Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, the brother of retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified against President Trump during last year’s Ukraine-focused impeachment investigation, filed a complaint with the Defense Department’s independent watchdog last week that claims he was dismissed from his White House role in an act of retaliation.
House Democratic leaders revealed the existence of the complaint in a letter sent to acting Inspector General Sean O’Donnell on Wednesday, which noted that it followed their earlier request for an inquiry into whether Trump retaliated against Alexander Vindman. This new information, they said, warrants an investigation into Yevgeny Vindman’s situation, too.
“Vindman’s complaint details allegations of legal and ethical violations committed by White House officials that he both personally witnessed and became aware of in his capacity as an [National Security Council] Deputy Legal Advisor and a senior ethics official on the NSC staff,” four Democrats wrote in their letter.
House Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith, and Rep. Stephen Lynch, the chairman of the Oversight subcommittee on national security, are all signatories. They also carbon-copied Republicans.
Trump was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House in December on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, but he was acquitted by the GOP-led Senate in February. By the end of that same week, Alexander Vindman, who worked on European affairs at the National Security Council, and his brother Yevgeny, a senior lawyer on the NSC who had no role in the impeachment investigation, were both removed from the White House. Yevgeny was reassigned to the Army General Counsel’s Office.
The House Democrats wrote in their letter Wednesday that Yevgeny Vindman “appears not only to have been punished for raising concerns to National Security Council (NSC) lawyers about President Trump’s July 25, 2019, phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky,” which was the subject of an intelligence community complaint that led to the impeachment investigation, but also for reporting multiple allegations that national security adviser Robert O’Brien and his chief of staff, Alex Gray, “misused government resources, excluded women from meetings, and made sexist and demeaning remarks to female NSC staffers, including inappropriately commenting on women’s looks and ‘talk[ing] down’ to women.”
Attorneys for Yevgeny Vindman confirmed that he filed, through counsel, a “whistleblower reprisal” complaint with the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General,” according to a statement from lawyers Mark Zaid, Andrew Bakaj, Brad Moss, and Eugene Fidell. Zaid and Bakaj also represented the intelligence community whistleblower, whose identity was never publicly confirmed.
NEWS: I can confirm that @MarkSZaidEsq @BradMossEsq Eugene Fidell and I represent Yevgeny Vindman. Please see Statement Concerning Lieutenant Colonel Yevgeny Vindman’s Whistleblower Reprisal Complaint with DoD Inspector General. pic.twitter.com/esS2CUPNbI
— Andrew P. Bakaj (@AndrewBakaj) August 26, 2020
According to the letter from the House Democrats, Yevgeny Vindman also said in his complaint that he expressed concerns to National Security Council officials John Eisenberg and Michael Ellis that O’Brien and Gray may be misusing government time for haircuts, personal dinner arrangements, and errands like retrieving luggage. In addition, the letter said he raised concerns about O’Brien possibly breaching government ethics standards in meetings involving SpaceX and the U.S. Postal Service.
House Democrats demanded that the Defense Department inspector general respond to their request for an investigation into these allegations by Sept. 1.
“It is imperative that LTC Y. Vindman, who dedicated his career to serving his country, be given the opportunity to have the allegations he has raised be reviewed appropriately and independently, without political interference from the White House,” they wrote.
O’Brien denied claims that the Vindman brothers were retaliated against, saying it was “absolutely” not the case.
Trump said he wasn’t happy with the job Alexander Vindman did. “We sent him on his way to a much different location and the military can handle him any way they want,” the president told reporters in February. The Army declined to investigate him.
Still, after the White House allegedly sought to block Alexander Vindman’s upcoming military promotion to the rank of colonel, he requested retirement over the summer instead of moving to his next assignment at the National War College.
