July 27, 2023 • 49 mins
When Lt. Colonel Alex Vindman’s family flees the Soviet Union, they’re in search of the American dream. That includes the right to speak truth to power, without retribution. But when Vindman testifies at the President’s first impeachment, that dream is called into question.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dad, I'm sitting here today in the US Capitol talking
to our elective professionals is proof that you made the
right decision forty years ago to leave the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Do not worry. I will be fine for telling the truth.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
That's Lieutenant Colonel alex Vinman making his opening statement as
a witness in President Trump's first impeachment. It's November nineteenth,
twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I've dedicated my entire professional life to the United States
of America for more than two decades. It has been
my honor to serve as an officer of the United
States Army. In July twenty eighteen, I was asked to
serve at the White House National Security Council.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
As he says, alex Vinman is a member of the
White House's National Security Council. He was one of the
people on a call, I'm going to say, a now
infamous call between President Donald Trump and the new President
of Ukraine, Voldemir Zelenski in July of twenty nineteen. President
Zelensky was urging President Trump to release military aid, which
(01:04):
had been somewhat mysteriously delayed. As the call was winding down,
President Trump said, quote, I'd like you to do us
a favor, though unquote. That favor is to open an
investigation into his political rival, Joe Biden. It's what you'd
call a quid pro quo, which would be a big
(01:24):
red flag to anyone listening in. Within minutes, Alex Binman
reported what he heard through the proper channels. He then
agreed to testify before Congress because he's a believer in
the system. It was much better than the system his
family had left behind in the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
As a young man, I decided I'd wanted to spend
my life serving this nation that gave my family refuge
from authoritary oppression.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
And he had every reason to expect that since he
was blowing the whistle strictly by the book, he had
nothing to worry about.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I also recognize that my simple act of appearing here today,
just like the courage of my colleagues who have also
truthfully testified before this committee, would not be tolerated in
many places around the world. In Russia, offering public testimony
involving the president would surely cost me my life. I'm
grateful for my father's brave act of hope forty years ago,
(02:18):
and for the privilege of being an American citizen and
public servant where I can live for a fear for
mine and my family safety.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Lieutenant Colonel Vinman wasn't sent to a gulag in Siberia,
and he wasn't executed, So I guess you could say
he was ahead of the game, but he was not fine.
The president was acquitted, but Vinman was fired and forced
out of the military, where he had served for twenty
one years. You may think you know his story, but
(02:47):
what you may not know is that Alex Vinman is
still picking up the pieces. I'm Miles Taylor, and this
is the whistleblowers on this show. We're going deep in
the heart of power to meet the people who spoke
out about wrongdoing from inside the Trump administration. Some were
(03:07):
in the President's inner circle, others were on the front
lines of top agencies. But they all have a few
things in common, the ethical gray areas that doubts about
whether what they did even made an impact, and they
all paid a price. Episode four, State of Chaos The Future,
(03:46):
Lieutenant Colonel Alex Vinman and his family ended up in
the United States when his father decided to move them
from Ukraine. It's one of those real American dream stories
that makes you feel good about the country.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
We immigrated from the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic in nineteen
seventy nine. My mother was dying of cancer. She didn't
survive to get to the United States. She passed away
in Ukraine. My father left at the age of forty seven.
We were three and a half years old.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
The we Alex is referring to is himself and his
identical twin brother.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
My name is Yevgenny Vimmen. Most people knew me as Yev.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Yes, they sound exactly alike. And you can see how
this could get a little complicated in a podcast, so
we'll be sure to let you know who's who. And
Yev Jenny Eugene's also known as Yev claims he's the
funnier brother, So if it's funny, maybe assume it's him.
But for now, back to Alex.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
We came to the United States as refugees, political refugees
fleeing anti Semitism, so not leaving for kind of economic reasons,
but for the aspirations of enjoying America's bound these freedom, liberty, justice, equality,
all these types of things.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Alex and Yev's father had already seen what anti Semitism
looked like when his family narrowly escaped the Nazi occupation
of Kiev in nineteen forty one.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
He and his family, his sister and his mother survived
World War Two, fleeing the Nazi attacks into Ukraine, the
inevitable seizure of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and the
mass slaughter the extermination of the Jewish population.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
He managed to evade.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
That by just a matter of hours days and lived
out the war in the euro Mountains.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
His grandfathers on both sides didn't have the same luck
surviving the war.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Both my grandfathers passed away. But this is the kinds
of stories that we were raised on his experiences as
a young man, kind of being a little bit of
a troublemaker himself, which which resonated with my twin brother
and I.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
The Vinman family lands in Brighton Beach in Brooklyn. Incredibly,
the twin boys wind up in a PBS documentary by
filmmaker Ken Burns called Statue of Liberty that looks at
what this symbol means to American immigrants.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
And then we went to our mother died, so we
went to Italy and then we came here.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Both of the Vinman boys wanted to serve their adopted country.
Here's Alex.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
I thought that there was an obligation to repay the
debt of welcoming us to the United States. My older brother,
my twin brother, we all served in the military. Why
I went into the military is tied to the immigrant roots.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Alex and Yev both quickly rise through the ranks of
the US military. Yev gets his law degree and serves
in combat in the Iraq War, earning the rank of
lieutenant colonel in twenty sixteen and multiple commendation medals. Like Yev,
Alex serves in a Rock where he's awarded a purple
Heart after being injured when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
About seven years into the military, I had to make
a judgment call on whether I wanted to be a
troop leader, an airborne ranger, all those cool things, or
do something that contributed in a bigger way. And I
made the determination that could contribute in a bigger way.
As a foreign area.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Officer, Alex's area of expertise will be Russia. It's a
natural choice.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
I had some advantages because Russian was spoken in the home.
I had some cultural awareness. I had traveled to the region.
I managed to take a successful career Niftrman, pick up
additional language in addition to Russian Ukrainian, and went to
get an advanced degree at Harvard, went straight to Moscow.
Was in Moscow for three years during the period where
this war between Russian Ukraine started. I had served in Ukraine.
(07:55):
I went to the Pentagon, drafted the strategies to manage
Russia as an adversary, and then to the White House
based on the work I did in the Pentagon.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, the Vinmans, they're overachievers.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
All that came together in a phenomenal way where I
just had an awesome, awesome career run all the way
up until the White House.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Up until the White House where things get complicated.
Speaker 5 (08:36):
Well, I hope that we do have good relations with Russia.
Speaker 6 (08:38):
It's a big country, it's a nuclear country. It's a
country that we.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
Should get along with, and I think we will eventually
get along with Russia.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
I was very, very, very thoughtful about joining the Trump
White House.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
I was a.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Recruited should join in almost a year into the administration
in November of seventeen, I had certainly monitored the direct
the administration was taking and got the pulse on what
the situation was, and the response was not heartening. The
response is from somebody that's been deployed to combat three times.
(09:10):
You've never been to as powerless an environment as you're
about to set foot it.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
So it was definitely cautionary.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
But Alex feels he has a lot to offer. He's
a Russia policy expert, and he brings that expertise to
the White House National Security Council or NSC, which is
basically the nerve center at the White House for the
most sensitive decisions on foreign policy, diplomacy, and sometimes war,
and he isn't coming into this tricky environment completely alone.
(09:42):
In July of twenty eighteen, when he joins the NSC,
Yev his brother accepts a position there as well. Here's Yev.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
I was the deputy Legal Advisor on the National Security Council.
It was extremely prestigious working with senior officials on the
most sensitive and important to topics in the country.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
The Vinman brothers. One thing about them is they are
not shy. They make an impression. And I remember what
I first heard about Alex. I remember roughly the window
when you started because some of our senior counselors for
intelligence and National security would interact with you at the NSC.
(10:22):
But I heard Alex Finnman, you know, is a know
at all on these issues. And I had someone on
my staff. I had someone of my staff who I
actually asked, you know, give me a readout of this
Alex Finman guy. She said, he's not a know at all.
He knows as shit. He especially knows his shit about Russia,
(10:44):
and given his knowledge of the language and culture, his
bosses also decide to add Ukraine to Alex's portfolio. It
makes sense, given that Ukraine's biggest security threat is often
from its own neighbor. When Alex starts on the NSC,
it's an especially delicate time. Ukraine is a US ally
in Europe, and Russian forces are starting to push further
(11:05):
into Ukrainian territory after having already seized a region known
as Krimea. It's an alarming sign of escalation and a
threat to an American ally. Coupled with the warnings from
the intelligence community about Russia's interference in American elections, it
feels like a moment when the US should be sending
a strong message to the leader in Moscow, Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
My first day on the job on the National Security Council,
the day that you're supposed to show up and in
process and get the orientations was Helsinki.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
He's referring to the summit between Trump and Putin about
US Russia relations held in Helsinki in July of twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
And that was the day that President Trump decided that
he was going to fanboy Putin and basically take his
word over the collective opinion of the national security community,
the intelligence community about Russian interference.
Speaker 6 (11:59):
He just said, and it's not Russia. I will say this.
I don't see any reason why it would be.
Speaker 7 (12:04):
So.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
I have great confidence in my intelligence people.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
But I will tell.
Speaker 5 (12:10):
You that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in
his denial.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Today Trump decides to ignore the American spy community and
accept the word of Russian rival Vladimir Putin. This shocks
Alex just as much as it shocked Andy McCabe, top
officials at DOJ, intelligence leaders, a lot of us in
the administration. What is it with Trump's deference to Moscow?
(12:39):
Just a few months later, Russia gets more aggressive in
Ukraine and the President continues to give Putin a pass,
preferring to look the other way.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
You had the Ukrainian navy attempt to navigate crossing to
get from one part of the country, certain navigating around
Crimea get to the other part of the country through
a place called the Kurt Street, and the Russians attack them.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
On CNN correspondent Matthew Chance underlines just how serious this
situation is becoming.
Speaker 8 (13:08):
This is a major escalation potentially because you've seen Russian forces,
according to the Ukrainian Navy, fire upon three naval vessels
and then board them with a raiding party consisting of
Russian special forces. The Ukrainian military says at least six
of its naval personnel were injured in that confrontation.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
I was scrambling to come up with some good solutions.
What can we do? And the President basically not only
did he not do anything, he canceled a lot of
activities that we had already on the plate to support Ukraine.
Basically black sea operations where we do partnership exercises with
a whole bunch of Black Sea states. Those were canceled.
(13:49):
So I thought it was a president just being weak
need later on, I realized that it was both his
dislike of Ukraine and his enamoration with.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
That were probably equally important in this.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
A few months later, in April of twenty nineteen, the
US Ambassador to Ukraine, Maria Yvanovich is fired.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
One of my key partners was the ambassador in Ukraine,
Mashia Ivanovitch, and she was a long serving public servant
decades of distinguished service. She ended up getting targeted by
the far right a slander campaign by a Ukrainian corrupt
Ukrainian prosecutor general.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Then somehow Rudy.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Giuliani got involved with the President's attorney that started to
become troubling.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Rudy Giuliani's on the case and a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor,
Yuri Lutsenko, who circulates a story that the US Ambassador
Yvanovich is refusing to investigate supposedly questionable ties between Ukrainian
officials and Hillary Clinton. The truth of this is well,
(15:00):
it's non existent, but Trump's inner circle, people like Giuliani,
Donald Trump Junior, and Sean Hannity join in attacking the
US ambassador.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
She made it past that first tranch of kind of
slanderous accusations, and then it came back around in April
because Don Junior Present's son attacked her on Twitter and
that was it.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
She's recalled, and maybe recalled doesn't sound that bad, but
she's actually been ordered back to Washington overnight, where she
faces the end of a thirty three year career in
the foreign service.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Mashya Ivanovitch was ousted. In April.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
You started hearing Rudy Giuliani publicly attacked Ukraine, and that
brought about complete upheaval in our Ukraine policy.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
The question is why why does the Trump administration attack
its own ambassador, Why is a random Ukrainian prosecutor spreading
conspiracy theories? And why doesn't the administration just condemn Russia
when it threatens a US ally Ukraine.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
It became quite apparent that it was all about US
domestic politics. The twenty first of April, you had a
new president of Ukraine. Zelensky was elected in a landslide victory.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
BBC News captures the excitement when a TV actor named
Voldemir Zelensky is elected president.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
I had proposed a congratulatory call for the president to
Colle Zelensky. They ended up calling him on the day
of his victory and just having a very pleasant congratulatory call,
mainly because the president likes winners. This occurred on April
twenty first, weeks later, it was completely different narrative.
Speaker 6 (16:55):
Today, I'm announcing my candidacy for President of the United States.
If we are in the for the soul of this nation,
I believe history will look back on four years of
this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment
in time.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
The importance of this connection between the election of Zelenski
and Joe Biden announcing his candidacy isn't totally obvious, So
let me explain. First off, Donald Trump sees a line
of attack in Ukraine against a Democratic opponent back home,
Joe Biden, and that's because Biden's son Hunter had done
(17:34):
business deals in Ukraine when Biden was Vice president, and
Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who's been leading opposition research
on Trump's perceived enemies, thought they ought to do some
digging into those deals to see what they could find
and maybe point allegations of corruption from Hunter Biden to
his father Joe. You know, see, if that whole soul
(17:57):
of a nation loftiness can be brought down a peg.
But the second thing to understand is specific to Ukraine.
Alex and Dyev explain Alex first.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Ukraine's history isn't always clean. It does have a deeper
history of corruption.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
There had been some major protests in twenty thirteen in
Ukraine that were known as the Maiden Uprising. Now, the
protests were about government corruption and the power of the
oligarchs and the political system, and they led to the
removal of then President Viktor Yanokovich. Fighting corruption becomes an
important issue for the incoming president, and then there's the
(18:35):
issue of Russia's threat to Ukrainian security, so new guy
Zelenski has to tackle both of these issues at the
same time. Yev explains this part.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
He had, on the one hand, his country that he's
trying to defend fro not quite the onslaught that we're
seeing now from the Russians, but still significant attack and
fight corruption.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
So you can see the pieces of line. President Trump,
Rudy Giuliani and others see that Biden may have an
achilles heel when it comes to Ukraine, and they see
the new president there Zelenski as someone that can lean on,
especially given the country's history of corruption, maybe in exchange
for that much needed help on the Russia thing, Zelensky
(19:20):
can do some backscratching for Donald Trump and his Joe
Biden problem. And the US ambassador y Ivanovitch is now
out of the picture, so who's left to complain about it?
Neither Alex or Yev know any of this at the time.
Yev again, this is all part of a scheme.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
I was not privy to and didn't understand the scheme
until a lot of this information came out. This was
a concerted effort.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Alex is just trying to get President Trump off to
a good start with Zelenski, but then he begins to
feel more and more uneasy, especially when the President orders
staff not to release security assistance to Ukraine, only that
the country absolutely needs if it's going to keep Russia
in check.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
In June, the President had placed this hold on security
assistance relatively quickly thereafter that convened a SUBPCC.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
That stands for Policy Coordination Committee Subgroup. Yeah, Washington loves
an acronym.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
All these deputies assistant secretaries to get together and get
people on the books, saying that everybody believes the right
thing to do to advance US policy was to continue
to offer Ukraine security assistants. I was diligently working as
much as I could to kind of navigate US back
on track with little effects. Frankly, that was further substantiated
(20:40):
on July tenth during this meeting in the White House
in the National Security Advisor's office, where this character Gordon Simon,
the Ambassador to the EU, flat out says that in
order to get things back on track with the Ukrainians,
they need to deliver an investigation.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
That's an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter
Biden's dealings in Ukraine.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
And this meeting ends abruptly, and then I'm arguing with Gordon.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
About the fact that we're not going to do that.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
I don't know if it needs to be overstated that
there needed to be dirt per se. All the President
needed was the innuendo. All he needed was the Ukrainians
to announce an investigation and he would take it from there.
This is a country that was in a state of war.
They might try to act on principle, but a push
comes to shove if they have to choose between the
(21:30):
national survival and digging up some dirt or fabricating some dirt.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
You can see it could be tempting. The Ukrainians need
weapons and money to fight Russia. America is their key
to those resources, and the President wants to use that
need as leverage to get dirt on his political enemy.
On July twenty fifth, twenty nineteen, there's a phone call
between President Zelenski and President Trump. Alex and his colleagues
(21:58):
are just hoping the conversation will be productive. Instead, all
of this finally explodes into the open.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
There's a good conversation. It might result in lifting the
hold on security systems. I went in with a small
sense of potential, hope, but a lot of foreboding about
what could happen. There were about a half a dozen
officials in that White House situation room with me. The
President probably had no idea. I have this funny visual
of him. It's kind of disturbing, sitting in his underwear,
(22:28):
drinking and coke. You know, up early. He doesn't like
to do anything before like eleven. So this was a
nine o'clock phone call. He was there just kind of
winging it.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Okay. I got a pause for a second just to
say I'm having PTSD listening to this story.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Turned out that Mike Pompeio was on the phone call.
John Bolton was nowhere to be seen, by the way,
just themselves as much as he could.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Mike Pompeo was Secretary of State and John Bolton was
the President's National security advisor, so he probably should be
there since this is about out national security.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
And it was me sitting with a handful of you know,
senior government officials prepared to take instructions listening on the
phone call. Do the follow up that you that emerges
out of these phone calls, and nobody's listening in to
trip up the president or to you know, go gotcha.
We're just they're doing our jobs.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Tripping him up is not necessary because what does the
President say.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
I'd like you to I'd like you to do us
a favor, though, all right, it's like a mafia. Don
Selensky's like, hey, Donald, it could really help us defend
ourselves if we got more of those really sweet javelins,
you know, the javelins that that have been so effective
in this war knocking out Russian armor. He asked for more,
(23:49):
and immediately Trump goes to, I'd like you to do
us a favor, though, and many proceeds to go into
this crazy rant about you know, how Ukraine is not
as good an ally, how Ukraine's ungrateful, and then he
goes on a rant about Joe Biden and just like
all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories and tries to get
put the squeeze on Zelensky to deliver on an investigation.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
What was the reaction like sitting there in the situation room,
were you making eye contact with the other officials or
talking about what was happening.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
I remember listening to this conversation and kind of shrinking
into my seat as this conversation starts. And Zelenski, you know,
didn't miss a beat either. He parried the President's demands
and was very charismatic.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Zelensky, as I said, is an actor and he's really
good on his feet. So when President Trump tells Zelensky
he'll have Rudy Giuliani get in touch with more details
on this investigation he wants, Zelensky says, and I quote,
I'd like to tell you that I also have quite
a few Ukrainian friends that live in the United States. Actually,
(24:55):
last time I traveled to the United States, I stayed
in New York near Central Park, and I stayed at
the Trump Tower. Now that's a sweet pivot. It could
be a scene straight out of Veep if the stakes
weren't so high.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
It made up my mind as soon as the call
was done. It was a visceral reaction about the dangers
to US national security by way of demonstrating of vulnerability
with Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
It was offensive. I made up my mind pretty much immediately.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Confident that the president has done something illegal. Alex knows
he has to report it through official channels, So the
first thing he does is get the best legal advice
he can find from the Deputy Legal Advisor to the
National Security Council, his twin brother, Yev, whose office is
just across the hall. Here's Alex.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
I went in there, into Eugene's office, which is right
across from mind, and.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Closed the door.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
You know, did a brief dramatic pause to make sure
I had his attention. Now, Yev, I could tell by
the look on his face that there is something wrong.
I know the guy quite well. I'd like to say
we know each other for about forty eight years. He said,
I heard something very disturbing. We didn't discuss it very long. Frankly,
we discussed it all of like five or ten minutes.
(26:13):
We were both active duty Army officers. You know, we
have a set of values that we live by, a
set of values that we performed our duties by for
the better part of twenty years at the time.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Back to Alex, and I said, Eugene.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
If what I'm about to tell you becomes public, the
president would be impeached, not having any idea that it
was to happen. It was just kind of capturing the
gravity of the moment rather than predicting that this would get.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
To an impeachment.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
And back to Yev.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
I did what duty required. Alex and I were in
complete agreement what that was. It was to report the
call to my supervisor, the legal advisor for the National
Security Council, who was dual had it as a deputy
White House Council and also assistant to the President, which
is a pretty senior presidential rank with the most senior
in fact. And Alex we discuss whether you should join me,
(27:01):
and I said, you're joining me, and then I dragged
him in and he became like your party to this
whole thing.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
That chief legal Advisor is a political appointee of the president,
and as such, he's not really motivated to draw a
line in the sand over Trump's behavior.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Here's Alex, your report is like this.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
He could counsel the President that what he's doing is illegal, immoral, unethical,
most importantly illegal, and get the President to reverse course.
He's a mild mandared bureaucrat, self serving, and he decided
that it was not career enhancing for him to challenge
the president on this one.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Alex has reason to be suspicious of this legal advisor,
since the guy had also been present in that meeting
with Ambassador Somblund, the one where Sondlin said the Ukrainians
would need to open some type of investigation into Joe
Biden if the security assistance was going to be released.
Here's Yev.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
The issue of Hunter Biden was raised, and that had
set off alarm bills and Alex had reported that. And
so what I would have anticipated a good lawyer doing
is having a conversation with the president. He spoke to
the president several times a week, he was involved in
many key decisions, and he did not do that.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
So why would he now, Assuming the president's lawyers aren't
going to take any action. Alex just has to work
with his colleagues to try to put Trump back on track.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
A couple weeks later, I drafted a presidential decision memo
that basically tried to get the president back on defending
US national security versus advancing his own political aspirations. So
at every point I was committed to doing this the
right way. How do we manage this situation? How do
we pick up the broken glass?
Speaker 3 (28:53):
What Alex doesn't know is that he's not the only
person who was alarmed by the phone call, and he's
not the only person who has decided to speak out.
(29:15):
One month after the call, on August twelfth, an unnamed
whistleblower files a formal complaint about the Trump Giuliani campaign
to pressure Ukraine into an investigation. The anonymous whistleblower, an
intelligence official, says they weren't on the Zelenski phone call,
but have heard enough about it to loudly sound the
(29:37):
siren inside the government. The complaint begins quote, in the
course of my official duties, I have received information from
multiple US government officials that the President of the United
States is using the power of his office to solicit
interference from a foreign country in the twenty twenty US election. Unquote.
(30:00):
That whistleblower remains anonymous even to this day, but we
did talk to their attorney, a DC based lawyer whose
firm specializes in these types of cases.
Speaker 9 (30:12):
My name is Andrew Mackay, and I'm a managing partner
of Compass Rose Legal Group, and i'm also dual had
it as senior counsel and the acting chief Acting disclosure
officer for whistleblower.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Aid Coincidentally, Andrew was also Ukrainian American, and he's a
former US intelligence officer, like the unnamed whistleblower.
Speaker 9 (30:31):
I didn't know who this individual was a whistleblower before
I met them. Somebody gave me a call one day saying, hey, look,
you know a friend of mine reached out to me
with a really significant concern and they need to speak
to somebody who knows about you know, what lawful whistleblowing
is and how that works. As I kah, sure you
note further on over, I'll be happy to speak with him.
We had a phone call and that's where I learned
(30:53):
a lot, but of course not all of the details
involving the perfect phone call.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
The whistleblower had first submitted the complaint with the Inspector
General of the Intelligence community. The Inspector General determined that
the complaint was credible and send it onto the Acting
Director of National Intelligence, Joseph McGuire. These types of reports
are almost always referred to Congress, but rather than sending
(31:19):
it on to the Senate and the House intelligence committees,
McGuire sat on it. So this is weird.
Speaker 9 (31:26):
Even if a concern wasn't needed to be urgent, they
would still say, Hey, we don't believe it's urgent, but
we're gonna go ahead and forward to the Hill.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Let them figure this out they want. Obviously, that's not
what happened. The report is filed on August twelfth, Congress
doesn't hear about it for an entire month.
Speaker 9 (31:44):
We identified two specific goals. Goal one was to get
the disclosure to the Hill lawfully. Goal io was protect
the client. Just protect the client.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
That's it.
Speaker 9 (31:57):
We weren't there to have there be a specific investigation,
although an investigation was obviously warrant it. We weren't looking
to have a president considered for impeachment. We're literally disclosing
a concern that something happened wrong, and our goal was
to get this to the Hill.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Congress is finally informed about the complaint in the middle
of September. Under pressure from BECAI and the whistleblower's legal team,
the Inspector General decides to bypass Director Maguire altogether and
get the complaint to the Hill. The House and sent
Intelligence committees are furious that this information has been kept
from them for so long. I actually wonder.
Speaker 9 (32:39):
If the White House and the Executive Branch at the
highest levels just let this disclosure go to the Hill,
it wouldn't have died, but would it have led to
an impeachment? Because I think that sometimes it's the cover
up that starts the drum beat. First it was there
is a complaint that's not coming out. Then it's, oh,
(32:59):
it involves potentially a foreign leader, and then it involves
potentially a phone call. It was a drip, drip drip,
and I think that that's what made it bigger in
my opinion.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Drip drip drip. Then suddenly a splash. Congress gets the report,
the media learns about it, and Director Maguire is hauled
up to Capitol Hill to explain why he didn't share
the whistleblower's complaints sooner. Representative Adam Schiff grills him.
Speaker 10 (33:30):
You would concur would you not director that this complaint
alleging serious wrongdoing by the president was credible. It's not
for me to judge, sir, but indeed you did judge
whether this complaint should be provided to Congress.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Basically, all hell breaks loose. Trump meanwhile decides to release
the hold on Ukraine's security assistance eighty five days late. Yeah,
total coincidence. Then in late September, the White House is
pressure to release the trail script of the phone call
with Zelenski, and turns out everything Alex and the unnamed
(34:06):
whistleblower had said is right there in the call. But
Trump disagrees.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
My call was perfect. The President yesterday of Ukraine said
there was no pressure put on him whatsoever, none whatsoever,
and he said it loud and clear for the press.
What these guys are doing, democrats are doing to this
country is a disgrace and it shouldn't be allowed.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
By October twenty nineteen, the House has started impeachment hearings,
even though it didn't get much play at the time.
Alex's initial report about that July phone call is now
suddenly extremely relevant. He's called in as a key witness,
and he's been around this administration long enough to know
what that really means.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
I was like, Okay, it's a matter of time once
this is announced.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
I guess I hired you know, sixteen hour days on
the National Security Council.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
As Rachel is Alex's wife, I.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Think I told her like, Hey, can you check on
my professional liability insurance? Like, you know, if I get sued,
could you check that pot I've got something that's going
to you know, not bankrupt us. And then I turned
around and went to sleeve a card to her, and
she stayed out the rest of the night wondering what
the hell that meant.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
On October twenty ninth, twenty nineteen, Alex testifies in a
closed session before three big House committees, and then November nineteenth,
he has to testify again, this time in public. From
his opening statement, his testimony makes waves. Here's Ari Melburgh
on MSNBC who sees just how Alex's background and military
(35:46):
record make him the perfect witness.
Speaker 11 (35:49):
Vinman struck me as the most devastating we've seen in
the public hearing today. This is someone who obviously looks
the part is the part that was a real reticence
by Republicans to go directly at him. This is an
army officer who spoke very directly about why he phoned
it in.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
He knew that it was political and wrong.
Speaker 11 (36:07):
This is not someone who reads in any way as aggrandizing,
as looking for the spotlight.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
It doesn't make Alex any friends with the administration or
the president's supporters. There are threats and there's harassment.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
I had Army Criminal Investigation Division. I had them come
out and take a look at my house. That we
increased police patrols. I had made arrangements to move on
to an army base if I needed to. It wasn't
just the fact that Maga would be angry at me
for testifying a geinst the president, but the President and
his henchmen Don Junior Giuliani. These folks had orchestrated a
(36:45):
campaign to attack me, to vilify me, to warn off
other folks from testifying.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Susan Glasser is co founder of Politico and now writes
for The New Yorker. She sees how Alex and others
who started peeking out about the Trump presidency had a
very specific type of credibility.
Speaker 12 (37:05):
So much of the damning real time information that came
out of the Trump administration about the President himself was
the result of the testimony. The people in the room,
they're not liberal Democrats, They're Republicans, most of them lifelong
Republicans or career public servants, and he just dumped on
(37:26):
these people in an extraordinary way.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Of course, there are lots of powerful people, people in fact,
with a lot less to lose, who could have testified
in the impeachment hearings but didn't.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
John Bolton is perhaps the best example of this.
Speaker 12 (37:43):
He obviously has financial independence, the ability to make money
that junior officials do not have.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
He sells a.
Speaker 12 (37:52):
Book in the middle of this in which he makes
extraordinary claims. He has a direct, first hand witness to
many of the events that are at the core of.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
The Ukraine impeachment. John Bolton did not provide that testimony.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Public servants like Alex has beleaguered boss Fiona Hill, the
fired and humiliated former Ambassador Marie Ivanovitch, even Ambassador Gordon Somlin,
who Alex had criticized for not doing more sooner, they
all step up and testify.
Speaker 12 (38:25):
It gets to the bigger mystery of what are all
these big men afraid of so much? With Donald Trump?
You know, he's a schoolyard bully, but he's not going
to punch them out.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
One thing we learned is that as a category and
as a.
Speaker 12 (38:39):
Class, these sort of macho talking Republican officials turned out
to be whimps when it came to standing up to
Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Wednesday, February fifth, twenty twenty, Trump is acquitted in his
impeachment trial.
Speaker 13 (39:08):
The Senate having tried Donald John Trump, President of the
United States, upon two articles of impeachment, two thirds of
the Senator's president not having found him guilty. It is
therefore ordered and adjudged that the said Donald John Trump
be and he is hereby acquitted of the charges in
said articles.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
For alex Vinman, this result means one thing, he's fired.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
The only surprise was that it didn't happen the day
he was acquitted. I thought i'd be out on Thursday instead,
I should have known Friday's firing day.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Were you angry at all?
Speaker 1 (39:43):
I think there was a combination of some relief. I
was probably angry about the fact that my twin brother
was escorted out with me. That wasn't entirely a surprise,
but that is pretty vindictive to go after people's family. Yev,
by that point we were anticipating. At we compared notes
about how he was intercepted in his office, and I
(40:05):
was intercepted in my office by the people that we
worked with every single day, quite closely.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
This feels especially petty. Yev hadn't even been called on
to testify, but Yev says, they're used to being grouped together.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Alex and I our second grade teacher, and administrators had
decided that we were too much trouble to keep together
in the same class, so they separated us and had
the White House learned that lesson, you know, thirty plus
years later, who knows what would have happened.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Again, it's not a gulag in Siberia. It could be worse,
But there's something that the Vindmann brothers don't see coming.
Their involvement in this political firestorm ends up costing both
of them their long standing careers in the US military.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Alex I would end up being angry about the consequences
about the fact that, like it turned out that the
arm ME wasn't going to allow me to perform my
duties in an effective manner. They would put me on
to kind of like this, the backwoods assignment somewhere while
they figured out whether I could get promoted or not.
(41:13):
I was selected for promotion to colonel. The White House
interfered with my promotion to colonel, so they made sure
that I wouldn't be able to advance in the military
or hope behold any kind of really effective.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
Position, and yev faces that too.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Even in the Army, I became persona on Grotto. The
current Judge Advocate General of the Army, Lieutenant General Stuart Rich,
promoted me to lieutenant colonel and then ultimately declined to
promote me to colonel. And one of the one stars
who's now retired, explicitly told me that if I had
my brother speak at my promotion, which is an intensely
(41:49):
personal ceremony where family comes to it's that he could
not perform the ceremony. So it was obvious that my
time in the Army would not be fruitful.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
With the Army stone walling any future ascent, both brothers
are forced to retire and this hurts. They've risked their
lives in combat. They are decorated with the highest military
honors and yet they're sidelined over petty politics. Yev.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
For somebody that had been serving in uniform, had deployed
into combat. It became very disheartening to see that if
the military and the army can't abide by its own values,
then the soldiers will notice that and vote with their feet.
And the army missed its recruiting goal by twenty five
percent in the most recent year.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
I ask Alex and Yev if they had any regrets.
Here's Yev. First.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
My regrets are that our system was not stronger, or
that we didn't have better people, or the people that
we had didn't didn't do what they should have done.
When malfeasance was reported and politics won over national security,
which ended us up where we are right now. It
completely upended my life, and I'm still dealing with some
(43:14):
of the consequences. I mean, I'm still radioactive to folks
that don't want to talk to the guy that testified
against Trump. My wife recently, actually, on a flight within
the past couple weeks, former military guy came up to
her and said something nasty and menacing. He came up
and try to intimidate my wife. Guy wouldn't have the
balls to say that.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
To me, but an all too familiar tactic.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Did I let that slow me down? No, we have
to be able to live with the consequences. There's no
Hollywood ending. The clouds don't part, the sun doesn't start
shining down just because you did the right thing.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
That's not the real world.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
You just need to be able to live with the
basic notion that you did the right thing, and we're
true to kind of your own moral compass.
Speaker 7 (44:00):
We begin with breaking news, of course, as war unfolds
in Ukraine this morning. Explosions and sirens heard in and
around Kiev. Overnight, Ukraine's Defense Ministry saying Russian forces have
arrived in the capital.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
It's February twenty fifth, twenty twenty two, almost two years
exactly since Trump was acquitted in his impeachment. Ukraine's worst
fears about Russian aggression have come true. ABC News anchor
Savannah Sellers reports the breaking news Russia has begun a
full invasion, pushing all the way toward the Ukrainian capital
(44:38):
of Kiev. Since then, hundreds of thousands of soldiers on
both sides of the conflict, and at least tens of
thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed. Yev has seen
the impact of this war on Ukraine firsthand.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
I've been involved in a State Department program with the
UK and EU, the Secretary Blinket announced back in May,
with the purpose of helping the Ukrainians investigate and prosecute
war crimes. So I've had several trips already, three trips,
including the last one I went out to Harkiv, which
is one of the regions where the fighting has taking place,
(45:15):
and providing international expertise on what constitutes war crimes, how
to investigate war crimes.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
You have also sees a connection between that so called
perfect phone call and the situation on the ground in
Ukraine today.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
There's a direct line to the first impeachment, the president's
actions politicizing what is obviously a national security event defending
our ally against Russian aggression. By not defending them, it
opened the door for Putin to engage in his current war,
where in a struggle dictatorships against democracy, an ascendant Russia,
(45:54):
if they achieved their goals, is likely to be an
empire in the next few years that we're going to
have to face with other embold in geopolitical adversaries that
are going to take lessons learned.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
For Alex The war is a kind of terrible evidence
of just how high the stakes were back in twenty nineteen.
And it makes you wonder if Donald Trump had been
re elected, how would he have responded to Putin's invasion.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
If it was Donald Trump that was the president and
he attacked.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Ukraine, the he being Putin and Ukraine.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Was crushed, what would that look like for the United
States for the twenty first century. It would mean the
rising tides of authoritarian regimes in the US in a
much much more powerless national security environment.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
Next time on The Whistleblowers, Olivia Troy was the Homeland
Security advisor to Vice President Mike Pence, and she was
known as the go to crist person in the White House.
Think terrorist attacks, shootings, floods, bombs. But when a new
virus starts making waves in January twenty twenty, it's not
(47:12):
just a health crisis. It's a crisis of leadership with
catastrophic consequences. The Whistleblowers is a production of iHeart Podcasts
(47:37):
in partnership with best Case Studios and Arc Media. It
was hosted by me Miles Taylor and written by Me
Isabel Evans and Adam Pinkiss. Isabel Evans is also our producer.
Associate producers are Hannah Leibowitz Lockhart and Ashley Warren. Darcy
Peakel is consulting producer. Zach Herman is the VP of
Development of ARC Media. This episode was edited by Daniel
(47:58):
Turrek with assistance from Max Michael Mill. Original music is
by James Newberry. Executive producers are Me Miles Taylor, Adam
Pinkss for Best Case Studios and Barrick Goodman for ARC Media.
Beth Ann Mcaluso is our executive producer for iHeartMedia, along
with Ali Perry. Special thanks to Kevin Famm, all of
our contributors and interviewees, and our intern Ann eleven, and
(48:19):
a big thanks to the teams at Government Accountability Project
and Whistleblower Aid, two of the best organizations for government
and private sector whistleblowers seeking legal support. Follow and rate
the Whistleblowers on the podcast site of your choice to
hear what these whistleblowers and others have to say about
what they believe will happen under a second Trump administration
(48:39):
or in the White House of AMaGA successor. You can
pick up my new book, blowback from Simon and Schuster,
Dad, I'm sitting here today in the US Capitol talking
to our elective professionals is proof that you made the
right decision forty years ago to leave the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Do not worry. I will be fine for telling the truth.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
That's Lieutenant Colonel alex Vinman making his opening statement as
a witness in President Trump's first impeachment. It's November nineteenth,
twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I've dedicated my entire professional life to the United States
of America for more than two decades. It has been
my honor to serve as an officer of the United
States Army. In July twenty eighteen, I was asked to
serve at the White House National Security Council.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
As he says, alex Vinman is a member of the
White House's National Security Council. He was one of the
people on a call, I'm going to say, a now
infamous call between President Donald Trump and the new President
of Ukraine, Voldemir Zelenski in July of twenty nineteen. President
Zelensky was urging President Trump to release military aid, which
(01:04):
had been somewhat mysteriously delayed. As the call was winding down,
President Trump said, quote, I'd like you to do us
a favor, though unquote. That favor is to open an
investigation into his political rival, Joe Biden. It's what you'd
call a quid pro quo, which would be a big
(01:24):
red flag to anyone listening in. Within minutes, Alex Binman
reported what he heard through the proper channels. He then
agreed to testify before Congress because he's a believer in
the system. It was much better than the system his
family had left behind in the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
As a young man, I decided I'd wanted to spend
my life serving this nation that gave my family refuge
from authoritary oppression.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
And he had every reason to expect that since he
was blowing the whistle strictly by the book, he had
nothing to worry about.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I also recognize that my simple act of appearing here today,
just like the courage of my colleagues who have also
truthfully testified before this committee, would not be tolerated in
many places around the world. In Russia, offering public testimony
involving the president would surely cost me my life. I'm
grateful for my father's brave act of hope forty years ago,
(02:18):
and for the privilege of being an American citizen and
public servant where I can live for a fear for
mine and my family safety.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Lieutenant Colonel Vinman wasn't sent to a gulag in Siberia,
and he wasn't executed, So I guess you could say
he was ahead of the game, but he was not fine.
The president was acquitted, but Vinman was fired and forced
out of the military, where he had served for twenty
one years. You may think you know his story, but
(02:47):
what you may not know is that Alex Vinman is
still picking up the pieces. I'm Miles Taylor, and this
is the whistleblowers on this show. We're going deep in
the heart of power to meet the people who spoke
out about wrongdoing from inside the Trump administration. Some were
(03:07):
in the President's inner circle, others were on the front
lines of top agencies. But they all have a few
things in common, the ethical gray areas that doubts about
whether what they did even made an impact, and they
all paid a price. Episode four, State of Chaos The Future,
(03:46):
Lieutenant Colonel Alex Vinman and his family ended up in
the United States when his father decided to move them
from Ukraine. It's one of those real American dream stories
that makes you feel good about the country.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
We immigrated from the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic in nineteen
seventy nine. My mother was dying of cancer. She didn't
survive to get to the United States. She passed away
in Ukraine. My father left at the age of forty seven.
We were three and a half years old.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
The we Alex is referring to is himself and his
identical twin brother.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
My name is Yevgenny Vimmen. Most people knew me as Yev.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Yes, they sound exactly alike. And you can see how
this could get a little complicated in a podcast, so
we'll be sure to let you know who's who. And
Yev Jenny Eugene's also known as Yev claims he's the
funnier brother, So if it's funny, maybe assume it's him.
But for now, back to Alex.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
We came to the United States as refugees, political refugees
fleeing anti Semitism, so not leaving for kind of economic reasons,
but for the aspirations of enjoying America's bound these freedom, liberty, justice, equality,
all these types of things.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Alex and Yev's father had already seen what anti Semitism
looked like when his family narrowly escaped the Nazi occupation
of Kiev in nineteen forty one.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
He and his family, his sister and his mother survived
World War Two, fleeing the Nazi attacks into Ukraine, the
inevitable seizure of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and the
mass slaughter the extermination of the Jewish population.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
He managed to evade.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
That by just a matter of hours days and lived
out the war in the euro Mountains.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
His grandfathers on both sides didn't have the same luck
surviving the war.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Both my grandfathers passed away. But this is the kinds
of stories that we were raised on his experiences as
a young man, kind of being a little bit of
a troublemaker himself, which which resonated with my twin brother
and I.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
The Vinman family lands in Brighton Beach in Brooklyn. Incredibly,
the twin boys wind up in a PBS documentary by
filmmaker Ken Burns called Statue of Liberty that looks at
what this symbol means to American immigrants.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
And then we went to our mother died, so we
went to Italy and then we came here.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Both of the Vinman boys wanted to serve their adopted country.
Here's Alex.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
I thought that there was an obligation to repay the
debt of welcoming us to the United States. My older brother,
my twin brother, we all served in the military. Why
I went into the military is tied to the immigrant roots.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Alex and Yev both quickly rise through the ranks of
the US military. Yev gets his law degree and serves
in combat in the Iraq War, earning the rank of
lieutenant colonel in twenty sixteen and multiple commendation medals. Like Yev,
Alex serves in a Rock where he's awarded a purple
Heart after being injured when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
About seven years into the military, I had to make
a judgment call on whether I wanted to be a
troop leader, an airborne ranger, all those cool things, or
do something that contributed in a bigger way. And I
made the determination that could contribute in a bigger way.
As a foreign area.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Officer, Alex's area of expertise will be Russia. It's a
natural choice.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
I had some advantages because Russian was spoken in the home.
I had some cultural awareness. I had traveled to the region.
I managed to take a successful career Niftrman, pick up
additional language in addition to Russian Ukrainian, and went to
get an advanced degree at Harvard, went straight to Moscow.
Was in Moscow for three years during the period where
this war between Russian Ukraine started. I had served in Ukraine.
(07:55):
I went to the Pentagon, drafted the strategies to manage
Russia as an adversary, and then to the White House
based on the work I did in the Pentagon.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, the Vinmans, they're overachievers.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
All that came together in a phenomenal way where I
just had an awesome, awesome career run all the way
up until the White House.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Up until the White House where things get complicated.
Speaker 5 (08:36):
Well, I hope that we do have good relations with Russia.
Speaker 6 (08:38):
It's a big country, it's a nuclear country. It's a
country that we.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
Should get along with, and I think we will eventually
get along with Russia.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
I was very, very, very thoughtful about joining the Trump
White House.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
I was a.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Recruited should join in almost a year into the administration
in November of seventeen, I had certainly monitored the direct
the administration was taking and got the pulse on what
the situation was, and the response was not heartening. The
response is from somebody that's been deployed to combat three times.
(09:10):
You've never been to as powerless an environment as you're
about to set foot it.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
So it was definitely cautionary.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
But Alex feels he has a lot to offer. He's
a Russia policy expert, and he brings that expertise to
the White House National Security Council or NSC, which is
basically the nerve center at the White House for the
most sensitive decisions on foreign policy, diplomacy, and sometimes war,
and he isn't coming into this tricky environment completely alone.
(09:42):
In July of twenty eighteen, when he joins the NSC,
Yev his brother accepts a position there as well. Here's Yev.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
I was the deputy Legal Advisor on the National Security Council.
It was extremely prestigious working with senior officials on the
most sensitive and important to topics in the country.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
The Vinman brothers. One thing about them is they are
not shy. They make an impression. And I remember what
I first heard about Alex. I remember roughly the window
when you started because some of our senior counselors for
intelligence and National security would interact with you at the NSC.
(10:22):
But I heard Alex Finnman, you know, is a know
at all on these issues. And I had someone on
my staff. I had someone of my staff who I
actually asked, you know, give me a readout of this
Alex Finman guy. She said, he's not a know at all.
He knows as shit. He especially knows his shit about Russia,
(10:44):
and given his knowledge of the language and culture, his
bosses also decide to add Ukraine to Alex's portfolio. It
makes sense, given that Ukraine's biggest security threat is often
from its own neighbor. When Alex starts on the NSC,
it's an especially delicate time. Ukraine is a US ally
in Europe, and Russian forces are starting to push further
(11:05):
into Ukrainian territory after having already seized a region known
as Krimea. It's an alarming sign of escalation and a
threat to an American ally. Coupled with the warnings from
the intelligence community about Russia's interference in American elections, it
feels like a moment when the US should be sending
a strong message to the leader in Moscow, Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
My first day on the job on the National Security Council,
the day that you're supposed to show up and in
process and get the orientations was Helsinki.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
He's referring to the summit between Trump and Putin about
US Russia relations held in Helsinki in July of twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
And that was the day that President Trump decided that
he was going to fanboy Putin and basically take his
word over the collective opinion of the national security community,
the intelligence community about Russian interference.
Speaker 6 (11:59):
He just said, and it's not Russia. I will say this.
I don't see any reason why it would be.
Speaker 7 (12:04):
So.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
I have great confidence in my intelligence people.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
But I will tell.
Speaker 5 (12:10):
You that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in
his denial.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Today Trump decides to ignore the American spy community and
accept the word of Russian rival Vladimir Putin. This shocks
Alex just as much as it shocked Andy McCabe, top
officials at DOJ, intelligence leaders, a lot of us in
the administration. What is it with Trump's deference to Moscow?
(12:39):
Just a few months later, Russia gets more aggressive in
Ukraine and the President continues to give Putin a pass,
preferring to look the other way.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
You had the Ukrainian navy attempt to navigate crossing to
get from one part of the country, certain navigating around
Crimea get to the other part of the country through
a place called the Kurt Street, and the Russians attack them.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
On CNN correspondent Matthew Chance underlines just how serious this
situation is becoming.
Speaker 8 (13:08):
This is a major escalation potentially because you've seen Russian forces,
according to the Ukrainian Navy, fire upon three naval vessels
and then board them with a raiding party consisting of
Russian special forces. The Ukrainian military says at least six
of its naval personnel were injured in that confrontation.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
I was scrambling to come up with some good solutions.
What can we do? And the President basically not only
did he not do anything, he canceled a lot of
activities that we had already on the plate to support Ukraine.
Basically black sea operations where we do partnership exercises with
a whole bunch of Black Sea states. Those were canceled.
(13:49):
So I thought it was a president just being weak
need later on, I realized that it was both his
dislike of Ukraine and his enamoration with.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
That were probably equally important in this.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
A few months later, in April of twenty nineteen, the
US Ambassador to Ukraine, Maria Yvanovich is fired.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
One of my key partners was the ambassador in Ukraine,
Mashia Ivanovitch, and she was a long serving public servant
decades of distinguished service. She ended up getting targeted by
the far right a slander campaign by a Ukrainian corrupt
Ukrainian prosecutor general.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Then somehow Rudy.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Giuliani got involved with the President's attorney that started to
become troubling.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Rudy Giuliani's on the case and a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor,
Yuri Lutsenko, who circulates a story that the US Ambassador
Yvanovich is refusing to investigate supposedly questionable ties between Ukrainian
officials and Hillary Clinton. The truth of this is well,
(15:00):
it's non existent, but Trump's inner circle, people like Giuliani,
Donald Trump Junior, and Sean Hannity join in attacking the
US ambassador.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
She made it past that first tranch of kind of
slanderous accusations, and then it came back around in April
because Don Junior Present's son attacked her on Twitter and
that was it.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
She's recalled, and maybe recalled doesn't sound that bad, but
she's actually been ordered back to Washington overnight, where she
faces the end of a thirty three year career in
the foreign service.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Mashya Ivanovitch was ousted. In April.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
You started hearing Rudy Giuliani publicly attacked Ukraine, and that
brought about complete upheaval in our Ukraine policy.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
The question is why why does the Trump administration attack
its own ambassador, Why is a random Ukrainian prosecutor spreading
conspiracy theories? And why doesn't the administration just condemn Russia
when it threatens a US ally Ukraine.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
It became quite apparent that it was all about US
domestic politics. The twenty first of April, you had a
new president of Ukraine. Zelensky was elected in a landslide victory.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
BBC News captures the excitement when a TV actor named
Voldemir Zelensky is elected president.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
I had proposed a congratulatory call for the president to
Colle Zelensky. They ended up calling him on the day
of his victory and just having a very pleasant congratulatory call,
mainly because the president likes winners. This occurred on April
twenty first, weeks later, it was completely different narrative.
Speaker 6 (16:55):
Today, I'm announcing my candidacy for President of the United States.
If we are in the for the soul of this nation,
I believe history will look back on four years of
this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment
in time.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
The importance of this connection between the election of Zelenski
and Joe Biden announcing his candidacy isn't totally obvious, So
let me explain. First off, Donald Trump sees a line
of attack in Ukraine against a Democratic opponent back home,
Joe Biden, and that's because Biden's son Hunter had done
(17:34):
business deals in Ukraine when Biden was Vice president, and
Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who's been leading opposition research
on Trump's perceived enemies, thought they ought to do some
digging into those deals to see what they could find
and maybe point allegations of corruption from Hunter Biden to
his father Joe. You know, see, if that whole soul
(17:57):
of a nation loftiness can be brought down a peg.
But the second thing to understand is specific to Ukraine.
Alex and Dyev explain Alex first.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Ukraine's history isn't always clean. It does have a deeper
history of corruption.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
There had been some major protests in twenty thirteen in
Ukraine that were known as the Maiden Uprising. Now, the
protests were about government corruption and the power of the
oligarchs and the political system, and they led to the
removal of then President Viktor Yanokovich. Fighting corruption becomes an
important issue for the incoming president, and then there's the
(18:35):
issue of Russia's threat to Ukrainian security, so new guy
Zelenski has to tackle both of these issues at the
same time. Yev explains this part.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
He had, on the one hand, his country that he's
trying to defend fro not quite the onslaught that we're
seeing now from the Russians, but still significant attack and
fight corruption.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
So you can see the pieces of line. President Trump,
Rudy Giuliani and others see that Biden may have an
achilles heel when it comes to Ukraine, and they see
the new president there Zelenski as someone that can lean on,
especially given the country's history of corruption, maybe in exchange
for that much needed help on the Russia thing, Zelensky
(19:20):
can do some backscratching for Donald Trump and his Joe
Biden problem. And the US ambassador y Ivanovitch is now
out of the picture, so who's left to complain about it?
Neither Alex or Yev know any of this at the time.
Yev again, this is all part of a scheme.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
I was not privy to and didn't understand the scheme
until a lot of this information came out. This was
a concerted effort.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Alex is just trying to get President Trump off to
a good start with Zelenski, but then he begins to
feel more and more uneasy, especially when the President orders
staff not to release security assistance to Ukraine, only that
the country absolutely needs if it's going to keep Russia
in check.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
In June, the President had placed this hold on security
assistance relatively quickly thereafter that convened a SUBPCC.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
That stands for Policy Coordination Committee Subgroup. Yeah, Washington loves
an acronym.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
All these deputies assistant secretaries to get together and get
people on the books, saying that everybody believes the right
thing to do to advance US policy was to continue
to offer Ukraine security assistants. I was diligently working as
much as I could to kind of navigate US back
on track with little effects. Frankly, that was further substantiated
(20:40):
on July tenth during this meeting in the White House
in the National Security Advisor's office, where this character Gordon Simon,
the Ambassador to the EU, flat out says that in
order to get things back on track with the Ukrainians,
they need to deliver an investigation.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
That's an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter
Biden's dealings in Ukraine.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
And this meeting ends abruptly, and then I'm arguing with Gordon.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
About the fact that we're not going to do that.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
I don't know if it needs to be overstated that
there needed to be dirt per se. All the President
needed was the innuendo. All he needed was the Ukrainians
to announce an investigation and he would take it from there.
This is a country that was in a state of war.
They might try to act on principle, but a push
comes to shove if they have to choose between the
(21:30):
national survival and digging up some dirt or fabricating some dirt.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
You can see it could be tempting. The Ukrainians need
weapons and money to fight Russia. America is their key
to those resources, and the President wants to use that
need as leverage to get dirt on his political enemy.
On July twenty fifth, twenty nineteen, there's a phone call
between President Zelenski and President Trump. Alex and his colleagues
(21:58):
are just hoping the conversation will be productive. Instead, all
of this finally explodes into the open.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
There's a good conversation. It might result in lifting the
hold on security systems. I went in with a small
sense of potential, hope, but a lot of foreboding about
what could happen. There were about a half a dozen
officials in that White House situation room with me. The
President probably had no idea. I have this funny visual
of him. It's kind of disturbing, sitting in his underwear,
(22:28):
drinking and coke. You know, up early. He doesn't like
to do anything before like eleven. So this was a
nine o'clock phone call. He was there just kind of
winging it.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Okay. I got a pause for a second just to
say I'm having PTSD listening to this story.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Turned out that Mike Pompeio was on the phone call.
John Bolton was nowhere to be seen, by the way,
just themselves as much as he could.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Mike Pompeo was Secretary of State and John Bolton was
the President's National security advisor, so he probably should be
there since this is about out national security.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
And it was me sitting with a handful of you know,
senior government officials prepared to take instructions listening on the
phone call. Do the follow up that you that emerges
out of these phone calls, and nobody's listening in to
trip up the president or to you know, go gotcha.
We're just they're doing our jobs.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Tripping him up is not necessary because what does the
President say.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
I'd like you to I'd like you to do us
a favor, though, all right, it's like a mafia. Don
Selensky's like, hey, Donald, it could really help us defend
ourselves if we got more of those really sweet javelins,
you know, the javelins that that have been so effective
in this war knocking out Russian armor. He asked for more,
(23:49):
and immediately Trump goes to, I'd like you to do
us a favor, though, and many proceeds to go into
this crazy rant about you know, how Ukraine is not
as good an ally, how Ukraine's ungrateful, and then he
goes on a rant about Joe Biden and just like
all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories and tries to get
put the squeeze on Zelensky to deliver on an investigation.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
What was the reaction like sitting there in the situation room,
were you making eye contact with the other officials or
talking about what was happening.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
I remember listening to this conversation and kind of shrinking
into my seat as this conversation starts. And Zelenski, you know,
didn't miss a beat either. He parried the President's demands
and was very charismatic.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Zelensky, as I said, is an actor and he's really
good on his feet. So when President Trump tells Zelensky
he'll have Rudy Giuliani get in touch with more details
on this investigation he wants, Zelensky says, and I quote,
I'd like to tell you that I also have quite
a few Ukrainian friends that live in the United States. Actually,
(24:55):
last time I traveled to the United States, I stayed
in New York near Central Park, and I stayed at
the Trump Tower. Now that's a sweet pivot. It could
be a scene straight out of Veep if the stakes
weren't so high.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
It made up my mind as soon as the call
was done. It was a visceral reaction about the dangers
to US national security by way of demonstrating of vulnerability
with Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
It was offensive. I made up my mind pretty much immediately.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Confident that the president has done something illegal. Alex knows
he has to report it through official channels, So the
first thing he does is get the best legal advice
he can find from the Deputy Legal Advisor to the
National Security Council, his twin brother, Yev, whose office is
just across the hall. Here's Alex.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
I went in there, into Eugene's office, which is right
across from mind, and.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Closed the door.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
You know, did a brief dramatic pause to make sure
I had his attention. Now, Yev, I could tell by
the look on his face that there is something wrong.
I know the guy quite well. I'd like to say
we know each other for about forty eight years. He said,
I heard something very disturbing. We didn't discuss it very long. Frankly,
we discussed it all of like five or ten minutes.
(26:13):
We were both active duty Army officers. You know, we
have a set of values that we live by, a
set of values that we performed our duties by for
the better part of twenty years at the time.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Back to Alex, and I said, Eugene.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
If what I'm about to tell you becomes public, the
president would be impeached, not having any idea that it
was to happen. It was just kind of capturing the
gravity of the moment rather than predicting that this would get.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
To an impeachment.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
And back to Yev.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
I did what duty required. Alex and I were in
complete agreement what that was. It was to report the
call to my supervisor, the legal advisor for the National
Security Council, who was dual had it as a deputy
White House Council and also assistant to the President, which
is a pretty senior presidential rank with the most senior
in fact. And Alex we discuss whether you should join me,
(27:01):
and I said, you're joining me, and then I dragged
him in and he became like your party to this
whole thing.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
That chief legal Advisor is a political appointee of the president,
and as such, he's not really motivated to draw a
line in the sand over Trump's behavior.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Here's Alex, your report is like this.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
He could counsel the President that what he's doing is illegal, immoral, unethical,
most importantly illegal, and get the President to reverse course.
He's a mild mandared bureaucrat, self serving, and he decided
that it was not career enhancing for him to challenge
the president on this one.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Alex has reason to be suspicious of this legal advisor,
since the guy had also been present in that meeting
with Ambassador Somblund, the one where Sondlin said the Ukrainians
would need to open some type of investigation into Joe
Biden if the security assistance was going to be released.
Here's Yev.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
The issue of Hunter Biden was raised, and that had
set off alarm bills and Alex had reported that. And
so what I would have anticipated a good lawyer doing
is having a conversation with the president. He spoke to
the president several times a week, he was involved in
many key decisions, and he did not do that.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
So why would he now, Assuming the president's lawyers aren't
going to take any action. Alex just has to work
with his colleagues to try to put Trump back on track.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
A couple weeks later, I drafted a presidential decision memo
that basically tried to get the president back on defending
US national security versus advancing his own political aspirations. So
at every point I was committed to doing this the
right way. How do we manage this situation? How do
we pick up the broken glass?
Speaker 3 (28:53):
What Alex doesn't know is that he's not the only
person who was alarmed by the phone call, and he's
not the only person who has decided to speak out.
(29:15):
One month after the call, on August twelfth, an unnamed
whistleblower files a formal complaint about the Trump Giuliani campaign
to pressure Ukraine into an investigation. The anonymous whistleblower, an
intelligence official, says they weren't on the Zelenski phone call,
but have heard enough about it to loudly sound the
(29:37):
siren inside the government. The complaint begins quote, in the
course of my official duties, I have received information from
multiple US government officials that the President of the United
States is using the power of his office to solicit
interference from a foreign country in the twenty twenty US election. Unquote.
(30:00):
That whistleblower remains anonymous even to this day, but we
did talk to their attorney, a DC based lawyer whose
firm specializes in these types of cases.
Speaker 9 (30:12):
My name is Andrew Mackay, and I'm a managing partner
of Compass Rose Legal Group, and i'm also dual had
it as senior counsel and the acting chief Acting disclosure
officer for whistleblower.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Aid Coincidentally, Andrew was also Ukrainian American, and he's a
former US intelligence officer, like the unnamed whistleblower.
Speaker 9 (30:31):
I didn't know who this individual was a whistleblower before
I met them. Somebody gave me a call one day saying, hey, look,
you know a friend of mine reached out to me
with a really significant concern and they need to speak
to somebody who knows about you know, what lawful whistleblowing
is and how that works. As I kah, sure you
note further on over, I'll be happy to speak with him.
We had a phone call and that's where I learned
(30:53):
a lot, but of course not all of the details
involving the perfect phone call.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
The whistleblower had first submitted the complaint with the Inspector
General of the Intelligence community. The Inspector General determined that
the complaint was credible and send it onto the Acting
Director of National Intelligence, Joseph McGuire. These types of reports
are almost always referred to Congress, but rather than sending
(31:19):
it on to the Senate and the House intelligence committees,
McGuire sat on it. So this is weird.
Speaker 9 (31:26):
Even if a concern wasn't needed to be urgent, they
would still say, Hey, we don't believe it's urgent, but
we're gonna go ahead and forward to the Hill.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Let them figure this out they want. Obviously, that's not
what happened. The report is filed on August twelfth, Congress
doesn't hear about it for an entire month.
Speaker 9 (31:44):
We identified two specific goals. Goal one was to get
the disclosure to the Hill lawfully. Goal io was protect
the client. Just protect the client.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
That's it.
Speaker 9 (31:57):
We weren't there to have there be a specific investigation,
although an investigation was obviously warrant it. We weren't looking
to have a president considered for impeachment. We're literally disclosing
a concern that something happened wrong, and our goal was
to get this to the Hill.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Congress is finally informed about the complaint in the middle
of September. Under pressure from BECAI and the whistleblower's legal team,
the Inspector General decides to bypass Director Maguire altogether and
get the complaint to the Hill. The House and sent
Intelligence committees are furious that this information has been kept
from them for so long. I actually wonder.
Speaker 9 (32:39):
If the White House and the Executive Branch at the
highest levels just let this disclosure go to the Hill,
it wouldn't have died, but would it have led to
an impeachment? Because I think that sometimes it's the cover
up that starts the drum beat. First it was there
is a complaint that's not coming out. Then it's, oh,
(32:59):
it involves potentially a foreign leader, and then it involves
potentially a phone call. It was a drip, drip drip,
and I think that that's what made it bigger in
my opinion.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Drip drip drip. Then suddenly a splash. Congress gets the report,
the media learns about it, and Director Maguire is hauled
up to Capitol Hill to explain why he didn't share
the whistleblower's complaints sooner. Representative Adam Schiff grills him.
Speaker 10 (33:30):
You would concur would you not director that this complaint
alleging serious wrongdoing by the president was credible. It's not
for me to judge, sir, but indeed you did judge
whether this complaint should be provided to Congress.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Basically, all hell breaks loose. Trump meanwhile decides to release
the hold on Ukraine's security assistance eighty five days late. Yeah,
total coincidence. Then in late September, the White House is
pressure to release the trail script of the phone call
with Zelenski, and turns out everything Alex and the unnamed
(34:06):
whistleblower had said is right there in the call. But
Trump disagrees.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
My call was perfect. The President yesterday of Ukraine said
there was no pressure put on him whatsoever, none whatsoever,
and he said it loud and clear for the press.
What these guys are doing, democrats are doing to this
country is a disgrace and it shouldn't be allowed.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
By October twenty nineteen, the House has started impeachment hearings,
even though it didn't get much play at the time.
Alex's initial report about that July phone call is now
suddenly extremely relevant. He's called in as a key witness,
and he's been around this administration long enough to know
what that really means.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
I was like, Okay, it's a matter of time once
this is announced.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
I guess I hired you know, sixteen hour days on
the National Security Council.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
As Rachel is Alex's wife, I.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Think I told her like, Hey, can you check on
my professional liability insurance? Like, you know, if I get sued,
could you check that pot I've got something that's going
to you know, not bankrupt us. And then I turned
around and went to sleeve a card to her, and
she stayed out the rest of the night wondering what
the hell that meant.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
On October twenty ninth, twenty nineteen, Alex testifies in a
closed session before three big House committees, and then November nineteenth,
he has to testify again, this time in public. From
his opening statement, his testimony makes waves. Here's Ari Melburgh
on MSNBC who sees just how Alex's background and military
(35:46):
record make him the perfect witness.
Speaker 11 (35:49):
Vinman struck me as the most devastating we've seen in
the public hearing today. This is someone who obviously looks
the part is the part that was a real reticence
by Republicans to go directly at him. This is an
army officer who spoke very directly about why he phoned
it in.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
He knew that it was political and wrong.
Speaker 11 (36:07):
This is not someone who reads in any way as aggrandizing,
as looking for the spotlight.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
It doesn't make Alex any friends with the administration or
the president's supporters. There are threats and there's harassment.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
I had Army Criminal Investigation Division. I had them come
out and take a look at my house. That we
increased police patrols. I had made arrangements to move on
to an army base if I needed to. It wasn't
just the fact that Maga would be angry at me
for testifying a geinst the president, but the President and
his henchmen Don Junior Giuliani. These folks had orchestrated a
(36:45):
campaign to attack me, to vilify me, to warn off
other folks from testifying.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Susan Glasser is co founder of Politico and now writes
for The New Yorker. She sees how Alex and others
who started peeking out about the Trump presidency had a
very specific type of credibility.
Speaker 12 (37:05):
So much of the damning real time information that came
out of the Trump administration about the President himself was
the result of the testimony. The people in the room,
they're not liberal Democrats, They're Republicans, most of them lifelong
Republicans or career public servants, and he just dumped on
(37:26):
these people in an extraordinary way.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Of course, there are lots of powerful people, people in fact,
with a lot less to lose, who could have testified
in the impeachment hearings but didn't.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
John Bolton is perhaps the best example of this.
Speaker 12 (37:43):
He obviously has financial independence, the ability to make money
that junior officials do not have.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
He sells a.
Speaker 12 (37:52):
Book in the middle of this in which he makes
extraordinary claims. He has a direct, first hand witness to
many of the events that are at the core of.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
The Ukraine impeachment. John Bolton did not provide that testimony.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Public servants like Alex has beleaguered boss Fiona Hill, the
fired and humiliated former Ambassador Marie Ivanovitch, even Ambassador Gordon Somlin,
who Alex had criticized for not doing more sooner, they
all step up and testify.
Speaker 12 (38:25):
It gets to the bigger mystery of what are all
these big men afraid of so much? With Donald Trump?
You know, he's a schoolyard bully, but he's not going
to punch them out.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
One thing we learned is that as a category and
as a.
Speaker 12 (38:39):
Class, these sort of macho talking Republican officials turned out
to be whimps when it came to standing up to
Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Wednesday, February fifth, twenty twenty, Trump is acquitted in his
impeachment trial.
Speaker 13 (39:08):
The Senate having tried Donald John Trump, President of the
United States, upon two articles of impeachment, two thirds of
the Senator's president not having found him guilty. It is
therefore ordered and adjudged that the said Donald John Trump
be and he is hereby acquitted of the charges in
said articles.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
For alex Vinman, this result means one thing, he's fired.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
The only surprise was that it didn't happen the day
he was acquitted. I thought i'd be out on Thursday instead,
I should have known Friday's firing day.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Were you angry at all?
Speaker 1 (39:43):
I think there was a combination of some relief. I
was probably angry about the fact that my twin brother
was escorted out with me. That wasn't entirely a surprise,
but that is pretty vindictive to go after people's family. Yev,
by that point we were anticipating. At we compared notes
about how he was intercepted in his office, and I
(40:05):
was intercepted in my office by the people that we
worked with every single day, quite closely.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
This feels especially petty. Yev hadn't even been called on
to testify, but Yev says, they're used to being grouped together.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Alex and I our second grade teacher, and administrators had
decided that we were too much trouble to keep together
in the same class, so they separated us and had
the White House learned that lesson, you know, thirty plus
years later, who knows what would have happened.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Again, it's not a gulag in Siberia. It could be worse,
But there's something that the Vindmann brothers don't see coming.
Their involvement in this political firestorm ends up costing both
of them their long standing careers in the US military.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Alex I would end up being angry about the consequences
about the fact that, like it turned out that the
arm ME wasn't going to allow me to perform my
duties in an effective manner. They would put me on
to kind of like this, the backwoods assignment somewhere while
they figured out whether I could get promoted or not.
(41:13):
I was selected for promotion to colonel. The White House
interfered with my promotion to colonel, so they made sure
that I wouldn't be able to advance in the military
or hope behold any kind of really effective.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
Position, and yev faces that too.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Even in the Army, I became persona on Grotto. The
current Judge Advocate General of the Army, Lieutenant General Stuart Rich,
promoted me to lieutenant colonel and then ultimately declined to
promote me to colonel. And one of the one stars
who's now retired, explicitly told me that if I had
my brother speak at my promotion, which is an intensely
(41:49):
personal ceremony where family comes to it's that he could
not perform the ceremony. So it was obvious that my
time in the Army would not be fruitful.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
With the Army stone walling any future ascent, both brothers
are forced to retire and this hurts. They've risked their
lives in combat. They are decorated with the highest military
honors and yet they're sidelined over petty politics. Yev.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
For somebody that had been serving in uniform, had deployed
into combat. It became very disheartening to see that if
the military and the army can't abide by its own values,
then the soldiers will notice that and vote with their feet.
And the army missed its recruiting goal by twenty five
percent in the most recent year.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
I ask Alex and Yev if they had any regrets.
Here's Yev. First.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
My regrets are that our system was not stronger, or
that we didn't have better people, or the people that
we had didn't didn't do what they should have done.
When malfeasance was reported and politics won over national security,
which ended us up where we are right now. It
completely upended my life, and I'm still dealing with some
(43:14):
of the consequences. I mean, I'm still radioactive to folks
that don't want to talk to the guy that testified
against Trump. My wife recently, actually, on a flight within
the past couple weeks, former military guy came up to
her and said something nasty and menacing. He came up
and try to intimidate my wife. Guy wouldn't have the
balls to say that.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
To me, but an all too familiar tactic.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Did I let that slow me down? No, we have
to be able to live with the consequences. There's no
Hollywood ending. The clouds don't part, the sun doesn't start
shining down just because you did the right thing.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
That's not the real world.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
You just need to be able to live with the
basic notion that you did the right thing, and we're
true to kind of your own moral compass.
Speaker 7 (44:00):
We begin with breaking news, of course, as war unfolds
in Ukraine this morning. Explosions and sirens heard in and
around Kiev. Overnight, Ukraine's Defense Ministry saying Russian forces have
arrived in the capital.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
It's February twenty fifth, twenty twenty two, almost two years
exactly since Trump was acquitted in his impeachment. Ukraine's worst
fears about Russian aggression have come true. ABC News anchor
Savannah Sellers reports the breaking news Russia has begun a
full invasion, pushing all the way toward the Ukrainian capital
(44:38):
of Kiev. Since then, hundreds of thousands of soldiers on
both sides of the conflict, and at least tens of
thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed. Yev has seen
the impact of this war on Ukraine firsthand.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
I've been involved in a State Department program with the
UK and EU, the Secretary Blinket announced back in May,
with the purpose of helping the Ukrainians investigate and prosecute
war crimes. So I've had several trips already, three trips,
including the last one I went out to Harkiv, which
is one of the regions where the fighting has taking place,
(45:15):
and providing international expertise on what constitutes war crimes, how
to investigate war crimes.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
You have also sees a connection between that so called
perfect phone call and the situation on the ground in
Ukraine today.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
There's a direct line to the first impeachment, the president's
actions politicizing what is obviously a national security event defending
our ally against Russian aggression. By not defending them, it
opened the door for Putin to engage in his current war,
where in a struggle dictatorships against democracy, an ascendant Russia,
(45:54):
if they achieved their goals, is likely to be an
empire in the next few years that we're going to
have to face with other embold in geopolitical adversaries that
are going to take lessons learned.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
For Alex The war is a kind of terrible evidence
of just how high the stakes were back in twenty nineteen.
And it makes you wonder if Donald Trump had been
re elected, how would he have responded to Putin's invasion.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
If it was Donald Trump that was the president and
he attacked.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Ukraine, the he being Putin and Ukraine.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Was crushed, what would that look like for the United
States for the twenty first century. It would mean the
rising tides of authoritarian regimes in the US in a
much much more powerless national security environment.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
Next time on The Whistleblowers, Olivia Troy was the Homeland
Security advisor to Vice President Mike Pence, and she was
known as the go to crist person in the White House.
Think terrorist attacks, shootings, floods, bombs. But when a new
virus starts making waves in January twenty twenty, it's not
(47:12):
just a health crisis. It's a crisis of leadership with
catastrophic consequences. The Whistleblowers is a production of iHeart Podcasts
(47:37):
in partnership with best Case Studios and Arc Media. It
was hosted by me Miles Taylor and written by Me
Isabel Evans and Adam Pinkiss. Isabel Evans is also our producer.
Associate producers are Hannah Leibowitz Lockhart and Ashley Warren. Darcy
Peakel is consulting producer. Zach Herman is the VP of
Development of ARC Media. This episode was edited by Daniel
(47:58):
Turrek with assistance from Max Michael Mill. Original music is
by James Newberry. Executive producers are Me Miles Taylor, Adam
Pinkss for Best Case Studios and Barrick Goodman for ARC Media.
Beth Ann Mcaluso is our executive producer for iHeartMedia, along
with Ali Perry. Special thanks to Kevin Famm, all of
our contributors and interviewees, and our intern Ann eleven, and
(48:19):
a big thanks to the teams at Government Accountability Project
and Whistleblower Aid, two of the best organizations for government
and private sector whistleblowers seeking legal support. Follow and rate
the Whistleblowers on the podcast site of your choice to
hear what these whistleblowers and others have to say about
what they believe will happen under a second Trump administration
(48:39):
or in the White House of AMaGA successor. You can
pick up my new book, blowback from Simon and Schuster,
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