GOP senators tried to stop Trump from firing Sondland
WASHINGTON — A handful of Republican senators tried to stop President Donald Trump from firing Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union who testified in the House impeachment hearings, but the president relieved the diplomat of his post anyway, according to people briefed on the discussions.
The senators were concerned it would look bad for Trump to dismiss Sondland and that it was unnecessary, since the ambassador was already talking with senior officials about leaving after the Senate trial, the people said. The senators told White House officials that Sondland should be allowed to depart on his own terms, which would have reduced any political backlash.
But Trump evidently was not interested in a quiet departure, choosing instead to make a point by forcing Sondland out before the ambassador was ready to go. When State Department officials called Sondland on Friday to tell him that he had to resign that day, he resisted, saying that he did not want to be included in what seemed like a larger purge of impeachment witnesses, according to people informed about the matter.
If they wanted him gone that day, Sondland conveyed to the State Department officials that they would have to fire him. And so they did, ordering him recalled from his post effective immediately. Sondland’s dismissal was announced just hours after another impeachment witness, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, and his twin brother, Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, were marched out of the White House by security officers and told their services were no longer needed.
The ousters came just two days after the Republican-led Senate acquitted Trump on two articles of impeachment. Outraged Democrats called the firings a “Friday night massacre” aimed at taking revenge against government officials who were forced to testify under subpoena about what they knew.
The Republican senators who sought to intervene on Sondland’s behalf reached out to Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, and Eric M. Ueland, the legislative affairs director, to register their protests, according to one of the people informed about the conversations, who like others declined to be identified discussing private talks.
The senators did not express the same concern about Vindman, who is viewed less sympathetically by the president’s allies. Republicans considered some of Vindman’s comments during his testimony overtly political and, in any case, believed it was untenable for him to remain on the staff of a president with whom he broke so publicly.
Trump on Saturday defended his decision to fire Vindman, calling the decorated Iraq War veteran “very insubordinate.”
“Fake News @CNN & MSDNC keep talking about ‘Lt. Col.’ Vindman as though
I should think only how wonderful he was,” Trump wrote on Twitter, without explaining why he put the colonel’s rank in quote marks.
“Actually, I don’t know him, never spoke to him, or met him (I don’t believe!),” the president continued, “but, he was very insubordinate, reported contents of my ‘perfect’ calls incorrectly, & was given a horrendous report by his superior, the man he reported to, who publicly stated that Vindman had problems with judgement, adhering to the chain of command and leaking information. In other words, ‘OUT’.”
Trump offered no explanation for why Vindman’s twin brother, Yevgeny Vindman, who is also an Army lieutenant colonel and who worked as a lawyer on the National Security Council staff, was also fired and escorted out of the White House complex at the same time even though he did not participate in the House hearings. Nor did the president mention his decision to recall Sondland.
The president’s dismissals of the Vindman brothers and Sondland opened a campaign of retribution just days after his the Senate acquittal on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.