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Eugene Vindman, a Ukrainian-American and career Army officer, played a key role in first impeachment of Donald Trump. Both he and his twin brother Alexander Vindman were dispatched by the Pentagon to work at the White House National Security Council on East European affairs. There they objected to Trump’s threat to withhold military aid to Ukraine, in a phone call which Alexander Vindman was monitoring. He later testified before the House Intelligence Committee which investigated the charges on which Trump was impeached.
Admirals and generals join the CIA Democrats
The new group of national-security recruits for the Democratic Party does not include any former CIA agents, at least according to their campaign biographies (as in previous studies, we report only the information publicly available on their campaign websites and local press reports, which is damning enough).
Since Elissa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger have moved on to higher office, the House Democratic caucus will include large numbers of former national-security officials and military officers, but no acknowledged former CIA agents. We will nonetheless retain the label “CIA Democrats” for convenience, although it should be understood that this refers to any Democratic candidate whose primary background is in the military-intelligence apparatus.
The most important figures among the new candidates are the four former admirals and generals who are among the best-funded and most-publicized of the Democratic candidates for Congress in seats currently held by Republicans. The four combined had raised more than $20 million by June 30, about half of that for retired admiral Eileen Laubacher, who is running against notorious right-wing Republican incumbent Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District.
Laubacher graduated from the US Naval Academy and spent seven years in naval intelligence, before joining the reserves. She returned to active duty and deployed to Afghanistan in 2009, eventually moving up to admiral in 2018. She then became defense attache at the US embassy in New Delhi, India, before returning to the US and working in the Biden White House as Senior Director for South Asia on the National Security Council. The US-India relationship is at the center of Washington’s plans for war against China.
The other retired admiral is a direct expression of the disaffection with Trump within the military brass. Vice Admiral Nancy Lacore, commanding 60,000 sailors and Marines in the Navy Reserve, was forced out of the Pentagon by Trump’s Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, as part of his purge of minority and female command officers. In announcing her campaign, Lacore made direct reference to this action, declaring: “After decades of service to our country, a career that started as a Navy pilot and finished as a three star admiral, I was removed from my position without cause, along with dozens of other senior military leaders.”