish refugees with only their suitcases and $750, hoping for a better life in the United States.

In the 40 years since, the first-born twin, Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, has become a scholar, diplomat, decorated officer in the United States Army and Harvard-educated Ukraine expert on the White House’s National Security Council.

And on Tuesday, Colonel Vindman’s past and present converged as he became a star witness in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, which is centered on the president’s dealings with the colonel’s native Ukraine.

View the complete October 29 article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg on The New York Times website here.