I’ve been wondering for weeks just what about the famous July 25 phone call (VIP) was so threatening to LTC-yes-that-means-Lieutenant-Colonel Alex Vindman that his reaction to the call was to be “literally shaken” and then bring it up with counsel, the infamous first Eric Ciaramella whistleblower, and eventually with the Democratic staff of the House Special Permanent Committee on Intelligence.

But while never revealing his name to Schiff or something.

All along, I’ve been wondering two things: why was this phone call enough to make a combat veteran visibly shaken, and where was the Macguffin. But it was more and more clear that this wasn’t just a matter of which political side was winning, because while politics might make you mad, they don’t generally make you scared.

So today, while the inquisition was putting the thumbscrews on Ambassador Sondland, ZeroHedge has a story that Burisma, through founder Nikolai Zlochevsky, has been indicted for money laundering, including the accusation that “Hunter Biden and his partners received $16.5 million for their ‘services’ as part of a money laundering operation that also involved the [former President Viktor] Yanukovych family is suspected, in particular, with legalizing (laundering) of criminally obtained income through Franklin Templeton Investments, an investment fund carrying out purchases of external government loan bonds totaling $7.4 billion.”

This is ZeroHedge, and I don’t trust them 100 percent by any means, but then there’s a news story on Interfax-Ukraine that covers the press conference in which members of the Ukrainian Parliament demanded an investigation.

Now things start to stack up. We’ve seen that Vindman has close ties to the previous Ukrainian government, dating back to Yanukovych and his successor Petro Poroshenko, while this alleged money-laundering scheme was taking place. The connection to the Franklin Templeton Fund is interesting because John Templeton, Jr. was a major Obama campaign donor, and Thomas Donilon, who was Obama’s National Security Advisor before Susan Rice and is now the chairman of BlackRock Investment Institute, a major owner of Franklin Templeton stock.

As an aside, remember how it was just shocking and unprecedented for Trump to use a personal representative? Here’s a quote from Donilon’s official bio:

Mr. Donilon served as the President’s personal emissary to a number of world leaders, including President Hu Jintao and President Xi Jinping, President Vladimir Putin, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Now, a little graft in the amount of a few million dollars is one thing, but $7.5 billion is real money, and a friend in the NSC could be really helpful. Especially with a couple friends in CIA and another one in an executive office in the West Wing.

This is still only based on supposition, and I’d like to see more support for this story. But, well, what did Vindman know, and when did he know it?

And who else knew it?