A soldier’s word against Donald Trump’s in impeachment inquiry

By M.S.R. | WASHINGTON, DC

IF THE CASE for impeaching President Donald Trump needed any further nailing down, it received it on October 29th. Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Vindman, the senior expert on Ukraine at the National Security Council (NSC), told impeachment investigators that he was so appalled by Mr Trump’s repeated demands that Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, investigate Joe Biden, a front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, that he reported it to a lawyer at the NSC. He did so twice.

“I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a US citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the US government’s support of Ukraine,” Colonel Vindman said in his opening statement, which was published beforehand. He said he believed that if Ukraine did pursue an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company on whose board Mr Biden’s son served while his father was vice-president, “it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained.”

Colonel Vindman’s testimony was given privately to three House committees—on Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight and Reform—in defiance of a White House order not to co-operate with the impeachment inquiry launched by the Democrats last month. It is important for three reasons.