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But Vindman said he doesn't know the identity of the whistleblower, right?

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Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the former National Security Council aide and impeachment witness President Donald Trump fired Friday, was just doing his job, former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told students and guests at a Drew University event here Wednesday night.

Over a 75-minute speech and Q&A session, Kelly laid out, in the clearest terms yet, his misgivings about Trump’s words and actions regarding North Korea, illegal immigration, military discipline, Ukraine, and the news media.

Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, said that Vindman is blameless and was simply following the training he’d received as a soldier; migrants are “overwhelmingly good people” and “not all rapists”; and Trump’s decision to condition military aid to Ukraine on an investigation into his political rival Joe Biden upended long-standing U.S. policy.

Vindman was rightly disturbed by Trump’s phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in July, Kelly suggested: Having seen something “questionable,” Vindman properly notified his superiors, Kelly said. Vindman, who specialized in Ukraine policy at the National Security Council at the time, was among multiple U.S. officials who listened in on the call. When subpoenaed by Congress in the House impeachment hearings, Vindman complied and told the truth, Kelly said.
“He did exactly what we teach them to do from cradle to grave,” Kelly told the audience at the Mayo Performing Arts Center. “He went and told his boss what he just heard.”

Although Trump has long insisted that his call to Zelensky was “perfect,” Kelly made clear that Trump indeed conditioned military aid on Zelensky’s help digging up dirt on the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

That amounted to a momentous change in U.S. policy toward Ukraine—one that Vindman was right to flag, because other federal agencies needed to know about the shift, Kelly said.

“Through the Obama administration up until that phone call, the policy of the U.S. was militarily to support Ukraine in their defensive fight against … the Russians,” Kelly said. “And so, when the president said that continued support would be based on X, that essentially changed. And that’s what that guy [Vindman] was most interested in.”

When Vindman heard the president tell Zelensky he wanted to see the Biden family investigated, that was tantamount to hearing “an illegal order,” Kelly said. “We teach them, ‘Don’t follow an illegal order. And if you’re ever given one, you’ll raise it to whoever gives it to you that this is an illegal order, and then tell your boss.’”

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The U.S. Army said it has no plans to investigate Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, after President Trump earlier this week suggested the former White House aide who voiced concerns about his actions toward Ukraine should face disciplinary action.

Ryan McCarthy, the secretary of the Army, said Col. Vindman would return to the Army and be given a “bridging assignment” before heading to school in a few months. “He will be heading to a senior service college this summer,” Mr. McCarthy said, speaking at a National Press Club luncheon in Washington Friday. “There’s no investigation into him.”

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ELAINE McCUSKER is a professional. A career civil servant specializing in the technical but crucial area of defense budgeting and finance, with prior experience in academia, the private sector and the Senate Armed Services Committee, she was a logical choice for the office to which President Trump elevated her in 2017: deputy comptroller of the Defense Department. She also was amply qualified for promotion to comptroller, a nomination Mr. Trump submitted to the Senate last November.

Yet she will not be getting the job after all — the latest public servant of integrity to face career consequences in apparent retaliation for Mr. Trump’s impeachment over allegations that he abused his power by withholding military aid from Ukraine to force Kyiv to investigate his political rival, former vice president Joe Biden.

Ms. McCusker played no known role, direct or indirect, in bringing that misconduct to the House of Representatives’ attention. All she did, while serving last year as acting Pentagon comptroller, was to tell the White House, via internal emails, that its holdup of the nearly $400 million Ukraine aid package might violate federal law, possibly causing the appropriations to lapse. She reacted with exasperated incredulity when an Office of Management and Budget official, Michael P. Duffey, tried to blame her for putting the funds at risk. In a September email, one of a series made public by Just Security, a website specializing in foreign affairs and defense policy, Ms. McCusker wrote, “You can’t be serious. I am speechless.”

Now the White House has confirmed that her nomination for comptroller has been withdrawn. There was no explanation offered. No doubt the White House did not relish a confirmation hearing at which Ms. McCusker would have had to testify about the Ukraine matter; equally plausibly, Mr. Trump is continuing his campaign of post-impeachment payback that has already resulted in the unceremonious ouster of Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman from the National Security Council staff, Gordon Sondland being recalled as ambassador to the European Union and the withdrawal of former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Jessie K. Liu’s appointment for a top Treasury Department post, reportedly in part because of her hesitancy to indict former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe. Axios has reported that Trump political loyalists inside and outside government are drawing up lists of officials deemed questionably loyal and targeting them for replacement.