Predictable behavior

A couple of the Republican reps in today's Maguire hearing were making the charge against the whistleblower's sources - you know, don't investigate the wrongdoing, investigate the leaker.  Trump is on the same page, of course.

President Trump told a crowd of staff from the United States Mission to the United Nations on Thursday morning that he wants to know who provided information to a whistle-blower about his phone call with the president of Ukraine, saying that whoever did so was “close to a spy” and that “in the old days,” spies were dealt with differently.

[...]

“You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right? We used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”

[...]

The remark stunned people in the audience, according to a person briefed on what took place, who had notes of what the president said.

  NYT

They should have been expecting it.

Some in the crowd laughed, the person briefed on what took place said. The event was closed to reporters, and during his remarks, the president called the news media “scum” in addition to labeling them crooked.

[...]

Mr. Trump repeatedly referred to the whistle-blower and condemned the news media reporting on the complaint as “crooked.” He then said the whistle-blower never heard the call in question.

[...]

The Trump Justice Department later proclaimed that the information the whistle-blower put forward did not qualify under the intelligence whistle-blower law, raising the question of whether the official was still protected from reprisal.

Which explains why Schiff and other Democrats on the Intel Committee stressed over and over that Maguire needed to assure them he would protect the whistleblower (and the IG, Schiff added). He did. But his decision to take the whistleblower's complaint directly to the White House and the DOJ instead of the Intel Committee as is required by law doesn't give me a lot of confidence. And probably doesn't give the whistleblower a lot, either. It obviously doesn't give the IG any:

The acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has said he would not permit the official to suffer retaliation, but the inspector general has pointed out that this personal assurance is not a legal shield.

Moreover, whistle-blower laws are aimed at channeling complaints to certain officials with oversight responsibilities — Congress, supervisors or inspectors general — and do not protect officials who provide information to other people without authorization. For that reason, these laws almost certainly do not protect the officials who told the whistle-blower about the call in the first place.

As I said, there's probably a lot of lawyering up going on right about now.



 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: