Amid a two-day binge of post-Christmas rage-tweeting, President Trump retweeted the name of the CIA employee widely presumed to be the whistleblower in the Ukraine scandal. On Thursday night, December 26, Trump retweeted his campaign account, which had tweeted a link to a Washington Examiner article that printed the name in the headline. Then, in the early hours of Friday morning, December 27, Trump retweeted a supporter who named the presumed whistleblower in the text of the tweet.This is a step the president has been building toward for some time.
The name of the presumed whistleblower has been circulating among Trump supporters for months. Trump surrogates—including the president's elder son—have posted the name on social media and discussed it on television. Yet actually crossing the line to post the name on the president's own account? Until now, Trump has hesitated. That red line has now been crossed.
Lawyers debate whether the naming of the federal whistleblower is in itself illegal. Federal law forbids inspectors general to disclose the names of whistleblowers, but the law isn't explicit about disclosure by anybody else in government.
What the law does forbid is retaliation against a whistleblower. And a coordinated campaign of vilification by the president's allies—and the president himself—surely amounts to "retaliation" by any reasonable understanding.
While the presumed whistleblower reportedly remains employed by the government, he is also reportedly subject to regular death threats, including at least implicit threat by Trump himself. Trump was recorded in September telling U.S. diplomats in New York: "Basically, that person never saw the report, never saw the call, he never saw the call—heard something and decided that he or she, or whoever the hell they saw — they're almost a spy. I want to know who's the person, who's the person who gave the whistleblower the information? Because that's close to a spy. You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now."
Trump's tweeting in the past two days was so frenzied and the sources quoted were so bizarre—including at least four accounts devoted to the Pizzagate-adjacent conspiracy theory QAnon, as well as one that describes former President Obama as "Satan's Muslim scum"—as to renew doubts about the president's mental stability. But Trump's long reticence about outright naming the presumed whistleblower suggests that he remained sufficiently tethered to reality to hear and heed a lawyer's advice. He disregarded that advice in full awareness that he was disregarding it. The usual excuse for Trump's online abusiveness—he's counterpunching—amounts in this case not to a defense, but to an indictment: "counter-punching" literally means retaliating, and retaliation is what is forbidden by federal law.
The presumed whistleblower's personal remedy for the president's misconduct is a private lawsuit for money damages against the federal government. It's hard to see how such a lawsuit would do anybody any good. The presumed whistleblower still draws a salary, and may not have suffered any material costs at all. The presumed whistleblower's ultimate compensation for this ordeal should be a future place of honor in the service of the country.
In the meantime, though, the country is left once again with the problem of a president who refuses to obey the law. Trump is organizing from the White House a conspiracy to revenge himself on the person who first alerted the country that Trump was extorting Ukraine to help his re-election: more lawbreaking to punish the revelation of past law-breaking. Impeaching a president whose party holds a majority in the Senate obviously presents many grave practical difficulties. But Trump's post-Christmas mania confirms House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's prediction that Trump would impeach himself.
Donald Trump will not be bound by any rule, even after he has been caught. He is unrepentant and determined to break the rules again—in part by punishing those who try to enforce them. He is a president with the mind of a gangster, and as long as he is in office, he will head a gangster White House.
David Frum, The Atlantic, December 28, 2019
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December 28, 2019
Voices4America Post Script. Share how Trump's crimes won't stop! His new tweeter campaign of vilification against the Whistleblower is retaliation and retaliation is a federal crime. #TrumpUnhinged #TrumpCriminal #ImpeachRemove
