FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump walks from the Marine One presidential helicopter prior to departing O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., October 28, 2019. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo
October 29, 2019
By Karen Freifeld and Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s top adviser on Ukraine is set to testify on Tuesday that he told a government lawyer about concerns that U.S. national security could be undermined after a phone call between Trump and Ukraine’s president.
Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman will be the first current White House official to testify behind closed doors in the impeachment inquiry led by the House of Representatives Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees.
Vindman, director of European affairs on the National Security Council, arrived at the Capitol shortly after 9 a.m. in full-dress Army uniform.
Vindman is the first person to testify in the inquiry who listened in on the July 25 call, in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democratic political rival, and his son Hunter Biden, who had served on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma.
The call prompted a complaint from an intelligence community whistleblower that led to the inquiry.
In his prepared opening statement, Vindman recounted listening in on the call.
“I was concerned by the call,” he says. “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.”
“I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained. This would all undermine U.S. national security,” he says.
After the call, Vindman says, he reported his concerns to the NSC’s lead counsel.
Vindman says the importance of Ukraine launching an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma was also emphasized by U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland in a meeting after a visit by a Ukrainian security official to Washington on July 10.
“I stated to Amb. Sondland that his statements were inappropriate, that the request to investigate Biden and his son
had nothing to do with national security,” Vindman says.
Vindman says he became aware of a shadow Ukraine policy promoted by “outside influencers” in the spring of 2019.
In his role as a director on the NSC, Vindman says, he provided readouts of relevant meetings and communications on Ukraine and other countries in his portfolio.
Trump made his request to Zelenskiy after withholding $391 million in security aid approved by Congress to help Ukraine fight Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of the former Soviet republic.
Federal law prohibits candidates from accepting foreign help in an election. Biden is a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination to face Trump in the November 2020 election.
Trump’s former Russia adviser, Fiona Hill, testified on Oct. 14 that she was alarmed by Sondland’s reference to a probe of Biden during that July 10 meeting and was advised to see NSC lawyer John Eisenberg, a person familiar with her testimony told Reuters.
Trump, a Republican, denies any wrongdoing in his dealings with Ukraine and calls the impeachment probe politically motivated. On Tuesday morning, he issued nearly 30 retweets and tweets in support of his position.
“Why are people that I never even heard of testifying about the call. Just READ THE CALL TRANSCRIPT AND THE IMPEACHMENT HOAX IS OVER! Ukrain (sic) said NO PRESSURE,” he wrote.
Republicans have criticized Democrats for holding weeks of hearings on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine behind closed doors and have blasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for launching a formal impeachment inquiry last month without getting authorization through a vote of the full House.
On Monday, Pelosi said the House will vote this week on procedures for moving into the public phase of the impeachment inquiry.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said his panel will conduct the public hearings and that he hoped to hear testimony from the State Department, the NSC, Defense Department officials and others. No timetable was given.
Later this week, the committees are to interview more administration officials in closed-door testimony. Kathryn Wheelberger, acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, and two State Department officials who are experts on Ukraine, Catherine Croft and Christopher Anderson, were slated to testify on Wednesday.
On Thursday, Timothy Morrison, another NSC staff member, is due to appear. He was on the July 25 call Trump held with Zelenskiy. William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, mentioned Morrison 15 times in his opening statement to investigators, which is considered the most damning to date.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld, Patricia Zengerle, Susan Cornwell and Richard Cowan; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Jonathan Oatis)
