By Vivian Salama
Updated Oct. 29, 2019 4:30 am ET
WASHINGTON—A top official with the National Security Council plans to tell House impeachment investigators that he was concerned by President Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, saying that the president’s request to have the Ukrainians investigate Joe Biden and his son may have been interpreted as a “partisan play.”
Alexander Vindman, an Iraq war veteran who currently oversees Ukraine policy at the NSC, will be the first official with firsthand knowledge of the phone call at the heart of the impeachment inquiry to testify when he appears before House investigators on Tuesday.
According to a statement obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Vindman also plans to tell investigators that the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, told a Ukrainian delegation in early July that the government in Kyiv needed to deliver specific investigations to secure a meeting with Mr. Trump. The statement says that the July 10 meeting was cut short by then-national security adviser John Bolton, which corroborates with what others have testified to.
Neither the White House nor Mr. Bolton responded to requests for comment Monday.
Trump and Ukraine: A Guide to the Key Players
valentyn ogirenko/Reuters
“Following this meeting, there was a scheduled debriefing during which Amb. Sondland emphasized the importance that Ukraine deliver the investigations into the 2016 election, the Bidens, and Burisma,” the statement says. “I stated to Amb. Sondland that his statements were inappropriate, that the request to investigate Biden and his son had nothing to do with national security, and that such investigations were not something the NSC was going to get involved in or push.”