So, let’s play “let us pretend,” and by “us” we mean all of the people who are apoplectic about folks who seek to disclose the identity of the self-styled whistleblower in the “Trump – Ukrainian phone call incident.”
Let “us” pretend that a Democrat is elected President, and that the holdover Republicans in the bureaucracy are angry that their party lost. So, let’s pretend they go out of their way to “resist” every act the incoming President promises, every move he makes, every word he utters, everyone he nominates; but more than that, they decide to “go public” by “blowing the whistle” on the new President by reporting the contents of some communication he held with a foreign leader, a communication containing something that goes against the norms of established policy. That makes him, by current definition, a “whistleblower.” Well, let’s pretend our whistleblower doesn’t report the contents, but fabricates them, based on third or fourth hand gossip from someone who supposed that something occurred because somebody told somebody else that he has the impression that it occurred.
Anyway, to continue: our “whistleblower” knows that his close involvement with Republican presidential campaigns and candidates, and his associations with the officeholders in the previous administration might undercut his pretense of neutrality were his identity to be disclosed, so he masks it, and insists upon full anonymity, even though what he is blowing the whistle about could lead to President-elect falling from grace, or even being toppled from office.
Well, in reality, the shoe is on the other foot, and our self-styled “whistleblower” is a holdover, partisan Democrat, who worked to “dig up dirt” on Donald Trump prior to his election. He has, with the assistance of fellow “deep-staters,” concocted a fanciful tale that requires its listeners to accept that no President ever withheld or considered withholding or threatened to withhold anything that had been promised to a foreign leader, in order to make sure that leader keeps his promises and certifies that the promised assistance or aid will be used as it was intended to be. This in spite of dozens if not hundreds of occasions when Presidents of each party did exactly that.
The self-styled “whistleblower,” sad to say, did not meet the legal definition of same, so, abracabra, the bureaucracy issued revised rules that allows “whistleblower protections” to someone who reports third-hand information. That means, prior to August of this year, the “whistleblower” could not have been called a “whistleblower,” because he wasn’t one.
And, before we get too tangled up in the weeds, let’s remember that the main protection a whistleblower has under existing statues is freedom from being fired or suffering retaliation from his employer. The statutes do not grant him anonymity; if one thinks about it for more than a couple of seconds, it will be clear why they do not: for how can we square due process with anonymous charges of wrongdoing, which can lead to investigations, punishment, opprobrium, or other negative consequences for the accused. The protections are simply that – to protect him from retaliation, not to foment anonymous, unsupported charges.
Contrary to the opinion of Congressman Adam Schiff, the whistleblower’s identity is not irrelevant – it is vital; for how can we judge his motives, his honesty, his knowledge, if we do not know who he is? Sure, it is possible, as the Democrats contend, that they want to keep his identity a secret because they fear for his safety, but is far more probable that they want to keep it a secret because they do not want to have certain things about him disclosed, such as his political opinions, associations, or campaign service, for fear that such disclosure would destroy his reputation as a neutral observer and would declare him to be the partisan operative that we all know he is.
Chairman Schiff has required that the Republican minority on the panel can call no witnesses who disagree with the Schiff view that President Trump has committed an impeachable offense. Failure to allow exculpatory evidence would completely contradict the basic values that Congressmen take an oath to uphold. Rigged tribunals do such things; honest trails or hearings do not.
It also is intriguing how few of Cong. Schiff’s “witnesses” could have “witnessed” anything. Several of them have never spoken to the President; several of them left office prior to the phone call; almost none of them actually listened to the phone call. And, we have the transcript, which shows that almost all of the “whistleblower’s” original letter was inaccurate. And, in true “Columbo” style, there is “one more thing”: The Democrats are up in arms because, in their words, “President Trump asked a foreign leader to dig up dirt on a political rival.” Well, we believe there is a huge difference between “digging up dirt” and reopening an anti-corruption investigation that was curtailed at the request of the former Vice-President’s son and at the demand of the former Vice-President. Digging up dirt, could be, for example, falsifying a dossier that alleged immoral behavior that never happened, claiming that certain associates of a presidential candidate were “Russian agents” when they were not, and so on – in fact, the very things that the Clinton Campaign and/or the Obama Administration did to Donald Trump in 2016.
And, let’s pretend that for whatever reason, Joe Biden had decided NOT to run for President this time, because of age, health, or because there were so many good candidates in the Democratic field. If he was not a candidate, what new reason would they find for objecting to investigating him in connection with the favors his son received from a corrupt Ukrainian government? Let’s guess: if he is a candidate, we can’t ask for an investigation because it would be “political.” If he is not a candidate, we can’t ask for an investigation because it would be irrelevant or old news. In either case, we bet they would say an investigation would be “a smear.” We wonder how outrageous or groundless an allegation would have to be in order for them to agree that something done against President Trump was “a smear”