WASHINGTON (AP) — Two top national security aides who listened to President Donald Trump’s July call with Ukraine’s president testified Tuesday at House impeachment hearings as the inquiry reached deeper into the White House.
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, an Army officer at the National Security Council, and Jennifer Williams, his counterpart at Vice President Mike Pence’s office, say they had concerns as Trump spoke on July 25 with the newly-elected Ukraine president about political investigations into Joe Biden.
"I found the July 25th phone call unusual because, in contrast to other presidential calls I had observed, it involved discussion of what appeared to be a domestic political matter,” Williams says, in opening remarks.
Vindman, who arrived at Capitol Hill in military blue with a chest full of service medals, has said he alerted the NSC’s lead counsel to his concerns.
In all, nine current and former U.S. officials are testifying as the House’s impeachment inquiry accelerates. Democrats say Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rivals as he withheld U.S. military aid to Ukraine may be grounds for removing the 45th president.
Trump says he did no such thing and the Democrats just want him gone.
The Democratic chairman leading the probe, Rep. Adam Schiff, noted that Trump tweeted against Williams over the weekend and Vindman has seen "far more scurrilous attacks” on his character by the president’s allies.
Schiff, who has warned that the president’s attacks on others in the impeachment inquiry could be seen as intimidation, said the witnesses "are here because they were subpoenaed to appear, not because they are for or against impeachment. That question is for Congress.”
Vindman and the other witnesses have testified in earlier, closed-door sessions. Their depositions have been publicly released, and they’ll face direction questions from lawmakers on Tuesday.
"I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen,” said Vindman, a 20-year military officer and an immigrant who arrived in the U.S. as a child with his family from Ukraine. He said there was "no doubt” what Trump wanted from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
It wasn’t the first time Vindman, a decorated Iraq War veteran, was alarmed over the administration’s push to have Ukraine investigate Democrats, he testified.
Earlier, during an unsettling July 10 meeting at the White House, Ambassador Gordon Sondland told visiting Ukraine officials that they would need to "deliver” before next steps, which was a meeting Zelensky wanted with Trump, the officer testified.