WASHINGTON – One top national security aide who listened to President Donald Trump's July call with Ukraine's president called it "improper." Another said it was "unusual." The two testified Tuesday at House impeachment hearings as the inquiry reached deeper into the White House.
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, an Army officer at the National Security Council, and Jennifer Williams, his counterpart at Vice President Mike Pence's office, said they had concerns as Trump spoke on July 25 with the newly elected Ukrainian president about political investigations into Democrat Joe Biden.
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"What I heard was inappropriate," Vindman told lawmakers.
The two led off a pivotal week featuring testimony from nine witnesses in all as the House's impeachment inquiry accelerates. Democrats say Trump's pressure on Ukraine to investigate Democrat Joe Biden as he withheld U.S. military aid that Ukraine needed to resist Russian aggression may be grounds for removing the 45th president.
Trump says he did no such thing in his call with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the Democrats just want him gone.
Vindman, a 20-year military officer arrived at Capitol Hill in military blue with a chest full of service medals, and said he reported his concerns "out of a sense of duty."
He did so, he said, "because they had significant national security implications for our country."
Williams, a career State Department official who has worked for three presidential administrations and counts former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a "personal hero," said the phone call was the first time she had heard anyone specifically seeking investigations from Ukraine.
"The reference to Biden sounded political to me," she said.
Williams said the call was "unusual" because the specific reference to Joe Biden and his son Hunter "struck me as political in nature."
Vindman, an immigrant who arrived in the U.S. as a toddler from Ukraine, told the panel he was grateful his father brought the family to the U.S. 40 years ago and for "the privilege of being an American citizen and public servant, where I can live free of fear for mine and my family's safety."
In the audience was his twin brother, also an official at the National Security Council and among those he told about his concerns over Trump's phone call.
Addressing his father, Vindman said, "Do not worry, I will be fine for telling the truth."
Gaveling open the second week of live televised hearings, the Democratic chairman leading the probe, Rep. Adam Schiff, noted that Trump tweeted against Williams over the weekend and Vindman has seen "far more scurrilous attacks" on his character by the president's allies.
Schiff, who has warned that the president's attacks on others in the impeachment inquiry could be seen as intimidation, said the witnesses "are here because they were subpoenaed to appear, not because they are for or against impeachment. That question is for Congress."
Schiff said that both Williams and Vindman noted the use of the word "Burisma" on the call. That's a reference to the gas company in Ukraine where Hunter Biden served on the board.
They both said Zelenskiy had mentioned it on the call, but testified it was missing from the rough transcript released by the White House.
The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. David Nunes, began the hearing with an extended attack on the media and dismissed last week's testimony as "secondhand and thirdhand conversations." He blasted the hearing as a "hoax."
Both witnesses have testified in earlier, closed-door sessions and received subpoenas to appear Tuesday. Their depositions have been publicly released.
Williams testified the call was unlike about a dozen others she had heard from presidents over her career. Vindman said Trump's remarks strayed from the talking points prepared for the president.
"Without hesitation, I knew I had to report this," Vindman testified. "It was inappropriate. It was improper for the president to demand an investigation into a political opponent."
At the time, the officials were just beginning to make the link with the stalled military aid, $391 million approved by Congress, that Ukraine was relying on as it confronts neighboring Russia.
Vindman said the uneven power dynamic between the presidents of the East European ally and the U.S. made the demand obvious.
"The culture I come from, the military culture, when a senior asks you to do something ... it's not be taken as a request, it's to be taken as an order," he said.
It wasn't the first time Vindman, a decorated Iraq War veteran, was alarmed over the administration's push to have Ukraine investigate Democrats, he testified.
Earlier, during an unsettling July 10 meeting at the White House, Ambassador Gordon Sondland told visiting Ukraine officials that they would need to "deliver" before next steps, which was a meeting Zelenskiy wanted with Trump, the officer testified.
"He was talking about the 2016 elections and an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma," Vindman testified, referring to the gas company in Ukraine where Biden's son Hunter served on the board.