Adam Schiff's unethical lie about whistleblower protection

Elizabeth Vaughn:

As Republican Congressmen tried valiantly to push Lt. Col. Mr. Vindman into divulging the name of the whistleblower, alleged to be Eric Ciaramella, Adam Schiff was repeatedly forced to interrupt with his now familiar warning. It’s remarkable how frequently and easily lies slip off this man’s tongue.

He shuts down all emotion and like a preprogrammed robot, and one can almost see it happening, he delivers his lies. That said, Schiff is not an especially effective liar. A convincing liar has to use a certain amount of emotion to be believed. My guess is that even his fellow Democrats know he’s lying, but because they share the same goal which is to destroy Trump, they’re happy to go along with it.

On Tuesday night, Newt Gingrich joined Fox News’ Laura Ingraham to discuss the hearings and they discussed – well – what a liar Schiff is. Here’s Newt:

My first thought is very simple, Schiff’s a liar. If Schiff doesn’t know who the whistle-blower is, why is he cutting off questions about a person he doesn’t know exists? I think it’s hard to exaggerate to the American people the degree to which Adam Schiff is a liar. And a liar on a scale that frankly totally dishonors the U.S. Congress. I mean, his whole — first of all, there is no whistle-blower. There’s no whistle-blowing statute for what happened. What you have is a leaker. The leaker was leaking things that are classified. He has no right to protection. Schiff clearly knows who he is and has lied to the country.

I used to be pretty aggressive when I was in Congress. I am surprised one of the members of the House Republicans doesn’t just say, ‘We all know the whistleblower is X. Now if you know it’s not X, who is it?’ Now, Schiff would then say ‘Oh, my God, we’re going to file an ethics complaint.’

In the video below, Vindman tells Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) he told two individuals about the Trump/Zelensky call and says one was George Kent.

Nunes tries to zero in on the second person and asks Vindman “What agency is this individual from?”

Schiff immediately pounces. “If I could interject here. We need to protect the whistleblower.”

In the second video below (at 3:55), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) questions Vindman. “And you’re not willing to tell us who that other individual is?”

Schiff springs into action. “As I indicated before, this committee will not be used to out the whistleblower. The same necessity to protect the whistleblower will persist. You will be recognized again Mr. Jordan.”

The scene appears to me at least, as a group of children who are playing “court” and Schiff is the obnoxious older brother who “calls being the judge.”

He also gets to make up all the rules. One of those rules is that the whistleblower has the “statutory right” to anonymity.

A fact check by the Washington Post indicates this is a false claim.

Neither the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998 (ICWPA) nor any related statutes have language guaranteeing anonymity for whistleblowers. These laws, in conjunction with Presidential Policy Directive 19 and Intelligence Community Directive 120, provide protections from work-related retaliation. Intelligence community whistleblowers can’t be demoted, fired or reassigned for legally reporting their concerns; their pay can’t be cut; they can’t be sent in for psychiatric exams; and their security clearance level can’t be touched.

“Nothing in the ICWPA expressly protects the anonymity of a complainant, or provides sanctions for someone who discloses it,” Stephen I. Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law and an expert on national security law, previously told The Fact Checker. “I think the harder question is whether disclosing a whistleblower’s identity could run afoul of other statutes, such as the federal criminal laws barring efforts to intimidate witnesses.”

Irvin McCullough, a national security analyst at the nonprofit Government Accountability Project, said the ICWPA “implies anonymity as a shield from other forms of workplace retaliation.”

“While not explicit in the statute, the obvious intent of the ICWPA was to create a channel through which intelligence employees could make disclosures of urgent concerns internally, securely, and anonymously (if they so choose),” McCullough wrote in an email. “That’s reinforced by the committee report’s recognition that whistleblowers could seek anonymous guidance from their home agency when making whistleblowing disclosures. The lack of whistleblowers’ right to enforce their confidentiality may be a loophole that Congress should correct.”
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Federal law expressly restricts the inspector general’s office from disclosing whistleblowers’ identities. It says “the Inspector General shall not disclose the identity of the employee without the consent of the employee, unless the Inspector General determines that such disclosure is unavoidable during the course of the investigation or the disclosure is made to an official of the Department of Justice responsible for determining whether a prosecution should be undertaken.”

That appears to be the lone statutory restriction on disclosing a whistleblower’s identity, applicable only to the inspector general’s office. We found no court rulings on whether whistleblowers have a right to anonymity under the ICWPA or related statutes.

Another lie brought to us from Adam Schiff. That this serial liar is allowed to drag the nation through this sham of an investigation is a travesty.
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Someone in Congress should file an ethics complaint about Schiff's deliberate lie.  I think he is not so much protecting the alleged "whistleblower" as he is protecting him from exposure as an illegal leaker and was someone with a bias against the President.  Schiff is doing this to further his coup attempt against the President.