"YOU'RE FIRED!!!!!" Poncey rat who dobbed Trump in gets the sack
Saturday, 08 February 2020
Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official who voiced concerns about President Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine’s leader, was escorted out of the White House on Friday, said his attorney.
“There is no question in the mind of any American why this man’s job is over, why this country now has one less soldier serving it at the White House,” said David Pressman, Col. Vindman’s lawyer, asserting that Col. Vindman “was asked to leave for telling the truth.”
Col. Vindman, the NSC’s Ukraine expert, had raised the ire of Mr. Trump, who was angered by his testimony in the House impeachment probe. He is expected to return to the Army in the coming weeks, a U.S. official said, though his exact role is unclear.
“Well, I’m not happy with him. You think I’m supposed to be happy with him? I’m not,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Friday morning. “They’ll make that decision. You’ll be hearing. They’ll make a decision.” He later retweeted tweets critical of Col. Vindman.
Col. Vindman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
NSC spokesman John Ullyot said: “We do not comment on personnel matters.” Earlier, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters at the Pentagon that Col. Vindman would be welcomed back from the White House like any other military official returning from an assignment.
Mr. Esper said Col. Vindman would be protected when a reporter asked if the Army would shield him from any possible retribution for his testimony against the president. “We protect all of our servicemembers from retribution or anything like that,” Mr. Esper said.
The ranks of the White House National Security Council are made up of specialists from agencies like the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon, and they rotate in and out for set periods. The lengths of the appointments vary, but Defense Department personnel are often detailed for a period of one to three years. Col. Vindman was detailed to the NSC in July 2018 as director for European affairs.
Col. Vindman’s departure comes as national security adviser Robert O’Brien is taking steps to reduce the size of the NSC by sending dozens of government officials temporarily detailed to the council back to their home agencies, according to people familiar with his thinking.
Col. Vindman, who listened in on the president’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, told impeachment investigators last year that Mr. Trump’s request for an investigation into a political rival was “inappropriate and improper.” He also said “there was no doubt” that Mr. Trump was asking on the call for an investigation from Kyiv as a condition for Mr. Zelensky to get a proposed White House meeting.
Col. Vindman testified that he had raised concerns about the call with an NSC lawyer, but he denied that he was the whistleblower whose complaint sparked the impeachment probe and said he didn’t know the identity of the whistleblower.