The Democrats are not fooling anybody, on both sides of the political aisle…
The whistleblower’s early communication with the committee also bears on the complaint’s credibility. The Times story explains that the whistleblowing Central Intelligence Agency officer initially alerted the CIA’s top lawyer to concerns. Yet before even waiting for this procedure to play out, the officer went to Mr. Schiff’s staff. This act has to be measured in light of Mr. Atkinson’s acknowledgment that the source demonstrated an “arguable political bias . . . in favor of a rival candidate.” It has become urgent that Republicans demand more information about the whistleblower’s history and motivations—questions that are central to any whistleblower complaint, but particularly one being used as a basis for impeachment.
If all this has a somewhat familiar feel of subterfuge and ambush, it should. The episode is redolent of the sneak attack on Brett Kavanaugh. An unknown person levels nasty allegations; a Democratic lawmaker (in that case, Sen. Dianne Feinstein) conceals the claim before springing it at an opportune moment; the media jumps on board to distort and inflame the story. Lost in the carnage are little things like fairness, standards and due process.
Everyone knows what’s going on, this isn’t about sudden shock over a president requesting a foreign government to investigate the potential wrongdoing by a career politician and his son. This is about overturning the 2016 elections, removing a president that the Democrats never conceded had won the White House. This is about pure power over the electorate and that should scare you, whether you’re an American or not.
Opinion: Schiff’s Whistleblower Timeline Doesn’t Add Up
If the latest impeachment push continues to backfire, Democrats can thank their House Intelligence chairman, Adam Schiff. Image: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
The New York Times reported this week that the “whistleblower” who set off the latest inquisition provided an “early warning” to Mr. Schiff’s committee that he or she was filing a complaint over Donald Trump’s July 25 call to Ukraine’s president. The media is now at pains to stress that whistleblowers do sometimes reach out to Congress, that all “procedures” were followed, and that what really matters is the accusation that Mr. Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.
Actually, it matters a great deal that Mr. Schiff knew about this early and withheld it deliberately from both the public and his House colleagues. He used his advance information to lay the groundwork steadily for later exploitation of the issue. He went so far as to charge the White House with a coverup—of a complaint he already knew about. The timeline of this orchestrated campaign is another knock to the legitimacy of the so-called impeachment inquiry. If the public can’t trust Mr. Schiff to be honest about the origins of his information, why should they trust his claim that the information itself is serious?
Mr. Schiff on Sept. 13, a Friday night, issued the explosive news that he had been alerted a few days earlier by the intelligence community’s inspector general of an “urgent” yet unspecified whistleblower complaint. But the complaint is dated Aug. 12, and news reports now say the whistleblower interacted with Mr. Schiff’s staff prior to then. So Mr. Schiff knew about the topic of the complaint for more than a month—while the public did not. It is now clear why the intelligence chairman in that month suddenly developed an interest in all things Ukrainian, and began aggressively previewing his impeachment mantra.
