Impeachment Hearings Live Updates: Republicans Question Vindman’s Loyalty
Republicans, as usual, cannot challenge the evidence against Trump so they attack the integrity of the witness.
The top Ukraine expert at the National Security Council, Colonel Alexander S. Vindman, testified that Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president in which Trump asked for investigations of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was “inappropriate” and “a partisan play.”
Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio cited critical comments about Colonel Vindman’s judgment from two other impeachment witnesses, Timothy Morrison and Fiona Hill, Vindman’s former boss at the National Security Council.
“Any idea why they have those impressions?” Mr. Jordan inquired.
“Alex is a top one percent military officer and the best army officer I have worked with in my 15 years of government service,” Vindman said, quoting Hill. “He is brilliant, unflappable, and exercises excellent judgment.”
Republicans also pressed Colonel Vindman, an American citizen and Army officer who was born in Ukraine, about how Oleksandr Danylyuk, the director of Ukraine’s national security council, had approached him three times to offer him the job of defense minister in Kiev.
This as if, because the Ukrainians offered Vindman a job three times, has something to do with Vindman's loyalty. In defending their guilty President, Republicans are reaching. Vindman confirmed the offers and testified that he repeatedly declined, dismissing the idea out of hand and reporting the approaches to his superiors and to counterintelligence officials.
“Every single time, I dismissed it,” he said, adding that “I’m an American. I came here when I was a toddler. And I immediately dismissed these offers, did not entertain them.”
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