You wouldn’t know it from the way Donald Trump has waged a campaign to out the whistle-blower, but the individual who filed a formal complaint against the president for pressuring Ukraine to smear his political rivals is, in fact, protected by federal law.
The Inspector General Act of 1978 states that agency watchdogs “shall not, after receipt of a complaint or information from an employee, disclose the identity of the employee without the consent of the employee, unless the inspector general determines such disclosure is unavoidable.”
In addition, the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 dictates that the president must enforce protections against retaliation of the whistle-blower which, naturally, Trump has not done at all.
In addition to suggesting the government execute the whistle-blower’s sources like in the “old days,” he’s repeatedly insisted the whistle-blower must come forward, admitted he’s trying to unmask the whistle-blower, and creepily tweeted “Where’s the whistleblower?,” when he hasn’t been busy claiming said whistle-blower doesn‘t exist.
Yet clearly the president’s last functioning brain cell, burnt out and working overtime, has somehow gotten the memo that it would be quite to very bad to actually go ahead and reveal the whistle-blower’s identity. That’s a memo that did not get passed down to the president’s namesake, who on Wednesday used his platform to name the alleged individual, like the idiot frat boy perpetually seeking daddy’s approval he is and always will be.
Tweeting a link to a story on Breitbart that named the person believed to have filed the complaint against the president, first son Donald Trump Jr. also included the name in his tweet just in case his followers wanted to save themselves a click. Then he flew off the handle in the face of criticism for putting an individual’s life in grave danger.
“The outrage on this is BS,” Junior told reporter Yashar Ali, adding that true Don Jr. Trumpologists should know better than to suggest he tweeted the whistle-blower’s alleged name at the behest of the administration.
“Those pretending that I would coordinate with The White House to send out a Breitbart link haven’t been watching my feed for a long time,” he added in a text message.
In a statement, the whistle-blower’s attorneys, Andrew Bakaj and Mark Zaid said, “Identifying any name for the whistleblower will simply place that individual and their family at risk of serious harm. We will not confirm or deny any name that is published but we will note publication does nothing other than show the desperation of a partisan crowd to deflect from the substance of the whistleblower complaint. It most certainly will not relieve the President of the need to address the substantive allegations, all of which have been substantially proven to be true.”
To give you an idea of how worrisome the notion of the whistle-blower’s name getting out is, even the hosts at TV Fox News have been instructed not to identify the individual in question.
Others, like the president’s son and his top lackeys, naturally disagree, which may or may not have something to do with the fact that they’ve run out of arguments for why Trump didn’t commit an impeachable offense and must now focus on attacking the person who initially sounded the alarm.
On Tuesday, Senator Rand Paul, who appears to be gunning for Lindsey Graham’s position as Top Presidential Footstool, casually told reporters he’ll “probably” out the whistle-blower, like he was musing that he’d probably pick up Thai for dinner. “I’m more than willing to, and I probably will at some point,” Rand said. “There’s nothing that prevents me from saying it now.”
Maybe Rand Paul, along with Donald Trump and his son, should read the law regarding protecting whistle-blowers before they mouth off again.
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