Vindman may face disciplinary action from Pentagon soon, Trump refers to military review

(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump hinted Tuesday that disgraced former U.S. National Security Council member Alexander Vindman may face disciplinary action over his behavior but cautioned that the decision will ultimately be up the military.

Speaking with reporters after signing the Supporting Veterans in STEM Career Act from the Oval Office, the president was asked specifically about the removal of both Vindman and his twin brother from the National Security Council last week.

After opining on the matter, he was then asked bluntly whether the former NSC official may face disciplinary action sometime soon.

That’s going to be up to the military,” the president replied. “We’ll have to see, but if you look at what happened, they’re going to certainly, I would imagine, take a look at that.”

The remarks were made at the end of the clip below (disable your adblocker if the video doesn’t appear):

“I obviously wasn’t happy with the job he did,” the president initially said in the clip above. “First of all, he reported a false call. That wasn’t what was said on the call. What was said on the call was totally appropriate, and I call it a perfect call. I always will call it a perfect call.”

Vindman was one of several top officials who overheard two of the president’s calls last year with Volodymyr Zelensky. Concerned about what he overheard in those calls, Vindman then shared his worries with the still-unnamed partisan whistleblower, who in turn went on to file the infamous complaint against the president.

“And it wasn’t one call,” Trump continued. “It was two calls. There were two perfect calls. There was no setup, there was no anything, and he reported it totally differently. And then they all went wild when I said that we have transcripts of the call, and they turned out to be totally accurate transcripts. … We had totally accurate transcripts, and it turned out that what he reported was very different.”

After the White House released transcripts of the controversial calls, it was discovered that the whistleblower’s complaint was chockablock with inaccuracies about the July 25th call in which the president had asked Zelensky to look into credible allegations of corruption concerning the 2016 U.S. presidential election and former Vice President Joe Biden.

On the third page of the complaint, for instance, the whistleblower claimed via his own dubious sources that State Department counselor Ulrich Brechbuhl had listened in on the July 25th call. But the State Department confirmed this was false.

The entire complaint was full of similar “third-hand gossip and outright falsehoods,” as noted at the time by Sean Davis of The Federalist.

“And also, when you look at Vindman’s … the person he reports to, he said horrible things,” the president continued speaking from the Oval Office on Tuesday. “[Vindman] avoided the chain of command, leaked, did a lot of bad things, and so we sent him on his way to a much different location. and the military can handle him any way they want.”

Fact-check: TRUE.

Tim Morrison, a former National Security Council official, testified last November that both Vindman’s immediate boss, Fiona Hill, and other NSC officials had had “concerns” about his poor judgment and refusal to abide by the chain of command.

Vindman himself admitted to Congress around the same time that, in the process of reporting his concerns about the president’s calls, he’d bypassed the chain of command.

“In your deposition, you emphasize the importance of chain of command. You were a direct report to Dr. Fiona Hill and then Mr. Tim Morrison and they were your seniors, correct?” Republican Rep. Brad Wenstrup asked him at the time.

“That is correct,” Vindman replied.

“When you had concerns about the 7/25 call between the two presidents, you didn’t go to Mr. Morrison about that, did you?” Wenstrup pressed.

“I immediately went to John Eisenberg, the [National Security Council’s] lead legal counsel,” the “super patriot” admitted.

“That doesn’t seem like chain of command,” Wenstrup replied.

Listen:

The rest of the Trump’s remarks Tuesday consisted of him defending his calls with Zelensky and pointing out that it’s “going to be up to the military” to decide whether or not Vindman should face disciplinary consequences for his actions.

Responding to the president’s remarks, The New York Times penned a false report late Tuesday warning that the president’s “war against ‘the Deep State'” had entered “a new stage.”

“As far as President Trump is concerned, banishing Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman from the White House and exiling him back to the Pentagon was not enough. If he had his way, the commander in chief made clear on Tuesday, the Defense Department would now take action against the colonel, too,” the far-left paper wrote.

Fact-check: FALSE.

The president never said any such thing. The Times was lying. So are the numerous other left-wing activists, pundits, analysts and other propagandists who’ve chosen to twist the president’s words to drum up fear over Trump being an alleged “dictator.”

Look:

These are all lies. So is the claim from the left that Vindman’s removal was conducted as retaliation for the impeachment inquiry. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien has debunked this lie as well.

Look:

Trump Derangement Syndrome exists, according to doctors, and the reason it does exist may in part be because of all the lies about the president that left-wing media outlets like The New York Times constantly tell.

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Vivek Saxena

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