The so-called White House “whistleblower” does not merit protection. He needs to be exposed.
To resolve the questions before the country, he must be publicly identified and questioned under oath. The right guaranteed all Americans under the Constitution — in this case, the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment — is not superseded by Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff’s self-serving interpretation of workplace administrative regulations concerning potential management retaliation against an employee. Reminder to the left: One of your virtue posturing mottos, now emblazoned on the homepage of The Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” — applies to you and everyone. Equal justice under the law.
House Democrats disingenuously exploited the anonymity provisions of whistleblower regulations to kick off their impeachment-style process aimed at President Trump. According to a few, brave, authentic journalists, there is strong circumstantial evidence suggesting that the person who filed the “whistleblower” complaint is a CIA analyst and former National Security Council staffer. But the media and the tech titans are doing their best to make sure you never hear this name. These organizations have, ironically, engaged in self-executing “prior restraint” — normally a form of government censorship that would otherwise have them howling before a federal court and publishing their stories — state secrets be damned! The hypocrisy is astounding. (RELATED: Calabresi: Democrats Are Violating Trump’s Rights — And Charging Him With A Fake ‘Crime’)
Censoring the name is widespread. Few major media outlets are reporting on him. Facebook has been scrubbing any mention of the “whistleblower” as a violation of its “coordinating harm” policy. There is no Wikipedia page for the “whistleblower,” and the page for his surname is “protected to prevent vandalism.” A site search shows that he is not even mentioned incidentally on the English Wikipedia site, though he does appear briefly in Spanish — for now, anyway.
Most egregiously, YouTube banned one of Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton’s weekly video updates because he discusses this allegation — even admitting that the “whistleblower” may not be the actual whistleblower (in which case there is no reason not to talk about him).
The censored report deals with new Judicial Watch analysis of White House visitor logs (publicly available U.S. government records) that document meetings with the “whistleblower,” detailed to the NSC in 2015 and returned to the CIA during the Trump administration in 2017. The White House visitor logs also reveal twenty-seven White House visits by Alexandra Chalupa, a contractor hired by the DNC during the 2016 election to coordinate with Ukraine’s government which was investigating President Trump and his former campaign manager Paul Manafort.
The “whistleblower” met with many people who have been implicated in the potentially criminal anti-Trump activity during and after the 2016 election. He met with Daria Kaleniuk, the co-founder and executive director of the Soros-funded Anticorruption Action Center (AntAC) in Ukraine. She visited on Dec. 9, 2015. One report indicated that in April 2016, the U.S. Embassy in Kiev “took the rare step of trying to press the Ukrainian government to back off its investigation of both the U.S. aid and (AntAC).”
The “whistleblower” met twice in 2016 with NYU law professor Rachel Goldbrenner, who at the time was an advisor to then-Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. Power of course was implicated in the highly questionable and potentially illegal unmasking of the names of 260 Americans caught up in foreign surveillance by the National Security Agency.
The “whistleblower” met with Nazar Kholodnitzky, the lead anti-corruption prosecutor in Ukraine whom the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch called for to be fired in the spring of 2019 — right around the time that the Biden/Burisma connection was emerging.
The “whistleblower” also met with assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, a significant player in the anti-Trump “resistance” whom Judicial Watch discovered had an extensive involvement with Clinton-funded dossier. Judicial Watch also released documents revealing that Nuland was central to the Obama State Department’s “urgent” gathering of classified Russia investigation information and disseminating it to members of Congress within hours of Trump taking office.
This and other background information on the “whistleblower,” which is based on an analysis of publicly available U.S. government records, show that he kept in touch with people who played a role in anti-Trump activities in 2016 and beyond. That does not prove the case that he is the “whistleblower” but adds important context to the work he was doing in the Obama White House. Judicial Watch will continue this important investigative journalism, especially since the major media are unwilling to do so.
What is most troubling is that there is no obligation, legal or otherwise, for the press or the social media monopolies to keep the name of the “whistleblower” a secret. Under the whistleblower statute there are at best limited prohibitions that apply only to government officials handling the case. It’s a really a matter of administrative employment practice. No one else is obligated to keep that secret. And the “whistleblower’s” identity is by definition newsworthy, since it is central to one of the biggest stories of the year, dealing with the potential impeachment of the president of the United States.
The fact that major media are not on the story shows a stunning lack of journalistic integrity. And the social media censorship of the “whistleblower’s” name is what we would expect from these politically biased organizations.
Furthermore, the Justice Department determined early in this process that the so-called “whistleblower” complaint failed to identify any actions by President Trump or anyone else that merited invoking the whistleblower statute. We later learned that the entire effort was coordinated by Adam Schiff’s staff to create a pretext for the bastardized process that followed. So, the “whistleblower” is more properly called a fabricator, and not entitled to any shield of anonymity. Plus, if he were involved in coordinating activities of the Ukrainian government in trying to rig the 2016 election, and improperly transmitting classified material — another far more serious term might be applied to the “whistleblower.”
If the “whistleblower” has a story to tell, he needs to go public with it. If he is not the “whistleblower,” he should deny it. If he is, he should admit it. The crisis is not going to suddenly vanish. The public has a right to judge the “whistleblower’s” actions and motives. Is the country being run through a grossly partisan sham impeachment process by disgruntled deep state political operatives? Judicial Watch will keep reporting on this case regardless of the media embargo and social media censorship.
Chris Farrell is director of investigations and research for Judicial Watch, a nonprofit watchdog group. He previously worked as a counterintelligence case officer.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.