Testimony from Alexander Vindman and Fiona Hill caps a devastating week for Trump, alexnazaryan writes
WASHINGTON — The week ended on a sour note for President Trump, with the public release of testimony by two national security council staffers — one current, one former — who expressed alarm over the way Trump officials pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for political help at home.
The testimony of the two officials is bound to energize Democrats ahead of next week’s public hearings. It includes a denunciation by Vindman of the “inherent risk” of playing politics with world affairs and Hill’s flat assessment of the Republican talking point that Ukraine “was launching an effort to upend our [2016] election,” as “a fiction.”
Giuliani sought a public announcement from Zelensky that he would investigate Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election, a pet concern shared by some on the conservative fringe who steadfastly reject the unanimous findings of intelligence and law-enforcement agencies that the meddling and hacking was perpetrated by Russia rather than its much smaller and less powerful neighbor.
Yovanovitch, though not Jewish herself, would come under similar attacks from Giuliani, especially after an article in The Hill cited speculated that she had told Ukrainian officials not to investigate certain U.S. entities dear to Democratic interests. Vindman testified that he and Hill both told Sondland that this was an “inappropriate” demand. The requested investigations had “nothing to do with national security,” Hill said, and “the NSC was not going to get involved in it,” according to Vindman’s recollection.
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