The Army lieutenant colonel who currently serves on the National Security Council and will testify Tuesday as part of House Democrats' impeachment inquiry is an immigrant from Ukraine and built a successful career as a scholar, Army officer, and intelligence professional.
Alexander Vindman, 44, has a West Wing office across from that of his twin brother, who is also an Army lieutenant colonel and serves on the National Security Council as a lawyer. He raised issues after the July 25 phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, saying he was concerned by Trump's demand that Ukraine investigate 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden.
According to a New York Times profile, Vindman's family moved from Ukraine to the United States in 1979 and settled in New York City. Arriving with their older brother, father, and grandmother, who had a total of $750 between them, the family set up roots and "worked to build its own American dream," Vindman will say in his Tuesday testimony.
The twins' father eventually became an engineer, while their older brother enrolled in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps — which spurred their interest in joining the U.S. military.
Alexander Vindman later graduated from the State University of New York at Binghamton, joined the Army and served in multiple overseas posts, including South Korea, Germany, and Iraq, and also earned a master's degree from Harvard University in Russian, Eastern Europe, and Central Asian Studies.
Before starting work at the White House in 2018, Vindman was stationed as an Army foreign area officer at the U.S. Embassies in Kiev and Moscow.
This spring, according to the Times, Vindman started to grow concerned about "outside influencers" trying to build a "false narrative" regarding Ukraine. The newspaper reported that the likely person behind that effort was Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer who has come under fire for his actions in Ukraine.
Trump is accused of holding up U.S. military aid to Ukraine until that country committed to investigating Biden and his son Hunter, who have faced allegations of corruption related to lucrative jobs Hunter got while his father was vice president.
Vindman will say Tuesday that his concerns about U.S. policy toward Ukraine boiled over after the July phone call.
"I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government's support of Ukraine," his testimony reads.
Trump has denied doing anything improper. The Democrat-controlled House will vote Thursday on formalizing the impeachment inquiry.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.