‘Apolitical’ Alexander Vindman is happy he helped Biden win, coy about the whistleblower

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The retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the White House national security aide who ended the chain of events that led to the investigation and first impeachment of President Donald Trump, recently told an interviewer that if there was no whistleblower complaint against Trump in The deal with Ukraine , Vindman will not “let things stand.” Instead, Vindman said, he will devise other tactics to protect Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic rival for the presidency, from harm with Trump’s actions.

“What would happen if there was no whistleblower? What would I do?” Vindman asked himself in an interview with Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Lawings Institution podcast. Vindman said he wanted to testify against the president. But if there had been no questioning in congress to testify, Vindman said, “I would have either got my feet up and down or found another way to actually address the attack on our democratic system.”

Vindman, on a publicity tour for his new book Here, Right Matters, explained that in the late summer of 2019 he believed Trump was “on the brink” of success in forcing the President of Ukraine to Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation into corruption in Ukraine to include the questionable business dealings of Hunter Biden, son of the candidate who was addicted to Biden’s drugs. This is a vulnerable moment for the Democratic opponent. “I don’t know what I’m going to do in that case,” Vindman said. “But the current president, President Biden, is extremely vulnerable, and who knows if he will land as a Democratic nominee, because President Trump realizes his corrupt business.”

So Vindman was determined to act. As it happened, House Democrats gave Vindman the opportunity he wanted. Even though they know they can’t win Trump’s conviction in the Senate, their quick questioning of impeachment is somehow rushed up to compare to their second Trump impeachment in 2021 is intended to weaken the president who is heading towards his re -impeachment efforts. election in 2020. Vindman emerged as the star witness to that questioning, and when it was over, even though he was angry with the Senate for not convicting Trump, he was happy that he would play the role of keeping the campaign alive. by Biden and, ultimately, is about to defeat Trump

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His testimony, along with several others, Vindman said, was “the first crack, the first chip in the president’s claims of good governance … It brought to light for large areas of this country that the president is really a corrupt actor. “His testimony, Vindman said, along with the strain of the Covid pandemic as well as racial unrest,” came together to allow President Biden to defeat President Trump. “

“We contributed there,” Vindman told Lawfare, with a touch of pride. “We public servants, the antibodies against corruption, contributed to that. And then the public, the citizenship of the United States, held the president accountable where the Senate failed. And that, I think, was a success. “

At that point in the conversation, Wittes asked. Trump supporters will say that what Vindman just described is certainly what they fear about the deep state: a faceless, unelected functionary, deep within the bureaucracy, trying to influence the political process to defeat a president who elected by millions of American voters. Trump might say, ‘Listen to this man Vindman,’ “Wittes suggested.” ‘He just described as a victory that he and other people in the deep state helped the public decide to vote against me. That’s really what I was saying about the deep state from the beginning. It’s Alex Vindmans and Pete Strzoks and Andy McCabes, and they all want the Democrats to win. ‘What was your response there? On the one hand, you’re talking about apolitical service, and you clearly mean it, but on the other hand, part of your sense of success is that you helped Joe Biden unseat Donald Trump. Fix it for me. “

Vindman responded with a defiant, own answer. My opponents are neutral and political, he argued, while I am not. “The judgments that come in and call me a deep stater are impartial, political judgments,” Vindman explains, “if an impartial, fair assessment would suggest that all I did was do my duty. We reported what we saw, we gave factual testimony, and left it to political actors to move on by impeachment or the president’s main prowess by not being accountable to him. ”Ignore that as previously said by Vindman that if political actors don’t act against Trump, Vindman will have to find another way to do it himself.

When he discussed the impeachment, Vindman presented his testimony as his major contribution to the events. But no matter how important his role in the whistleblower complaint began the Trump-Ukraine investigation. In the course of the impeachment, Republicans believe Vindman set the whistleblower train and then denied that he knew how it happened.

The impeachment testimony revealed that Vindman, who in his role as a National Security aide listened to Trump-Zelensky’s call, told six people about the president’s conversation. He told his brother, who is an NSC lawyer. He told three other NSC officers, John Eisenberg, Michael Ellis, and Tim Morrison. He then told two people outside the NSC, that both, he said, had full security clearances and a “need to know.” One of them was George Kent, a State Department official who dealt with Ukraine. And the other one is – Vindman won’t say.

When, in his dismissal before the impeachment committee, Republicans asked who was the last person Vindman said about the call, Vindman’s lawyer forbade him to discuss it, telling GOP lawmakers, “You have to protect the identity of the whistleblower. ” The lawyer was allowed to stone lawmakers because Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the committee, urged Vindman to conceal the identity of that final man.

In Vindman’s public testimony, Rep. Rep. Rep. Devin Nunes told Vindman about the people Vindman talked about calling Trump-Zelensky. Nunes went through them all before arriving at the unnamed, final man. At that point, Schiff intervened. Nunes should stop discussing the topic, Schiff said. “We need to protect the whistleblower,” Schiff warned. “Please stop. I want to make sure there is no effort to get the whistleblower out by these methods.”

The situation could not have been clearer. “Ultimately, we knew Vindman was the person talking to the whistleblower,” said a senior Republican aide who discussed the matter for my book Obsession. “All the facts point to Vindman here is the coefficient, that he sparked the whole thing. For all the intent and purpose, Vindman was the whistleblower here, but he got someone else to do his dirty work. for him.”

By the way, Republicans learned during the investigation that the whistleblower, whose name has not yet been made public, had a previous relationship with one of the Democratic presidential candidates in 2020-who would eventually Joe Biden reported.

In the Lawfare podcast, Wittes walks Vindman through the basics of the whistleblower thing. “In the book, you say you don’t know who the whistleblower is,” Wittes said. “But you also describe events that indicate you have a good idea of ​​who it is. Is that fair?”

“That’s fair,” Vindman said. He went on to say that there was some “doubt” about the man’s identity, and that doubt “gives too much caution.”

But Wittes still went. “You have every reason, based on the circumstances, to assume it’s someone you describe in the book,” he told Vindman. “But you never ask that person, you never ask that person, and you have no one else capable of knowing that way. Is that fair?

“That’s perfect,” Vindman said. “I don’t even know for sure who the man is.”

It is safe to say that no Republican investigator at the time of the impeachment would believe Vindman. And Vindman’s next statement did nothing to change their minds. “I think the whistleblower is a sophisticated actor in their own right,” Vindman said, with admiration. “When they wrote their complaint to the whistleblower, they linked it to multiple sources. Thus again adding to the fairly reasonable doubt as to who the original source was, who was involved in the initial complaint.”

The idea, then, is to hide the sources of the whistleblower’s complaint, even if it will be used for the most public reason imaginable. Wittes did not ask about the final, unnamed person Vindman talked to – the one named Adam Schiff should remain secret.

On Aug. 3, the book section of the New York Times tweeted, “Alexander Vindman, the whistle-blower in Trump’s first impeachment, is not expected to be a key figure in history’s attention.” The tweet was probably written by a staff member who knew little about the impeachment story. After all, Vindman has repeatedly denied being a whistleblower. But Vindman does not correct the Times. Instead, he retweeted the tweet.

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It should be noted, just for the record, that the federal whistleblower law does not apply to the President of the United States. There is no inspector general in the White House. The idea of ​​applying whistleblower law to the president is ridiculous from the get-go. But Congress can do what it wants, and Schiff and Speaker Nancy Pelosi are moving forward, as they expect Trump to be damned coming into 2020.

Now, in retrospect, Vindman is proud of his role in trying to overthrow the president and protect the president’s main rival. Which is why some listeners to the Lawfare podcast may be surprised to hear Vindman say, near the end, that “I still consider myself apolitical.” In fact, he participated in one of the most political exercises one can imagine and still cannot describe his full role here.

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Tags: Alexander Vindman, Ukraine, Donald Trump, Impeachment, Joe Biden, Whistleblowers

Original Author: Byron York

Original Location: ‘Apolitical’ Alexander Vindman is happy he helped Biden win, coy about the whistleblower

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