Has President Trump learned a lesson from impeachment? Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) isn't seeing a tremendous amount of evidence lately.The Alaska senator who voted in favor of acquitting Trump earlier this month spoke to reporters Wednesday and was asked if she believes Trump learned a lesson after becoming the third president in U.S history to be impeached in the House of Representatives. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) argued he would, saying earlier this month the president "will be much more cautious in the future" and "has learned from this case."But Murkowski told reporters on Wednesday, "There haven't been any strong indicators this week that he has."> Asked Lisa Murkowski if Trump learned his lessons from impeachment: “There haven’t been any strong indicators this week that he has.”> > — Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 12, 2020This comes a day after all four prosecutors in the Roger Stone case quit after the Department of Justice changed course on its recommendation of a seven to nine year sentence for the former Trump adviser; the reversal followed an angry tweet from Trump, who on Wednesday congratulated Attorney General Bill Barr "for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control."Asked the same question about whether Trump learned from impeachment, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Wednesday reportedly laughed and observed, "He seems the same as he did two weeks ago."More stories from theweek.com The Democratic establishment is out of time Brokered convention gets close 2nd place in FiveThirtyEight's Democratic nomination forecast Bloomberg picks up 3 endorsements from Congressional Black Caucus

(Bloomberg) -- Attorney General William Barr is confronting one of the biggest crises of his tenure after the Justice Department reversed course on a recommendation about how long one of President Donald Trump’s allies should go to prison, prompting a team of career prosecutors to quit the case.Coming after he helped the president navigate the special counsel’s probe of Russian election meddling and prevail in the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history, Barr will be pressured to prove he’s not a political hired hand just doing the White House’s bidding.Trump may have made Barr’s challenge tougher by tweeting congratulations on Wednesday morning for the attorney general’s intervention in the case of the president’s longtime confidant Roger Stone. Trump praised Barr for “taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought.”The change to the Justice Department’s sentencing recommendation on Stone -- convicted of witness tampering and lying to Congress -- is the second politically charged move revealed by the agency this week.On Monday, Barr said he had created a special channel for Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to share his “findings” on former Vice President Joe Biden’s connections to Ukraine -- an issue that played a central role in Trump’s impeachment and trial.The next day, four prosecutors resigned in rapid succession after the sentencing change in the Stone case. They did so after the department overruled them and scaled back its initial advice that Stone serve seven to nine years in prison. Instead, the department recommended that Stone serve three to four years.Trump repeated public objections before and after the initial recommendation, fueling fears that law enforcement officials simply succumbed to White House pressure.“I thought the recommendation was ridiculous, I thought the whole prosecution was ridiculous,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “I stay out of things to a degree that people wouldn’t believe, but I didn’t speak to them,” Trump said of the Justice Department.Not everyone found that explanation convincing.“The president of the United States has no business interfering in the criminal trial of his own campaign adviser,” said Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat and the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “The Justice Department owes the court and the American people an explanation of exactly what is happening here.”Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, a strong Trump supporter, said, “I don’t think it’s appropriate for him to be commenting on cases in the system.” Referring to the judge who will decide Stone’s sentence, the South Carolina Republican said “whatever she decides to do in the case of a 70-year-old man I support.”On Twitter Tuesday night, Trump attacked the prosecutors and U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who presided over Stone’s trial and is to sentence him on Feb. 20.Trump is also withdrawing the nomination of Jessie Liu-- who had been the U.S. attorney in charge of the office that prosecuted Stone -- to oversee sanctions at the Treasury Department.Iran-Contra PastBarr, who has long argued for a strong executive branch, has faced a steady stream of criticism and controversy since he became attorney general a year ago. Trump had routinely disparaged his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from the Russia election interference investigation and has said he needed someone more loyal, pointing to President John F. Kennedy’s decision to pick his brother, Robert, for the job.Barr appears to be filling that role for the president, as he did long before Trump appeared on the political scene. He was attorney general under President George H.W. Bush nearly three decades ago. Back then, he helped torpedo criminal prosecutions in the Iran-Contra affair by successfully advocating for Bush to issue a wave of pardons before leaving office following his election defeat to Bill Clinton.While Barr has faced criticism, he has also been praised by law enforcement officials and other groups for his priorities in fighting crime, illegal immigration and hackers. Only hours before the four prosecutors resigned, Barr was given an award by the group Major County Sheriffs of America, where he delivered a speech defending police.Now, having gotten Trump past the special counsel probe and impeachment since taking office again in February 2019, Barr will be under pressure to explain why his department made the Stone decision, which many legal experts said couldn’t have taken place without his consent.In Barr, Trump Finds Traditional DOJ Pick Who Has Taken His SideFormer Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder said on Twitter that what Justice Department headquarters is trying to do “is unprecedented, wrong and ultimately dangerous.”“DOJ independence is critical,” added Holder, who faced complaints from Republicans that he was too close to President Barack Obama.A department official said the leadership believed the initial recommendation for Stone’s prison term was excessive and that it wasn’t proportional to his crimes. But the reversal and Barr’s role in it comes as the law enforcement agency considers more leniency in the sentencing of another former Trump confident, Michael Flynn, who resigned as the president’s first national security advisor after three weeks.Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on the Justice Department’s internal watchdog to investigate the decision regarding Stone’s sentencing and whether White House officials were involved.The Justice Department recommendation isn’t final. The judge in the case can make a decision independent of the DOJ’s guidelines. That was a reality some of the administration’s defenders pointed to after the change in recommendation.“Sounds like some drama,” said Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican. “Judges aren’t obligated to follow the recommendation of the prosecutors anyway. What really counts is what the judge decides to do and then there’s a process to appeal and ultimately to seek clemency, if, in fact, that’s something that is justified under the facts.”(Updates with a nomination withdrawn in 13th paragraph. A previous version of this story had an incorrect home state for Senator Graham)\--With assistance from Daniel Flatley, Erik Wasson and Josh Wingrove.To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Strohm in Washington at cstrohm1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Larry LiebertFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

WASHINGTON -- As far as President Donald 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 Tuesday, the Defense Department would now take action against the colonel, too."That's going to be up to the military," Trump told reporters who asked whether Vindman should face disciplinary action after testifying in the House hearings that led to the president's impeachment. "But if you look at what happened," Trump added in threatening terms, "I mean they're going to, certainly, I would imagine, take a look at that."This is an unsettled time in Trump's Washington. In the days since he was acquitted in a Senate trial, an aggrieved and unbound president has sought to even the scales as he sees it. Vindman was abruptly marched by security out of the White House, an ambassador who also testified in the House hearings was summarily dismissed, and senior Justice Department officials Tuesday intervened on behalf of Trump's convicted friend, Roger Stone, leading four career prosecutors to quit the case.More axes are sure to fall. A senior Pentagon official appears in danger of losing her nomination to a top Defense Department post after questioning the president's suspension of aid to Ukraine. Likewise, a prosecutor involved in Stone's case has lost a nomination to a senior Treasury Department position. A key National Security Council official is said by colleagues to face dismissal. And the last of dozens of career officials being transferred out of the White House may be gone by the end of the week.The war between Trump and what he calls the "deep state" has entered a new, more volatile phase as the president seeks to assert greater control over a government that he is convinced is not sufficiently loyal to him. With no need to worry about Congress now that he has been acquitted of two articles of impeachment, the president has shown a renewed willingness to act even if it prompts fresh complaints about violating traditional norms."The president is entitled to staffers that want to execute his policies, that he has confidence in," said Robert C. O'Brien, the national security adviser, who supervised Vindman and his brother, Yevgeny Vindman, also an Army lieutenant colonel, who was dismissed from the National Security Council staff even though he did not testify in the House hearings. "We're not a banana republic where lieutenant colonels get together and decide what the policy is."The president's involvement in Stone's case generated vigorous protests and calls for an investigation into whether he improperly sought to skew the prosecution in favor of a longtime associate and adviser. Hours after Trump's tweets criticizing the Justice Department for seeking up to nine years in prison for Stone, the department reversed gears and said it would ask for a lesser sentence.The Justice Department rejected any link to the president's tweets, while Trump insisted that he had nothing to do with the case. But the withdrawal of the four career prosecutors working on the case left the unmistakable impression that they thought something improper had happened."The American people must have confidence that justice in this country is dispensed impartially," Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, wrote in a letter asking the department's inspector general to investigate. "That confidence cannot be sustained if the president or his political appointees are permitted to interfere in prosecution and sentencing recommendations in order to protect their friends and associates."Trump has repeatedly railed against law enforcement agencies for targeting his associates. Among those who have been convicted are Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman; Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser; and Michael Cohen, his personal lawyer."The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them," he wrote on Twitter shortly after midnight Tuesday morning.By the evening, he was demanding to know why the Democratic power broker Tony Podesta had not been prosecuted and expanded his attack to Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is presiding over Mr. Stone's case."Is this the Judge that put Paul Manafort in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, something that not even mobster Al Capone had to endure?" he wrote on Twitter, providing a false version of her role as well as his treatment. "How did she treat Crooked Hillary Clinton?"Trump has long suspected that people around him -- both government officials and even some of his own political appointees -- were secretly working against his interests. His impeachment for trying to coerce Ukraine to incriminate Democrats by withholding $391 million in security aid has only reinforced that view as he watched one official after another testify before the House.Witnesses like Alexander Vindman testified under subpoena compelling them to talk, but Trump blamed them for his dilemma. In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump complained at length about Vindman, accusing him of misleading Congress about the president's July 25 phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart. In fact, Vindman's version of the call closely tracked the written record released by the White House, but he did testify that he thought it was inappropriate to ask a foreign country to tarnish the president's domestic political opponents."We sent him on his way to a much different location, and the military can handle him any way they want," Trump said. "Gen. Milley has him now," he added, referring to Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I congratulate Gen. Milley. He can have him. And his brother, also. We'll find out. We will find out. But he reported very inaccurate things."Others involved in the impeachment process may also pay a price. The administration plans to withdraw the nomination for Pentagon comptroller of Elaine McCusker, a Defense Department official who questioned the aid freeze, The New York Post reported. While the Senate has not been notified of such a move, an administration official said it was likely to happen after budget hearings this week.McCusker could not be reached for comment, and a Pentagon official referred questions to the White House, which had no comment. Sen. James M. Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters that he had "a feeling everything is going to be fine with the nomination." But friends of McCusker said she was aware that her nomination was in jeopardy.Just Monday, McCusker was the one left explaining the wielding of another Trump administration ax. Appearing before reporters in her role as the Defense Department's acting comptroller, she sought to describe why the Pentagon was proposing to eliminate the $7 million subsidy to Stars and Stripes, a newspaper for U.S. troops."We have essentially, decided that, you know, kind of coming into the modern age, that newspaper is probably not the best way that we communicate any longer," she told reporters.Another political appointee who may lose a nomination is Jessie K. Liu, who served as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia when her office prosecuted Stone; Manafort and other high-profile cases.She stepped down in December, when Trump nominated her to be the undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial crimes. But Tuesday the White House withdrew her nomination, a person familiar with the matter said.At the White House, Victoria Coates, a deputy national security adviser, has twisted in the wind amid feverish speculation about whether she would be pushed out. She has been the subject of a whisper campaign suggesting that she was the anonymous author of a book about being a member of the resistance inside the administration -- which prompted the literary agents for the actual author to deny the claims.O'Brien, Coates' boss at the National Security Council, rejected the speculation in an appearance Tuesday at the Atlantic Council. "This town is amazing when it comes to whispers," he said, adding he did not know who the author was. "I think writing 'Anonymous' is inconsistent with working at the White House or working at the NSC, so whoever wrote 'Anonymous' probably shouldn't be there."But O'Brien is presiding over a broader housecleaning at the National Security Council. Since being appointed last fall, he has said he wants to shrink the size of the staff to what it was under President George W. Bush. At the Atlantic Council appearance, he said he would be finished "by the end of the week" reducing the staff of policy professionals to 115 or 120 from the 175 when he took over.The ousted officials were detailed from elsewhere in the government like the CIA, the Pentagon or the State Department and are returning to their home agencies. According to an administration official, the original plan was to use this downsizing as cover to remove Vindman as well without looking like a reprisal.But in the end, the president did not want cover. He wanted to send a message -- a message that Washington has received.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

We are watching the rule of law collapse in real time.It is no surprise that President Trump on Tuesday meddled in the federal case against his friend Roger Stone — who is convicted of sabotaging an investigation against Trump himself — declaring that a nine-year sentencing recommendation by Department of Justice lawyers was "very unfair" and adding that he "cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!"It is no surprise that the Department of Justice — led by Trump's unendingly faithful servant, Attorney General William Barr — responded to Trump's tweet by reversing itself, instead recommending that Stone serve only an "unspecified" amount of time in prison.And it is no surprise that these events occurred in an atmosphere of Trumpian house cleaning. There were reports that Jessie Liu, a former prosecutor on the Stone case, had her nomination withdrawn for a job at the Treasury Department. The president on Tuesday also suggested that the military conduct an inquiry against Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, whose only apparent crime is telling Congress the truth about what he witnessed during the Ukraine scandal. At the same time, the White House reportedly planned to withdraw its nomination of Elaine McCusker to be the Pentagon's comptroller — because McCusker resisted the president's efforts to delay military aid to Ukraine, the act that started the scandal. Add Tuesday's events to those of last Friday, when Vindman and his brother were fired, along with Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the EU, and America has experienced two "Saturday Night Massacres" within a week.The message to the federal workforce is clear: Mess with the president or his friends, and your career will suffer. Trump is like a bizarro world version of Diogenes: Instead of a ceaseless search to find the last honest man, he instead is doing everything he can to expel all traces of integrity and honesty from American governance.Right now, he is succeeding.If there is one small bit of surprise and even consolation in Trump's post-impeachment campaign to assert unlimited power, it is that integrity still exists in corners of the executive branch: All four federal prosecutors working on Stone's case withdrew on Tuesday rather than serve the president's wishes. But such consolations — as with Sen. Mitt Romney's (R-Utah) vote to impeach the president — are also fleeting, because they ultimately mean so little. The president will get what he wants anyway.There will be more of this kind of stuff. NBC on Tuesday night reported that Barr is personally consolidating control of federal legal matters of interest to the president. And Trump on Tuesday night publicly assailed the judge handling Stone's case. We are a very long way from the time when then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch recused herself from Hillary Clinton's email case after she chatted with Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac. The old wisdom was that the appearance of a conflict of interest is the same as an actual conflict. The new wisdom — if it can be called that — is to get away with as much as you possibly can.Trump is generally corrupt, but his attempts to bend the Department of Justice to his will and self-interest are particularly troubling, and will probably do damage that lingers long after he leaves office. Justice — the rule of law — has always been a flawed and fragile concept in America, but it is also one of the foundations on which our democracy rests. "All men are created equal" is a statement of how we are to be treated by the law. Now the president orchestrates special treatment for himself and his cronies and urges punishment for his enemies. Increasingly, the Department of Justice seems willing to go along. In doing so, it loses whatever legitimacy and reputation for fairness it might have had. Right and wrong, legal and illegal are less important than they were a few years ago — what matters most is who has the power, and the will to use it.This was foreseeable. Sen. Susan Collins' (R-Maine) limp protestations notwithstanding, we knew that Trump would use his unearned impeachment acquittal as license to disregard the last remaining restraints on his power. But it was easily predicted even before he became president that Trump was a creature of grievance, a man who would almost certainly abuse and misuse the powers of office in settling scores both real and imagined. This is who Trump is. He became president anyway."We told you so," is an insufficient response to this moment. American democracy hangs in the balance. Can anything be done?Maybe not. Maybe it is too late. Trump was impeached for trying to cheat the election; it seems likely he will continue such attempts, in which case the 2020 election might already be lost. But Trump's opponents must keep trying anyway. They must keep voting, keep donating, keep protesting, keep writing against this president until all is finally lost. Romney showed his integrity last week. So did the federal prosecutors who quit the Stone case on Tuesday. Now the rest of us must do the same.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com In Twitter rampage, Trump attacks federal judge set to sentence Roger Stone South Sudan, Chinese oil interests buried 4 reports of deadly, disfiguring toxic oil contamination, AP reports John Kelly says Vindman did the right thing reporting Trump's 'illegal' Ukraine order

President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday that the Pentagon should review the conduct of a former White House national security aide who played a central role in the Democrats' impeachment case and potentially consider disciplinary action against him. Army Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, who until last week was detailed by the Pentagon to the White House, testified before the House impeachment panel that Trump inappropriately pushed Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Since his acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial, President Donald Trump has privately encouraged his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to keep investigating the Biden family and Ukraine, and to keep updating him and his administration, including the Justice Department, on his findings, according to two people familiar with their discussions.Reached for this story on Monday evening, Giuliani repeatedly declined to comment on specifics, but did say that his relationship with the president remained intact and that he’d just “talked to him twice today.” Asked what those conversations regarded, the Trump attorney replied, “no comment.”To those who know this president, this comes as little shock. “In my conversations with the president, he has, on more occasion than one, said that he wants to get to the bottom of the Ukraine issue in a very similar way that he’s talked about investigating the ‘Russia hoax,’” said another source close to Trump.President Trump’s conversations with Giuliani come just one week after the Senate acquitted him of abusing his office during his interactions with Ukraine. Since then, Trump has embarked on the predictable victory lap, claiming complete vindication and ousting witnesses who participated in the House impeachment investigation, including Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman as well as EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland. Some officials said they fear Giuliani’s work will now proceed but with the president’s official imprimatur. Giuliani & Co. Plot New Biden Probes as Trump’s Ukraine Team Lies in Ruin“I think he feels like the chains are off now,” said one senior administration official. “It’s like things have taken a turn. The gloves are off. And everything that used to be hush hush is now just… out in the open.”At the same time as he is pushing out his foes and scheming to investigate his future rivals, President Trump is also publicly flirting with the idea of helping save those who were pulled into the Russia investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. On Tuesday, Justice Department headquarters overruled prosecutors’ recommendation that former Trump adviser Roger Stone serve seven to nine years in prison for lying to Congress and witness tampering. Shortly after that news broke, all four prosecutors involved in the case withdrew from their work there, and one left the Justice Department altogether. A senior Justice Department official said it was not an easy day, but an early-morning Trump tweet—which called the initial recommendation a “miscarriage of justice”—had nothing to do with the department’s move to override the prosecutors. Following Trump’s acquittal last week, Giuliani and his allies continued ramping up their probes into Hunter and Joe Biden and Ukraine matters. And on Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told CBS’s Margaret Brennan that the Department of Justice had established an “intake process” whereby Giuliani could pass off information he gathered from Ukraine to prosecutors. “I have no idea what he’s got. I have no idea if the information is credible or not,” Graham told The Daily Beast in a phone interview. “Anything that comes out of Ukraine needs to be run through intelligence. Rudy is also on TV saying he has the smoking gun. When somebody goes on TV and talks about what they got in Ukraine... that needs to be checked. Everyone should be suspicious.”Graham went on to denounce the Democrats’ embrace of Lev Parnas, a former associate of Giuliani who recently pushed out recordings of President Trump advocating for the firing of former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. “You know, we have the Democrats who are embracing Parnas… putting people on TV to make outlandish claims. We should run him and that information through the system,” Graham said, adding that he was “skeptical” of any information emanating from Ukraine.Speaking to reporters on Monday, Attorney General Bill Barr acknowledged that the department would evaluate Giuliani’s information but waved off any notion that the president’s personal attorney was being given special attention or priority. The Washington Post later reported the District Attorney’s office in Pittsburgh had been tapped to handle the case.Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are actively working to gather additional information on the Bidens and Burisma. Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI), Graham, and Chuck Grassley—the Republican chairmen of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and the Finance Committee, respectively—previously requested the State Department hand over any documents tied to the Bidens or Ukraine. A source briefed on the investigation confirmed to The Daily Beast that it is focusing on witnesses from Blue Star and the State Department who are seen as close to Biden: David Wade, the communications chief for the former vice president; former Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken; and Amos Hochstein, an envoy for energy policy in the Obama administration. As previously reported by BuzzFeed, Senate investigators have said they expect to soon get records from the National Archives about meetings in 2016 between Obama administration officials, Ukrainian representatives and the Democratic National Committee, the source said. Once the archive and State documents come through, investigators plan to set up witness interviews, the source said, adding that investigators have indicated the probe could extend into the summer.“We don't give our investigations artificial deadlines and we haven’t speculated on any timeframes,” a spokesman for Grassley said. “We follow the facts where they lead and each inquiry is done on a case by case.”Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian diplomat who has long claimed the Ukrainian government meddled in the 2016 election to damage Hillary Clinton, has previously stated that he’s agreed to cooperate with the probe into the Bidens. He told The Daily Beast he shared additional documents with investigators on Monday. The lawmakers leading the investigation have sought to investigate claims related to Ukraine and 2016, including Telizhenko’s. Telizhenko said the documents included emails, and did not share further detail about the materials, which he said were in response to queries from the Senate investigators. Spokespersons for the senators did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

National security adviser Robert O’Brien said Tuesday evening there had been “absolutely” no retaliation involved in Friday’s departure of Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman from the National Security Council, even as President Trump seemed to indicate that the military would “look into” whether to take disciplinary action against the Army officer.

Army officer was removed from his post last week after providing damaging testimony during the House impeachment inquiryDonald Trump said on Tuesday the military may consider disciplining Alexander Vindman, the former White House National Security Council official who testified in Trump’s impeachment trial.Vindman, an army lieutenant colonel who provided some of the most damaging testimony during the House impeachment inquiry into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, was removed from his White House job last week.“We sent him on his way to a much different location and the military can handle him any way they want,” Trump said.Asked if he was suggesting that Vindman face disciplinary action, Trump said that would be up to the military.“If you look at what happened … they’re going to certainly, I would imagine, take a look at that,” Trump said.In his testimony, Vindman, then the NSC’s top Ukraine expert, said that Trump’s request that Ukraine investigate the “2016 election, the Bidens and Burisma” – which could boost Trump’s re-election – was “inappropriate and had nothing to do with national security”.A line from Vindman’s testimony about the rule of law in the United States, “here, right matters”, became a refrain in the Democrats’ impeachment case against Trump. The Republican president was acquitted in the Republican-majority Senate after being impeached in the Democratic-controlled House.“I obviously wasn’t happy with the job he did,” Trump said of Vindman. “First of all he reported a false call … what was said on the call was totally appropriate.”One of Vindman’s lawyers, David Pressman said, “There is no question in the mind of any American why this man’s job is over, why this country now has one less soldier serving it at the White House. Vindman was asked to leave for telling the truth.”Vindman’s twin brother, who served as a senior NSC lawyer, was also recalled last week, though he did not serve as a witness in the impeachment. The Vindman brothers will be reassigned to the defense department, according to a spokesperson.

President Trump said on Tuesday the military may consider disciplining former National Security Council aide Alexander Vindman, who testified in Trump's impeachment trial and was fired by the White House along with his twin brother.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the military may consider disciplining former National Security Council aide Alexander Vindman, who testified in Trump's impeachment trial and was fired by the White House along with his twin brother. Vindman, an Army lieutenant colonel, provided some of the most damaging testimony during an investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives of Trump's dealings with Ukraine.