Did Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman Start This Coup?

During Tuesday’s impeachment hearing, Lt. Col. Vindman made a strategic error during his public testimony.  He appears to have perjured himself.

For the record, Vindman was on the July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukraine President Zelensky.  When ranking member Devin Nunes pressed him on whether he discussed the call with anyone outside the White House, the good little soldier said he discussed the call with U.S. State Department Deputy Secretary George Kent and an “individual in the Intelligence Community.”

In a published report at The Washington Examiner, Byron York noted Vindman’s closed-door testimony in the bunker in the basement of the Capitol Building revealed he had “twice taken his concerns to Eisenberg [National Security Council Legal Advisor].  He also told his twin brother Yevgeny Vindman, who is also an Army lieutenant colonel and serves as a National Security Council lawyer. He also told another NSC official, John Erath, and he gave what he characterized as a partial readout of the call to George Kent, a career State Department official who dealt with Ukraine. That led to an obvious question: Did Vindman take his concerns to anyone else? Did he discuss the Trump-Zelensky call with anyone else? It was a reasonable question and an important one. Republicans asked it time and time again. Vindman refused to answer, with his lawyer, Michael Volkov, sometimes belligerently joining in. Through it all, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff stood firm in favor of keeping his committee in the dark.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) asked Vindman, "You never leaked information?"  He replied, "I never did. I never would. That is preposterous that I would do that."

"Your boss had concerns about your judgment, your former boss, Dr. [Fiona] Hill, had concerns about your judgment, your colleagues had concerns about your judgment, and your colleagues felt there were times when you leaked information," Jordan said. "Any idea why they have those impressions?"

It’s vital to remember Lt. Col. Vindman clearly stated in his public testimony he did speak to an “individual in the Intelligence Community” and when Nunes pressed him to identify the person his attorney intervened to say his client was not going to answer the question.  At that point Chairman Schiff gaveled in to stop the questioning, but Nunes countered asking the Chairman how it was possible to identify the whistleblower if no one knows the name.

“Under advice of my counsel and instructions of the Chairman, I have been advised not to provide any specifics on who I have spoken to inside the Intelligence Community,” Vindman said. “But I can offer that these people were properly cleared individuals with a need to know.”

Nunes said Republicans had tried to subpoena the whistleblower, but the motion was tabled by committee Democrats. Nunes ended his questioning by calling the hearings an “impeachment inquisition.”

Alexander Vindman looks really bad here as he gets grilled by Jim Jordan pic.twitter.com/3rq8qIGpM3

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) November 19, 2019

After being vaporized by Jordan’s questioning, Vindman snapped back saying, “I was doing my job.”

The “individual in the Intelligence Community” looks more and more like 33-year-old Eric Ciaramella, a registered Democrat held over from the Obama White House who had worked with Joe Biden and John Brennan.  Ciaramella left his National Security Council post in the West Wing of the White House in mid-2017 amid concerns about leaks to the media.  He has since returned to Langley, VA where the CIA headquarters is located.

Earlier this year, Adam Schiff recruited two of Ciaramella’s closest allies at the NSC—both of whom were also Obama holdovers—to join his committee staff. He hired one, Sean Misko, in August—the same month the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s phone call was filed.

The graphic accompanying this blog post is Photoshopped®, but then you knew that already.  Photographs of Ciaramella are nearly impossible to find.  Most of the photographs you can find are blurry, but I lucked up and found four very interesting pictures of our whistleblower with Hillary Clinton, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Democrat presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren.

I chose to create the above graphic of Ciaramella with Sen. Schumer to highlight his now-ominous warning from January 2017 on the Rachel Maddow Show:  “Let me tell you;  You take on the Intelligence Community—they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”