Alexander Vindman testifies before a House Intelligence Committee hearing as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump on November 19, 2019. (Credit: Jonathan Ernst, Reuters)
“A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by star impeachment witness Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (Ret.) against Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and two Trump White House staffers for supposed “witness intimidation” during Trump’s impeachment hearings.
Vindman filed his suit in February, just over a year after he had enjoyed fifteen minutes of infamy before Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and the House Intelligence Committee, as Democrats sought to impeach and remove Trump for allegedly pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate allegations of corruption against Joe Biden, his leading rival in the 2020 election.
(…) Vindman alerted a contact in the intelligence committee — whom he refused to name under oath — about a July 2019 phone call between Trump and Zelensky, triggering the investigation into Trump. Schiff would not allow Vindman to be questioned about the so-called “whistleblower” who first approached the House Intelligence Committee with his second-hand concerns about the call. Vindman did admit, however, that the Ukrainians felt no “pressure” to investigate Biden.
(…) U.S. District Court James Boasberg of the District of Columbia, a Barack Obama appointee, issued a 29-page ruling, The Hill reported, concluding that even if “Defendants leveled harsh, meanspirited, and at times misleading attacks” against Vindman, “political hackery alone does not violate [the law at issue].” White House staffers Dan Scavino and Julia Hahn, a former reporter for Breitbart News, were also named as defendants in the lawsuit.” (Read more: Breitbart, 11/8/2022) (Archive)