'Apolitical' Alexander Vindman is happy he helped Biden win, coy about whistleblower
At that point in the conversation, Wittes raised a question. Trump supporters would say that what Vindman had just described was precisely what they feared about the deep state: a faceless, unelected functionary, deep inside the bureaucracy, trying to influence the political process to defeat a president who had been elected by tens of millions American voters. Trump might say, 'Listen to this guy Vindman,'" Wittes suggested. "'He just described as a success that he and other people in the deep state helped the public decide to vote against me. That's actually what I've been saying about the deep state from the beginning. It's the Alex Vindmans and the Pete Strzoks and the Andy McCabes, and they all want the Democrats to win.' What's your response to that? On the one hand, you talk about apolitical service, and you clearly mean it, but on the other hand, part of your definition of success was that you guys helped
Joe Biden unseat Donald Trump. Reconcile that for me."
Vindman responded with a defiant, self-serving answer. My adversaries are partisan and political, he argued, while I am not. "The judgments that come in and would label me as a deep stater are partisan, political judgments," Vindman explained, "when an impartial, fair assessment would suggest that all I did was do my duty. We reported what we saw, we gave factual testimony, and left it to the political actors to either move forward through impeachment or basically embolden the president by not holding him accountable." Never mind that Vindman had earlier said that if the political actors had not taken action against Trump, Vindman would have had to find another way to do it himself.
When he discussed the impeachment, Vindman presented his testimony as his main contribution to events. But at least as important was his role in the whistleblower complaint that started the Trump-Ukraine investigation. During the course of the impeachment, Republicans came to believe that Vindman was the one who set the whistleblower train in motion — and then denied that he knew how it happened.
Impeachment testimony revealed that Vindman, who in his role as a National Security aide had listened to the Trump-Zelensky call, told six people about the president's conversation. He told his brother, who was a lawyer at the NSC. He told three other NSC officials, John Eisenberg, Michael Ellis, and Tim Morrison. Then he told two people outside the NSC, both of whom, he said, had full security clearances and a "need to know." One of them was George Kent, an official at the State Department who dealt with Ukraine. And the other was -- Vindman would not say.
