Wisconsin Politics
Ron Johnson, Republican Senator from Wisconsin, has an electoral problem. He was first elected to the Senate in the 2010, defeating liberal Democrat Russ Feingold. That was the “Tea Party” year, when Republicans made strong gains after Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act, and took control of the House. Johnson won by 4%. He was reelected in 2016, as part of the surprising Trump victory in Wisconsin. Feingold was his opponent again; this time it was a 3 % margin.
In 2018 Democrats took every statewide seat in Wisconsin from the Governor on down. While Republican gerrymandering guaranteed control of the State legislature, Democrats actually received 9% more of the overall vote. The writing is on the wall. If these trends continue, Johnson will be in trouble in 2022.
Johnson, like several other Republican Senators, hitched has wagon to President Trump. He is one of Trump’s fiercest defenders, willing to go onto the Sunday news shows and defend the President with red face and demanding tones (Business Insider). He dodges commentator’s questions and weaves a web of conspiracies against the President.
Supporting Ukraine
Johnson is also deeply involved in the US support of Ukraine resistance to Russia. He has been a leader in the Senate (along with Rob Portman, Dick Durbin and Chris Murphy) in maintaining Ukrainian defense spending. So Johnson was more than concerned when he discovered that the Trump Administration was withholding defense funds from Ukraine. As he said, “I winced.” “I was surprised by the president’s reaction and realized we had a sales job to do.”
But as the impeachment inquiry continues, Johnson found he was on the “wrong side.” His earlier statements were used as evidence that the defense funds were being held back. So Johnson wrote a letter, to prove his fealty to Trump, and get off “the hook” about Ukraine.
The Letter
In the letter, Senator Johnson takes a partisan stand before he even writes the first sentence. The letter is not addressed to the full Intelligence Committee, but to the Republican leadership of Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan.
The first section repeats a litany of alt-right conspiracies against President Trump. Hillary Clinton, Fusion GPS, the Steele Dossier, private email servers and Strzok/Page are just highlights of a four paragraph rant against Democrats.
He then proceeds to attack Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman of the US Army, assigned to the National Security Council. Vindman, in a meeting in Ukraine with Johnson and other US leaders, expressed the view of the National Security Council and the State Department about US foreign policy.
The Meeting
In the meeting, Johnson pressed the Ukrainians to fulfill their election mandate of fighting “corruption”. Vindman, according to the letter, stated the official position of the NSC was, “…that our relationship with Ukraine should be kept separate from our geopolitical competition with Russia.”
Johnson was upset. Corruption in Ukraine was a deep and long standing issue. But “corruption” also was a “code word” for President Trump’s fixation on the “Crowd Strike Theory” that the 2016 election wasn’t hacked by the Russians, but Ukrainians instead. This conspiracy, pressed by Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, has been de-bunked not only by the entire US Intelligence Community, but also by the Mueller investigation.
In addition, “corruption” came to mean President Trump’s attempt, through Giuliani and other US diplomats, to force Ukrainians to open an investigation into the actions of Hunter Biden and his father, Joe Biden. The shorthand for that gambit was the name of the company Hunter Biden worked for, Burisma.
Vindman went on to warn the Ukrainians not to get involved in US domestic politics. Johnson saw this as directly opposed to the actions of the President, who was deeply interested in “corruption,” and the domestic political value of investigating Crowd Strike and Burisma.
The Deep State
Senator Johnson saw this as a clear example of the institutional forces of the government, what Trump Advisor Steve Bannon called the “Deep State,” conflicting with the views and desires of the President. In the letter, Johnson states the following:
“…I believe that a significant number of bureaucrats and staff members within the executive branch have never accepted President Trump as legitimate, and resent his unorthodox style and his intrusion onto their ‘turf’. They react by leaking to the press and participating in the ongoing effort to sabotage his politics, and, if possible, remove him from office. It is entirely possible that Vindman fits that profile.”
So Johnson set the stage for the attacks on Lieutenant Colonel Vindman in yesterday’s hearings.
The Lieutenant Colonel
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman is an American story. His father emigrated from the Ukraine in the Soviet Union after his wife died. Vindman and his twin brother were three when they arrived in New York along with their older brother. They were raised there, and became citizens with their father.
All three brothers served in the US Armed Forces, but Alex made a career in the Army. He served in combat in Iraq, earning the Combat Infantry Badge and the Purple Heart. He earned a Masters degree in Eurasian Studies from Harvard, and serves in the National Security Council as Director of European Affairs. His expertise is in Ukraine, and he speaks Ukrainian and Russian, as well as English.
Vindman listened into the phone call on July 25th between Presidents Trump and Zelenskiy. When he heard Mr. Trump ask Zelenskiy to investigate Crowd Strike and Burisma as “a favor though” within a conversation about defense aid to Ukraine, he saw it as “inappropriate and improper.” He went to National Security Council lawyers about the matter.
He also did his job by informing others in the government of how the conversation went. He informed George Kent in the State Department, and an undisclosed person in the Intelligence Community. While we don’t know for sure, it is likely that the undisclosed person became the author of the Whistleblower’s Report that began our current impeachment crisis.
Desecrating the Uniform
Senator Johnson’s letter set the Republican strategy against Alexander Vindman. He was attacked from the very first interrogation, when Republican Counsel Steve Castor questioned Vindman’s loyalty to the United States. Castor related that a member of the Ukrainian government offered Vindman a job as Defense Minister in the Ukrainian government. Vindman laughed at the story, relating that it was actually offered three times. But he made it clear that he turned down the offer, and reported it to his “chain of command”.
What did that “light hearted” questioning achieve? It gave ammunition to the alt-right claim that Vindman is somehow a “foreign” plant in the highest places in our government, a man who at best has “dual” loyalties.
Other Republican Congressmen questioned Vindman’s job description and painted him as overstating his authority. Congressman Stewart of Utah even went so far as to question Vindman’s wearing of the Full Dress Blue uniform of the US Army at the hearing.
No Sense of Decency
The old legal adage goes:
“When you have the law, pound the law. When you have the facts, pound the facts, when you have neither the law or facts, pound the table.”
Republican Congressmen have neither the facts nor the law. The President of the United States offered US aid in return for a “favor” from the Ukrainians. Lt. Colonel Vindman was a direct “fact” witness to that action. The only alternative the Republicans have is to “pound the table”. Unfortunately, Alex Vindman’s reputation and career must be destroyed to make their point.
In the McCarthy Hearings in the 1950’s, when Americans were swept away over the fear of Soviet spying, innocent lives were ruined. The turning point in the era began when Senator McCarthy attacked by claiming that a young lawyer in the defense firm was a “Communist”. Attorney Joseph Welch defended his employee, saying on live television to the Senator:
Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild … Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
As Nunes, Jordan, Stefanik and the rest prove: there is no sense of decency left here.
