Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who oversees Ukraine policy at the White House, is to appear before impeachment investigators Tuesday.
A senior White House official plans to tell House impeachment investigators on Tuesday that he believed President Donald Trump undermined U.S. national security when he appealed to Ukraine’s president to investigate his political rivals, according to a copy of his opening statement obtained by POLITICO.
“I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine,” Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official overseeing Ukraine policy, plans to tell investigators, referring to Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into Joe Biden and his son.
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council staffer set to deliver dramatic testimony confirming that President Donald Trump sought dirt on a political rival from Ukraine, is a Jewish refugee from that country when it was part of the Soviet Union.
“I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine,” Vindman, an army officer and the top NSC official handling Ukraine, says in testimony posted Monday evening by the New York Times, which he is set to deliver to congressional investigators on Tuesday.
Trump has denied that he sought a quid pro quo in a July phone call with the Ukraine president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he asked the Ukrainian to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. Trump simultaneously was withholding close to $400 million in congressionally approved defense assistance to Ukraine. Trump released the assistance last month, and has insisted that it was not withheld as a means of pressuring Ukraine to seek dirt on the Bidens.
Vindman, who listened in on the conversation in his official capacity, would be the first whistleblower to have first-hand knowledge of the call.
Looks like the GOP strategy is to malign anyone who speaks up. If they don't bow down to the Orange One, they are (pick one) Never Trumpers, traitors, spies, or Democrats.
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New CNN hire Sean Duffy launched an extraordinary attack on Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, saying the fact he was born in Ukraine may have been a factor in his decision to report concerns about President Trump’s July telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The former Wisconsin GOP congressman appeared on CNN’s New Day hours before Vindman is set to become the first sitting White House official to testify in the impeachment inquiry into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. Vindman is the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council and is expected to tell House investigators that he was so alarmed by what he heard on Trump’s call to Zelensky that he felt obliged to reported it to one of his superiors.
Vindman—and his twin, who also works for the NSC—was born in Ukraine but left for the U.S. when they were 3 years old, according to a profile of him published by The New York Times on Tuesday. That fact raised alarmed for Duffy, who appears to have doubts over whether Vindman had America’s best interests in mind when reporting the call.
Sean Duffy on CNN on Army Lt. Col. 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." pic.twitter.com/dlsYlTnCwR — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 29, 2019
“It seems very clear that [Vindman] is incredibly concerned about Ukrainian defense,” he said. “I don’t know about his concern [for] American policy, but his main mission was to make sure the Ukraine got those weapons. I understand it: We all have an affinity to our homeland where we came from. Like me, I’m sure that Vindman has the same affinity.”
Asked if he would put the defense of his ancestral homeland of Ireland ahead of America’s, Duffy ignored the question and said: “He’s entitled to his opinion, he has an affinity, I think, for the Ukraine, he speaks Ukrainian, he came from the country, and he wants to make sure they’re safe and free.”
He added: “I understand that, but my point is the president is the one who gets to set the policy and he’s the one that looks out for America first, and the American taxpayer, and American citizens.”
Ingraham clearly has no experience with multilingualism. Speaking in what is peoples' native language is pretty common...happens all the time when I meet up with fellow Lithuanians. It is *so* easy to drop into the language that's most comfortable.
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Duffy’s comments echoed those made by Fox News host Laura Ingraham and two of her guests Monday night, when they suggested that Vindman is guilty of “espionage” and could be a Ukrainian double agent. During a panel discussion on The Ingraham Angle, Ingraham said she found it unusual that Vindman occasionally spoke to Ukrainian officials in their language.
The Fox News host said: “Here we have a U.S. national-security official who is advising Ukraine, while working inside the White House, apparently against the president’s interest, and usually, they spoke in English. Isn’t that kind of an interesting angle on this story?”
Not everyone in the GOP is subscribing to the strategy....
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Republicans may quibble with the substance of Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman’s testimony as they try to protect President Donald Trump from the fast-moving impeachment inquiry. But congressional GOP leaders say it’s out of bounds to attack Vindman’s patriotism and allegiance to the United States, as some conservative pundits did on Monday night.
A pair of high-ranking Republicans on Tuesday made emphatic statements in defense of Vindman, a National Security Council official who heard Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president and testified that it was improper for the president to demand an investigation into Joe Biden and a threat to U.S. national security.
“That guy’s a Purple Heart. I think it would be a mistake to attack his credibility,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican, in an interview. “You can obviously take issue with the substance and there are different interpretations about all that stuff. But I wouldn’t go after him personally. He’s a patriot.”
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), one of the most hawkish Republicans in the House and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said it would be “shameful” to question Vindman’s loyalty or patriotism to the country.
Cheney wasn’t even pressed by reporters on the topic; in her opening remarks during a weekly leadership news conference in the Capitol, she went out of her way to decry the attacks on Vindman, including the outlandish theory that he was a potential spy working against the United States.
“We need to show that we are better than that as a nation,” said Cheney, the third-ranking House Republican. “We’re talking about decorated veterans who have served this nation, who put their lives on the line. And it is shameful to question their patriotism, their love of this nation, and we should not be involved in this process.”
Vindman says there are omissions in the White House-released rough transcript of the conversation with the Ukrainian president. He was one of the people who reviewed it before it was released, he added some of the missing parts, but his edits didn't find their way into the version that was publicly released.
-------------------------------- When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier
Posts: 38222 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010
Whoever redacted the document that way needs to face an investigation for potential obstruction. When the next president assumes office, we need a thorough house cleaning of the government with the potential for lots of trials (and lots of banana republic charges slung around by Republicans), or a South Africa-style truth commission that forces people to publicly confess their illegal misdeeds in exchange for public "forgiveness," i.e. no jail time.
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Ingraham clearly has no experience with multilingualism. Speaking in what is peoples' native language is pretty common...happens all the time when I meet up with fellow Lithuanians. It is *so* easy to drop into the language that's most comfortable.
That "journalist" is so well-paired with our stable genius president. What a marvelous brain she has. Such a wealth of experience and insight. So subtle is her thinking. So measured is her tone, and so wise and tempered in her judgment.
Posts: 12759 | Location: Williamsburg, VA | Registered: 19 July 2005
