One of the most dramatic and memorable moments of the first congressional impeachment hearings against Donald Trump came in November 2019, when Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman addressed his father, who was born in the former Soviet Union.

“Dad, my sitting here today in the U.S. Capitol, talking to our elected officials, is proof that you made the right decision 40 years ago to leave the Soviet Union and come here to the United States of America in search of a better life for our family,” Vindman said. “Do not worry. I will be fine for telling the truth.”

The Republican president had a very different perspective. Despite Vindman’s decades of military service — he’s a Purple Heart recipient and Iraq War veteran — the Trump administration denied him the Army promotion he was due and subjected him to retaliation ahead of his retirement in July 2020.

Nearly six years later, Vindman did something unexpected: He launched a Democratic Senate campaign in Florida, hoping to take on appointed Republican Sen. Ashley Moody.

His first bid for elected office showed promise — Vindman proved to be a prolific fundraiser, for example — but his candidacy ultimately fell short: He lost this week’s primary to state Rep. Angie Nixon.

The morning after the results were announced, Trump celebrated the outcome, publishing an ugly message to his social media platform. It read in its entirety:

The most gratifying loss last night was that of a real treasonous creep, Alexander Vindman, to a Radical Left Lunatic, who can’t speak or think properly, and who will go down to certain defeat at the hands of Ashley Moody, a truly Fantastic Senator, from the Great State Florida. Vindman, if you remember, was the one who lied about my “Perfect Call” with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, only to find out that the conversation was routinely recorded and proved that I was 100% in the right (Completely Innocent!). It was, indeed, a Perfect Call, and the Dumocrats Fake Impeachment effort massively failed. Vindman should be prosecuted for what he did!

The sheer volume of falsehoods over these four sentences was staggering. Vindman didn’t commit treason; he’s not a creep; Nixon is not a lunatic; Nixon is perfectly capable of proper speech and thought; Moody is not a fantastic senator; Vindman didn’t lie; Trump’s infamous call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was not perfect; the president was never exonerated; and while the impeachment trial against Trump ultimately fell short, it was the first impeachment effort in American history to garner bipartisan support, and several Republican senators acknowledged the president’s obvious wrongdoing.

But Trump’s lies were only part of what made his missive notable. Just as striking, if not more so, were the last eight words of his statement: “Vindman should be prosecuted for what he did.”

What Vindman did was expose official wrongdoing through proper channels. The president didn’t say what the decorated veteran would be prosecuted for, exactly, probably because Vindman did everything right.

Trump, however, apparently doesn’t care. He doesn’t just want his foes to lose; he wants them to suffer for having wronged him. Time will tell whether Trump’s Justice Department pursues Vindman at the president’s direction, but given the degree to which the White House has weaponized federal law enforcement against Trump’s perceived enemies, it would be a mistake to assume that his online rant went unnoticed at Main Justice.

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