National Security Council staffers uneasy, fear Trump backlash
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman departed Capitol Hill after dark on Tuesday after spending more than 10 hours detailing his concerns at President Donald Trump's handling of foreign policy. The next morning he returned to his desk as Trump's top Ukraine expert.
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.
News Courtesy: www.cnn.com
