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‘DO NOT WORRY. I WILL
Alexander Vindman, in congressional testimonyfrom the West Wing and sometimes show up
at the White House, unannounced, with guests
in tow. On far-right blogs, Hill had been called
a mole for liberal billionaire George Soros or
the anonymous aide responsible for a scathing
anti-Trump op-ed in the New York Times. Her
job seemed to entail constantly swimming up-
stream against an onrushing current of pend-
ing disasters.
In this environment, reports of Giuliani
making mischief in Ukraine seemed like a side-
show, one of many weird subplots stirred up by
Trumpworld’s fringe players. Then, on July 10,
Sondland and several top Ukrainian diplomats
met with Hill and her boss, National Security
Adviser John Bolton, in Bolton’s corner office in
the West Wing. Amid the choreographed talk of
U.S. support for Ukraine in its fight against Rus-
sia, Sondland, the E.U. ambassador, blurted out
something off-script: the Ukrainians would get
their White House meeting only if they opened
the investigations Trump wanted. Bolton stiff-
ened in his chair, checked his watch and called
the meeting to a halt.
For Hill, it was a eureka moment. Giuliani’s
political mischief-making and Sondland’s de-
mand for investigations were part of a shadow
foreign policy that subjugated America’s stated
support for Ukraine to Trump’s 2020 interests.
Bolton, a Russia hawk, was livid, Hill testified.
Sondland moved to take the Ukrainian officials
down to the Ward Room, a small windowless
space in the basement of the West Wing near
the Situation Room. Bolton pulled Hill aside
and instructed her “to go downstairs, find out
what was being discussed and to come right
back up and report it to him,” Hill later recalled
in her testimony.
As she walked into the Ward Room, Hill
heard Sondland telling the Ukrainians that he
had an agreement with Trump’s chief of staff,
Mick Mulvaney, that would grant Zelensky a
White House meeting in exchange for opening
the investigations. Hill asked the Ukrainian of-
ficials to leave the room, then chastised Sond-
land for his “inappropriate” demands. She
went back upstairs to report to Bolton. His in-
structions made such an impression that she
recounted them to Congress from memory,
months later: “You go and tell [the National
Security Council’s top lawyer John] Eisenberg
that I am not part of whatever drug deal Sond-
land and Mulvaney are cooking up on this.”
Sondland and his lawyer declined to comment
on the record.
Hill wasn’t the only one who reported Sond-
land’s offer. The NSC’s Ukraine expert, Vind-
man, had come forward too. Vindman had im-
migrated to the U.S. from the then Ukrainian
Soviet Socialist Republic in 1979, when he
was 3, and had served in the U.S. Army for two
decades, doing tours as an infantry officer in
South Korea, Germany and Iraq, where he was
wounded by a roadside bomb and awarded the
Purple Heart. Vindman felt it was his respon-
sibility to tell Eisenberg what he had seen. “I
was reporting something to the chain of com-
mand,” he told lawmakers Oct. 29. “What he
did with that information is probably above my
pay grade.” Eisenberg took notes and told him
to bring any future concerns to him.
Two weeks later, Vindman did. Around
9:03 a.m. on July 25, Trump began his now in-
famous call with Zelensky. Vindman and Jenni-
fer Williams, Vice President Mike Pence’s ad-
viser on Europe and Russia, were official note
takers on the call, and they and around four
other officials were listening in from the Situ-
ation Room as Trump dialed in from the resi-
dence. Almost as soon as Trump started talk-
ing, Vindman became uneasy.
Vindman had drafted the President’s talk-
ing points, but as he scribbled furiously in
one of the government-issue notebooks he
regularly used, he could hear Trump going off
script. Trump said, “I would like you to do us
a favor,” and then launched into a list of trou-
bling requests. The President asked Zelensky
to investigate a debunked conspiracy theory
that Ukraine, not Russia, had meddled in the
2016 U.S. election. “The other thing,” Trump
said. “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son,
that Biden stopped the prosecution.” He asked
Zelensky to look into it.
Like Hill, Vindman had a eureka moment.
It was suddenly clear to him that rather than
support an ally in a shooting war against Rus-
sia, Trump was using Kyiv’s desperate po-
sition to pressure Zelensky to smear a pos-
sible 2020 opponent. Vindman brought his
notebook to Eisenberg, the NSC lawyer, and
read him through the call, underscoring the
points where Trump appeared to solicit in-
terference in the 2020 campaign. Eisenberg
took everything down on a yellow notepad.
Later that week, Eisenberg came back to
Vindman and told him “not to talk to any-
body else” about the matter, he testified. An
NSC spokesperson declined to comment.
The day after Trump’s call with Zelensky,
Sondland took three embassy staffers, includ-
ing counselor on political affairs David Holmes,
to lunch at an upscale Kyiv restaurant known
for its appetizer of black caviar on thin savory
pancakes. Sitting on the terrace within earshot
of the street, Sondland ordered a steak with