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(CNN) Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a key witness in President Donald Trump's impeachment inquiry, is retiring from the US Army after more than 21 years of military service because he determined that his future in the armed forces "will forever be limited" due to political retaliation by the President and his allies, his lawyer told CNN Wednesday.
Vindman's lawyer, David Pressman, described "a campaign of bullying, intimidation, and retaliation" by the Trump administration as the reason for his client's retirement. In November 2020, Vindman joined the staff of the national security blog Lawfare with a fellowship of the Pritzker Military Foundation.
David Pressman who is a partner at Jenner & Block. News of Vindman's retirement marks the culmination of a months-long saga dating back to his public testimony in November.
The lawsuit cited various public statements and Twitter posts by Mr. Trump’s confidants and allies in the media that attacked Mr. Vindman. It also included accusations that Mr. Vindman was a double agent who had loyalties to Ukraine.
After he was fired from the NSC in February, an Army spokesperson told CNN that Vindman had been reassigned to the Department of the Army.
Vindman delivered explosive testimony during public impeachment hearings that Trump's push for Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden was "inappropriate" and that he knew "without hesitation" that he had to report it.
Alexander Vindman, a key witness in President Donald Trump's impeachment inquiry, is retiring from the US Army after more than 21 years of military service because he determined that his future in the armed forces "will forever be limited" due to political retaliation by the President and his allies, his lawyer told CNN Wednesday.
Duckworth's power play, which her office described as "unprecedented in modern history," takes advantage of unanimous consent procedures in the Senate that are used to efficiently conduct Senate business. Typically, a large batch of non-controversial military promotions, like the ones Duckworth is holding up, would be passed all at once ...
Testifying in his Army uniform as an active-duty soldier, Vindman invoked his father's decision to leave the Soviet Union and come to the US, noting that the testimony he was giving would likely get him killed in Russia. "Do not worry, I will be fine for telling the truth," Vindman said in a now well-known line.
Top military leaders, including Esper, have insisted that Vindman would be protected from retaliation of any kind after he transitioned back to the Pentagon, but some Democratic lawmakers have made it clear they believe that he is still being targeted by the White House.
Vindman has endured a "campaign of bullying, intimidation, and retaliation" spearheaded by the President following his testimony in the impeachment inquiry last year, according to his attorney, Amb. David Pressman who is a partner at Jenner & Block.
Ensconced in the secure hearing rooms of the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in a midnight-blue dress uniform, a bevy of ribbons pinned to his chest, Colonel Vindman testified privately from morning until night.
But beyond the substance and the drama, Colonel Vindman offered a compelling immigrants’ tale and a glimpse into the story of twin brothers who have lived a singular American experience, one that was featured in a Ken Burns documentary when they were children. From their days as little boys in matching short pants and blue caps, toddling around the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn — known as Little Odessa for its population of refugees from the former Soviet Union — and into adulthood, they have followed strikingly similar paths.
Inside the secure room, known as a SCIF, the atmosphere grew tense, as Republicans questioned Colonel Vindman about his private conversations in what Democrats viewed as an effort to discern the identity of the whistle-blower who prompted the inquiry.
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg. Published Oct. 29, 2019 Updated Feb. 7, 2020. WASHINGTON — The twin brothers were 3 when they fled Ukraine, then a Soviet republic, with their father and grandmother, Jewish refugees with only their suitcases and $750, hoping for a better life in the United States.
When Colonel Vindman married, she photographed him and his bride under a tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl, at their wedding. The twins’ father, Semyon Vindman , went on to become an engineer, Ms. Kitman said, and the twins’ older brother entered the Reserve Officers Training Corps in college.
By July, Colonel Vindman had grown deeply concerned that administration officials were pressuring Mr. Zelensky to investigate Mr. Biden. That concern only intensified, he told investigators, when he listened in to the now-famous July 25 phone conversation between Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump.
Sanya is serious,” she wrote in the caption accompanying the image of them in their blue ball caps and short pants in 1980, the year after they arrived. A 1985 photograph of them with their grandmother on a boardwalk bench appeared in Mr. Burns’s documentary “The Statue of Liberty.”.
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