Lawyer for cowardly whistleblower worked with Biden on claim that hurt the Bush administration

Washington Examiner:

The lawyer representing the anonymous CIA employee who blew the whistle on President Trump's dealings with Ukraine once assisted a whistleblower who worked with Joe Biden's staff to accuse the military of failing to provide armored vehicles to the troops in Iraq.

Whistleblower Franz Gayl, a Marine Corps civilian ground combat advocate, went public in 2007 with a now-disputed claim that the military had ignored or slow-walked requests for life-saving equipment, such as mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles and nonlethal offensive gear, that would have saved Iraqi civilians.

Gayl was assisted by Andrew Bakaj, a former CIA officer who specializes in supporting whistleblowers. Bakaj is now the principal attorney for the career CIA officer who worked on the National Security Council under Presidents Barack Obama and Trump before departing and filing a whistleblower complaint with the Intelligence Community inspector general.

The claim from Gayl helped build opposition to the war and President George W. Bush, who was portrayed as incompetent, and fueled Obama's 2008 victory, which propelled Biden into the vice presidency. But it has come under renewed scrutiny in recent years.

Gayl's ability to connect with the staff of a powerful congressional committee, the laudatory media coverage of his complaints, and the link to Biden present striking parallels with the Ukraine whistleblower a dozen years on.

In 2007, Biden, then a senator for Delaware, referred to the report in his criticism of Bush’s handling of the war. "I have absolutely no faith, none whatsoever, in this president to voluntarily do what should be done," he said. ”The only way it is going to happen is when our Republican friends stop voting with the president and start voting to end this war by supporting our troops."

Erin Logan, a Biden adviser who worked on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, connected Gayl to USA Today, which wrote about Gayl’s complaint and exposed the problem to a national audience. Logan went on to become a senior Pentagon and National Security Council official in the Obama administration.

House Democrats, who won back the majority six years into Bush’s term largely from voter opposition to the war in Iraq, weighed impeaching Bush over his handling of the war. But at least one report rejected Gayl’s claim about the vehicles.
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The Democrats appear to be going back to their anti-Bush playbook.  In attacking Trump they will meet much more resistance and will expose for their attempted coup.  It demonstrates what is really going on is a power play that has really nothing to do with national security.