Testimony: White House lawyer told Vindman not to discuss Ukraine call
Source: Politico
The senior White House lawyer who placed a record of President Donald Trumps July 25 call with Ukraines president in a top-secret system also instructed at least one official who heard the call not to tell anyone about it, according to testimony heard by House impeachment investigators this week.
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a decorated Army officer who served as the National Security Councils director for Ukraine, told lawmakers that he went to the lawyer, John Eisenberg, to register his concerns about the call, in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Bidens, according to a person in the room for Vindmans deposition on Tuesday.
Eisenberg recorded Vindmans complaints in notes on a yellow legal pad, then conferred with his deputy Michael Ellis about how to handle the conversation because it was clearly sensitive, Vindman testified. The lawyers then decided to move the record of the call into the NSCs top-secret codeword systema server normally used to store highly classified material that only a small group of officials can access.
Vindman did not consider the move itself as evidence of a cover-up, according to a person familiar with his testimony. But he said he became disturbed when, a few days later, Eisenberg instructed him not to tell anyone about the callespecially because it was Vindmans job to coordinate the interagency process with regard to Ukraine policy.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/01/white-house-vindman-ukraine-call-063892
MissMillie
(38,560 posts)"...the call was perfect!"
Dennis Donovan
(18,770 posts)Apparently, just moving the call transcript to the codeword server wasn't an unusual thing, as the Trump admin had started doing it in 2017 due to leaking. The fact that Eisenberg told Vindman to forget what he saw shows intent to obfuscate the nature of the call.
It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.
Haggis for Breakfast
(6,831 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(49,002 posts)real Cannabis calm
(1,124 posts)The_jackalope
(1,660 posts)Coverup.
Evolve Dammit
(16,736 posts)If a server is un-subpoena-able, Brad Parscale will do for now. He's the Drumpf head IT guy for a few years and lead on the 2020 campaign. Surely he knows what recordings, emails, etc. are kept and what is selectively altered or deleted, as he is "in charge" of that group within the WH.