Marsha Blackburn Exposes Vindman

Alexander Vindman broke the chain of command and leaked the contents of the President’s July 25th phone call to his pal, the “whistleblower.” Over a policy dispute with the President!

How is that not vindictive?

— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) January 23, 2020

First and foremost, Vindman admitted openly during his testimony before HPSCI last year under questioning from ranking GOP member Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) that he leaked the contents of President Trump’s call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to two officials who were not in the White House. Vindman claimed during his testimony then that these two officials he leaked the call to were “cleared U.S. government officials with appropriate need to know.” While Vindman claimed under oath he did not know who the whistleblower was, Schiff intervened saying that answering Nunes’s questions identifying the individuals outside the White House to whom Vindman leaked the Trump-Zelensky call details may out the identity of the whistleblower who filed the original complaint.

The person who filed the complaint has been long been–and was at the time of this hearing–publicly reported to have been CIA official Eric Ciaramella. According to a follow-up report published this week by the outlet that first reported Ciaramella’s identity, RealClearPolitics, Vindman was the person who leaked the call details to Ciaramella.

“A mutual ally in the National Security Council who was one of the White House officials authorized to listen in on Trump’s July 25 conversation with Ukraine’s president leaked it to Ciaramella the next day — July 26 —  according to former NSC co-workers and congressional sources,” RealClearPolitics’ Sperry wrote. “The friend, Ukraine-born Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, held Ciaramella’s old position at the NSC as director for Ukraine. Although Ciaramella had left the White House to return to the CIA in mid-2017, the two officials continued to collaborate through interagency meetings.”

In essence, what that means is that according to this investigation published by RealClearPolitics and Vindman’s actually testimony before HPSCI during the impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives, Blackburn was correct when she tweeted that Vindman leaked the call details to the alleged whistleblower.

What’s more, Tim Morrison at the NSC–Vindman’s boss in the White House–testified during the impeachment hearings that the lieutenant colonel had an “unfortunate habit” of going around the chain of command like he did by leaking the call details to the two people he confirmed he leaked to during the HPSCI hearings.

So, again, this second tweet from Blackburn–while inconvenient for the left’s anti-Trump narrative–is also factually accurate.

Then Blackburn followed up later with a third tweet noting that Vindman’s now former superior officer, now retired, has publicly admonished him for being overtly political: