This archive report was first published on 20 November 2019.
As the impeachment inquiry enters its second week of public hearings, a disturbing theme has emerged: President Trump and his allies spent months carrying out a secretive extortion plot against the new Ukraine government, which aimed to help him win re-election in 2020.
On Tuesday, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the White House's top Ukraine expert, and Jennifer Williams, a foreign policy adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, testified about their involvement in the plot.
Colonel Vindman and Ms. Williams represent an increasingly endangered species in Mr. Trump's Washington, a world populated by grifters, self-dealers, and cheats who look at political power and see personal gain.
However, dedicated public servants like Colonel Vindman and Ms. Williams speak in sincere and personal terms of their allegiance to the country and the Constitution they had sworn to defend.
Both listened in on the July 25 call between President Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's new president, and were alarmed by what Mr. Trump said.
"I couldn't believe what I was hearing," Colonel Vindman said of his reaction to hearing Mr. Trump tell Mr. Zelensky "to do us a favor, though," by investigating Joe Biden and his son Hunter for alleged corruption.
Ms. Williams called the conversation "unusual," explaining, "I thought that the references to specific individuals and investigations, such as former Vice President Biden and his son, struck me as political in nature, given that the former vice president is a political opponent of the president."
Republicans tried to dismiss Mr. Trump's call for investigations of the Bidens as a harmless request, but Colonel Vindman shot that down quickly.
"The culture I come from, the military culture, when a senior asks you to do something, even if it's polite and pleasant, it's not to be taken as a request, it's to be taken as an order," Colonel Vindman said.
Especially given the power disparity between the United States and Ukraine, Colonel Vindman said, it was clear that Mr. Zelensky wasn't being given a choice.
"It was probably an element of shock that maybe in certain regards, my worst fear of how our Ukraine policy could play out was playing out, and how this was likely to have significant implications for U.S. national security," he said.
