Ukraine expert at White House sounded alarm on Trump call

WASHINGTON >> A White House national security official who is a decorated Iraq War veteran plans to tell House impeachment investigators today that he heard President Donald Trump appeal to Ukraine’s president to investigate one of his leading political rivals, a request the aide considered so damaging to U.S. interests that he reported it to a superior.

Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman of the Army, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, twice registered internal objections about how Trump and his inner circle were treating Ukraine, out of what he called a “sense of duty,” he plans to tell the inquiry, according to a draft of his opening statement obtained by The New York Times.

He will be the first White House official to testify who listened in on the July 25 telephone call between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that is at the center of the impeachment inquiry, in which Trump asked Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.

“I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine,” Vindman’s statement says. “I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained.”