The swift return to work for one of the impeachment inquiry’s central witnesses —
who the President and his allies decried as a “never-Trumper” with ulterior motives, even as he remains on the President’s National Security Council staff — illustrates the predicament facing staffers as the proceedings advance.
The impeachment crisis that’s consumed the White House is causing new turbulence at the National Security Council, where officials are wondering whether their efforts are being undermined and worry the President could sour on the entire body, ignoring its expert advice as he fumes about its role in the current crisis.
Already a bumpy workplace under Trump, the National Security Council’s career civil servants now find themselves under fresh scrutiny from an already-skeptical President and his inner circle.
Tim Morrison, the council’s Russia and Europe director, worked with Vindman in handling the Ukraine transcript and is expected to testify Thursday.
But Morrison is expected to leave his post, a long-planned departure that was nonetheless complicated by the current impeachment drama.
“After more than a year of service at the National Security Council, Mr. Morrison has decided to pursue other opportunities — and has been considering doing so for some time. We wish him well,” a senior administration official said in a statement.
Sources familiar with the situation at the council say there is a sense of anxiety among some staffers as they see their colleagues and State Department officials being called to the Capitol Hill to testify in the ongoing impeachment inquiry that has prompted unfounded personal attacks from Republican lawmakers, some in the West Wing and even the President himself.
Trump’s virulent response to Vindman’s testimony — asserting without evidence the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert is a “never-Trumper” with questionable motives — sent a cold chill through the council’s suite of offices in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the West Wing.
Inside the nearly 150-year-old building next to the White House where the National Security Council is housed, the mood has shifted dramatically.
Uncertain role
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Some National Security Council officials — particularly those not working on top White House priorities like the Middle East or Asia — increasingly feel undervalued and sidelined in the policy-making process, according to people familiar with the dynamic.
Like Vindman, much of the National Security Council staff is drawn from the Pentagon, State Department or the US intelligence agencies. Many are careerists who served under previous administrations, Democratic and Republican.
A demoralized air hangs over the council, knowing their work is treated with skepticism by the West Wing and often doesn’t drive policy decisions in the way a traditional National Security Council would. Often, officials are pressed into service to try and fix problems created in the West Wing on the back end of the decision-making process.
Concerns they could be swept up into the impeachment proceedings have made that more difficult, according to several sources familiar with the situation. One source noted that several National Security Council staffers are worrying about having to hire lawyers when they don’t have the resources to.
Since Trump’s ill-fated July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, staffers have watched as the mundane inner-workings of their typically inconspicuous council — such as how a transcript of a call with a foreign leader is written reviewed and stored — become public.
“This is the last thing a civil servant wants to get dragged into,” said a former Trump administration National Security Council official who remains in contact with current staff. “The folks that are still there are just trying to keep their head down and focus on their work.”
In their depositions on Capitol Hill, two council officials — Vindman and former Russia director Fiona Hill — both recalled their concerns at apparent attempts to leverage the US relationship with Kiev for political ends. Each said they raised those concerns with their superiors, and ultimately to National Security Council lawyers, a remarkable demonstration of the internal angst among White House professional staff at the actions taken by the President and they people close to him.
Since testifying, Vindman has faced scrutiny within his own ranks. Not seen as a meticulous note taker, his opening statement before lawmakers raised eyebrows among some colleagues who were concerned he would mix up details and cause doubt about what happened.
Still, White House officials acknowledged that Vindman’s credibility stems from his proximity to the call. He was the first official who listened in on the conversation to go under oath, though if House Democrats have their way, he likely won’t be the last.
Distance from Trump
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Trump’s interactions with much of the National Security Council staff have been fleeting, and he has made a point of announcing that some of the most damaging testimony against him comes from people he doesn’t know.
“Why are people that I never even heard of testifying about the call,” he wrote on Twitter on Tuesday just ahead of Vindman’s arrival, in his military uniform, on Capitol Hill.
The list of senior State Department and National Security Council officials who Trump claims are strangers is long. His senior Russia adviser, the architect of US-Ukraine policy, the top diplomat in Kiev: all unknown to the President, he now claims, as they each sit before congressional lawmakers to detail their unease at how he was conducting himself.
The apparent unfamiliarity with his own administration’s senior-most policy aides only confirms what those officials are claiming behind closed doors: that Trump ignored the official diplomatic channels they oversaw in favor of unofficial overtures to Ukraine, led by Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, meant to surface dirt on political opponents.
On Ukraine, Trump often favored the advice of people outside the government instead of the professionals inside the administration. He once mistook Hill, a longtime expert on Russia, for a clerical aide during a briefing.
New leadership
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CNN.MobileWebFloatingPlayer.transition,onPin: function () {playerInstance.hideUI();},onUnpin: function () {playerInstance.showUI();},onPlayerClick: function () {if (mobilePinnedView) {playerInstance.enterFullscreen();playerInstance.showUI();}},onDismiss: function() {CNN.Videx.mobile.pinnedPlayer.disable();playerInstance.pause();}});/* Storing pinned view on CNN.Videx.mobile.pinnedPlayer So that all players can see the single pinned player */CNN.Videx = CNN.Videx || {};CNN.Videx.mobile = CNN.Videx.mobile || {};CNN.Videx.mobile.pinnedPlayer = mobilePinnedView;}if (Modernizr && !Modernizr.phone && !Modernizr.mobile && !Modernizr.tablet) {if (jQuery(containerClassId).parents(‘.js-pg-rail-tall__head’).length) {videoPinner = new CNN.VideoPinner(containerClassId);videoPinner.init();} else {CNN.VideoPlayer.hideThumbnail(containerId);}}},onContentEntryLoad: function(containerId, playerId, contentid, isQueue) {CNN.VideoPlayer.showSpinner(containerId);},onContentPause: function (containerId, playerId, videoId, paused) {if (mobilePinnedView) {CNN.VideoPlayer.handleMobilePinnedPlayerStates(containerId, paused);}},onContentMetadata: function (containerId, playerId, metadata, contentId, duration, width, height) {var endSlateLen = jQuery(document.getElementById(containerId)).parent().find(‘.js-video__end-slate’).eq(0).length;CNN.VideoSourceUtils.updateSource(containerId, metadata);if (endSlateLen > 0) {videoEndSlateImpl.fetchAndShowRecommendedVideos(metadata);}},onAdPlay: function (containerId, cvpId, token, mode, id, duration, blockId, adType) {/* Dismissing the pinnedPlayer if another video players plays an Ad */CNN.VideoPlayer.dismissMobilePinnedPlayer(containerId);clearTimeout(moveToNextTimeout);CNN.VideoPlayer.hideSpinner(containerId);if (Modernizr && !Modernizr.phone && !Modernizr.mobile && !Modernizr.tablet) {if (typeof videoPinner !== ‘undefined’ && videoPinner !== null) {videoPinner.setIsPlaying(true);videoPinner.animateDown();}}},onAdPause: function (containerId, playerId, token, mode, id, duration, blockId, adType, instance, isAdPause) {if (mobilePinnedView) {CNN.VideoPlayer.handleMobilePinnedPlayerStates(containerId, isAdPause);}},onTrackingFullscreen: function (containerId, PlayerId, dataObj) {CNN.VideoPlayer.handleFullscreenChange(containerId, dataObj);if (mobilePinnedView &&typeof dataObj === ‘object’ &&FAVE.Utils.os === ‘iOS’ && !dataObj.fullscreen) {jQuery(document).scrollTop(mobilePinnedView.getScrollPosition());playerInstance.hideUI();}},onContentPlay: function (containerId, cvpId, event) {var playerInstance,prevVideoId;if (CNN.companion && typeof CNN.companion.updateCompanionLayout === ‘function’) {CNN.companion.updateCompanionLayout(‘restoreEpicAds’);}clearTimeout(moveToNextTimeout);CNN.VideoPlayer.hideSpinner(containerId);if (Modernizr && !Modernizr.phone && !Modernizr.mobile && !Modernizr.tablet) {if (typeof videoPinner !== ‘undefined’ && videoPinner !== null) {videoPinner.setIsPlaying(true);videoPinner.animateDown();}}},onContentReplayRequest: function (containerId, cvpId, contentId) {if (Modernizr && !Modernizr.phone && !Modernizr.mobile && !Modernizr.tablet) {if (typeof videoPinner !== ‘undefined’ && videoPinner !== null) {videoPinner.setIsPlaying(true);var $endSlate = jQuery(document.getElementById(containerId)).parent().find(‘.js-video__end-slate’).eq(0);if ($endSlate.length > 0) {$endSlate.removeClass(‘video__end-slate–active’).addClass(‘video__end-slate–inactive’);}}}},onContentBegin: function (containerId, cvpId, contentId) {if (mobilePinnedView) {mobilePinnedView.enable();}/* Dismissing the pinnedPlayer if another video players plays a video. */CNN.VideoPlayer.dismissMobilePinnedPlayer(containerId);CNN.VideoPlayer.mutePlayer(containerId);if (CNN.companion && typeof CNN.companion.updateCompanionLayout === ‘function’) {CNN.companion.updateCompanionLayout(‘removeEpicAds’);}CNN.VideoPlayer.hideSpinner(containerId);clearTimeout(moveToNextTimeout);CNN.VideoSourceUtils.clearSource(containerId);jQuery(document).triggerVideoContentStarted();},onContentComplete: function (containerId, cvpId, contentId) {if (CNN.companion && typeof CNN.companion.updateCompanionLayout === ‘function’) {CNN.companion.updateCompanionLayout(‘restoreFreewheel’);}navigateToNextVideo(contentId, containerId);},onContentEnd: function (containerId, cvpId, contentId) {if (Modernizr && !Modernizr.phone && !Modernizr.mobile && !Modernizr.tablet) {if (typeof videoPinner !== ‘undefined’ && videoPinner !== null) {videoPinner.setIsPlaying(false);}}},onCVPVisibilityChange: function (containerId, cvpId, visible) {CNN.VideoPlayer.handleAdOnCVPVisibilityChange(containerId, visible);}};if (typeof configObj.context !== ‘string’ || configObj.context.length 0) {configObj.adsection = window.ssid;}CNN.autoPlayVideoExist = (CNN.autoPlayVideoExist === true) ? true : false;CNN.VideoPlayer.getLibrary(configObj, callbackObj, isLivePlayer);});CNN.INJECTOR.scriptComplete(‘videodemanddust’);
