A campaign of revenge?

US President Donald Trump on Friday fired two of the highest profile witnesses in his impeachment probe, sparking accusations that he is on a campaign of revenge.

Trump recalled his ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, just hours after Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a decorated soldier who worked at the National Security Council, was ordered out of the White House.

The firings came two days after the Republican-majority Senate acquitted Trump of charges that he abused his office and one day after he gave a victory speech branding his opponents as “evil.”

Sondland, a political appointee who got his post after donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, said in a brief statement, “I was advised today that the president intends to recall me effective immediately.”

The ouster of Vindman, a respected officer who was wounded in Iraq, was even more abrupt, when he was ordered out of his NSC offices at the White House.

He was “escorted out of the White House where he has dutifully served his country and his president,” his lawyer David Pressman said in a statement.

“Vindman was asked to leave for telling the truth,” Pressman said. Vindman’s twin brother Yevgeny, also a lieutenant colonel who worked as an attorney in the NSC, was fired simultaneously, US media reported.

Trump has described the impeachment process as a hoax, denying there was anything wrong in his push for Ukraine to open a politically embarrassing investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s family.

Trump yesterday defended his decision to fire Vindman saying

Vindman was present during a now famous July 25 phone call during which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to open an investigation into his political rival Joe Biden.

Subpoenaed by Congress to testify at the House impeachment hearings, the Ukrainian-born Vindman, who received a Purple Heart for wounds suffered in Iraq, said Trump’s actions were “improper.”

That testimony helped build the case leading to Trump becoming only the third president ever impeached by Congress.

Trump attacked Vindman in a tweet yesterday.

“Fake News @CNN & MSDNC keep talking about ‘Lt. Col.’ Vindman as though I should think only how wonderful he was,” Trump wrote, apparently referring to news outlet MSNBC.

“Actually, I don’t know him, never spoke to him, or met him (I don’t believe!) but, he was very insubordinate, reported contents of my ‘perfect’ calls incorrectly.”

“In other words, ‘OUT’.”

Sondland told lawmakers he followed the president’s orders in seeking a “quid pro quo” deal for Ukraine to investigate Biden in exchange for getting Zelensky a coveted White House visit.

Sondland said Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani led the effort at Trump’s direction to pressure Zelensky for the investigation and that top officials in the White House and State Department knew about it.

That testimony helped build the case leading to Trump becoming only the third president ever impeached by Congress, before his acquittal this week.