Alex Vindman

Alexander Semyon Vindman (born Aleksandr Semyonovich Vindman, June 6, 1975) is a retired United States Army lieutenant colonel who served as the Director of European Affairs for the National Security Council (NSC) until 2020. He came to national attention in 2019 as a witness in Congress's impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump during the Trump–Ukraine scandal. In his testimony, he described concerns he had previously reported regarding a call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that contributed to the abuse of power charge in the first impeachment of Trump. Vindman was commissioned in 1999 as an infantry officer in the Army. He served in the Iraq War, where he was wounded by an improvised explosive device in 2004 and received the Purple Heart. He later became a foreign area officer specializing in Eurasia and was appointed Director of European Affairs at the NSC in 2018. He retired from the Army in 2020 after 21 years of service following delays to his promotion to colonel and actions taken by the Trump administration in response to his testimony before Congress. In 2022, Vindman filed an unsuccessful lawsuit against several Trump allies alleging retaliation for his congressional testimony. In 2026, he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for Florida's United States Senate special election; the primary nomination went to Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist, in what has been characterized as a major upset.