Pops wrote:The whistleblower who raised concerns about President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine spoke to staffers on the House Intelligence Committee before filing a formal complaint, giving Democrats advance warning of the accusations of wrongdoing that triggered their impeachment inquiry.....
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THe Ds aren't supposed to get "advance warning" of whistleblower complaints. The New York Times reported that the whistleblower talked to Adam Schiff while PBS is now reporting the whistleblower talked to some unknown number of D staffers. There appears to be a discrepancy here in the news reports. And then the whistleblower talked to a D lawyer, who apparently actually rewrote the report. So far it seems he talked to Schiff, a bevy of D staffers, and a D lawyer before he even filed the report and the report itself seems to have been co-written with Schiff and an unnamed D lawyer. And whats more, Schiff tweeted about it all before the report was filed, so essentially it was leaked to the public as well.
Sorry.....thats not how the whistleblower process works. By leaking to the Ds before filing his report the whistleblower has disqualified himself from receiving whistleblowing protection. Whistleblowers aren't allowed to leak confidential information---their reports are supposed to be confidential and are supposed to go through the authorized channels.
If you read the instructions for "whistleblowers" on the DNI website, whistleblowers aren't allowed to pass on their report to congressional staffers of the D party. The whistleblowers are allowed to discuss their concerns with their supervisors, or with someone higher up within the intelligence community, or with a congressional intelligence committee as a whole---not Adam schiff and not D staffers and not D lawyers and not to the public vis tweets.
This so-called whistleblower not only broke the rules by talking to D staffers, but then broke the rules again by going to a lawyer and having the lawyer write up the report.
I now have doubts that the whistleblower is actually entitled to whistleblower protections, since he has gone outside the established channels for whistleblowing in order to collaborate with the Ds in writing his report.
I won't be surprised if the whistleblower is outed and then charged for leaking confidential information and/or for failing to inform the DNI that he had previously leaked his report to the Ds when he submitted the report to the intelligence officer.
Cheers!