If Republicans want Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman to answer their questions, then perhaps they should ask questions worth answering — or, better yet, questions he can actually answer.
Instead, ranking member Devin Nunes spent much of his time during Tuesday’s testimony attempting to back Vindman into a corner, and force him to answer whether he knew who the anonymous Ukraine whistleblower is.
Rep. Devin Nunes, Rep. Adam Schiff and Lt. Col. Vindman’s counsel clash over line of questioning about identity of whistleblower.
“I want to make sure there’s no effort to out the whistleblower through the use of these proceedings,” Schiff says. https://t.co/SfAn7Bnx4h pic.twitter.com/nxiJ6iEgXj
— ABC News (@ABC) November 19, 2019
Vindman has made it clear that he does not know the whistleblower’s identity. This might not be true, but any other response could jeopardize the whistleblower’s anonymity — a risk House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff isn’t willing to take.
Nunes wants to link Vindman to the whistleblower because such a link would prove that this is a coordinated bureaucratic effort to take down President Trump. But focusing on the whistleblower is useless. Schiff will block any question related to the whistleblower, as he did with Nunes.
Instead, Republicans should focus on Vindman’s intimate connections to a bureaucracy that has often been hostile to the president. These are legitimate questions Vindman can and must answer. And regardless of whether they establish the connection Nunes hopes to make, questions of this nature could discredit Vindman’s account.
There’s a tricky balance Republicans must strike: They can draw attention to Vindman’s bureaucratic career, but they must do so without reverting to personal attacks and pointed questions about Vindman’s motives. Rep. John Ratcliffe focused on the latter during Vindman’s closed-door hearing, and the deposition proves that this effectively shut Vindman down and put him on the defensive.
It’s hard to blame Vindman for reacting the way he did. His record speaks for itself: He’s an Army combat veteran and an expert on the National Security Council, and he’s the first witness who can provide a firsthand account of what transpired between Trump and Ukraine. Republicans can’t just dismiss him on the grounds that he wasn’t in the room with Trump, that he had never met the president, and that he has little knowledge about U.S.-Ukraine relations.
Republicans must take him seriously, but if Nunes’s performance is any indication, it seems they have no intention of doing so.
