In 2019, then-President Donald Trump tried to strong-arm Ukraine’s president by withholding military aid his country needed to ward off Russian aggression. The aid wouldn’t be forthcoming unless the Ukrainian helped gin up bad publicity against Trump’s reelection opponent, Joe Biden. Trump was deservedly impeached for that appalling betrayal of a U.S. alliance.
In a potentially illuminating postscript that comes as Ukraine again dominates American headlines, the star witness from the first of Trump’s two impeachment trials, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, is suing Donald Trump Jr., Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and others from Trump’s inner circle. Vindman, forced to retire from the military by a vindictive president, alleges they launched a campaign of personal destruction against him during and after his testimony — a campaign that included the leaking of classified materials.
As a White House national security aide, Vindman listened to the July 2019 phone call in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy implored Trump to free up U.S. weaponry his country needed to resist Russian-backed fighters. “I would like you to do us a favor though,” Trump responded before pressing Zelenskyy to investigate the Ukraine business ties of Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. This was a sitting American president compromising U.S. security for the sake of his own reelection.
