And Stephen Castor, the staff lawyer for the Republicans, darkly insinuated that Colonel Vindman harbored dual loyalties to the United States and Ukraine, because a Ukrainian official had repeatedly offered him the job of secretary of defense. Colonel Vindman acknowledged the offers and laughed them off; the Ukrainian official later said he had been joking.
It was a particularly repulsive line of attack in light of Colonel Vindman’s opening remarks, in which he addressed his father, who escaped the Soviet Union with his family when the colonel was a young child, in the hope of a better and safer life in America. “Do not worry, I will be fine for telling the truth,” Colonel Vindman reassured his father. When Representative Sean Patrick Maloney later asked him why he had said that, he replied: “This is America. This is the country I’ve served and defended. That all of my brothers have served. And here, right matters.”
The gallery burst into applause while Republicans sat and stewed. Perhaps they were reflecting on another part of Colonel Vindman’s opening statement, in which he said that the testimony he was about to give “would not be tolerated in many places around the world,” specifically Russia. If the exasperated Republicans had their way, it wouldn’t be tolerated here, either. |
