US President Donald Trump on Friday removed two witnesses from his administration who testified against him in the US House of Representatives impeachment inquiry.
Two days after Trump’s acquittal by the US Senate, Gordon Sondland announced he had been ousted as US ambassador to the EU just hours after the White House dismissed US Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman from the US National Security Council.
Both testified in the inquiry into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Vindman was escorted from the White House in the afternoon, along with his twin brother, Yevgeny, a senior lawyer and ethics official on the council, Alexander Vindman’s lawyer David Pressman said.
Pressman said that Alexander Vindman “was asked to leave for telling the truth.”
“The truth has cost Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman his job, his career and his privacy,” Pressman said in a statement.
Hours later, Sondland announced that he too was no longer a member of the Trump administration.
“I was advised today that the president intends to recall me effective immediately as United States ambassador to the European Union,” he said in a statement.
Trump appeared to telegraph the moves earlier on Friday.
Asked at the White House whether he wanted Alexander Vindman to leave, Trump said: “Well, I’m not happy with him.”
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham on Thursday told Fox News that Trump believes he was treated “horribly” during the impeachment inquiry and “maybe people should pay for that.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement that Vindman’s firing “was a clear and brazen act of retaliation that showcases the president’s fear of the truth.”
“The president’s vindictiveness is precisely what led Republican senators to be accomplices to his cover-up,” she said.
“The administration’s dismissal of Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, his brother and US ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland is clear political retaliation, the likes of which is seen only in authoritarian countries around the world,” US Senator Robert Menendez said in a statement.
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