(Jewish Group) The decorated officer set to testify in the impeachment probe is a Jewish refugee

[Behind the Aegis]

The decorated officer set to testify in the impeachment probe is a Jewish refugee from Ukraine

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council staffer set to deliver dramatic testimony confirming that President Donald Trump sought dirt from Ukraine on a political rival, is a Jewish refugee from that country when it was part of the Soviet Union.

“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, an Army officer and the top NSC official handling Ukraine, says in testimony posted Monday evening by The New York Times, which he is set to deliver to congressional investigators on Tuesday.

Trump has denied that he sought a quid pro quo in a July phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky in which he asked the Ukrainian president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. Trump simultaneously was withholding nearly $400 million in congressionally approved defense assistance to Ukraine. Trump released the assistance last month and has insisted that it was not held back as a means of pressuring Ukraine to find damaging information about the Bidens.

Vindman, who listened in on the conversation in his official capacity, would be the first whistleblower to have firsthand knowledge of the call.

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[BigMin28]

1. He is a wonderful American

A patriot. I am grateful for him, his service, and all those men and women like him

[elleng]

2. 'An online album by Carol Kitman, a photographer, documents the life

of Vindman and his twin brother, Eugene, who also served in the military, since she spotted them in 1980, then 4 years old, strolling in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach with their grandmother. They had arrived from the Soviet Union in 1979, according to Kitman.

His mother had died in Ukraine, and his father brought the twins and an older brother to the United States for a better life along with their maternal grandmother, who would care for them. A 1985 photo of the twins and their grandmother sitting on the boardwalk in Brighton Beach, known as “Little Odessa” because of the influx of Jews from Ukraine, featured in a Ken Burns documentary on the Statue of Liberty. . .

Eugene Vindman is a lawyer on the national security council.'

[Gothmog]

3. Why am I not surprised by this?

This man is a hero and does not deserve this treatment