American Resistance by David Rothkopf

Author:David Rothkopf [Rothkopf, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2022-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

Making a Beeline to Legal

As a consequence of all this, as soon as Vindman heard the president ask Zelenskyy for help with digging up dirt on Biden, he knew exactly what he had to do. “I made a beeline to legal. And I went straight into my brother’s office and I said, ‘Eugene, if what I’m about to tell you is ever made public, Trump will be impeached.’ And then I told him we had to go tell Eisenberg. I told him, ‘Let’s go talk to John Eisenberg,’ and he was like, ‘Yep, let’s go.’”

In the second meeting, Vindman again felt that Eisenberg was very guarded in his response: “He’s [Eisenberg] a cool customer.” Vindman thought Eisenberg was understanding the significance of what he was being told, but he gave few clues. And, Vindman noticed, he took no written notes of the conversation. Vindman was glad he had brought his brother along as a witness.

Within a matter of days, what Vindman had reported started producing shockwaves across Washington, shockwaves so great that within weeks Congress was involved in the investigation that would soon turn into an impeachment inquiry. In part, this was due to Vindman’s conviction and sense of right and wrong. In part, it was also due to the fact that he was not the only person who had flagged the call. While he was following procedure to report what he saw as Trump’s wrongdoing, within the Intelligence Community another official was using established channels to file a whistleblower complaint with the Office of the Inspector General for the IC.

Michael Atkinson was the IC inspector general. He described what happened when he received the complaint: “From the moment I read the whistleblower complaint, with the extraordinary, extraordinary allegations of President Trump allegedly using his office to solicit interference in the 2020 campaign, in the election,” Atkinson felt this development could have broad repercussions.

“And then [I understood] pretty quickly that the alleged phone call between President Trump and President Zelenskyy took place the day after Robert Mueller had testified before the two House committees. Understanding that it looked like President Trump felt freed from what had been the Russia investigation. And it immediately started off with this Ukraine activity. And so that was just really astonishing to me that someone who had just put out such a huge political fire, the Russia investigation, had immediately started what I thought was likely to become another constitutional forest fire the very next day, through his call with the president of Ukraine,” he said.

“I thought that the director of National Intelligence was required by statute to forward the urgent concern to Congress when I passed it along to him with my determination that it was credible,” Atkinson said. “And then the Department of Justice got involved and made a determination that ‘Oh, no, that urgent concern law doesn’t apply’ and so the director of National Intelligence has no obligation to forward the complaint to Congress. And so that was very surprising to me that what I thought was clear in the law, the Department of Justice had undone.

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