Trump cries wolf on whistleblower rules
We begin with a tweet from President Trump written in all-capital letters:
“WHO CHANGED THE LONG STANDING WHISTLEBLOWER RULES JUST BEFORE SUBMITTAL OF THE FAKE WHISTLEBLOWER REPORT? DRAIN THE SWAMP!”
It’s emblematic of how Trump uses misinformation (and all-caps tweets) to defend himself from serious charges. First it was the Russia investigation, and now, an impeachment inquiry in Congress spurred by a whistleblower complaint.
We mapped out how this false attack wound up on the president’s Twitter account. A factually flawed article on the conservative website the Federalist became fodder for Trump’s allies on TV, which in turn caught the president’s attention.
The Federalist asserted that “between May 2018 and August 2019, the intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, firsthand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings.” As proof, the Federalist cited the fact that the intelligence community’s whistleblower form was revised in August, the same month the Ukraine whistleblower filed a complaint.
But forms don’t change rules; the rules are set by laws and policies. In this case, the guiding document is Intelligence Community Directive (ICD) 120, which was issued in 2014 and last updated in 2016. The directive implements Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 19, “Protecting Whistleblowers with Access to Classified Information,” which President Barack Obama signed to provide the first-ever executive-branch protections for intelligence community whistleblowers.
In a lengthy statement rebutting the Federalist’s reporting, the U.S. intelligence community inspector general’s office said that the Ukraine whistleblower used the previous version of form, not the new version. The inspector general’s office also disclosed that the Ukraine whistleblower indicated on the form that the complaint relied on a mix of firsthand and secondhand knowledge.
We gave Four Pinocchios to Trump.
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